Double-Cross My Heart (21 page)

Aware of him still glancing her way, she cursed herself for needing to remind herself who he was and what he was doing. Couldn’t she just enjoy being with him without having to constantly refresh her memory as to his deceit?

He said, “If you referring to the fact that I’ve never been married—“

“No,” she interrupted. “Lots of people don’t marry young. I’m not married, either.”

“Then how,” he said, “am I commitment-phobic?”

“I guess,” she responded as he pulled the car into an underground parking garage, “I’m still puzzled why a guy with your talents and abilities hasn’t bought a company and stayed with it. Maybe you’re ADHD and you can’t stay focused on one thing for any length of time. You just keep acquiring companies and taking them apart.”

Having parked the Porsche, he turned off the engine and said patiently, “I’m very good at what I do, Eden. I take faltering companies, entities on the brink of bankruptcy, and I salvage what I can. In a way, I run a different kind of junk yard. I don’t have any guilt about that. It’s a necessary function in our capitalistic society.”

“Yes, of course,” Eden said, still not buying the notion of a destruction-oriented business being good.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “I know watching the company taken apart will be difficult for you, but you’ll see—in the end, everything will come out fine. You’ll be better off financially. Your friends and co-workers will find jobs with other companies. It’ll be all right.”

“I suppose so,” she murmured after a moment, anxious now that she’d let him see the extent of her feelings about the takeover. She couldn’t give herself away too much.

Alex smiled at her in the dimly lit car. “I love this caring side of you, but you don’t need to worry. They’ll all be okay.”

Hoping to steer the conversation away from an area she had no business in, she nodded and forced herself to smile at him. There was no need to hear Alex say over and over again what his true priorities were. She knew what all he’d done in the pursuit of the
junk
he considered Michele Cosmetics to be.

She just struggled to really see that his interests were solely in destruction. He really was a quality guy, down deep inside.

Knowing she had to get herself out of this conversation before she veered too close to her own convictions and tipped him off as to her true position on the takeover, she deliberately looked around, saying brightly, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m really not saying there’s anything bad about your business model. I’m just trying to understand how your mind works.”

Desperately trying to normalize the conversation, she went on, “Wow! Isn’t this the Westlake condo building? Your friends must have great taste.”

Alex smiled at her, crinkling up the corners of his blue eyes. “They’re
my
friends, aren’t they? And they’re going to love you, too.”

“I hope so,” she said, smiling back tremulously. No matter what, she had to keep her conscience…and her heart, under control.

Twelve floors up, Natalie greeted them warmly. A doctor who was pregnant with her first child, Natalie had gone to high school with Alex.

“Come in,” she invited them, “everyone else is here. Go on through to the kitchen. Dan’s there whipping up something wonderful and mysterious for dinner.”

Very aware of Alex’s firm clasp on her hand, Eden followed him as he lead the way. The kitchen was beautiful with old exposed brick and lovely colonial detailing. The room seem full of people, but Eden managed to sort them out. Dan, the guy in the apron who was apparently working his magic at the stove, was Natalie’s contractor husband. He had his own company and specialized in condos and apartment buildings.

Introduced to Eden, Dan said in a teasing voice. “If you’re going out with Alex you shouldn’t get too excited about the idea of a man in the kitchen. He’s strictly takeout.”

“I know,” Eden said in a deliberately mournful tone. Doing her best to shake off the scene in his car, she widened her smile and let Dan introduce her to the others already there.

They seemed like a fun group.

In addition to their hosts, she met Celia and Hayden, a botanist and assistant football coach respectively; Keith and his wife, Zoë, a nurse; and Patrick, a lawyer married to housewife, Stephanie. They had two small children at home.

Volunteering to help Zoë get out the plates and utensils while Dan served up a concoction he teasingly labeled “woodland stew”, Eden said, “So you work at Chicago General?”

Zoë flashed a grin. “Yes, but we in the nursery don’t get a lot of excitement. Just the occasional little one who needs some extra help. I also work part-time for a nurse registry, which gives me a chance to keep up my general nursing skills in other areas.”

“Hey, Zoë,” her husband, Keith, a tall guy with a boisterous voice, said, “tell them about the politician who came into the ER the other night.”

His wife responded immediately, “Oh, yeah,” and launched into the story.

Watching them interact, obviously all old friends, Eden had to work not to feel regret. She’d never really be a member of this cluster of friends. When her affair with Alex was over—it would be
over
she reminded herself—the other people in the room would have no liking for her. But for this moment, she enjoyed the teasing, laughing group.

Dinner was a relaxed affair with more laughter and only one edgy moment when Natalie asked Eden what she did for work.

Looking up from the plate she held in her hands, Eden said as calmly as she could manage, “I work in the cosmetics industry.”

“Really?” Keith asked. “What do you do? Mix the colors or something?”

Eden glanced over at the big guy, recognizing an goofy attempt at humor. Every now and then she got this sort of thing. Usually from men who had no concept of the business or the millions spent on cosmetics every year.

To her surprise, Alex spoke up, “Eden’s one of the top executives at Michele Cosmetics. They manufacture—“

Stephanie, a petite blonde woman, interrupted. “That’s the local company that makes my favorite brand of lipstick. You know, Natalie, that mauvy rose color you complimented me on when we went shopping last week?”

The women in the group seemed to all turn toward Eden.

“Oh, yes,” Natalie responded enthusiastically. “That’s a great color on you.”

“Lilac Rose,” Eden said, knowing there was pride in her voice. While she herself was too dark to wear the pink-mauve color, she’d been the impetus behind the company developing several lipsticks for fair-skinned blondes.

