2
“Nice picture in the Washingtonian.” Tony Prossi, one of three founding partners of the law firm of Prossi, Stuart and Craig, stepped into Joseph Craig’s office.
Joseph lifted his gaze from his computer screen. He’d been profiled in the latest issue of Washingtonian as one of the ten most eligible bachelors in Washington. “It’s not like they gave me a choice. You wouldn’t believe how many women read that magazine.”
“You’re fighting them off, are you?” Tony lifted his eyebrows.
“Yes, I’m fighting them off.” He gripped the arms of his chair as he pushed himself to his feet and then he was crossing to the bar in the corner of his office. At six foot four, with dark, wavy hair and a model-worthy face, Joseph Craig didn’t need assistance attracting the opposite sex. He had an almost untamed air about him that women found irresistible.
“I hear the cute weather woman from NBC was all over you last night.”
“We were all over each other.” He turned from the bar with a glass of water. “And I’ve been paying for it all day. I’m exhausted. There was no stopping her. She went down on me in the back of the cab on the way to her place.”
“I’m sure it was painful for you,” Tony said dryly.
“It was.” He laughed. “I’m getting too old for this. I got about a minute’s sleep last night.”
“And here I thought you were about to pop the question to Kathy,” Tony said, referring to Joseph’s girlfriend, a former model and the owner of a plush art gallery in Alexandria, Virginia.
“I probably should.”
“And this is why you were screwing the weather woman?”
“We’re not exclusive.”
“Does she know that?”
Joseph shrugged. “We haven’t discussed it.”
“I bet.” Tony glanced at his watch. “I’m off. See you Monday.”
“Wait—wait.” Joseph followed him to the door. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go up to New York for the weekend. There’s an opening at a gallery. A new artist I want to see.”
“New York City in August? No thanks.”
“Come on, when was the last time you were up there?”
“Not even tempted. Have a nice weekend.”
“You’re getting boring, Prossi,” Joseph called after him as he left his office.
Joseph Craig and Tony Prossi started life on the same day in hospitals six hundred miles apart—Tony the first son of a young senator and his wife, both of prominent Virginia families, and Joseph the son of an eighteen-year-old girl who would later become a maid at the estate of a prominent Massachusetts family. And when they met twenty-one years later, they were law students at one of the most prominent colleges in the country. As their lives started the same day, their paths to becoming attorneys too started the same day.
The illegitimate son of a maid would receive the same education as the senator’s son. Joseph spent his entire life with the affluent, not as a servant or as an equal, but as an outsider striving to be like them because they were all he knew. His childhood home was on one of the largest estates in Massachusetts. His neighbors had names like Kennedy, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. He shared their world, but not their status. He was a no one in a world of someones and he knew it, had known it since almost the beginning.
As a little boy, he often sat on the porch off the small two-bedroom cottage that served as his home, staring at the mansion where his grandmother worked and asking why his house was so much smaller. “Because we come from different places, Joseph,” his grandmother would say. “We only live here because I work for the Williamses. This is their home… Most people live in much smaller houses.” But Joseph never saw those smaller houses.
His grandmother, Elizabeth Craig, came to the United States from England when she was thirty-one years old. Recently widowed, with a ten-year-old daughter, she was hired by Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Williams as a maid and provided a small house on the estate.
Elizabeth’s daughter, Helen, grew into a beautiful young woman with platinum hair and green eyes. She turned the heads of men wherever she went. And the summer before she was to begin her freshman year in college, she turned the head of Richard Jefferson Eastwood III, the oldest son of Mr. Williams’s banker, Richard Jefferson Eastwood II. He came to the estate to attend a Fourth of July party and noticed Helen sitting on the porch of her cottage reading a book. He was charming and handsome, and when he asked her if he could call her she said yes. He never mentioned he was getting married in September.
Helen lost her virginity that summer. She was in love and never doubted the dashing Richard would one day be her husband, until one Sunday morning in August when she was lying next to him in bed and his telephone rang. He spoke to the other person only briefly, but before he hung up he said, “I love you too” into the receiver. When Helen asked who he was speaking to he told her it was his fiancée and was surprised when she seemed shocked by the admission. “It has nothing to do with you,” he said. “I want to keep seeing you after I’m married.”
