There's Something About Her, A Manhattan Love Story (16 page)

“We planned a trip to Saint Tropez months ago. One of her friends is getting married.”

Oh, the pain in my heart. “Oh, I see.” I take my laptop out of my bag.
 

After three knocks on my door, it opens. Robert Tango is there; his lips are stretched into a huge smile. “Morning, Vince. Morning, Maggie. I’ll be working closely with you and the IK App team while Vince skates off to paradise with his beautiful fiancée.” He glares at me as if he wants to eat me alive.

Vincent scowls. “Get the hell out of here, Rob. The IK App team doesn’t need you slowing them down.”
 

“Maggie might need a little access while you’re gone. My name is just as good as yours, my brother.” Boy, is he cocky. “By the way…” Robert looks out the doorway. “Hey, Gabrielle?” he calls. She’s in my office in a flash. I avoid Vincent’s scowl.
 

“Have you met Maggie? We went to school together. I had a thing for her. I think she had a thing for me, right?”

I put on a fake smile. “A little thing. I was only at your school for four months. So…”

He wipes that cocky grin off his lips to leer at me. “Four months was all I needed.”

I can tell that Vincent is turning angrier by the second.
 

Gabrielle cuts her eyes away from my face. “Vince, babe, we have a flight to catch. We’ve already pushed it back once.”

“It’s a private jet. The flight will leave when we get there. I want to speak to Maggie alone,” he barks.

Gabrielle whips around as if his words slapped her on the cheek. She stomps all the way back to Vincent’s office.
 

“Remember your priorities, Vince,” Robert says before leaving us.
 

Vincent shuts the door. “Maggie, you need to know that I’m going away with her, but I will not make love to her. I won’t touch her.”

“Why not? She’s your fiancée. Are you not going to touch her forever?”

“I’m never fucking her again.”

I grunt. “So what are you going to do? ‘Make love’ to her?”

“What the hell, Maggie! Do you think I mince words? I’m not going to fuck, make love, or have sex with her. I need time to work this through. Just don’t let Rob near you. I don’t trust him with you.”

This is insane. I feel as if we’re in high school again, except this time, one of the guys is getting married and the other one is going through a divorce. Neither one should appeal to me.
 

“I’m not going to do anything with Robert. I’m not even a wee bit attracted to him.”

“You’re not?” He sounds relieved.

“No.”
 

“Are you attracted to me?”

I roll my eyes. “Of course I am. You know that.”

He smirks. “I’m attracted to you too. I thought about you all night long. How is Jack’s wife?”

I clamp my lips together. His casual tone doesn’t fit our circumstances. “She’s fine. She gets out of the hospital today.”

He smiles despite my cool demeanor. “That’s good news. What time did you get home?”

Again, I hesitate. I hate that his mood is infectious. For the moment, I forget how angry I am with him. “This morning. Charlie and I slept there.”

“Chuck… Is he still an asshole?”

“The biggest.”
 

We end up staring into each other’s eyes while smiling. I know that as soon as he walks into that elevator with her, I’ll feel the void.
 

“I’m going to fix this, Maggie. It’s not going to be easy.”

I look at the ceiling to focus on anything but his face. The fact that he’s leaving with her makes him and I feel like a lost cause.
 

“Have a good trip,” I mutter.

Vincent presses his back against the closed door and narrows his eyes seductively. “Come here.”
 

I see what he’s doing. No one can see us if we’re against the door. I walk over, and he grabs me as soon as I’m close. We kiss feverishly.
 

Vincent’s penis is as hard as steel. His eyes are dazed as he unbuttons my jacket and the first five buttons of my sheer green blouse. After enough of my skin is exposed, he kisses and tastes the fleshy part of my breasts.
 

“You’re so soft,” he whispers.
 

I release an unrepressed sigh. He kisses up the side of my neck and then sinks his tongue into my mouth. Our lips know that they will long for each other, and there will be no fulfillment—not for a long time and maybe never again.
 

Vincent grabs the back of my neck and presses his forehead against mine. “I’ll be back sooner than you think. Step back, baby.” He kisses me again.

