Just Like a Man (39 page)

Harry did so, his expression one of complete annoyance. "You already told me I could take the evening off," he reminded Pax by way of a greeting.

"Yeah, I know. And you can. But you have to do one thing for me before you go."

Harry held up his wrist and tapped his watch. "Sorry. Off the clock. Employer said so."

"This will just take a minute."

Harry tapped his watch again and enunciated more slowly, "Off… the… clock."

Pax settled his hands on his hips. "You want your Christmas bonus this year or not?"

Harry's mouth flattened into a tight line. "What is it that you need me to do?"

"You have to be me for five minutes. Ten minutes, tops. You can keep your name, but you have to be me."

"I have to
what
?"

"Be me. I mean, be the CEO of CompuPax. Harry Rutherford, CEO. You'll finally see what it's like to be self-employed."

"So far, it's confusing and unpleasant," Harry said. "And where are the reeking piles of filthy lucre?"

"Look, I'll explain later," Pax promised. "The courier's finally here with that delivery I was expecting this morning, but you have to accept it and sign for it, and pretend you're the CEO of CompuPax. And you have to do it as Harry Rutherford, not T. Paxton Brown."

Harry eyed him narrowly. "That's not illegal, is it?"

"Of course not," Pax told him. See? You did have to lie about stuff when you were the big boss.

"Then being you, even for ten minutes, wouldn't be illegal, only repugnant, is that what you're saying?"

"Harry," Pax cautioned him again.

"All
right,"
Harry said. "I'll pretend to be you. And who are you supposed to be? Mary Poppins?"

"I'm Thomas. Just Thomas. I'm some guy who's come to fix your computer because it hasn't been working today."

"Oh, that's rich. You're the computer repairman? For a company that designs software? Why don't I have my own people on the problem?"

Good question, Pax thought. He hoped it didn't occur to Selby. Aloud, though, he said, "You want that bonus, Harry? You'd damned well better believe I'm the computer repairman. And so should the woman at the front door."

Harry arched one eyebrow peevishly. "Ah. It all comes clear. A woman is involved. Fine. I'll be you and you'll be the computer repairman. Won't this be fun."

Pax had to take him at his word and trust that Harry wouldn't screw this up. He started to lead his assistant back to the front door, then decided he'd let Harry take the lead, since, all modesty aside, he knew for a fact that the CEO of CompuPax wasn't much of a follower.

"Selby, this is my, um, employer. For today," Pax said when they came back into the living room, trying to keep her attention fixed on his face, because he feared Harry's expression might reveal too much of the ruse. Belatedly, Pax remembered that as good as Harry was at being rude and sarcastic, he was a terrible liar. "This is Mr. Rutherford," he introduced Harry further. "He owns CompuPax. I'm here working on his computer. Today. It's been causing him problems. Today."

Okay, so maybe, at the moment, Harry wasn't the only one who was a terrible liar, Pax thought. Why would his normally easygoing deceitfulness desert him now, when he really needed it?

"And Mr. Rutherford," he continued, turning to Harry and praying to every god he could remember from that humanities elective he took about world religions that Harry would please, for once, be cooperative, "this is a friend of mine. Selby Hudson. She works for the courier company who brought you this package."

Thankfully, Harry, being greedy and covetous of his Christmas bonus, played along. Oh, Pax could tell by his expression that he had no idea what game they were playing, and that he would demand an explanation as soon as was humanly possible, but for now, at least, he'd go along with it.

"Miss Hudson," he said. "So nice to meet you."

And Pax squeezed his eyes shut tight, because Harry was trying to do an American accent—maybe even a Texas accent—and didn't even come close. Maybe, if Pax was very lucky, Selby would assume Harry was from Scandinavia. Because, hey, all your most famous Swedes were named Rutherford.

For one brief, terrible moment, Pax was scared to death that Selby wasn't going to buy it. If she read even the tiniest part of the business section of the newspaper, or if she was the type to buy any sort of popular news magazine, she would know CompuPax was owned by T. Paxton Brown. She would know he was lying. And she'd demand to know why. And in that one brief, terrible moment, Pax's hands began to sweat, his heart began to pound, his vision grew blurry, and he feared he would throw up.

Then, "Nice to meet you, Mr. Rutherford," Selby said, smiling.

And then Pax knew an intense, transcendent sort of relief unlike anything he had ever experienced before. He remembered that Selby had only lived in Indianapolis for a few months, so she probably hadn't had a chance to familiarize herself with the local celebrities and such. For whatever reason, she didn't know anything about the genesis of the city's most important employer and biggest industry. And for the first time in his life, Pax was happy to be unknown and meaningless, a rather puzzling development, to say the least.

And then two more things happened that puzzled him. First, Harry smiled back at Selby, with what appeared to be a genuinely delighted smile, even though all the time that Pax had known him, he'd never seen Harry genuinely delighted by anything. And second, Pax realized he wanted to punch Harry in the nose for smiling that way at Selby. It made no sense. But Harry's showing even some small interest in Selby made Pax want to hit him. Worse, for one crazy minute, he actually felt uncertain about himself, worried that maybe Selby would find Harry more interesting and more attractive than she found Pax. For one insane minute, Pax was Tommy Brown again, pining for the kind of girl—no, for one girl in particular—he knew he could never have.