Devastated, Helen listened to him as he explained how they came from different “stations in life” and he would never even entertain the notion of marrying someone with her background. A month later she discovered she was pregnant. Richard, his wedding two weeks away, was in his office when Helen called.
“Helen, hello,” he said, obviously pleased to hear her voice until he learned the reason for the call. “Are you sure it’s mine?”
“Of course I’m sure. You’re the only man I’ve ever been with.”
“I’m not going to marry you. I’m marrying Elise next week.”
“I’m having your baby!” she cried. “You have to marry me.”
“I’m not marrying you, Helen.” His voice was cold. “Even if I wasn’t marrying Elise, I wouldn’t marry you…My family would never accept you.”
“But…but I’m pregnant.”
“That’s not my problem.” He hung up the phone and several days later she received a letter and check in the mail.
Helen,
This letter in no way acknowledges responsibility for the predicament you’ve found yourself in. I am not in love with you, have never been in love with you, and would never want to father a child with you.
If you are in fact pregnant, I recommend you terminate the pregnancy immediately. I’ve enclosed five hundred dollars to pay for the procedure.
I will be getting married next week. Please stop calling my office.
Richard
Helen never spoke to Richard Eastman III again. Seven months and two weeks after receiving the letter, she gave birth to a ten-pound boy and named him Joseph. Joseph had a full head of curly black hair, a cleft in his little chin and the hint of deep dimples in his cheeks.
Elizabeth never discussed the pregnancy or birth with her employers. The Williamses thought it odd when Helen stopped attending college after only one semester, but didn’t realize she was pregnant until the spring when it became impossible to hide. Even then Elizabeth didn’t bring up the obvious fact that her single daughter was pregnant. And when she asked for a few days off in late May to take care of her daughter, there was no mention of the baby.
Joseph was three weeks old the first time the Williamses met him. Helen, who was out walking with him in the garden, came around a corner and almost collided with them. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here,” Helen said, quickly turning.
“It’s okay, Helen,” Mrs. Williams assured her. “We came out to meet your baby.”
“Oh.” Helen turned back, surprised. “His name is Joseph,” she said with the hint of a smile. She moved the blanket down from his face so they could see him. “He weighed ten pounds.”
“He’s beautiful,” Mrs. Williams said, her eyes moving from the baby to her husband. “Isn’t he, Theodore?”
“Yes.” He didn’t take his eyes from Joseph.
Later that day, Mr. Williams approached Elizabeth and asked if he could have a few moments of her time. “Of course, Mr. Williams.” She followed him down the long marble hallway leading to his study. “I know I should have asked your permission before bringing him home from the hospital, but she had nowhere else to go,” she began nervously as soon as he closed the door.
“Elizabeth, your grandson is welcome here.” He led her to a leather chair beside a fireplace before taking a seat himself. “Does Richard know? It’s obvious, Elizabeth. He’s a perfect replica of him.”
Elizabeth showed Mr. Williams the letter Richard Eastman had sent to Helen and the two never again discussed Joseph Craig’s paternal roots. Joseph grew up not knowing he was the illegitimate son of Richard Eastman III. His mother told him he was the son of a Frenchman she met during a trip to Europe the summer after graduation—a man who died in a car accident before they were to be married.
Almost from the beginning, it was obvious Joseph inherited more than the Eastmans’ looks. He inherited his grandfather’s keen intellect. Richard Eastman II was a brilliant financier. His son, Richard III, was gifted both academically and athletically.
Joseph inherited it all. He taught himself to read when he was three. He was beating Mr. Williams at tennis and chess by the age of eight. He was witty and shrewd, and Mr. Williams spent hours counseling and teaching the boy. Joseph attended a prestigious private day school through eighth grade and then was accepted to the exclusive Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut for high school.
