47

Ace Hardwood was greeted by a bouquet of colourful dahlias at his door that morning.
Scarlett’s styled brown hair was visible over it.
“Come on in,” he said, “I’ll take that.”
Scarlett followed him to the breakfast counter, where his open newspaper and cup of coffee sat. “You know, if I were an assassin and I was assigned to kill you, I’d just wait for this time and shoot you square in between the eyes, through that window, while you read your paper.”
Ace raised his eyebrows at her. “Well, that would mean as an assassin, you’d done your research, so I guess you’d deserve the win.”
“You’d be the most boring target, honestly,” Scarlett placed her handbag on the counter and sat down in front of Ace, with a huff, “No thrill of tailing you; no chase, no spark. Just a clean bullet to the brain. How boring.”
Ace widened his eyes and rolled them. “Should I be concerned that you’re trying to kill me?”
Scarlett propped herself up by the elbows and leaned over the counter to bring her face closer to Ace’s. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.” She bit down on her lower lip and flicked her eyes to Ace’s lips.
She was gifted in the art of seduction; she had done it many times. Ace Hardwood was probably no different to any of the other men she had met.
He looked bored and fluffed the newspaper on to her face, making her back down into her seat.
“For whom are the flowers?”
“Not your business, Ambrose. You can get yourself a cup of coffee, if you like,” Ace sighed, turning the page of his paper.
“Who the hell is this?!”
Scarlett turned her head to see who the commanding voice came from and saw a petite girl with a pixie cut, standing in between the living and dining area, staring daggers at her. She was caught off guard.
“Chel ”
“You’re such a jerk, Ace,” she snapped, “I thought we had a good time! I haven’t even left and you’ve brought in,” she looked at Scarlett disgustedly, “This.”
Scarlett raised her eyebrows.
“I’m done. I’m leaving,” she stomped her heel against the tile and trudged out.
Ace’s eye moved from the direction the girl had gone to and then back to Scarlett. “You should be here all the time. I was starting to fear that she wouldn’t leave.”
“Are you cheating on that other girl, you douchebag?” Scarlett demanded.
Ace looked confused. “Which other girl?”
“The one with the curly hair from yesterday? Aren’t you dating her?”
Ace burst out into laughter. He actually set his newspaper down and gripped the edge of the counter as he laughed. “Oh God, I’m not dating her, or anyone for that matter. What we had was an agreement.”
Scarlett made a face. “An agreement? That’s so sad. And here I thought you had game.”
“Oh, I have game. Why do you think they’d be here, otherwise?”
Scarlett ventured a guess. “I don’t know, maybe they have no ambition for their jobs so they can spend the night and part of the morning in a strange man’s house? Or maybe, you’re actually spending your billions?”
Ace scoffed. “I don’t pay for sex. I don’t have to.”
“Maybe you should pay them; for putting up with you.” Scarlett plucked a grape from the fruit dish and put it into her mouth.
“Why do you care if I’m dating someone else anyway?” Ace asked.
“I don’t like cheaters.”
Scarlett lapsed into silence, which was a little bit unlike her. Ace glanced at her for a few quiet moments, before looking back at his paper.
Scarlett’s fingers dancing across the counter made Ace watch them. She walked her fingers from her side of the counter to his cup of coffee, before picking it up. Her eyes trained on Ace, she lifted the cup to her lips and took a sip from the opposite side that Ace had been sipping.
When she lifted her lips, there was a lipstick stain of a perfect pair of lips on the rim of the cup, in the same daring shade as Scarlett’s. She set the cup back down on its coaster.
Ace looked at the cup, with its fresh stain of Scarlett’s lips. “Did you just drink my coffee?” he asked.
Scarlett gave him a one-shouldered shrug. “I just took a sip. It’s disgusting, by the way. Black coffee? Ugh.”
“This is an Italian dark roast,” Ace said.
“There’s nothing wrong with the coffee, but you drink it like a psychopath.”
“Says the woman who was just talking about assassinating me.”
“I would only have done it if I got paid. You drink it like this on your own volition. You psycho,” Scarlett smirked.
“After breakfast, you leave for office immediately,” Ace sighed.
Scarlett stood up. “No, I’ll go now.” When she noticed Ace’s face, she added. “I’ll get some proper breakfast from the cafe. Aren’t you coming into work?”
“I’ll come in a little later,” Ace said, as usual, offering no explanation.
“Oh, right, you have flowers to deliver,” Scarlett said, shouldering her bag, “I’ll see you later. Morning, Belinda, have a nice day!”
She waved to the housekeeper, who seemed elated to have some cheer in the morning, and left.
Scarlett had already been in the office for three hours when Ace finally walked in.
“How was your date?” she asked, handing him a pen-drive filled with photos for his approval.
“Just go for lunch, Ambrose,” he mused, seemingly, in a good mood.
The bag on Scarlett’s shoulder would have implied that she was leaving for lunch. As she stood outside Woods Towers, however, she walked past all the places she usually went to and hailed a taxi.
The cab dropped her off a few blocks down at a building she had been to only once before.
Instead of walking inside, Scarlett walked to the side of the building where a man dressed like a Secret Service agent led her to an elevator and up to the thirtieth floor. She was ushered into a small conference room.
Terrence Burke stood at the head of the table, staring her down.
“Scarlett, how nice of you to join us,” he said.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, why don’t you take a seat?”
