Chapter Seventeen
Archer
I pressed the intercom button my phone. “What’s up?” Angela asked, sounding frazzled.
“I’m sorry to do this to you…”
“But?”
“I’ve got a two-foot high stack of paperwork and a date in two hours. Please tell me you can stay and handle some of this for me.”
There was a long pause where I imagined her putting the phone on mute and throwing things around. “I don’t have anything better to do,” she finally said. “You need me to sweep and mop the lobby to give the janitors the day off?”
“Angela, you must know that without you, my life simply would not function. You are not just an administrative assistant. You’re a badass bitch who worked her ass off to get a position with one of the richest men in town, and you deserve it.”
“Thank you, Archer. That means a lot.”
“You’re welcome, and when you get off, take the company card. Get yourself something nice and have dinner.”
She thanked me and graciously allowed me to transfer the brunt of my workload to her. I was lucky to have dedicated people in my life who wanted the best for me, my company, and the boys. They were genuine, capable, and they actually cared.
The drive home was quick. Traffic had mostly thinned out by that time, and I was getting anxious. I had less than an hour and a half to get ready to go to dinner and pick up Zoe, and I wasn’t about to be late.
When I walked inside the house, Mona was sitting in the living room, reading with the TV on so she could watch what the boys were doing. She looked up at me.
“What are you doing? You’re going to be late. Come on.” She pulled me by the sleeve up to my room and started shuffling through my clothes. “So, you’re going to tell her about the boys tonight, I assume?”
“I—what? No. Why would do a thing like that?”
“Because sooner or later, she’s going to wonder why you waited so long to tell her you had kids. I’d be wondering at this point. That’s something she should’ve known before the first date.”
“You’re right.” I sat down on the end of the bed. “I have to tell her, don’t I?”
“Yes, of course. You shouldn’t have kept it a secret in the first place. Now you’re going to have to explain it all and come up with a reason why you omitted one of the most important facts about your life until now.”
“Oh, no.” I laid back. “I’m so stupid, Mona. I had the perfect chance. She asked me straight up why I keep going back and forth with her, and I told her that it was because my life is complicated. Now she’s going to wanna know why I didn’t tell her then.”
“Secrets and lies from the very start.” Mona pulled out a tight baby blue button up with a pair of jeans. “You’re not going to get away without telling her everything you lied about.”
“I know, and she probably won’t trust me when I tell her about the twins, either. She’s going to think it’ll just be one secret after the other. You know why she thought I gave her the cold shoulder on her first date?”
“She probably thought you were married.”
“She did.”
“You might not get away with this.” She handed me my clothes.
“What should I do?”
“Tell her everything, not just that you have boys. That won’t be enough. Open up to her and make sure it really comes from deep down. If you do that, and she really likes you, she’ll listen.”
“Jesus, this could end before it gets started.”
“Remember what I’m telling you, and don’t you forget. You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t take a risk.”
“Yeah, yeah...” I grabbed my clothes and hopped up to get into the shower. “I’ll tell you how things go tomorrow when I see you.”
“Good, and give it a bit this time before you decide to break her heart.”
“Yeah, yeah…” I jumped into the shower.
I left the house half an hour before I was supposed to pick up Zoe. It wasn’t enough time. She lived on the other side of town, off one of the busiest streets in the city. I called her once I hit the freeway.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hi, I’m so sorry, Zoe. I’m on the freeway now. I might be a couple of minutes late.”
“That’s all right. I was actually thinking of calling you for the same reason.”
“Good. We’ll both be late, and neither of us will be offended by it.”
“Thank God,” she sighed. “I thought you might think I was skipping out on you.”
“That’s not going to happen. You are mine for the evening. I worked for that privilege, remember?”
“How could I forget? The kitchen hasn’t been that clean since I opened the place.”
“Would you like to go to that lobster place you talked about?”
“Fresh Catch? Fuck yeah, I would. Hurry. I’m starving.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” It seemed like the entire city was on the road that night. There must’ve been an event downtown. It never got like this otherwise.