I do as I’m asked. He flexes his eyebrows as he adjusts his pants to hide the hard-on. Once he’s stable, he lifts his eyebrows one last time before he walks out of my life for what will be one extremely long week.

I keep my door closed until they’re good and gone. When I open it, Robert sits at Vincent’s desk, waving at me.

“Oh, shit,” I mutter. I can see that he’s going to make it very hard on me while Vincent is away.

Linda and I get cracking. I ask her to set meetings with the IK App team, budget and finance, video production, general marketing, and digital. We need to sit down with the representatives of each department in that order. I study the itinerary before returning Darius’s call. We talk about my ideas and how far we can realistically take them.
 

“I thought you wanted minimal visibility,” Darius says after I mention a commercial.

“I’ll take what I can get.”

Thank God he chuckles. “Fine, Maggie, I’ll let you do whatever your budget allows. Only for you.”

I laugh. “I feel special. You snowboard, don’t you?”

“I compete.”
 

I grin. “Maybe we can get some shots of you doing some snowboarding tricks. We put the shots over music and bam, commercial.”

“Yeah?” He’s excited.

“Yeah!
 

“I’m up for it.”

“I’ll get back to you by Monday morning,” I say.

After the call, I stop by Lena’s office to run my planned meetings and tasks by her. She approves the agenda and sends an email to the teams encouraging compliance.
 

By ten p.m., we have a production team, samples of banners, markers, a page on our website, and a budget. Linda and I worked feverishly to get it done. I entrusted her with the banners, signs, and markers.
 

I’m sending one final email to Darius while Linda packs up her side of my desk.
 

“Maggie, you’re my supervisor, but we’re friends, right?” she asks.

“Supervisor on paper, but friends and colleagues in real life.” I smile.

She smiles. “A group of us are going Rock n’ Roll bowling tonight. You want to come with?”

“I heard of that place. My girlfriends and I were supposed to try it. I’m game.”

“Rock n’ Roll bowling?”
 

Linda and I jump, startled.
 

Robert is in the doorway. “I’ll be there tonight too. It’ll be fun to see your moves, Maggie.”

Linda and I look at each other as he walks away. Suddenly, I feel like declining the invitation but if I do, it’ll look too suspicious. Therefore, tonight, I’ll be bowling with Robert.
 

Great.

Two hours, two glasses of wine, and a pair of black skinny pants and a black boat-neck sweater later, I end up at Rock n’ Roll Bowl.

The music is loud. The lights are dim, except for the flickering red, yellow, and blue swirling beams, which make me dizzy.
 

 
“You made it!” Linda shouts when I approach the A&Rt group.
 

I hold up my rented bowling shoes. “I did!”

“This is my boyfriend, Roland!” she shouts.

Roland has a gut and wears a lot of gel in his hair. He’s definitely the lucky one in their situation.
 

I shake his hand. “Nice to finally put a face to the name. I’ve heard a lot about you. All good. I only have good stuff to say about Linda too!” I stick my fingers in my ears to get a reprieve from the noise. “Are we going to be yelling like this all night?”
 

“What did you say?” Linda shouts.
 

Jeez. I’m ready to call this a bust and walk right out of Rock n’ Roll bowling, head home, and call Cleo and Hannah to see if they want to meet for dinner and drinks in about an hour. Linda looks right past me. Whatever she’s watching garners her full attention.
 

She wraps a hand around my wrist and puts her mouth close to my ear. “He showed up!”
 

I whip around. Robert stands behind the barrier separating the lanes from the main floor. Gosh, he’s tall and gorgeous. He’s in the same category as Johnny Depp and Skeet Ulrich. He grins like a man with naughty plans.
 

I have a plan of my own, and that’s to stay as far away from him as possible. “Hey, Linda! I’m going to the ladies’ room,” I say in a rush.

As soon as she shouts, “Sure,” I take off with the rented shoes still in my hand.
 

All the stalls are taken, so I wash my hands and study myself in the mirror. I can do this. What am I afraid of?
 

I’m afraid that whatever Robert has planned might work. I didn’t think I was attracted to him, but he looked mighty tasty a minute ago. Am I worried about offending Vincent? Hell, he’s off rendezvousing with his
fiancée
.
 

