“Desiree, can Cael Nyilas walk me to class this morning?” Aya requested. The look Desiree burned my way was intimidating.
“Of course, Aya,” Desiree relented. “Cael, only take as much time as necessary.”
“Nos morituri te salutamus,” I grinned. I knew that was overly dramatic. How tough could a room full of third graders be? Aya took me by the hand and led me in. Wow! Her teacher was a hottie. A quick glance suggested she was unmarried and very interested in me.
“Ms. Reichmann, this is my Daddy,” Aya announced loudly. Ms. Reichmann’s eyes flicked down to notice my lack of a wedding band. I knelt so that I was eye to eye with Aya.
“Aya, honey, Father has to talk to Ms. Reichmann in private for a moment. Please take your seat and I’ll see you before I leave,” I smiled paternally at Aya. She skipped to her seat.
“Ulyssa,” Ms. Reichmann bit her lower lip.
“Ulyssa, is there a place where I can talk with you in private?” I asked with open innocence and a heavy undercurrent of passion. It turned out there was an unused conference room at the end of the hall.
I left Ulyssa with a smoldering look that guaranteed me a call-back. If any of the kids had the faintest idea why she was so flushed, short of breath and happy, they gave no hint. Aya took excessive pride in showing her ‘Daddy’ off to all her classmates. Any time I detected a bully, I gave the ‘I’m keeping an eye on you’ glare. I was whistling as I returned to the car.
“28 fucking minutes!” Desiree screamed at me.
“I had a little chat with Aya’s teacher. I thought it would be nice if Ms. Reichmann was aware that Aya was unhappy,” I reduced our love-making to the bare bones, ‘no mention of sex’ facts. “She said she’d keep a special eye out for Aya.”
“That wasn’t your job,” Desiree seethed. We started driving away.
“I doubt you’ll listen to my…” I go out.
“Shut up,” she interrupted. “You have nothing to say that I want to hear.”
“You shut up and imagine for a second I don’t hate you and that I’m pretty good reading women in a way you are unaccustomed to,” I snapped back.
“Katrina is going to be hard pressed to save you from this outburst,” she sneered vindictively.
“How about this; Katrina saw potential in you so she’s given you a chance to restore your prestige. What you are failing to understand is the underlying concept of family at Havenstone. This means they put a premium on their children – their female children,” I suggested.
“Protecting the next generation can’t be a job for you. It wouldn’t be for them. To those women, perpetuating their families is all-important and you must see it as an obligation handed down to you by all your Havenstone predecessors.” See, I avoided saying blood lines and their fucked up Amazon heritage.
“I don’t know what your mother did wrong. Whatever it is, Katrina doesn’t care and she’s the one that really matters,” I prodded. “Useless pricks like Fabiola won’t be of any use to you even if they did like you. Thus endeth the male blathering.”
“How do you know it was my Mother?” Desiree asked after several minutes driving.
“Desiree, your father could have done a fan dance on a table at the Presidential Inaugural Dinner and the women of Havenstone wouldn’t give a damn. From Fabiola’s big mouth, I’m guessing your mother married a guy that the family didn’t approve of. In the status-obsessed corporate culture we are stuck with, that has to be pretty dreadful,” I finished.
We were almost at Havenstone’s Corporate HQ before Desiree spoke. She had been positively grim, far beyond her normal grumpiness.
“I killed them,” she stated in a cold, emotionless voice.
“Who?”
“My parents. When my aunt found me and told me about my true heritage and what my parents had done, I killed them,” Desiree answered in the same lifeless tone.
“I’m not going to lie to you. That’s totally fucked up, but then I’m not you and I don’t have to walk in your shoes,” I mused. “I’m certainly not going to give you sympathy, or pity.”
“You are a horrible person for not having the strength of character to allow your mother and father to live with the choices they made. Killing them was a totally selfish act. Before you say ‘you wouldn’t understand’, let me tell you that’s bullshit. Like you, I had a mother and father. My Mom is dead and I miss her every day. I think you miss them and that’s why you are so damn bitter.”
“I should kill you for that liberty,” Desiree informed me.
“Bring it, Kitten,” I scoffed. “I’d kick your ass.”
“What inspires that delusion?” she turned to me. We had parked in the garage by this time.
“I have righteous fury on my side. Against that, you have no defense,” I grinned.
“I warned you against flippancy,” she reminded me.
“Is that a demand that I present my righteous fury for your examination?” I countered. Silence. We went through the security rigmarole, put up the firearms. As we were leaving, I turned to Desiree.
“You would think those two educationally-challenged bimbos would have warned me I was carrying blanks,” I griped. The two security babes’ posture turned all agro on me.
“I really should leave you here with them for a few hours,” Desiree threatened.
“Have I told you recently how much I find you to be a kind, beneficent, wise and gifted teacher and sensei?” I faux-pleaded.
“Shut up,” she grunted as we made my getaway.
“I think I know why Katrina tolerates you,” Desiree told me after a few second in the elevator.
“To try everyone else’s patience?” I guessed.
“Precisely,” she shoved me. “Stop being overly clever. It is unattractive in a male.”
“Stranger danger!” I shouted (still in the elevator) as I backed into the far corner. “Stranger danger!”
“If I had a gun, I would shoot you,” she glared. There was a glimmer of amusement as well.
“At this range, you would probably miss,” I taunted her playfully.
Desiree trembled with conflicting emotions. She gave in, stepped up and punched me in the chest. I kept laughing so she hit me again, but she was letting a tiny smile creep across her lips too.
“Damn you,” she ground her teeth, fighting her happiness. “Fine. Cael, to my side.” There I went.
“Kneel.” I knelt. The elevator doors opened, Desiree stepped out, turned to gaze into my eyes then cruelly smiled as the doors shut and the elevator continued up. The looks I got from women as they accessed the device was priceless. It took a while for one to break the silence.
“What are you doing?” she inquired.
“My boss told me to kneel here,” I explained, “so here I kneel. In nine hours, if I can still walk, I’m going home and taking a long, hot bath.”
“You are just going to stay there for nine hours?” another woman groused.
“I’m an intern. An order is an order and it isn’t like she’s forgotten where she left me.”
“Our male intern isn’t nearly this nice,” a third lady commented. “We call him the Chinchilla. When he isn’t acting as if he’s somehow valuable, he scurries about like a rodent.” That would be Brian I was willing to bet. The women in the elevator were suddenly self-conscious they’d talked that way around another male intern.
“Do you have a nickname?” the third one tried to make light of the faux-pas.
“I think there are three in the running: ‘come here’, ‘kneel’, and ‘shut up’. When I hear one of those, I assume they are talking to me,” I joked. They snickered. God, I could have an orgy in this elevator. Thank goodness my libido was still slaked from nailing Ulyssa the teacher.
“Where are you?” Desiree snapped over the phone eight minutes later. I had her on speaker.
“I’m right where you left me,” I grinned. There was a new crowd in my box. I was getting the impression the word of my fate was circulating around the building and women were slipping over to see for themselves.
“Are you an idiot?” she grumbled.
“I’ll leave the evaluation of my mental facilities to the experts, oh glorious Boss of mine,” I replied. “I would like to report there are two wonderful ladies from International Finance putting a shipping label on me as we speak,” I lied. From the look of one of the ladies, that wasn’t such a bad, or far-fetched, idea.