When I knocked on Zoe’s door, she inched it open slowly, the lights off in her apartment, revealing a fiery red gown that seemed to flow down her body with a slit that traveled up her legs. “Hello,” she said in a sultry whisper.
“Can we just skip dinner and fuck right now?”
“Not yet. I’m starving.” She tried to play it off and keep her eyes straight when we walked to the car, but I could see her eyeing me, looking at my arms and my chest. It was sexy, being admired by a woman as powerful as her.
“Traffic’s a bitch,” I said when I got the car started.
“That’s because of the street music festival. Me and Chloe go every year and pass out pastries.”
“I wonder if they have a good rock band. I’d love to rock out to some metal.” I threw my head up and down.
“I’m sure they do. They let anyone play there. Last time, there was this guy with a gray Moses beard sitting in the lotus position playing a pair of wooden pipes. He was so high, he just kept blasting the same note over and over again, probably thinking he was about to reach enlightenment.”
“I would’ve loved to see that.”
“We should walk around a bit after we finish eating. He’s probably there right now, whistling himself into a higher plane of consciousness.”
We both cracked up laughing. “Oh, God.” I was still beet red. Finally, when I caught my breath, I asked, “How are things at work? Have there been any sightings?”
“No, and I don’t want to talk about it. So far as I’m concerned, you and I are the only people who exist tonight.”
“Are you sure? Zoe, I’ve been worried ever since you told me.”
“I’m positive. You and I are the only two people in the world who matter right now.”
I went quiet. There were two people who mattered just as much tonight, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell her about them. There was a line of cars for miles backing up the downtown exit. We had to take the next exit and drive through the back roads to get to the restaurant where a crowd of people was waiting out front.
We stopped next to the alleyway near the entrance. “There’s a wait,” she said. “Do you think we can get in?”
“Are you kidding?” I laughed. “We don’t have to wait with the common folk. Come on.” I whisked her through the alley to the kitchen entrance in back where a bus boy was sitting on a milk crate smoking a joint.
When he caught sight of us, he stopped, halfway through a hit, his eyes wide. The smoke caught in his throat, and he keeled over hacking. I waited for a moment while he regained his bearings. When he did, he looked up at me. “Please, please don’t say anything. I—”
“Just go tell Brendan that Archer is here and that I need a table for two in the back.”
“Sure.” He jumped up and ran inside.
Zoe was trying not to laugh. “That was good.”
“Maybe I can scare the boy into giving us a free bottle,” I joked.
“You’re ruthless.”
“You have no idea.”
The back door opened, and a large Mexican man with a bright red face came out. “Archer, how are you, man? You should’ve told me that you were coming. I just used the last of the bay scallops.”
“That’s all right. I think I’m in the mood for lobster.”
“We’ve got plenty of that. Come inside. Your table’s ready. I hope Marco didn’t disturb you.”
“No, he’s fine. I think we disturbed him though.”
Brendan laughed. “He was pretty shaken up. That’ll teach him to smoke on break.”
We walked inside the cramped kitchen, through the office, into a low-lit room with candelabras sitting in each corner, illuminating our small, private booth. I waited for Zoe to take her seat before I sat down.
“What can I get you to drink?”
“I think we’ll try out one of your vintage roses.”
“And are you ready to order?” he asked.
I looked at Zoe. “I’ll get the lobster,” she said.
“The same for you, Archer?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll have your order out in a minute.”
When he left, Zoe leaned in. “I’m glad you chose the rose. It will go perfectly with the lobster. I’m surprised you knew that.”
“This is why I learned it. To impress women.”
“You dog.” She kicked me under the table playfully. “I’ll bet you have a different girl every night.”
“I used to; I won’t lie.”
“I wouldn’t believe you if you did.”
“But it gets boring after a while, and I don’t like having to go through all the effort of hunting somebody down, trying to convince them that I’m worth it, all so I could do the same thing I was doing every other night.”