The week before he left for Choate Rosemary, Joseph was in his mother’s closet searching for his birth certificate when he found a large manila envelope. Inside were several newspaper clippings about the founder of a new brokerage firm, Richard Eastman III. He read through each article and then he found the letter Richard Eastman had sent his mother almost fifteen years earlier. It took him a moment to comprehend what it meant. His father wasn’t a dead Frenchman. He was from Massachusetts and he had three Roman numerals after his name.
Joseph read the letter thirty times, never mentioning the discovery to his mother. She seemed to have almost convinced herself he was the son of a Frenchman, telling him dozens of stories over the years about the handsome man who swept her off her feet. She’d even given him a name: Jean la Montagne.
Instead, his father was an American who wouldn’t give up a fiancée to marry the seventeen-year-old he’d impregnated. Joseph was the only student in his high school not sharing his father’s name. He was the only student who was the son of a servant. He was still popular with the other students and teachers, but he knew he was different. When he went home on break it wasn’t to mansions like his friends. He went home to a small cottage he shared with his mother and grandmother. While his friends were vacationing in the South of France, Aspen and Palm Beach, he was helping his mother polish silver.
He spent his whole life on the edge of his father’s world. He became fanatical about proving his worth to his classmates and had inherited the brains and natural athletic ability to do it. He excelled at everything in high school, becoming captain of the rowing team, tennis team and debate team.
Like his father and grandfather before him, he graduated valedictorian of his class. He was one of three students in the country that year to receive a perfect score on his SAT, and he was accepted to Yale University. After graduating magna cum laude with a degree in English, he took the LSAT and received a score high enough to gain admission to Harvard Law School.
During his final semester before graduation, Joseph’s grandmother died of a heart attack and Tony offered to drive him home. When they arrived at the estate, they were greeted by Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and within minutes they were offering Tony a room in the main house.
Joseph excused himself and was almost in tears when he reached the cottage. He found his mother curled up on the couch crying, and as he pulled her into his arms he too began to cry. Later, when the Williamses called to invite them to the main house for dinner, Joseph declined.
He was sitting on a porch swing, drinking his fourth Heineken, when Tony strolled up the path from the main house hours later.
“Hey.” Tony stopped several yards from the porch. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” He took a long swig from the bottle in his hand.
“This place is unbelievable,” Tony said glancing towards the gardens to his right.
“You mean your parents’ place in McLean isn’t like this?”
“Hardly. We’re paupers compared to this.”
“I wonder what that makes me.” Joseph kicked off the porch with the tip of his loafer, sending the swing back in a wide arch. “What’s lower than a pauper?”
“I was kidding,” Tony said. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s sleeping. Cleaning up after other people all day is hard work.”
Tony watched him in silence.
“Has your mother ever made a bed, Tony?” Joseph asked, not looking directly at him, but off towards the main house.
Tony brought his eyebrows together, confusion marring his handsome features. “Of course.”
“You mean you didn’t have a maid?”
“Not that lived in the house.”
“So you had one that came during the day, but went home at night.” Joseph’s gaze moved from the house to Tony.
“No. We had a service come to the house a couple times a week.”
“Did you ever think about those women?” He jumped off the swing and closed the distance between them in several long strides. “Where they went when they left your fancy house?”
“No, Joseph, I didn’t.” Tony met his eyes. “What in the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing…nothing at all.” He tilted back his head as he finished his beer and then he tossed the empty bottle onto the porch. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to the Williamses? I mean, the servants’ quarters are somewhat below you, aren’t they, Prossi?”
“I only agreed to stay up there because I thought you’d want some time alone with your mother…It’s not a big deal, Joe.”
“To you maybe.” Joseph moved to walk past him, but Tony gripped his arm. “Take your hands off me,” Joseph snapped, his eyes moving to the hand on his arm.
“What are you going to do, Joe? Hit me?” Tony moved his head back so he could meet his friend’s eyes. “You’re going to hit me because Mr. Williams invited me to stay in his house so you could have some time alone with your mother?”
“That’s not why he invited you.” Joseph roughly shook his arm free and turned to face him. “He invited you because your father’s a fucking senator and he thinks you’re too good to stay here.” He waved his hand towards the cottage.
“That’s bullshit.” Tony placed his hands on his hips. “He invited me to stay there because of you.”
