LOVING THE HEAD MAN (21 page)

ELEVEN

The rain beat heavily against the window pane as Bree lay in her childhood bedroom and watched the stars through the curtain-less frame.  Robert had taken her to dinner, to the Nodash Flip and Dip of all places, and Bree couldn’t help but laugh at the big man sitting in such a down home establishment, especially when the waitress said that they served grits all day and a puzzled look crossed Robert’s gorgeous face.

       What she mostly loved about the night, however, was that he didn’t pressure her.  He didn’t even suggest they get a room or anything like that.  He drove her back home, told her he would give her overnight to think about his offer, and that he’d stay overnight at the Days Inn, the only decent motel in town, awaiting her response.  But it was the offer itself that was keeping Bree awake.

       He told her about it when their plates arrived and the waitress, a seductress from way back named KatyMae, finally left them alone.  He wanted to hire her as an attorney at Colgate, where she would occasionally try cases, but mainly she would run the recruiting program Alan used to run.  It would give her a higher rank than any other starting attorney and would more than provide her with the standard of living she would need to provide for herself and her siblings.  It sounded so wonderful to Bree that she could hardly believe it.  And, once again, her father’s voice told her it sounded too wonderful.  “What’s the catch?” she could hear him asking.

       “What’s the catch?” she asked Robert.

       Robert was staring at his plate of chicken and dumplings, fried okra, and red beans and rice as if it were a plate of worms.  “No catch,” he said without looking up, his fork and knife poised to dig in.

       “Then what you’re saying is that this job offer is just that, a job offer, and I can live anywhere I want to live and date anybody I want to date, right?

       Robert tasted a dumpling, found that he liked it.  “I don’t understand what you mean.  Why would you be dating somebody else, and of course you can live anywhere you want to live.”

       “I’m just saying.”

       “I’m offering you the job because I believe you can do it and
do
it well.  Now if you’re suggesting that my offer implies the fact that I want you in Chicago with me, then you’re correct.  I want you in Chicago with me.  I’m not making a secret of that.”

       Bree’s heart began to pound.  “But what do you want me to do in Chicago with you?”

       Robert considered her.  “I want you and me to see if we can make it work. 
A relationship that is.”

       Their eyes met.  Bree held his gaze. 
“A long term relationship?”

       “Hopefully, yes.”

       “Were you once hopeful of a long term relationship with your son’s mother?”  She didn’t think she’d have the nerve to ask it, but she was glad she did.

       Robert took another heap of food into his mouth and then sat back and chewed it up.  Then he exhaled.  “Yes, of course I was.”

       “What’s her name?”

       “Why in the world are we discussing her?”

       “You never mentioned her,
nor
your son, so it kind of caught me by surprise.  I never read that you had a son.  What’s her name?”

       Robert hesitated only slightly.  “Sylvia,” he said.

       Bree stared into her glass of juice.  That name just sings, she thought.  “Was she beautiful?”

       “Yes, very,” Robert said so quickly that Bree, surprised, looked up at him.  “And still is,” he added.  “But what does that have to do with your job offer?”

       “Does she live in Chicago?”

       “No, Brianna, she does not.  Am I currently seeing her? No. We haven’t been in a relationship in years.”

       “But you’ve seen her since the breakup?”

       Robert hesitated.  “Yes,” he admitted.

       “How long did you guys stay together?”

       This caused another hesitation.  “A decade,” he admitted.

       This floored Bree.   She looked at him.  “Ten years?  You stayed with her for ten years?”

       “That’s right.”

       “For the sake of your son?” she asked hesitantly.

       Robert stared at her.  He could lie, but he couldn’t.  “No,” he said.

       Their eyes continued to hold each other’s gaze.  Until Bree finally looked away, her heart as confused as it had been the night he made love to her.  And she realized that she really didn’t know him at all.  “Your son, what’s his name?”

       “Zachary. 
Zack.”

       “Colgate?”

       “Yes.”

       Bree sat erect. 
Exhaled.

       “We’re just getting started, Brianna,” Robert sought to reassure her.  “Let’s not rush the process.  Just go home tonight and think about my offer.  Quite frankly, I don’t see how you can turn it down, but I’ll understand if you do.  You don’t owe me anything for the deed to that house, or anything else.  That was my gift to you, and no matter what you decide it will remain my gift to you.  And if you want the job, but not me,” he said with a smile that seemed laced more with anxiety than gaiety, “I’ll understand that, too.”