“So, you want something stable?”
“I just don’t want to have to pretend to want something I don’t. If I wanted sex, I could probably just walk out of here right now and pick a girl. It’s not hard, but what’s the point? It’s not satisfying. There’s nothing deep or profound about sticking my dick in somebody I just met. Besides, half the time the women I meet only care about one thing.”
“The money.”
“And who can blame them? The world’s not an easy place. They have to get ahead, but that doesn’t mean you have to lower yourself to having sex with somebody in hopes of getting a new purse or a pair of shoes.”
“I always wondered how men like you find women.”
“We don’t, not usually. There are ways, like matchmaking services, and we can always date within our class structure. But until you actually have the cash, it’s impossible to describe the magnitude of wealth and what it does to your life and the people around you.”
“I’m curious.”
“It’s all about greed and envy. If people see that you have that kind of money, they get all worked up. They want to know everything about you and tell you their life stories. Then they just have a few issues that they need help with. Issues that only money can solve, of course.”
“Of course,” she said, nodding.
“Then there’s family. I’m blessed to be an only child, but I’ve met a lot of people who ended up floating the people they love through rehabs, buying them houses, giving them allowances, all so they can be screwed over. It ends up turning people sour. Billionaires lock themselves in their houses. They pay for every security measure you can imagine and live like they’re about to be shot at all times. You’ve never seen paranoia until you’ve met a neurotic billionaire.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“I don’t. I choose the people who I talk to carefully and live my life. I don’t need a bulletproof car and a moat to make myself feel secure. I just need things to work at the company.”
“Is the money what influenced your decision to stop talking to me?” She was looking me directly in the eye as if she was challenging me to lie to her.
“It was part of it, but you’re not the kind of woman to spread her legs for the first rich man who comes along. So, I wasn’t really worried as much about that as I was the chaos of my daily life.”
“I’ll bet that is on a completely different level,” she said.
“Does that bother you?” I had to test her first.
“Rose for the lady.” Brendan walked in and set a wine glass down for Zoe. The sweet, pink aroma of the wine caught my senses, and my stomach started growling. “And for you.” Brendan poured me a glass and left the bottle. “Your order is almost ready. I’ll be back shortly.”
“Thank you, Brendan.”
“Of course.” He ducked out.
“I’m thinking of adding an apricot streusel to the menu, something that they can call in ahead of time for.”
“Do you normally let people call in ahead for orders? That sounds like a huge shift in your business plan.”
“It is, and no, we don’t do it yet, but Chloe started talking about it to me the other day. We have a huge menu, and I don’t know if you know much about food service or not, but that’s a big mistake. It’s all about simple, mostly uniform ingredients.”
“Right.” I took a sip of my wine.
“But there’s so much more that I can do that customers aren’t experiencing, and we want to bring that to people.”
“I see. Can you keep up with it?”
“That’s the only reason I’m even considering it. If I get a deadline, I’m going to make it. I plan ahead. That’s how I always do things. It’s the unexpected stuff I can’t take care of.”
She was thinking of altering her business plan to decrease her workload. I couldn’t throw in a couple sleepless nights and a frantic trip to the hospital. I knew, even if she didn’t say anything, that she was already stretched so thin from the business that she wasn’t sure if she could keep up.
“I think anything that makes that place easier to run will benefit you in the long run, and I’m kinda hoping that that streusel will become a regular thing.”
“You liked it?”
“Do you have more?”
“I’ll make it anytime you want.”
“Now, then. There’s a kitchen right there.”
“So, you’re saying my place is in the kitchen?” She lifted one eyebrow and took a drink of wine.
“Your place is wherever you want it to be.”
Brendan emerged from the kitchen carrying two steaming plates of bright red lobster. “For the lady.” He set her plate down. “And for you, Mr. Archer. Is there anything else?” He set my plate down.
“Lots and lots of garlic butter,” Zoe said.
“Lots and lots of garlic butter,” I relayed.
“Coming right up.”