“You’re naïve,” Joseph said dismissively, before walking off in the direction of the gardens.
“I’m naïve?” Tony jogged to catch up to him and then fell into step beside him. “The man just spent an hour and a half talking nonstop about you.”
“Right.” Joseph shook his head, continuing forward. “I’m sure he gets a real kick out of the success of the maid’s son.”
“That guy is proud as shit of you. He has a folder an inch thick with clippings of your accolades. Jesus, Joe, even I was impressed. You had a perfect fucking SAT?”
“What?” Joseph’s head turned in Tony’s direction.
“He talks like you’re his grandson. He thinks you’re brilliant.”
“He said that?” Joseph stopped at the entrance to the gardens. “He said I was brilliant?”
“Yes.” Tony nodded. “You are, Joseph. You’re the smartest guy I know. And you’re a great friend, but this obsession you have about where you come from is destructive.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re the son of a senator.”
“You don’t see it, but people respect you, Joseph. And they respect you for your accomplishments, not your father’s.”
“They’d respect me more if my last name was Prossi.”
“That’s not true.”
“What if my last name was Eastman?” he asked, his eyes intense. “Would they respect me more if I was Richard Eastman IV?”
Richard Eastman III was a senior partner at Eastman and Brothers, one of the most successful investment brokerage firms in New York City.
Tony opened his mouth, but then closed it. “If you were Richard Eastman’s son, you’d be rich and spoiled and probably never work a day in your life.”
“And what if I was his bastard?” he asked, meeting Tony’s eyes. “What would I be like then?”
Tony stared at him for several seconds and then his eyes widened. “Fuck—why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hi, I’m Joseph Craig, Richard Eastman’s bastard’?”
“I don’t know…Do you know him?”
“No.” Joseph’s eyes dropped to the ground and he kicked at the dirt under his shoe.
“So he never supported you?”
Joseph actually laughed aloud. “Yeah. And that’s why I grew up in a fucking shack behind a mansion.” He swung his leg back and kicked a small rock into the air.
“You’ve never tried to contact him?”
“No.” Joseph shook his head. “When I meet Richard Eastman, I don’t want him to have any illusions that I’m after his money…I’m going to be established on my own first.”
Three years out of law school, after serving as a clerk to a US Supreme Court justice and then working at a private law firm for two more years, Joseph partnered with Tony Prossi and Kevin Stuart, a successful trial attorney and friend of Tony’s father, and opened the doors of Prossi, Stuart and Craig. Within two years they were the “hottest” law firm in Washington, DC, and their rates were the highest in the city. Separately the men were brilliant litigators, but the chemistry created by the partnership brought them up to the level of genius.
Joseph’s mother was killed in an automobile accident the year he turned thirty. Joseph returned to Massachusetts for the first time since graduating from Harvard. When he disembarked from the plane at Logan International Airport expecting to see the Williamses’ chauffeur, he instead was greeted by the eighty-two-year-old patriarch of the family. Theodore Williams smiled as Joseph walked towards him.
“Mr. Williams.” Joseph held out his hand as he stopped before the elderly man. “This is a surprise.”
“Hello, Joseph…I’m so sorry about your mother.” Instead of taking the hand Joseph offered, Mr. Williams wrapped his frail arms around him. “We loved her, Joseph,” he said when he finally pulled back, tears glistening in his tired blue eyes.
“I know.” Joseph smiled sadly. “She loved you too.” And she had. Two years earlier he tried to get her to move to Washington.
“This is my home,” she’d told him. “I don’t want to leave.” And there was nothing he could say to convince her otherwise. She was content to be someone else’s servant, even preferred it over any other option he presented. “They’re my family, Joseph…I love it here,” she’d said. He called her once a month and flew her down to Washington the next two Christmases, but their relationship wasn’t close and their conversations were superficial.
As the limousine wound its way down the long road leading to the Williamses’ home, Joseph’s eyes took in the familiar scenery. And then Theodore Williams turned to him and invited him to stay in the main house.
The funeral was small and intimate, and afterwards Joseph shared a scotch with the older man in the study where they used to play chess.
