Amanda
I got letters and faxes and emails from them. All the time. They wanted to know when we were kicking off. We had suddenly stalled everything when we had been good to go. When were we moving forward again, they wanted to know?
And what was I to tell them? I had to keep making excuses because James couldn’t get his ass into gear and do something about it. He was lost in the eyes of some woman and forgetting about what he was supposed to do here.
I got up. Let him have to answer to them, then, if he was going to do this. I was tired of saving face, of making excuses that would keep our clients even though everything had come to a halt and there was no sign of money.
Money made the world go around. Once you started questioning that, everything failed.
I pushed James’s door opened. He turned his chair toward the desk to face me. He had been staring out of the window.
“What?” he snapped. His face was set in a scowl. I jolted. James never spoke to me like that.
“Jesus, foul mood today,” I asked.
“You never knock. This is private space, dammit.”
I lifted my hands. “Okay, okay.” He was extremely irritable. “I just need to talk to you.”
“About what?” I got the feeling he just wanted me to leave his office. Whatever had happened, it had pissed him off and he wasn’t in the mood for me. Well, tough luck. He was going to have to deal with me. Life didn’t go away because you didn’t feel like it.
I folded my arms over my chest and hardened myself, ready for his bullshit so I could stand up to him.
“Harrison just emailed me again,” I said.
“And?”
“I need you to talk to him.”
James frowned. “For what? You’re the one that communicates with them.”
I nodded. “Yes, I do. But this has gone on long enough. I’m done making excuses for you. If we don’t move on this expansion we’re going to lose Harrison. We don’t want to do that.”
James rolled his eyes. “Can you stop thinking about the damn company for one second?”
“I’m the only one that actually thinks about the ‘damn’ company. If you would be half as interested in this place as you ought to be we might be doing a lot better.”
James glared at me. “You’re suggesting I don’t care?”
I didn’t answer him. It sure felt that way, but I wouldn’t say it. He was angry already. How far would I be able to push him?
“I need you to talk to him,” I said again. “I can’t keep making excuses for you and this has gone on longer than I what I understand.”
James swiveled his chair back to the window, ignoring me.
“I’m serious, James,” I said. “We’re going to lose Harrison. We’ve been tagging them along for long enough. We need to give them something solid or they walk and we can’t do the expansion without them.”
James sighed. “I’ll look into it,” he said.
I wanted to ask what was eating him but we weren’t that close. He wouldn’t tell me. Besides, I didn’t really care. It was curious. And that wasn’t enough reason for me to risk having James lose his temper with me. I’ve never seen him lose his temper but I’ve heard that it’s not pretty. Rather let him stew by himself than get involved in something I didn’t care about.
“I’ll forward you the email he sent me. Reply as soon as possible, please.”
James didn’t answer me. He didn’t look at me. I turned around and left the office. I wasn’t sure he was going to do anything at all. If he didn’t and Harrison walked? I could get us someone else. I could always get us someone else. But Harrison was a big client and you wanted big clients at the start of a new venture. Harrison had agreed to get on board because of our good reputation and strong name in the business world.
James was flushing that down the toilet. And it wasn’t his personal life, either. If it was, I would have left him to destroy himself. He was good at that. This one, though, affected me directly. I didn’t like when other people’s mistakes affected me.
Looking back, I should have never started a partnership with him. The set up was so binding it was hard to get away from James even with the small things. If I’d insisted on a Closed Corporation or something, the rules would have been different, changing the game.
In my office, I sat back down behind my desk and looked at the paperwork. I needed to get this sorted out. I wanted that expansion to happen before something went wrong. I wanted us to grow, get more money. That was what it was all about, in the end.
More money.
If we expanded we could almost double our turnaround and it wasn’t just in business but with our stocks and investors.
I picked up the phone.
“Derek,” I said when he answered. “Are you alone?”
“I am.”
“Good. James is useless and I’m starting to worry. How viable is it to get another signature?”
“You mean, the way we did before?”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. He thought for a moment.
“We can get away with it but if he finds out we’re in trouble.”
“He won’t find out. His head is somewhere else – probably dreaming about naked women – and he’s not paying attention to anything right now. I asked him to email Harrison who asked about progress again. I doubt he’ll even do that.”
“I don’t know, Amanda. It’s risky, as always. This isn’t a call I’m going to make. If it goes wrong…”
“It won’t,” I said. It couldn’t. If we moved forward and we were doing well, the money rolled in and James could keep doing whatever he wanted, everything would be perfect.
“Well, I’ll do what I can on my end but you need to handle the rest.”
“Oh, I will,” I said.