Celia, the botanist who did something related to the eco system in the lake, said, “You must love your work. It sounds very creative.”

Eden looked over at her and said, “Yes, I do like my work. Very much. I get to do the creative part and the management part. It’s very fulfilling
.”

CHAPTER TEN

Stepping out of Natalie and Dan’s powder room, Eden turned to go back to the nursery where Natalie and the other three women were gathered. Down the hall she could hear the men, still talking in the kitchen.

“No,” Keith protested. “This woman has only worked for us for a year or two. I don’t know why she was expecting to be considered for the promotion. Dick’s been with the company for ten years.”

“Dick?” Alex asked, speaking from somewhere out of Eden’s view. “Wasn’t he the guy you had some trouble with last year? Something about strip clubs on his expense account?”

“Yeah,” Keith acknowledged, his louder voice carrying clearly. “We straightened that out. But now we have this chick, I mean she’s really hot and does a good job in her department, but what the hell is she thinking? She outright insisted on an interview for the promotion!”

Dan’s voice came from the sink side of the kitchen, a tinge of laughter in his words. “Oh, the unreasonable things women expect. She insisted on being given a chance for the job!”

Keith swung around to look in Dan’s direction. “Well, she was pushy.”

Eden, still standing in the hall outside the bathroom, found herself straining to hear the conversation. She wasn’t necessarily a flag-waving feminist, but she was a woman in the business world and she’d been there long enough to witness some inequities. Then there were the inequities she was personally experiencing….

“So this Tiffany woman thought you should have promoted her over a guy who’s worked there ten years?” Alex asked. “That doesn’t seem reasonable. What is she, crazy or something?”

“She wants Dick’s job now and probably mine in a few years. I’m not saying women can’t run a company,” Keith said, inferring exactly that to Eden’s straining ears. “I just wish they wouldn’t get so pushy. My dad built this company. Who the hell do women think they are? They have to pay their dues, too!”

Without being aware of it, Eden took several steps toward the kitchen, the men’s voices now clear.

Pay their dues?

“I hope you explained seniority to her,” Alex said, laughing. “I guess some women expect promotions to be handed to them or something.”

“I tried to tell her that,” Keith insisted. “She didn’t deny it really, but she talked about her college education and said something about having ‘aspirations’ to upper management!”

“You better be careful, Keith. At our firm, we deal with a fair number of lawsuits,” Patrick warned, “where women are taking legal steps against employers. Just this last week an associate of mine went to trial to defend a man who owns a chain of stores.”

“A woman sued because she didn’t get promoted?” Keith asked, obviously incredulous at the thought.

“Yep,” Patrick confirmed.

Eden could see the lawyer from where she hovered in the darkened hallway.

“And she won,” Patrick told them. “All she had to do was hint at sexual harassment and the jury handed her an award.”

“What a crock!” Alex said, the mockery in his voice clear. “People need to concentrate on what they offer their employer. If they work hard and give a hundred and ten percent, it’ll pay off. We all have to deal with difficult employees, Keith. No doubt about it. Hey, you going to the Bears game next week?”

Taking a step back into the hall, Eden struggled against the rage fountaining inside her. Work hard? Give everything to the company and automatically collect a reward! Bullshit!!

After giving her life to Michele Cosmetics, she was being shoved out the door.

In the kitchen, Dan made some muffled comment, sending the other guys into laughter.

Eden stood in the dark, anger flooding her. She felt like her head was going to explode.

Hearing the other men talking about this kind of crap wasn’t any surprise to her, but to hear it from Alex—
Alex!—
who knew her situation, knew she was getting screwed over—

Turning blindly, Eden went back into the bathroom and quietly, carefully, closed the door. Sitting down the closed toilet seat, she worked to contain the furious, insanely furious, tremors wracking her body. But she couldn’t repress the tears.

It was all so damned unfair.

***

“Hey!” Alex said, reaching over the Porsche’s stick shift to place his hand over hers, clasped together in her lap. “I’m sorry you remembered that report you have to get done tonight. I was looking forward to ‘dessert’ at my place.”

Eden flashed a glance at him. He saw her face—pale in the dim light, but she didn’t say anything.

“You’ve been awfully quiet the last hour or so,” he said. The car was too dark for him to see her face clearly, but he frowned, feeling a strange tension in the hands under his.

“Are you okay?”

While he had to keep most of his attention on the slick, icy roads, Alex couldn’t refrain from glancing at her face, pale in the dim ghostly light cast by the dash.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Her voice was too calm to be fine. “It’s starting to sleet. Be careful.”

Somehow he didn’t think she was casting aspersions on his driving skill, but Alex put his hand back on the steering wheel, his gaze on the road.

“I heard you talking to Natalie,” he ventured a few minutes later. “You guys seemed to hit it off.”

“She’s nice,” Eden said, her voice still strained. “They’re very excited about the baby.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, his sensors lighting up from all the incoming emotion he felt from her. It wasn’t about Natalie, though. He’d bet on that, but he still had no idea what had upset Eden and she wasn’t volunteering anything.

It baffled him, this tension he felt from her. From his point of view the evening had gone great. His friends had warmed to Eden, as he’d known they would. He’d told a few of them how he was coming to feel about her and he knew they’d been looking forward to meeting the woman who’d caught him when he’d least expected her.

But now, and maybe for the last hour, he’d known something was seriously bothering her. A couple of his friends could be less than amusing sometimes—everyone had their moments. Stephanie could be whiny and Keith was occasionally a little loud, but Eden wouldn’t get upset over things like that.

Driving in silence, the woman next to him all but a block of ice, Alex could only think of the last evening they’d been together. No woman had ever fit so perfectly in his arms.