“This is wonderful,” Zoe said. “We’ve got the chef serving us at one of the best restaurants in the city.”
“That’s nothing. I could take you to L.A. for truffle chicken and get you home before midnight.”
“I hope you don’t. I plan on staying up tonight.” Her foot traced up my leg, and I felt my pants growing tighter.
The lobster was savory with the taste of sea salt that could only be found in freshly caught seafood. Zoe ate the entire thing without waiting to seem delicate or dainty. She didn’t care what I thought. She just wanted her lobster, and I loved that about her. She wasn’t putting up a front to impress me. There wasn’t any point in that. She was being herself, unapologetically so. She deserved the truth.
I poured out the last of the wine bottle into our glasses and took a drink. “Tell me what you want for your future.”
“To keep my business.”
“I know about your business, and I can promise you are not going to have any problem keeping it. They’re already talking about pooling cash for bakery trips at the office.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’ll find a way. What I’m wondering is what you want for yourself.”
“For me?” she scoffed and took a drink of her wine. “That’s a difficult question. I don’t have any time for myself.”
“But if you did?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
I wanted her to say that she wanted a family, or a little girl. Something that I could use as a lead in to tell her about the twins. But obviously, that wasn’t a priority in her life. She was a businesswoman. Her world revolved around her career. Maybe she didn’t want any of that. “Come on.” I left some money on the table and got up to offer her my hand.
“Thank you.” She took it and stood up. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know yet. Let’s find out.”
“I don’t like surprises,” she said.
“It’s not much of a surprise.” I led her into the kitchen and out the back door to the alley where three of the cooks had joined in the smoking circle.
“Excuse us, boys.” Zoe flashed them a wink and took my arm so I could lead her out into the sea of people swarming the streets. Traffic had completely halted to accommodate the crowds. There was simply no place for them to drive.
The sound of a thousand instruments playing at once mingled with the smell of kettle corn and sautéed meats coming from the stands lining the boulevard. I kept close to Zoe and never once lost her hand as we pushed through to the red brick square sitting across the street from the restaurant where a jazz band had setup a makeshift stage.
An elderly black woman stepped up to the mic. Her thick, smoky voice seemed to stop the crowd. Zoe lit up, her blond hair shimmering in the soft white light of the Chinese lanterns hanging above us. The sight of her made my pulse race.
“Come here.” I pulled her closer and wrapped my arm around her waist so we could swing softly to the beat.
“I told you I have two left feet.”
“It’s just an excuse to get you closer.”
“You don’t need an excuse.”
I let my hands slip down her body and rested them on the top of her hips. “I like you, Zoe. I feel like I can relate to you. I don’t know what’s going to happen between us, or how this will turn out, but I want you to know I’m serious about giving us a chance. No more rejection.”
“You really like me?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I like you, too, Archer.”
It was time. She needed to know that I wasn’t going to lie to her anymore and what my life was really like. “Zoe…”
“Archer, look out.” She grabbed my hand to pull me away. I felt something like a ton of bricks bash me right in the face. I whipped around, my fists up, ignoring the warm flow of blood dripping from my face, just in time to keep from getting hit by the metal bar that Mr. Beetle was swinging at me for a second time.
“Zoe, get behind me.”
“Be careful.”
Mr. Beetle smiled. “Got you, didn’t I?” he said in his strange, high-pitched voice.
The crowd was spreading out around us to get away from the violence. It gave the crazy man room to maneuver. He jumped forward, the bar held high, and slammed the bar down toward my head.
I stopped him in midair, grabbed the bar from his hands, and threw it behind me so he couldn’t get to it. Mr. Beetle turned around and started running.
“Come here,” I roared and lunged forward. My hand snagged him by the back of the collar.
He thrashed around, trying to get away. “Let me go! Let me go! I’ll kill you!” His face was red, and he was spitting. He tried to reach around and claw my hands. I let him go, and with a sharp kick to the back of his knees, dropped him on the pavement. He landed face first.
