The Sunday Arrangement (21 page)

“Are you listening to
anything I’m saying to you?” my father yelled. “I’m talking about the goddamn
phone call, not his fucking office edict.”

I froze. Dad never
raised his voice, or at least he hadn’t in years and years. What the hell was
going on with him?

I watched my dad
pinch the bridge of his nose like he was willing away a pounding migraine. “Let
me try again,” he said. “Lauren, there’s a lot you don’t know. About me. About
this company. And about the Mavericks.”

Obviously, since you
never bother filling me in on anything
. “Ever think of fixing that? I can’t exactly
make information suddenly appear in my head, ya know.” I knew I sounded snarky,
but I was sick of this guessing game.

He glared at me. “I’m
here, aren’t I?”

I threw my hands in
the air to prompt him to share whatever was lying so heavily on his chest. Bracing
myself, I waited. There was no way he was going to tell me anything. He was all
bark, no talk. No details. No information. Just the basics, the bare
necessities of what I needed to know to get the job done. He had been that way since
I was born, always keeping his family in the shadows of his business life. Even
now, when I was one of his top employees, he still refused to treat me like anything
but a little girl. I gave up trying to obtain information from him a long time
ago, promising myself that I’d be different when I became Hart Corp’s new CEO.

“This isn’t really
easy to talk about. I have not shared what I’m about to tell you with anyone
before. So I hope when I tell you this, you’ll be understanding and . . . maybe
a little compassionate with your old man.” He folded his large hands in his
lap.

“You’re freaking me
out now, Dad. What happened?”

“About a year ago, I
slipped up.” His eyes wandered to the far wall, completely ignoring my intense
gaze. “And I regret it, but it seems that it has been brought back to my
attention. Someone doesn’t exactly want me to forget about my indiscretion . .
.”

My eyebrows furrowed
in confusion. “I don’t get it. What do you mean you ‘slipped up’?”

He held out his hand
to stop me. “I cheated on your mother.”

“You what?”

“I’m not proud of it.
Trust me, I’ve regretted it ever since. But I’m a man. I have basic human instincts.
Your mother has been incredibly frail lately and I—”

I stood up from my
chair. “You just thought it’d be okay to screw someone else?” I ran my hand
frantically through my frizzy hair. “I can’t—I can’t believe this. I mean, I’ve
always known you were a horrible father and spouse, but I’ve always thought it
was because you were a workaholic. But this? I can’t even look at you right
now.”

I stormed off to the
kitchen. I didn’t know what I was looking for—a coffee, a shot of whiskey, a
hammer? I wanted to cry. I wanted to puke. I couldn’t stand the sight of my
sick, twisted father. I’d always suspected him of infidelity with his
voluptuous secretaries and his late-night rendezvous across the globe. But I
had never had definitive proof. How would I ever look my mother in the eyes
again?

“I know you’re upset,
and I’m really sorry about that,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you in all of
this.”

“Me?” I asked,
turning around to stare at him. He was now standing by the sofa. His hands were
in his pockets, nonchalant as ever. “Who cares about me? What about Mom?”

“Well, hopefully,
she’ll never have to find out.”

I folded my hands
across my chest. “You seriously think you can just never tell her?”

“I hope not, my dear.
I really hope not.” He hung his head as if in shame. I wasn’t buying it.

I pelted questions at
him, one after the other. “Does someone else know about your affair? Who was it
with? Does Toby know?”

He rubbed his bald
head with his thick, sausage-like fingers. “Yes, unfortunately Peter Maverick
found out about the affair.”

I wanted to collapse
on the floor. Peter Maverick was a man as vindictive as my father was cold—he
would surely destroy my dad with this information. “How did he get wind of
this? Weren’t you careful?” My mind flashed to the video cameras in Pierce’s
room and what they contained on their memory cards.

“Well, I thought so.
Until I discovered that the girl I was seeing a few times a week was the
daughter of one of the board members.”