Scarlett looked around. “Look, I don’t have a lot of time. If I’m not back in the office on time, we may have some problems.”
“You work for me Ms. A ”
“Yeah, and I can’t do the job that you hired me to do, if I get fired from the job that I’m doing for Ace,” Scarlett said, like she was talking to a child.
Terrence laughed, dark and low. “I’ve heard accounts from Brad and a few others, Scarlett. I don’t think job security is something you need to be worried about.”
“What do you mean?” Scarlett’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Terrence slipped one hand into a pocket. “Well, it seems that Ace Hardwood tries to keep you quite safe and sound, especially from people he has a particular distaste for.”
Scarlett crossed her arms over her chest. “If Ace is showing any favour towards me, that means that you’re that much closer to getting what you want. You understand that, right?”
The man raised a salt-and-pepper eyebrow. “Good,” he said, simply, barely moving his lips, “I wouldn’t want anything getting in the way of that.”
“Mr. Burke, you hired me because you believe that I can give you what you need. I need you to allow me to do that,” Scarlett reasoned.
Terrence began to walk towards Scarlett. “There’s no need for such formality, Scarlett. You can call me Terrence.” He smiled at her, darkly. “Now, do you have any information for me?”
Scarlett nodded. “His office is off-bounds to everyone and when he’s not there and his secretary isn’t at her desk, he locks his office. I haven’t found a key other than the one he has on his person. Don’t worry, I’ll find a way into it soon enough.”
“There must be something valuable in there,” Terrence nodded, knowingly, “But it won’t be in plain sight.”
Scarlett nodded, again. “He recently got a specific suit altered for something, but there wasn’t any event or appointment on any of his schedules. I’ll keep check of anything of the sort and find out where he went.”
“He must be meeting new clients,” Terrence looked irritated, “Find out who he’s meeting with. And Scarlett, there’s a semi-annual product launch banquet happening in a few weeks’ time. I need you to find out what he’s doing for that. I want to know his strategies and plans.”
“I’ll get you that information,” Scarlett assured.
Terrence took her hand in his, with a smile. “I know you will.”
Scarlett looked down at her hand in his and back at Terrence’s face, recoiling internally. Outwardly, she looked as calm, collected and confident as the first day Terrence met her.
“Tell me, what does Ace Hardwood do in a day?” he asked, almost conversationally.
Scarlett thought. “He reads the paper with a coffee each morning, and never skips a good breakfast. He’s always in the office on time. Except today; he took a bouquet of flowers to someone, but he won’t say who. He’s in meetings or in his office all day. I don’t really know what he does when he goes home, other than bedding various women.”
“Any of these women, been you?” Terrence asked, smarmily.
Scarlett tipped her chin up. “I can’t get you what you want by being like them.”
Terrence patted the hand of hers that he held. “Oh, you’re not like them, Scarlett.”
Cringing on the inside, Scarlett pulled her hand out of his grasp. “Anything else?”
“I want this information soon,” Terrence nodded, propping himself against the table that stood in the room.
“You will get it, but I need time; I need time to gain Ace’s trust so that I’m not flying blind. I need to know what information to give you to hurt him,” Scarlett said, formally.
“I need something. And soon,” Terrence crossed his arms, “I’m not a very patient man, Scarlett.”
“You’ll have something. It hasn’t even been a week,” she said.
“Do you think we can use one of the women he sleeps with?”
Scarlett shook her head. “He won’t talk to them about anything related to his company, I’m sure of it. I think he barely talks to them at all. He said they have an agreement and nothing more.”
Terrence laughed. “He’s smart. Ace Hardwood is a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot. I need inside information to one up him. Let me have an update by the end of the week.”
“I can’t be coming to meet you whenever you want to hear something. Let me know you want to meet me and I will let you know an appropriate time to do so. Unless you want to get caught,” Scarlett said, flatly.
Terrence shrugged. “So be it. Now, you can be on your way, Scarlett.”
She smiled at him, sweetly and walked out the same way she had come in.
Scarlett’s stomach grumbled in hunger as she made her way back to Woods Towers. She had taken up about forty-five minutes of her thirty-minute lunch break. After buying a protein bar and slipping it into her bag, Scarlett hurried up to the fortieth floor.
Gretchen was on the phone and Scarlett intended to slip past her and into her own office before any questions could be asked.
Before she could do anything, the door to Ace’s office opened and he stepped out, a frown etched across his face, knitting his dark eyebrows together.
“Where have you been?” he asked, more harshly than he usually spoke.
“Lunch,” Scarlett said, airily.
“Lunch,” Ace repeated, nodding slowly, “For almost an hour?”
“I met a friend,” Scarlett said, doing amazingly at not letting her racing pulse get to her.
Ace narrowed his eyes. “A friend?”
Scarlett nodded, with a look on her face that told Ace he was asking stupid questions.
“You’re lying, Ambrose,” he said, stepping out of his office fully.
Scarlett cocked her head to a side. “You’re right, I was meeting with the troops and planning how to take you out.”
Ace didn’t smile. Instead he said, “You’re being fishy. I don’t like it. I expect my employees to be honest with me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Scarlett nodded.
Ace motioned with his head for her to go to her office. “I’ll find out why you’re being fishy, Ambrose. And now, since you’ve had a great lunch, I need you to make this deposit for me across town.” He handed her a slip of paper. “Immediately.”