He screamed loudly.
I stomped down on him as hard as I could. “Shut up!” He went quiet. “That’s right. You know who’s in charge, don’t you?” I ducked down and kept my voice low. “You ever fucking come near her again, and I will cut your cock off and feed it to you raw, you understand me?”
“You can’t always be with her.”
“The fuck did you just say to me?” I stepped back and kicked him in the ribs. “Huh?” I kicked him again and again. Each blow just pulled me further into the madness. I didn’t stop until I felt Zoe grab my hand to pull me away.
“Come on, Archer. There’s cops all over this place.”
I kicked him again. “Help!” he shrieked. People stared at me with a bit of horror on their faces.
I grabbed Zoe’s hand. “Let’s go.” We didn’t waste any time walking back to the car.
“I don’t know what he was thinking.” She turned to me when we got in the car. “Now you’ve got blood all over your face. I need to get you cleaned up. Is there somewhere nearby we can go?”
I started the car, still so furious I could’ve killed the man. “We’re leaving,” I said through clenched teeth and slammed on the gas.
“Where?”
“Back to my house. You know what he told me, Zoe?”
“What?”
“He said that I couldn’t always be with you.” She went white. “He followed you to the club that night, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“And how often has he been coming into the store?”
“Nearly every day.”
“I don’t know what to say to this. He’s dangerous, and he’s obsessed with you, and now he’s trying to bash my head in. You’ve got a real problem here.”
“I’m so stupid.” She let her head fall.
“Don’t say that. You’re not stupid.”
“No, I am. Chloe warned me about this guy, and I didn’t listen. She told me to have him sent to jail when he first started coming in, and instead of doing that, I put up with him. Now he’s running around trying to attack any guy who talks to me. But you have to believe me, Archer.” I heard the distress in her voice. “I didn’t know he was like this. I thought he was harmless.”
“I wouldn’t blame you for this. I’m worried about what he’s going to do next.”
“I am, too.” She sounded drained, so different from the way she sounded when we were dancing that it made me want to turn around and hunt down that freak just so I could hear him scream one more time.
Instead, I took a deep breath and turned my focus on her. “I’m sorry. I completely lost it. It just makes me so angry.”
“It was unreal the way you dropped him on the ground like that.”
“Well, he’s not very big.”
She laughed. “No, but he sure screwed up your face.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m taking you back to my place for a bit. I’ll get cleaned up, and we’ll go from there. Is that all right?”
“Of course.” After some time had passed, she said, “Thank you, Archer. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I don’t think I could’ve done anything else if I tried.”
When we got back to the house, Zoe found her way to the kitchen, and I watched from a stool on the counter as she pulled out an ancient bag of frozen peas from the back of the freezer. “I have cold compresses in the bathroom upstairs.”
“I prefer the traditional method. Here.” She pressed it against my cheek and started working on wiping away some of the blood. She was so attentive and gentle. I barely even felt it when she swiped the cut on my nose. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“You don’t have to worry about me, you know. I can take care of myself.”
“I believe it.” Her arms were firm and toned from the work in the bakery. “I’m just glad I got a chance to defend you.”
“You could’ve gotten arrested.”
“Eh, it was self-defense. Besides, I’ve got great lawyers.”
She set her rag down. “You defended me.” She reached out and kissed me then pulled back. “That was…”
I pulled her forward and kissed her, this time longer, letting her lips open slowly like a budding flower as I swept my tongue over them. Her breath caught in her throat, so I took a chance and slammed my tongue through her mouth. She seemed to go limp, solely driven by the experience now, so I led her further and reached up to her shoulders to slide the strap of her dress down. She reacted instantly and started stroking the head of my cock through my jeans.
“I want to taste you,” she whispered almost shyly.
“No.”
“Why not?” The look on her pretty face told me that she was a little hurt by my response.
I responded by lifting her up onto the counter and setting her down. Then I drew back and trained my eyes on her. “Because it’s your turn.” I lifted her dress and pulled her panties down.