My mouth fell open. “At
Hart Corp?”

“I wish. Any of those
old geezers could easily be bribed. The secret would go to the grave with me.”

“Surely you don’t
mean . . .”

He shook his head
slowly. “Maverick and Company,” he said slowly.

“But . . . but I
don’t understand. Peter has sex with all kinds of women since his wife killed
herself so long ago. Everybody in New York knows the notches on his bedpost
have whittled the frame down to a complete nub,” I said, thinking out loud. “I
mean, Pierce even told me that his dad used to hire women to dress in skimpy
French maid outfits and pretend to clean around the house before he banged them.”
I hoped Dad wouldn’t ask me why or when Pierce told me that. Now was not the
time to confess my own sexual scandal.

“That’s true,” he
said quietly, “but I believe all the women he’s slept with over the years have
been of legal age.”

His words hung in the
air like a toxin, making it impossible to breathe. My knees threatened to
buckle. Reality was settling on my chest, and it was heavy. Incredibly heavy. I
felt like I was suffocating and, at the same time, hyperventilating. My father,
the child molester? It was way too early in the morning to process something
this egregious.

 “How in the . . .
how the hell did you let this happen?”

He turned on his
heels and began to frantically pace the length of my living room. “I don’t know!
I don’t know! She told me she was twenty-five, and she looked it. Maybe my
judgment was clouded by my desire for her, but I would have never guessed she
was barely seventeen. What seventeen-year-old has breasts like that? I met her
at a bar for Christ’s sake!”

I met my father in
the living room. His frenzied steps were driving me crazy. “Dad, chill. Sit
down. Drink your coffee.”

“I’m too revved up
for caffeine.”

I sank into my plush
white loveseat. “Clearly.” I felt an intense headache coming on, and my bed was
practically shouting my name. Fatigue from the night’s events threatened to
overshadow the horrid news my father had just shared. “So what does this all
mean, Dad? Sum it up for me.”

He sat at the edge of
sofa and stared at the coffee table. “This seventeen-year-old girl has a father
on the board of Peter Maverick’s company. I don’t know if he knows of his
daughter’s extracurricular activities or not. But it’s apparent that Peter used
her to get to me. She has pictures, texts, and e-mails to prove it all—our
affair, I mean.”

“So Peter’s
blackmailing you with that information.”

He nodded glumly.
“He’s forcing Hart Corp to front this harebrained casino. I happen to know his
company has been quietly suffering the last few years, mostly because of the
competition we’ve been steadily giving them.” He sighed. “I believe it’s his
intention to make this casino flop and ruin Hart Corp . . . and obviously, me.”

“I knew you had to be
out of your mind to agree to do business with that sleazeball.”

“I had no choice.
Don’t you see? He’s tied my hands with all the information. If my affair with a
minor gets out, I’ll lose everything. It’d destroy my lifelong work. It would
all be for nothing.”

“Not to mention you’d
sure as hell go to jail,” I added.

“That too.”

 I shifted on the
sofa, bringing my knees to my chest. “Does Pierce know about his father’s
schemes? Or is Peter acting like you always do, solo?”

“That’s what I wanted
you to find out by watching him. I suspect he does know something. How else could
Peter jeopardize the first project that his young son has ever really managed?”

I couldn’t believe
that Pierce was willingly sabotaging this casino. He might hate my father and
our family, but I happened to know he hated his own father even more. Would he
really play along with his father’s games? I had a feeling Pierce wasn’t the
kind of man who liked being a puppet, dancing and moving at the handler’s will.
“So what do we do now? How am I supposed to go back to work tomorrow and act
like nothing’s changed? I should just hand in my resignation right now. No one
would bat an eyelash.”

“You could do that.
But then you would have to explain to your mother why you suddenly quit. And
she’d have to find out about all of this . . .”

