The Paris Affair (15 page)
Claire inserted her keycard into the lock, and Helmut pushed the door open for her. She opened her mouth to tell him she’d see him later, but he was already inside. As the door slammed ungracefully behind her, he backed her up against the wall and kissed her again. This kiss was just as demanding as the one on the street corner, and she was soon breathless.
His single-minded focus on her set her reeling, and soon she was breathless. He trailed hot kisses down her neck while his hands scooped up under the hem of her skirt and found the waistband of her hose and her panties. With an efficient yank, she was bare from the waist down, and he lifted her legs up and around his waist and pressed her back against the wall. While she worked on the buttons of his tailored dress shirt, her hands clumsy in her haste to find his smooth, hot flesh.
He pressed a hand into her slick folds, his thumb working her clit and she cried out and clenched around him. Then his cock was inside her, thrusting hard and fast while one hand gently cushioned her head from the wall.
Claire felt like Dorothy from the
Wizard of Oz
, spinning inside a twister of desire, possession, and other emotions that she couldn’t name. Her climax rippled around her in shimmering waves, and Helmut gave a thrust and she felt him shudder inside her.
They clung together for a long moment, their breath slowing, and then gently he eased himself out of her and lowered her legs to the floor.
He looked her in the eyes then, and gently stroked her cheek. He kissed her softly, tenderly, and deeply. And then he quietly walked out, shutting her door softly behind him.
Scalding hot water from the shower washed over Helmut, and steam curled around the marble-tiled shower, rising in innocent white fluffs.
The rush of water and the din of the fan were not loud enough to drown out the screeching of tires and the crunching of metal that played over and over again in his head. His heart had frozen when he’d seen Claire crumpled on the floor of that cab.
No, his heart had frozen thirteen years ago on a dingy stretch of I-55 outside Midway Airport. The towering smokestacks from refineries had been the sole witnesses of the stupidest risk Helmut had ever taken. Today’s fender-bender was nothing compared to the twisted heap that had been his Mustang that night.
He closed his eyes as the water poured over his face, stinging eyes that had waited more than a third of his life to cry.
Olivia.
Sweet and full of laughter, with the sultry voice of a fallen angel. His fiancée.
She had died that night because of him. Helmut had wished for years afterwards that he had, too. He had prayed for it. There was no mountain too high, no motorcycle too fast, no gamble too risky for him.
In between his daring escapades, there was work and more work. He had no one to go home to, no wife, no kids. No reason not to put in ninety or more hours a week. The day that should have been his wedding day, he was promoted to department manager.
When his dad died, his mom begged him to come back home to Florida, but he just couldn’t see leaving Sheffield & Fox. The company would fall apart without him, he told everyone. He was indispensable.
Helmut sank down onto the floor of the shower, cradling his throbbing head in his hands. The steaming water began to cool as the hotel water heater gave up on him.
He had started dating again, eventually. Ever faster cars and indulgent weekend getaways made him popular. The first time a woman he barely knew said that she loved him, he panicked, and never called again. Women apparently loved a challenge. Knowing he’d screwed and then screwed over one of their own seemed to make him all the more attractive to the rest.
All of them except for Claire.
Teeth chattering, Helmut shut off the water and reached for a towel.
Claire was the first woman in many who didn’t chase him, didn’t cling, didn’t beg. She challenged him, fired him, and shunted him into a tiny private corner of her life. Seeing her proud form humbled by the accident, Helmut knew he’d met his match. Before he left for Paris, he thought he’d already lost everything he cared about. But he hadn’t realized he had a heart left to wager.
He wrapped a towel loosely around his waist and stared at himself in the mirror. Did he dare risk what was left of that for Claire?
He needed some fresh air. Or to hit something.
He changed into workout clothes and headed down toward the exercise room. If he was lucky, they’d have some friggin’ heavy free weights he could heft until his arms and legs turned to jelly. With his luck of late, he’d be stuck with a treadmill and a yoga mat.
He didn’t get that far. The exercise room was off the main lobby, down a side hall past the bar. Tossing back a shot glass at the polished mahogany and chrome counter stood Ben.