And Pax hadn't felt that way in a long, long time. In fact, he'd sworn to himself decades ago that he would never feel that way again. He actually sensed the fingers of his right hand curling into a fist, and he had to force himself to relax them, and to relax the rest of himself, too.

This was nuts. This was Harry. This was Selby. And it was all a big, fat lie, anyway. What the hell was the matter with him?

Harry arched his eyebrows at Pax, silently requesting a cue, but for the life of him, Pax had no idea what to say. His thoughts were so scrambled by now, he wasn't sure what he'd intended to do in the first place. All he knew was that Selby was here, in his home, and for some reason, he wanted her to come in and stay for a while. But he couldn't do that, because this wasn't his place—at least, not to her. But he didn't want to go out, either, because he wanted Selby
here.
He wanted to share his place with her. Which, of all the bizarre developments of the last few minutes, was the weirdest yet.

Thankfully, Selby knew what to do. She extended both the package and the clipboard to Harry and said, "I'll need you to sign, please, Mr. Rutherford. Right there by number seventeen." And as she pointed to the line on the form, she looked over at Pax and smiled. And suddenly, every fear, every anxiety, every concern he'd been entertaining completely melted away.

Everything was fine, he thought. There was no reason for him to be alarmed. Selby didn't think there was anything odd about the situation at all. Because she trusted him implicitly.

Dammit.

"There you go," Harry said as he returned the clipboard to Selby. Then he turned to Pax. "So… Thomas. How's it coming back there with the computer?"

"Ought to be done in an hour or so. Sir," he added, trying not to choke on the word.

Harry smiled at Pax's discomfort. "Excellent." He thrust the package toward Pax and said, "Take this back to the office when you go, will you? Thomas? I have to go out. Do let yourself out when you're finished. Have some dinner before you go if you'd like. That's what I'm going to do." And then Harry was gone, leaving Pax and Selby both standing in openmouthed amazement.

Well, hell, Pax thought. He'd wanted to get rid of Harry, sure. But he'd wanted there to be some small element of credibility in the situation.

"Wow. He's really trusting," Selby said when the door had closed behind Harry.

Pax did his best to shrug off the remark. "I, um, I've done work for him before. He knows me. And he's kind of eccentric." Well, that last, at least, was true.

"Funny accent," she observed. "Where's he from?"

"Um, Scandinavia, I think."

She nodded, but didn't look anywhere near convinced.

"So… you wanna stay for a while?" Pax asked experimentally.

"And watch you while you work?" she asked, sounding as if she would really enjoy such a thing.

Oops. Gee, that could be a problem, since Pax didn't know the first thing about repairing computers. He was a whiz at programming them, but if he had to take the back off of one…

"Ah…"

"I'm just kidding," she said, smiling again. "I can't stay. Even though this is my last delivery of the day, I should get home to grade some papers. Thanks, though."

"Well, have you had dinner?" Pax asked, still not wanting her to leave, in spite of the weirdness of the situation. Now that the shock of her sudden appearance had worn off—and now that he had her believing every fraudulent word he said—he wanted to spend some quality time with her.

"I haven't, actually," she told him, spreading her hand open over her stomach. She turned her wrist over to look at her watch. "I could probably take an hour. No more than that, though." She glanced back up at Pax. "If you're sure Mr. Rutherford wouldn't mind."

"Who, him?" Pax asked. "He's such a people person, he wouldn't mind a bit."

He smiled at Selby. Selby smiled at him. And Pax knew then that not only was she buying everything he said to her, but that in no time at all, he'd be in like Flynn. Which, of course, went along completely with his plans for her.

So why did he feel like such a heel?

"SO THIS IS HOW RICH PEOPLE LIVE," SELBY

said as she sat back in her chair and took in her surroundings again. She still found it odd that the CEO of a major corporation had invited his computer repairman to stay for dinner while he was out. Even if Thomas had done a lot of work for the man in the past, it was still… odd. Maybe, like Thomas said, he was one of those eccentric millionaires, the kind who lavished gifts and services on those less fortunate. And anyway, who was she to criticize the whims of the wealthy when she had no idea what it meant to be a part of that economic stratum herself? The closest she'd ever come to this kind of money in the past had been watching them draw the Lotto numbers at night. Maybe rich people did this sort of thing all the time—that altruism and philanthropy stuff she'd heard about. Or maybe today was Take a Computer Repairman to Dinner Day and she'd just missed the memo. In any event, if this was how the wealthy lived, she could be happy continuing on with her own life. Frankly, she wasn't all that impressed by the digs of Harry Rutherford, CEO. His place was pretty stark and spartan, with little color and less warmth. The furniture had probably set the guy back more than she'd make in her entire life, no matter how many jobs she worked, but there was nothing remarkable about it. On the contrary, with all those straight lines and the monochromatic feel, it was pretty boring. Her old, tweedy camelback sofa with the worn arms and squeaky springs that she'd bought for forty bucks at the thrift store had a helluva lot more character than Harry Rutherford's leather-bound conversation pit did. And his lamps made of twisted metal rods had nothing on the hand-painted ceramic pineapple lamp she'd picked out of a Dumpster a couple of years ago. Clearly money could not buy style.