       And that was all they said about it.  They continued to eat in relative quiet, he took her back home, and now she was
lying
in bed, staring at the stars, but thinking more about him than anything else, even the dream job offer he had made to her.  He wanted a relationship with her, he wanted one when she was still a trainee, and on one level just the thought of being with Robert pleased her beyond belief.

       But on another level, perhaps a deeper level, it terrified her.  Especially now that she knew he had a son, a son who was probably not that much younger than she was.  And the fact that he had been in a ten-year relationship with his son’s mother, and he still described her as “very beautiful,” and yet he never married her, didn’t sit well with her either.  Robert seemed to her to have so many layers to him, so many pockets, that she didn’t know if she wanted to take on that kind of complication, that kind of trouble.

       But he looked so gorgeous today, standing on her porch, his brown hair blowing around his gorgeous face, his big, blue eyes wide with affection,
his
wonderfully muscular body that she couldn’t keep her eyes off of.  And when he said he couldn’t live without her, and that he had love for her, mercy.  That was something to hear from a man like him.  And to offer her a dream job like the one he offered her, where she would earn major bucks, with, according to him, no strings attached, it all just didn’t spell trouble to her, or anything that would really require much thought. 

       Then Bree smiled. 
Thought about her father.
  And she could hear him now. 
Child, are you crazy?  The man paid off the house, offered you a great job, said he couldn’t live without yo’ butt.  What else you got going on? 
Nodash, no man, and no job?
  What on God’s green earth is there to think about?

       But Bree did think about it. 
Because it couldn’t just be about Robert and what Robert wanted.
  It had to also be about her, and what she wanted.  And the longer she thought about it, the more certain she became.  And by the time she had gotten out of bed, thrown on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed her mother’s keys off of her dresser and ran, through the drenching rain, and plopped down into her mother’s big old Buick Bel-Air, her certainty was like a drug.  And she was so
high,
and so otherworldly intoxicating, that she was driving up into the Days Inn parking lot, a fifteen minute drive to the outskirts of town, in under five minutes.

       “Ninety-one won’t do,” Robert said into the telephone.  “We need more like ninety-eight, ninety-nine percent
certainty
before I’ll take it before a jury.”  He was seated on the edge of the bed, in his motel room, talking on the phone with Monty Ross.  His head was bow, his eyes were closed, and he was pinching the bridge of his nose.  Exhaustion couldn’t describe how tired he was. 

       “Pete thought he had it figured out,” Monty said on the phone’s other end, “but I’ll tell him to refigure.”

       “Do that.”

       “You know we need to meet before we head back to DC.”

       Don’t remind me, Robert thought, and once again wondered why in the world
did he agree
to represent Bradford.  “I know.”

       “
Which, my sources tell me, could be as early as a day or two.
”    
      
“Understood.”

       “So when will we be meeting?  I need to give the principals enough notice.”

       Knocks could be heard on Robert’s room door. He frowned.  Who in the world could be disturbing him in Nodash, Mississippi on this kind of rainy, miserable night?  “I should be back in town tomorrow,” he said as he rose and walked over to the window above the air conditioning unit.  He could see nothing in the black and the rain. 

       “Who is it?” he yelled, before opening the door.

       “It’s me,” Bree said, “open up.”

       His heart leaped with joy at just the sound of
  her
voice, and dropped through his shoe at the thought of her turning his offer down.  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Robert said into the phone, hung up, and immediately opened the door for Brianna.

       She was
soak
and wet by the time he took her by the arm and hurried her inside. 

       “Bree,” he said as he grabbed her and pulled her out of the rain, “what in the world are you doing out in this kind of weather?”

       “I had to talk to you,” Bree said, chill in her voice, her earlier adrenalin giving way to a kind of nervous reality. 

       Robert looked at her, looked at her fully erect nipples poking her wet t-shirt, and his manhood began to swell almost immediately.  But he turned off the A/C and moved toward her. 

       “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes,” he said as he began to quickly undress her. 
“Before you catch your death.”

       Robert removed her t-shirt, revealing her braless breasts, and then he pulled down her jeans, revealing no panties. 
Which probably meant, he figured, she had dressed awfully fast.
  He hurried to the bathroom, grabbed a big, white, terrycloth towel, and hurried back into the room, drying her entire body and then wrapping her in it.