Gone

I glanced at my watch again, remembering how Kerri, my last…partner, had rolled her eyes at it. 

“Why won’t you get a Rolex?” she’d demanded. 

When I’d said nothing, just looked at her, she’d sighed. “You have a driver. You have a jet. You can’t have that watch. It’s embarrassing to me.”

I hadn’t needed a watch that day to know it was time. I didn’t permit women to tell me what to do. As soon as I’d seen her into the Mercedes that evening, I’d been texting my assistant to send her her walking papers. And a goodbye present, of course. One she’d appreciate.

A Rolex. 

Now, my serviceable Timex, all the watch any Kiwi bloke needed, was showing me eight-thirty at last. I wanted to tell myself that I hadn’t been distracted during the past half-hour, that I’d needed the time for my own work as well, but I didn’t permit lies. From anyone, but least of all from myself. I hadn’t needed the time. And I had been distracted. 

By that suggestion of spirit and fire Hope had showed, such a contrast with her appearance. With the finely-boned body, the sweet heart shape of her face, the clear eyes the color and clarity of the sparkling waters of Waitemata Harbour. The high, broad cheekbones and delicately pointed chin.

It was the face of a kitten, and kittens were made to be played with, weren’t they? The cloud of pale hair that tumbled around that face—that was a kitten’s, too, fine and soft. Not to mention the hint of sharp little claws.

And, most of all, her mouth. The perfectly etched bow of her upper lip, the fullness of the lower one. Plump, and moist, and ready. Her round, long-lashed eyes and delicate frame said innocent, her mouth said anything but, and the combination was giving my imagination a workout. 

I wanted to look down and see that mouth working on me. I wanted to see those big sea-blue eyes closing, and to make her open them again so she could watch. And I wanted to hold her ankles again. I knew just how I’d do it, too. 

I’d shoved her into a tidy compartment in my mind once I’d left her, but she’d refused to stay there. The vision of my hands wrapped around those slim ankles as I slowly forced her legs up over her head, as she moaned and squirmed and arched her back, had forced its way past my barriers and definitely—most definitely—interfered with my concentration. 

That was annoying, but the way to deal with annoyances was to surmount them.  Just like I’d surmount this one. If not tonight, then soon. Soon, and hard, and often.

I swiped my keycard on the outer door to the publicity department. Silence greeted me, as it had before. I trod the narrow space between cubes to the back. To Martine’s office, and Hope’s cube.

She wasn’t there.

There was a piece of paper on her neatly cleared desk, though. Folded. Nothing but an H on the outside. Discreet.

I opened it even as the anger and disbelief rose. I didn’t permit emotion. But somehow, I didn’t seem to have a choice. 

No. You always had a choice. You couldn’t control what happened, but you could control your reaction.

Except that I couldn’t.

Sorry. I had to go.

Hope.

It took me the entire subway ride home to stop shaking. 

I’d waited until I heard the whisper of the outer door opening and closing in the distance, then packed up my laptop with trembling hands. I’d just have to finish my work at home.

And then I’d argued with myself all the way to the subway stop.

You’re jeopardizing your job. How? By not going out to dinner with the CEO? There was such a thing as a sexual harassment lawsuit. 

Except that I had no evidence. No emails. No text messages. No witnesses. One suggestion that I go to dinner, and I hadn’t even said no. I’d just left. 

The thought had my feet slowing, my body turning. I had to go back.

To become what? Ah. That was the problem, wasn’t it?

To become what you’re dying to be. And that was the thought that turned me right around again and had me running for the subway stairs. Because no matter what…no. No. I hadn’t come this far and been through this much for this.

Once, during a fashion shoot, one of the models had approached me. 

“Your job, it sucks,” Natalia, a tall blonde with fierce cheekbones and slanting deep blue eyes had told me in her guttural Russian accent.

I’d laughed out of sheer surprise. “Um…yeah,” I’d said, then looked around to see if Vincent were anywhere in earshot. “But, you know…rent.”

“There are other ways to pay the rent. You could do what I do.”

“No, I couldn’t. I’m too short. Nobody wants a five-two model with no boobs.”

“That is not what I mean.” She’d looked around herself, then slipped me a card.

Boris Aristov, I’d read. Agent.

“And again.” I’d made to give the card back to her. “No point.”

“Not that kind of agent, not like you are thinking. It is an escort service. Very expensive, very discreet. You could be making ten—” She’d waved a long, elegantly manicured hand. “Even twenty times what you are getting now. Thousands of dollars an engagement. When I moved to New York, it was cockroaches everywhere. A bathtub in the kitchen. Worse than Russia. And now? I have a doorman. I am living like a princess. I go on some dates, I have my regulars…” She shrugged an expressive shoulder. “The money, it is easy. And you are small, yes, and your figure is not so good as mine. But some men, they like that. The look of a little girl.”

Ick. I’d thrust the card back into her hand as if it were on fire. “I’m not judging,” I’d hurried to say. “But—no. That’s not for me.”

“You are thinking they are nasty, sweaty, dirty,” she’d urged. “That you are standing on the street corner. But it is not like that. They take you to the functions, so the other men can see you and be jealous. You converse. You laugh at the jokes. You speak perhaps a little French. You are elegant. A lady. And then you go back to the hotel room and…well. We have all had the bad dates, yes? Where we were perhaps sorry it ended as it did, because it was not so much fun, and we had to pretend? How much easier to pretend when it is his tuxedo jacket you are taking off, when you are in a suite at the Four Seasons? When you have a belly full of champagne, and there are thousands of dollars in your purse? Beauty does not last forever, and men are, how do you say? Fickle. But money…” She kissed her fingertips delicately. “The stocks and bonds, they are beautiful.”

I’d said no then. I was still saying no now. It wasn’t even enough of a choice to be a choice. If this job depended on my sleeping with Hemi Te Mana, no matter how much I wanted to do just that? Then I’d go get another job. 

A stab of anxiety at the thought. Oh, God. Crawling back to Vincent…even if he’d take me. No. He wouldn’t take me. I’d be unemployed. 

Why couldn’t life be simple?