I hung up. I would handle the rest, for sure.
The document lay in front of me. I filled and signed my half of it. The document was tedious but these things always were. When I was finally done, I slipped it into a plastic sleeve and into my bag. I got up and left the office.
Charlie Weber’s offices were in a big shiny building on the other side of Tampa CBD and the man was hardly ever in town. Since he’d taken over the string of hotels from Charles Weber Sr. he had been traveling most of the time to make sure the hotels ran smoothly under new management.
I knew for a fact he was in town now, though. He would be for a short while still.
“Is Mr. Weber busy?” I asked his secretary. She shook her head and warned Charlie I was coming. I smiled at her and walked past.
“Amanda,” he said warmly when I walked into his office and closed the door. I locked it.
Charlie raised his eyebrows at me.
“What can I do for you today?”
I sat down on the armrest of the chair opposite his desk. I crossed my legs over each other, knowing my pencil skirt rode up this way. Charlie’s eyes slid over my body, hungry. The Weber boys were both the same – unable to resist a woman.
“I need your help with something,” I said.
“Documentation, I gather?”
I nodded and retrieved the plastic sleeve from my bag. “I’m sure James told you that we’re not moving on the expansion just yet. He says he’s worried about money but I think it’s a woman.”
Charlie smirked. “If it’s James we’re talking about, it’s always a woman. He’s transparent.”
I nodded. “I suspected that. I need this expansion to move forward but I can’t do anything without his signature.”
Charlie leaned over and took the papers from me. He flipped through it.
“What’s in it for me?” he asked.
“You know what’s in it for you,” I said in a husky voice. Charlie glanced up at me. His face was an expressionless mask – all business – but his pupils were dilated. I knew I would get what I wanted.
“Alright,” he said. “I don’t have anything better to do with my time.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Being objectified sometimes was a necessary evil. Charlie took a pen out of his pocket and poised his hand over the paper before he started writing. The process was slow but worth it. Charlie’s handwriting was so close to James’s that it was almost exactly alike. He filled in the forms with James’s details. When he signed, he drew the loops and curls that James had in his signature with practiced ease. When he was done, he stood up. He didn’t hand me the documents. Not yet.
Charlie walked around his desk toward me. His tongue darted out over his lips, a crack in his mask showing the lust beneath it. He stopped in front of me and pulled me up, grabbing me around the waist and kissing me hard. His hand groped my breast roughly.
I let him. There were times when this needed to be done. Sleeping with Charlie had done more good in my company than I cared to admit.
Was it low of me to give myself to him like this? I wondered as he fumbled with my clothes, getting rid of it clumsily. His lust crippled him today. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my actions. This was purely another form of business, a transaction. I wouldn’t sleep with anyone if it didn’t benefit me in some way. And this benefitted me in every way possible.
Half an hour later Charlie pulled up his pants, zipping it up again. He was breathing hard, his hair a mess. He straightened his tie and tucked in his shirt.
I pulled on my blouse again and fixed my hair. It was a little disheveled as were the papers on Charlie’s desk. I sat back down in the seat. Charlie picked up my documents and handed them to me.
“Always a pleasure doing business with you, Amanda,” he said and smiled. I smiled back. I couldn’t say the same but that was beside the point. I slipped the documents back into the plastic sleeve. If I faxed this through to Harrison today and he signed his part, we were good to go. For the first time in weeks, I relaxed.
“I’m worried that James’s exploits will ruin the company,” I said. I crossed my legs over each other and still felt Charlie between my legs. Sex with him was always rough and unrefined, only for the sake of his own pleasure and no one else’s. It wasn’t sex, it was fucking.
“The Fischer girl?” Charlie asked.
“That’s right, you know about her. She’s new on the scene but he’s completely taken with her. And not in a good way.”
Charlie laughed. “Well, that’s not the first Fischer in his life.”
“What do you mean?”
Charlie shook his head. “Back in the day, he had a holiday fling, a girl from the Forgotten Coast that stole his head and turned his brains into mush. She was a Fischer, too. He spoke about her again the other day, actually, when we were having lunch.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “The Forgotten Coast?” I asked.
Charlie nodded. “You know he’s always loved that place.”
Right. Loved it so much he put that stupid painting up at the office. I thought back to Ava Fischer, looking at the painting. Reminds me of home Caleb had said when she had been looking at it.
“How strange,” I said. “I guess it’s a weakness.”
Charlie laughed again. “One of many,” he agreed. I thanked him for his time and walked to the door, unlocking it and letting myself out. The secretary glanced at me as I walked past. If she knew, she let on nothing.