The Other C-Word (36 page)

We wouldn’t want staring. Staring might impede the clandestine nakedness we planned to perpetrate. “I have the keys. I’ll meet you up there.”

Warning bells permeated the din of lust in my head. I
knew
I should not do this, but that damn dimple was a con man of the highest order. Later I would send a thousand dollars to a Nigerian prince because it asked me to.

I put my hand over my chest in a probably futile attempt to cover up the boob disaster and hurried to find my best friend, fellow office drone and love consultant Ellen. As I suspected, she occupied my old spot by the buffet tables. Great minds and all that. I hoped the food wouldn’t forget me now.

“Ellen!”

She paused mid-potato ball. She’d thank me later.

I pulled her into a nearby cube and shoved aside someone’s work papers to sit on the white, plastic counter. The files probably weren’t important. This was the Steak on a Stick corporation—the United Nations it was not. “Should I go make out with The Accountant?” I asked.

Her brown eyes narrowed. “You pulled me away from hot hors d’oeuvres to ask me that?”

“I fully deserve that reprimand, but this is important, too. Kissing or no kissing?” I didn’t mention that there had already been kissing. No need to complicate the matter.

She set her martini down and took on a more properly ponderous attitude. The politics of inter-office romance were tricky. “Kissing.”

I fist-pumped. “Yes!”

“But don’t screw him in the copy room. You’ll always be the girl who screwed a guy in the copy room. Remember poor Mary Lou and the supply closet?”

“That nickname was just evil. How come the men never get vile rhymes made up about them?”

Ellen was indeed wise. A few months ago, she’d sold a book—an awesome young adult novel about the zombie apocalypse starring a lesbian heroine named Samantha. Oh, yeah, I would forever be personified as the tough, yet sensitive saviour of humankind with a penchant for both justice and redheads.

“Where you gonna do it?” she asked.

“Oliver’s office.”

“Nope.”

“Why? It’s deserted. Oliver fled his unwashed minions an hour ago.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again, but the furrow between her eyebrows remained.

“Besides, he has couches.” I hoisted my boobs farther up in my push-up bra. Almost time for my pretties to shine!

“Do not have sex with that man in your boss’s office! You’d always be—”

“Yes, yes, I know. Besides, it would be slutty.”

Ellen pulled my sweater down so it stretched over my cleavage more. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Ellen was indeed wise.

“What’s going on with your boob there?” She pointed just as some guy passed by. He snickered and moved on. Now those gay rumours would circulate again. When they resurfaced I got hit on more by skeevy vice presidents who dreamed of getting to watch. I didn’t know if Ellen minded. She was a lesbian, so she didn’t care about that part. But perhaps she hated that people thought I was her main squeeze. She dated taller and cooler than me. Her words.

* * * *

I unlocked the door and tiptoed into the CEO’s well-appointed office. It smelt of leather furniture and large, ridiculous bonuses. I had been Oliver Taylor’s second assistant for over a year at Steak on a Stick, whose slogan read, ‘What doesn’t taste better on a stick!’ It wasn’t the best rhetorical question ever. I’d gone to school to learn how to act. Now every day I acted as if being a secretary at Steak on a Stick didn’t murder my soul one beefy bite at a time.

Sam hadn’t arrived yet. I planted myself on Oliver’s desk and turned off the negative voices in my head. After all, I wasn’t here to rehash my disastrous acting career—I was here to begin a disastrous affair.

I didn’t wait long. A couple of minutes later, he sauntered into the room, cool, collected, debonair. Ellen’s cock-blocking face filled my brain. I tried to conjure chaste thoughts—nuns, priests, naughty monks…hot priests listening to dirty confessions…

I wasn’t very good at chaste thoughts. Whoever it was who said that only men thought about sex all the time was dead wrong, or simply rubbish at picking up ladies.

Sam paused a moment in the dim light, then came towards me, slowly, almost prowling like a jungle cat. That was what romance novels always said the hero did and boy, did Sam panther with the best of them. Appropriate, for while my bodice hadn’t exactly been ripped, it had been stained thoroughly.

“Hello,” he said.

I jumped. The room had been so quiet. He threw me a cheeky smile that said he wasn’t sorry for making me jittery.

“I’ve never been in here before.” He ran his hand across the back of a sofa that probably cost more than my car.

The twinkling lights of downtown Los Angeles filtered in through the enormous executive windows, illuminating him in warm, sultry yellows—Hollywood’s modern version of candlelight. I slid off the desk and jutted out a curvy, come-hither hip. “Well, here is where it all goes down.”

“Where all what goes down?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care. I avoid thinking about my job any more than I have to as a tremendously dedicated professional.”

He laughed and said, “But he never sees people up here, right? That’s the scuttlebutt.” Sam’s eyes caressed every inch of the room instead of caressing every inch of me.

“Yes, that’s true, I guess. It’s a
secret
office,” I joked. He didn’t say anything. I glanced in the ornate wall mirror and floofed up my hair.

Sam made a slow circuit of the room while I almost jumped out of my skin. I ought to be the jumpee, not the jumper—why was he ignoring my obvious signals? My seduction techniques were rusty. Perhaps in true Tinseltown fashion I should have sent him a sex tape as a warm-up act.

“I heard there was a secret,
secret
room.” he said.