I rolled my eyes. How
dare he! “Really, Dad? I think we have enough blackmail on our hands without
your pointless threats.” But admittedly, he did have a point. The only reason I
wasn’t on a jet out of Vegas that very moment was the picture of devastation
etched across my mother’s face when she discovered her husband’s scandal. My
father had clearly made his bed, and he could lie in it for all I cared. But Mother?
Her only crime was marrying a pig. I could just see her opening the morning
paper to see Dad’s face and the haunting headline: “Billionaire bangs his way to
bankruptcy and prison.” If there was any way of saving her from that pain, I
would fight for it at all costs.

“We need to find
something on the Mavericks, Lauren. We need to turn this thing around before
Hart Corp completely capsizes and we’re all left drowning in the ocean.”

Lovely mental picture
, I thought to
myself. “I’ll see what I can do, Dad. I don’t think you should expect much.
Pierce is a solid employee and smart as a whip. He’ll cover his tracks well, if
he even has any to hide.” Was it wrong that in the wake of this crisis, all I
could think about was next Sunday? That was the aspect of our arrangement I
loved the most. We left work off the mattress and merely focused on the release—the
pleasure from fully experiencing someone else’s body, the electricity of
passion, and the fear of getting caught. I wasn’t sure if I could ever give
that up and put the sexual animal that had roared to life back in her cage. Pierce’s
sensuality and our Sunday arrangements had me captivated—hook, line, and
sinker. As bad as it sounded, I almost didn’t care if he knew that his father
was screwing over my father’s company.

 My father reached
into his tweed jacket and pulled out a thick, clunky cell phone. “If you find
out anything, or if you need me for any reason at all, use this. It’s
untraceable and safe.”

As though I had
reminded him of something he had to do, he rose quickly from my sofa. “Be safe,
Lauren. Don’t trust anyone, and always watch your back.”

~*~*~*~

It was still early,
and I had nothing to do today. Originally I had wanted to conference call with my
assistant, Monica, to get a summary of my projects, the ones my dad had forced
me to stop. But they were the last thing I wanted to worry about now. Heading
for the bedroom, I decided to sleep off the bizarre conversation I had just had
with my father. Maybe my thoughts would make more sense when I got some sleep
under my belt and could focus enough to formulate some kind of game plan.

A few hours later, I
woke up to my cell phone buzzing. It was Pierce. He never called after we slept
together, so I was confused about why he was suddenly acting more gentlemanly
than he ever had after one of our one-night stands. I was afraid to answer,
fearful I may give something away, so I let it go to voice mail.

“Hey there. I hope
you got some rest after last night’s adventure. Good call on the cameras, by
the way. I think you’ll be pleased when I get this video all edited. We look
especially hot on film. I wanted to tell you that you’ll need club clothes for
our next Sunday. See you tomorrow.”

I set the phone back
on the nightstand. I hadn’t been to a club for anything other than scouting our
potential competition here in Vegas, except for our visit to the mermaid
attraction, and I knew nothing in my closet would fit that type of scene. I
grabbed my cell; I needed to go shopping and would probably need my driver.

“Yes, ma’am, I will
be there soon to pick you up,” he said.

Four hours later, I
found a suitable dress. It was a black, thigh-high, form-fitting dress with a
draping neckline and open shoulder sleeves. The back of the dress was very
revealing and gathered by a diamond-encrusted clasp, showing off most of my
back. It was exactly what I wanted. With this, I purchased silver peep-toe
pumps and a black onyx and diamond bangle bracelet. I was all ready for Sunday;
I just had to wait for it to come, and in the meantime, figure out if Pierce
was trying to destroy my father.

My brother called me
on Wednesday to let me know that the model was done, but that he wouldn’t be
able to make it out until Saturday night. His wife, Margret, had their second
child and he wanted to spend a few days with her. I understood where he was
coming from, but that didn’t help my nerves about Sunday. I wouldn’t have been
able to tell him not to come, and I also wouldn’t have been able to force him
to leave Las Vegas with a good conscience.