Dabbling in the Robert pond would certainly put my job in jeopardy. I think that’s what he wants. He wants me to slip up so that he can get rid of me for good. Robert is clearly invested in Vincent and Gabrielle’s engagement, which I suspect is a business arrangement.
 

I wish I were repulsed or offended, but I’m not. Growing up with the Lords, I learned that sometimes marrying for money is the way of the world. Charles Lord the First would’ve never approved of Jack marrying Daisy.
 

If I weren’t related, I wouldn’t have met Uncle Charles’s standards either. He used to tell my mother to do something with me because I’m too much of a “wild ass.” His strict, WASPy ways were part of why Jack left home right after high school and Charlie ran wild whenever he could escape his father’s critical eyes. Charlie would fuck anyone and everyone besides Daphne the Debutante.
 

Neither Charlie nor Jack shed one tear at their parents’ funeral. They didn’t appear pleased by their deaths; they just looked indifferent. They felt free, and they felt guilty about it. That’s Chuck’s major malfunction. He still has the guilts.
 

I take one long sigh. It’s show time.
 

“Oh, you’re here.”
 

I turn. It’s the chick who wasn’t happy that I brought Linda to the meeting. “Hi, um…”

“Janice,” she says snootily.

“Right.” I start to walk off.

“No, wait, Maggie,” she says.
 

I turn to face her.
 

“I’m sorry for being a bitch. It’s hard to choose a different path once you’ve started down one.”

I take a moment to assess her authenticity. “That’s okay. It happens.”

She turns on the sink to wash her hands. “How do you like A&Rt so far?”

“I love it.”

She turns the water off and snatches a paper towel out of the dispenser. “Vincent seems to be enjoying you.”

The bitch. That was a fake make-up. I snort. “I aim to please,” I say to provoke her.

She glowers at the two faint red marks on my neck. I forgot about those. I’m glad they couldn’t be seen under the collar of the blouse I wore to work. They’ll be gone by morning. I never stay red for long, unless I’ve been sunburned.

She steps forward to get real intimate with me. “He’s just going to bone you and toss you aside like yesterday’s
Times
.”

“Well, there goes choosing a different path,” I snarl.

She shakes her head. “No. I’m not attacking you. I’m informing you.” She turns to stroll out of the restroom.
 

I’m usually the one leaving the other person to chew on what I just said. Janice just gave me a taste of my own medicine, and it’s bitter. I shake my head. After I collect myself, I walk out of the restroom.

“Maggie!”

I jump. “What the hell!”

Robert stands right by the door.
 

“Have you been standing here waiting for me?” I’m back to shouting again.

“I want to talk to you.”
 

“About what?”

“Everything,” he says.

“What’s everything?”

He gathers me around the waist. “Just come on! You’re always making it hard.”

I anchor my feet and frown. “Hard for who? You?”
 

“Who else?”

“I’ve never spoken to you in my life!”

“I know.”

We stare at each other. His playful eyes and wicked grin are like the eighth and ninth cardinal sins. I’m struck by insight. I’m no different from Jack and Charlie. I was into Robert Tango because he looked dangerous and exciting back then, and he still does.
 

“Maggie”—he’s still grinning—“talk to me. I’m not going to bite you. Maybe.” He winks.

I sigh and glance over my shoulder. The A&Rt group seems to be having a good time without me. I notice Keith glaring in our direction. He probably can’t wait to have his chance at hitting on me too.
 

“All right,” I say.

Robert keeps his arm around my waist until we’re on the sidewalk on 10
^th
Avenue. It’s a relief to get a reprieve from the music and the flashing disco lights.
 

“Are you cold?” he asks.

I jerk out of his embrace. “A little.”

“Then why are you stepping away from me? Come to daddy.” He grabs me again.
 

I laugh and look him right in the eyes. “Why are you coming on to me?”

“When have I come on to you?”

“He says with his hands on my ass…”

He snickers and squeezes my ass cheeks. “I didn’t know they were there.”

“When are you going to remove them?”