“Joseph, there are some things…things you have a right to know,” Mr. Williams said as his shaky hand brought his glass to his lips. He was staring at the fire, sitting in a high-back chair beside Joseph, the same chair he’d sat in when he talked to Elizabeth about her grandson thirty years earlier. “I’m not young, and I want to make sure you know the truth before I die.”
Joseph’s eyes swung to the profile of the older man. “About Eastman?”
The old eyes turned from the fire and looked directly into his. “You know?”
“That Richard Eastman was the man who got my mother pregnant? Yes, I’ve known since I was fourteen. I found a letter.”
“Your mother never said—”
“She didn’t know. I never discussed it with her.”
“I learned when you were a month old, and I contacted your grandfather.”
Joseph sat up straighter in his chair. “They knew?”
“Yes. Your grandfather and father knew. They never told your grandmother. Your grandfather paid for your education,” he said. “He was very proud of you, Joseph.”
“What do you mean he paid for my education?” Joseph pulled his eyebrows together in a frown. “I received grants.”
“To college. But he paid for Choate Rosemary. He asked them to tell you they were scholarships.”
Joseph shook his head from side to side. “He had no right…You had no right.” He abruptly stood and walked to the window.
“You were his grandson…his only grandson. He wanted to help you.”
“And my father?” Joseph turned from the window. “How did he play into all of this?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never discussed you with him…but he was there. He attended all your graduations.”
“My graduations?” Joseph turned from the window.
“Harvard, Yale, Choate Rosemary. He and your grandfather attended them all.”
“They had no right!”
“Your grandfather was so proud, Jo—”
“He didn’t have a right to be proud! He had nothing to do with who I am. My mother and you…You were the only ones I wanted. You were the ones who were there for me when I was growing up.”
“Your grandfather was a good man, Joseph. You remind me of him.”
“No!” Joseph glared at him. “I’m a Craig, not an Eastman. I would never not acknowledge my son or grandson. I’m nothing like them.”
“Joseph,” Mr. Williams began weakly.
“Don’t mention them to me again,” Joseph said coolly. “Don’t mention them again.” And he didn’t. Theodore Williams died a few months later, and as Joseph stood before three hundred mourners at the private service, delivering a eulogy at the request of the family and honoring the only father figure he’d ever known, Richard Eastman III sat in the audience.
“Mr. Craig?” His secretary’s knock preceded her entrance into his office. At sixty-one, Martha Godfrey was without question the top secretary at the law firm. Originally Tony’s, she’d come to Joseph a year and a half prior after a small scandal erupted involving him and his very attractive secretary. The brief indiscretion cost the firm a fine secretary and close to one hundred thousand dollars.
Joseph looked up from the stock portfolio displayed on his computer screen. “Yes?”
“Ms. Paige is here to see you.”
“Hello, Joseph.” Kathy stepped around his secretary. “Goodbye, Martha.”
“It’s okay, Martha.” Joseph pushed back his chair. “Switch the phones to the answering service and start your weekend.” His gaze shifted to Kathy as he came to his feet.
Kathy Paige was the epitome of beauty with long, straight blonde hair, large catlike green eyes, full lips and a perfect complexion. Standing a smidgen under six feet without shoes, she had the head-turning appeal of a movie star. “You haven’t called me in three days,” she scolded as she slid her perfectly manicured hands up his chest. “Where have you been?”
“Working,” he said before brushing his lips over hers, his hands lightly gripping her hips.
“You could have at least texted.” She trailed her lips along his jaw as she leaned her body into his. “I missed you.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy to answer my texts?”
“Pretty busy. And I’m still busy. I have a few things I have to wrap up.”
“Come on.” She flicked her tongue over the sensitive skin behind his ear. “Haven’t you missed me? I’m sure you have time for a break.” One of her hands was at the front of his pants.
Joseph closed his eyes, breathing deeply as she rubbed him through the thin material of his trousers. “Baby—”
“Your body doesn’t want to go back to work,” she whispered against his ear.
“I have things I’ve got to get done today,” he insisted, but his hands had slid from her hips to her butt, and he was propelling her backwards towards the door.