My heart tripped just enough to make me flustered. “How do you—?” Shit. A good assistant would have denied the secret,
secret
room. Truth be told, I was a competent, bored assistant at best. “I mean, what room?”

He prowled some more in my direction, a dangerous smile playing about his features. “I mean this door right here beside you.”

FYI, when you make a hidden hideaway, you shouldn’t put a giant, undisguised metal door on it.

“I can’t let you in. I don’t even go in there.”

“So you know the code?” He’d taken on an I-dare-you air.

I was the worst secret keeper in the world. Saying nothing was obviously the best course of action.

He leaned in so that we stood cheek to cheek. His breath tickled my ear when he murmured, “I want to kiss a masterpiece like you amongst other masterpieces.”

I’d never been whispered such an overblown load of obviously seductive bullshit in my life. It was wonderful. A naughty thrill set my skin to tingling—the urge to break rules overcame me. Peeking inside Oliver’s secret gallery wasn’t too rowdy, as rebellions went, but it was fun, and it was mine.

I backed away and walked to the keypad outside the not-so-hush-hush vault. I punched in the code—sixty-nine, sixty-nine, six. Did I mention how classy Oliver was?

Cool air whooshed into the office as the door swung open. Rows of tiny spotlights flashed to attention. His body behind mine, Sam shuffled me into a world of rare artefacts and priceless artworks. If you dismembered me and sold me for parts, I wouldn’t be worth one square inch of this room. Every once in a while I would steal in here and sit, drinking in the kind of beauty rare in this life. It wasn’t a huge vault—about twenty by thirty feet, with a cushioned, velvet-covered bench running down the centre—but it was an island of pure tranquillity.

There was a gorgeous wooden mask from Oliver’s trip to Mali a month ago. A collection of ancient Egyptian
ushabtis
sat in a plexiglass display case. Paintings by Matisse, Dali, Kahlo and a dozen others lined the walls, jammed together in double rows, embracing the mere mortals in the middle.

Despite his fabulous-terrible-come-on-line, Sam brushed past me the moment we entered the room and gawked in wonder at the beauty enveloping us. I couldn’t blame him. I peeked out of the open door, nervous excitement simmering in my belly, and prayed we wouldn’t get caught.

He stopped at one particular painting towards the back—Oliver’s newest addition. “I’ve never seen this Picasso.”

I crossed to him and admired the small window of dashing colour and tension poised on the perfect chocolate wall. “That’s a pretty recent one—new to Oliver, of course. It’s one of my favourites.”

The masterpiece was only nine by seven inches or so. It featured the head and shoulders of a Harlequin in near profile, bedecked in blue, yellow and red diamonds. He wore a black hat that came to a rounded peak at the crown and swooped down over his ears almost like bull horns. The lip of a wine bottle featured in the bottom left corner of the painting. What I loved best was his stark white face with slashing black eyebrows—he peered at you mischievously, yet seriously, a glint in his dark eye. As if he understood something you didn’t, like he was staring at the doom hovering over your shoulder. A drunken, tired and probably poor performer was he. I could relate to that.

“I’m impressed you identified it as a Picasso. I only knew from Oliver’s bragging,” I said. The piece wasn’t signed.

His voice came from behind me. “It’s Rose Period, probably 1901 to 1905-ish. Wonderful. Although I’m more a Cubist man, myself.”

I shifted to see his face. “Well, aren’t you smart in the ways of art?”

He rolled his eyes, but smiled to lessen the blow. “I’m smart in the ways of lots of things.”

I caught the Harlequin’s gaze again and resisted an urge to wink. “How much do you think Steak on a Stick paid for it? Ten million? Twenty?” I had no idea, but it was fun to fantasise about pissing away gagillions of dollars for the sake of beauty.

“Not enough.”

I turned to him. He stared down at me with an odd expression. He blinked it away and brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. I trembled and whispered, “Suppose we steal it and run away to Bali?”

Taking a step closer, he said, “Now you’ve got the right idea.”

That
look in his eyes was much less confusing. I giggled and stared at my feet. It would be so easy to grab it off the wall and disappear…move to a beach…have monkey butlers…

Sam rocked back on his heels. “How is it he gave you the code to this room? In the trenches, he refers to you as ‘Girl Number Two’.”

“Yes, his respect for me is well known.”

The backs of his knuckles trailed the outside of my arm, and he took my hand in his own. The small gesture infused me with a sense of value. The feeling that I wasn’t merely a drone, but a person—his touch told me he saw me as one. Sudden emotion welled in my throat. I couldn’t speak for a long moment. He played with my fingers, and my forehead fell to his shoulder. When my voice box could vibrate again, I said, “I clean it. The room. I may be Girl Number Two, but I am Feather Duster Number One.”

In a flash, his arms were around me. His intoxicating smell rolled over my senses. “You’re number one to me.” It was his second cheesy pick-up of the night. I always did love anything dripping in dairy. I took his head in my hands and feasted on that luscious, exaggerating mouth.

We fell back against the wall and thumped into the Picasso’s frame. I flew away from it as if prodded by red-hot pokers. “OhmyGod is it okay?”

He straightened the painting. “Yes, don’t worry.” Gently, he took my shoulders and rubbed the tops of my arms. “We did not pulverise Pablo.”