“Little early for the hard stuff,” Helmut said as he swung a leg over the stool next to Ben’s. “Early celebration?”
“What the hell are you doing here, Helmut?”
Helmut signaled the waiter and ordered a glass of water. “Thought I’d go for a jog, but you looked like you needed company. Is that vodka?”
Ben shrugged and poured himself another. And downed it in a single gulp like the first shot.
Helmut grabbed the bottle and pretended to study the label. “That looks like actual Russian. How much does a bottle like this go for, anyway?”
“Don’t care. Charged it to the room.” Ben wiped his mouth with a cocktail napkin and fixed Helmut with a nasty stare. “What happened, Helmut? Did you forget you got fired and show up for work anyway?”
Helmut casually set the bottle down on his other side. “I thought a vacation was in order, to celebrate my retirement.”
Ben snorted. “You? Retire? That’ll be the day. I get it. You decided to chase a little CEO skirt and thought you could wine and dine her in Par-ee. Pathetic, man. Flying all this way to win a piddly little bet.”
Helmut flushed, but Ben continued without seeming to notice.
“High and mighty a week ago. Now look at you, man. Washed up. Wearing...what the hell are you wearing?”
“Sweats. How much of that bottle did you drink, Ben?”
“Not nearly enough, Helmut, buddy. Not nearly enough.” Ben pushed back his barstool and got unsteadily to his feet. “Tell you what, Helmut. I’ve got a little...something I’m working on. Maybe you can get a piece of it, too. Never let it be said that I don’t take care of my friends.”
Ben clapped Helmut on the back and wandered out of the bar. Helmut eyed the bottle.
“Is
monsieur
a friend of yours?” the bartender asked.
“Used to be,” Helmut said as he stretched and started to leave.
“The bottle,
monsieur
. It is paid for. Do you want it?” The young man produced a lid and screwed it back on.
“Thanks,” Helmut said. Maybe he could share it with Claire tonight. By the sound of it, it was her money that paid for it.
Claire punched the off key on her cell phone and glared at the small screen as though it might apologize for Ben. The Shadow Fly project manager was late for his own press conference. Behind her, her VP of marketing flipped through charts on his laptop, preparing to read the presentation cold.
She set the phone down on the folding table in front of her, reached for her bottle of water and took a gulp. Then she glanced at her watch again. And picked up her phone again.
Steph answered on the first ring. “What’s wrong, Claire? Why aren’t you in the conference room yet?”
“Lackey’s MIA.”
“Huh. Did someone call his cell?”
Claire let out a breath. So much for Steph’s miracles. She should have smuggled the woman into France in her suitcase. “Goes straight to voice mail.”
“Huh.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“Chill, Claire, I’m dialing the hotel on the other line as we speak. Hang on.”
Claire barely heard Steph’s voice in the background, and made out the words “Lackey” and “page,” but nothing coherent.
“No answer in his room either. I’ve got another idea. How long do you have?” Steph asked.
Claire glanced at her watch. “Five minutes. No, four. If you find him before I do, let him know that I’m disappointed that he couldn’t join us. No, on second thought, I’m not disappointed.”
Steph chuckled. Claire thought she heard a muffled “thanks” as Steph talked to someone on the other phone.
“I called Forrester,” Steph said.
“Helmut? Why?” It was a good thing that Steph couldn’t see the heat that crept into Claire’s cheeks over the phone.
“They’re friends, and I know he’s in Paris,” Steph continued. “He says that he last saw Ben over an hour ago at the hotel. Can you guys handle the presentation?”
“Most of it. But I don’t have a single tech person here, and I know a couple of the trade magazines are going to press for details about the engine streamlining we did. I don’t have the foggiest idea what that even means.”
Steph chuckled again. “I think it means they made it smaller and more efficient. But that’s where my knowledge ends. There were a couple of engineers booked for the trip. Go start the press conference and I’ll see if I can send them over to answer questions at the end.”
“Thanks, Steph. You’re a life saver.”
The door to the tiny sitting room opened and a slight man wearing a conference coordinator badge waved them out into the hallway. Claire deliberately set a measured pace down the hall, knowing that the other three execs would slow down to let her enter first. No matter how hectic things are backstage, never let your audience see you nervous or they’ll eat you alive.