“I hate it when you don’t call before the weekend. I don’t know whether or not to make plans.”
“I’m sorry.” He pushed her back against the wooden door, his lower body pressing in to hers. “I should have called.” He slipped one hand beneath the hem of her dress, slowly trailing his fingers up the inside of her thigh. “Jesus,” he said deeply, slipping a finger into her. “You’re so wet.” A second finger joined the first. He sank his fingers in and out of her for several seconds. “Is this for me?”
“Yes,” she breathed, pushing against his hand.
His free hand dropped to his belt. “Go lean over my desk,” he whispered against her ear, removing his hand from beneath her dress. He turned the lock on his door before following her across the room, his eyes traveling over the back of her legs and butt.
“Joseph—”
“Shh. Bend over.” He placed a hand on the center of her back, slowly pushing her upper body forward until she was lying over his desk. “Spread your thighs a little.” He moved his knee between her legs. “Good.” He pushed his pants and briefs down just enough to free himself and then without warning thrust his hips forward, plunging inside of her. He pulled out slowly before ramming into her again, dropping his mouth to the back of her neck as he increased the rhythm of his thrusts, the sounds of his body slapping against hers magnified in his office.
He freed her breasts from the confines of her dress, kneading them with one hand as he continued to pump in and out of her, her cries of pleasure filling the air. “You’re too loud,” he warned, but she continued to cry out, her moans growing louder. “Quiet,” he whispered, with no real conviction, his body driving into hers. He reached around her, running his fingers over her clit. “Come for me, baby,” he said a moment before she screamed out, her body clenching around him. Seconds later, he groaned deeply, his body collapsing over the back of hers.
“You’re bad,” she said a short time later as she adjusted her dress.
“I’m bad?” He chuckled as he pulled up his zipper. “You’re the one who showed up at my office not wearing underwear.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining a minute ago.”
“I’m still not complaining,” he said as he buckled his pants. “But know when you show up in my office without underwear I’m going to fuck you.”
She slipped her arms up around his neck, her green eyes meeting his brown ones. “Is that a promise?”
He lowered his head, pausing with their lips inches apart. “You’re intoxicating,” he whispered before settling his lips on hers.
She ran her hands down his back, continuing until they reached his butt, her hands pulling his lower body into hers.
“Give me a minute, babe,” he said against her mouth. “I don’t recover that quickly.”
“Sometimes you do.”
“Not today.” He intercepted her hand before it reached the front of his trousers. “Not today.” He stepped around her and dropped down into one of the two club chairs facing his desk.
“So where have you been?” She lowered herself into his lap.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she began, moving a thumb to his lower lip and rubbing at a lipstick stain, “why haven’t I heard from you for three days?”
“I told you. I’ve been busy.” He opened his mouth and tried to capture her thumb. “Come to an opening in New York with me for the weekend.”
“I can’t. I have to work tomorrow.” She began to finger the hair falling just above his collar. “Don’t go away. I missed you this week.”
“Did you?”
“Desperately. Where were you last night? I must have called you ten times. It just kept going straight to voicemail.”
“We settled the case against WNTC and they took us out to celebrate. At some point, my phone died.”
“When did you get in?” She frowned. “I dropped by your place at two in the morning.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why what? Why did I stop by or why do I want to know when you got in? Regardless, the answer is the same—because you’re my boyfriend.”
“Do we really have to get into this right now?”
“Get into what? Joseph, what time did you get home last night?”
“I didn’t.” He met her eyes.
“You didn’t?” She pulled her eyebrows together. “Did you sleep here?”
“No.”
“Oh my God!” She scrambled off his lap. “You were with someone else.”
He dragged his hands down his face. “I had a lot to drink and I—”
“Did you have sex with another woman last night?”
Joseph didn’t answer as he met her eyes. “I had too much to drink.”
“Did you have sex with another woman?” she repeated, her voice more angry now than hurt.
“We never said anything about other people.”
He’d barely uttered the words before she slapped him hard across the face. “You bastard!”