The conference press room was standard issue with half a dozen rows of chairs facing a blue-skirted table lined with microphones. To Claire’s surprise, the room was packed. Bright lights flashed as she and her team took their seats at the table and the marketing VP walked to the podium to begin the presentation.
The intro music started up and images of airplanes and American flags began flashing on the video screen behind Claire, and the camera lenses kept on flashing. There were also half a dozen TV cameras running. Claire blinked through the blind spots in her vision and tried to make out the station names. She recognized some major players. NBC, CBS, BBC. Why were the major networks so interested in a remote-controlled helicopter?
The door Claire and the executives had just walked through opened, and Ben Lackey slunk through, closing it quietly behind him. He took an empty chair at the end of the table. With the lights dimmed for the A/V, Claire couldn’t see a lot of details, though his hair looked slightly mussed in the front, and his tie had been loosened.
She quickly scribbled
Ben’s here
on a note pad and handed it down the line of chairs toward the podium.
The VP of Marketing managed to introduce Ben so smoothly, it looked like a planned handover. Claire breathed a sigh of relief as Lackey launched into an animated discussion of Shadow Fly. She spent the time surreptitiously studying the audience, and got good vibes. Not too much fidgeting, no one leaving during the presentation. In fact, by the end, they all seemed to hover on the edge of their seats as if waiting for a grand finale.
And then the questions began.
The first two were innocuous enough. Technical details about wing composition and fuel components. Question number three came from one of the major news networks in the back.
“Does Sheffield and Fox have a statement about the Forrester affair?” Claire couldn’t make out the face of the reporter through the tangle of cameras and heads.
Ben shot her a glance, and she stood, suppressing a sigh. With a confident smile, she walked to the microphone at the podium and squinted into the bright lights of the projector, which still illuminated the backdrop with the S&F logo and the Shadow Fly photos.
“Good afternoon, everyone. As you probably know, I am Claire Sheffield, CEO of Sheffield and Fox.” Cameras flashed, and Claire had to fight to keep from cringing in the assault on her eyes. Her heart constricted as she formed her words carefully.
“In answer to the question about the Forrester affair, I would like to refer you to the press release that we sent out at the beginning of the week. We are still investigating the incident internally, and have begun a massive educational campaign within the company regarding business ethics.”
More hands went up. Claire nodded at a woman in the second row.
“Ms. Sheffield, have you forgiven Helmut Forrester?”
Claire frowned at the odd choice of words. “I don’t believe that it is my place to either judge or forgive him. This is a business matter, and a legal one.”
“Is it true that you fired him?” the woman asked, without waiting for permission.
“The entire board of directors and the executive team, including Mr. Forrester, agreed that it would be best for the investigation and for the company if he sought employment elsewhere for the time being.” Claire scanned the room looking for someone else to call on, but every hand had disappeared except for the same woman.
“Ms. Sheffield, would you agree that it is important for a ‘twenty-first century company and all of its representatives to avoid even the appearance of impropriety in all business dealings’?”
Claire smiled tightly and clamped down the fear that was fluttering around in her belly. The woman was driving at something. “That sounds like a direct quote from our press release.”
“Yes, Ms. Sheffield. It is. Do you consider your current relationship with Mr. Forrester to be ‘avoiding the appearance of impropriety’?”
Claire folded her hands together on the podium to keep them from shaking. “I am afraid I don’t understand the question.”
“Are you romantically involved with Helmut Forrester, Ms. Sheffield?”
Claire took a small, steadying breath. “We move in the same social and business circles. Mr. Forrester worked for many years in the aerospace industry, and for my father. It is inevitable that our paths should cross.”
Claire was sure she heard a snort of laughter, but it was quickly muffled. Her cell phone vibrated softly in her jacket pocket, and she silenced it.
“Does any one have any additional questions about the Shadow Fly project?”
Another hand went up. A man this time, front row center. Close enough for Claire to read his press badge. NBC news. The big guns.
“What is your reaction to the photographs that were posted on the Internet this afternoon, Ms. Sheffield?”