“Jesus!” he yelled, pulling his head back. “Fuck!” He lifted his hand to his watering eye. “What in the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I hate you! You climb out of another woman’s bed this morning and then have sex with me in your office the same afternoon,” she began, her face contorted in hurt and anger. “You have no respect for me.”
“That isn’t true.” He continued to touch his reddening cheek.
“What do you think? I’m your whore?” She was livid.
“No, God no.” He reached for her hand.
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered, jerking her hand out of his reach. “You have absolutely no respect for me.”
“That isn’t true. Now sit down so we can talk about this.”
“Talk.” She shook her head, tears now evident in her eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Kathy, I—”
“You what? What?” Her voice caught. “Did you know yesterday was our one year anniversary?” She angrily wiped at the tears falling down her cheeks. “I am such an idiot. I thought things were going well between us.” She crossed towards the door.
Joseph was out of his chair and following, reaching the door as she began to pull it open. “Don’t.” He closed the door, pressing his body against the back of hers, his mouth at her ear. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
“Let me go, Joseph,” she whispered, crying now. “I want to leave.”
“I’m an idiot,” he said. “Don’t leave.”
“This is over. You aren’t capable of a committed relationship.” She pulled unsuccessfully on the door. “Let me out!”
“Not until you let me talk.”
“Open the door!”
“Calm down,” he said through clenched teeth, one hand moving to her shoulder. “I want to talk to you.”
“Open the fucking door!”
“Hey.” There were three loud knocks on the door. “What in the hell is going on in there?” It was Kevin Stuart’s voice.
“Nothing,” Joseph said.
“Kevin, he won’t let me leave,” Kathy cried.
“Joe, open the Goddamn door!” Kevin banged again.
Joseph stepped back, his jaw clenching and unclenching as Kathy swung open the door, pushed past Kevin and the half dozen associates gathered outside the office, and fled down the hall.
“What in the hell?” Kevin asked after slamming Joseph’s door. Several inches shorter than Joseph with a husky build and thinning blond hair, Kevin had an uncanny resemblance to Bruce Willis. “We could hear the two of you all the way in the lobby.”
Joseph crossed to his bar and poured himself a generous amount of scotch.
“Until today there were actually associates on board who had never seen you put on a public display with some female,” Kevin fumed.
“I’m not in the mood.” Joseph pushed past him and dropped down in the chair he’d been sitting in with Kathy moments earlier.
“Oh, you’re not?” Kevin raised his eyebrows, his hands on his hips, standing directly in front of Joseph’s chair. “And do you think we were in the mood to listen to your love quarrel as we met with clients?” The muscles in his jaw were shaking as he spoke. “It sounded like you were raping her in here.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t. She was breaking up with me.”
“Let me guess.” He tapped his lip with his index finger. “She found out you fucked the weather lady last night.”
“How did you—”
“Know you fucked her? I was sitting next to you, Joe. Her foot was in your crotch half the night. And we all know how much restraint you have.” He dropped down into the empty chair and reached into his jacket for his cigarettes.
“You can’t smoke in here.”
“Go to hell,” Kevin said through the side of his lips as he lit the cigarette. “You drive me to it.” He inhaled deeply, leaning back in the chair as he blew out a stream of smoke. “You’ve got to stop this, Joe. Half the office heard you.”
“So I saw.”
“I mean having sex with her. Everyone within your general vicinity could hear her. They were standing around gossiping about it when the yelling started.”
Joseph briefly closed his eyes. “Nothing’s happened in this office since Tanya left,” he said, referring to his ex-secretary who cried sexual harassment when he tried to break off a one-month relationship. It was easier to pay her off than deal with a scandal, but Kevin was still pissed about it. The money came right off the top of their profits and he seemed to resent Joseph more as time passed.
“I know. I was starting to believe you actually changed and, until last night, I thought you were serious about Kathy. You’re priceless, Craig.”
“Why don’t you go home to your wife? I’ve had about all I can stomach of you for a day.”
“You’re not alone there.” He leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette in a decorative ashtray on his desk.
“That isn’t an ashtray,” Joseph said.
“I know.” Kevin smirked as he stood up. “Have a nice weekend.”