The VIP Room (10 page)

“
U
s
,” Sam said, still studying my face. “You and me. That’s what I handled the wrong way. I thought I could have everything. You in the office and other women just to date. They never meant anything when I had you to come back to. But then I realized I didn’t want anyone else. I only want you. And I’m done with wondering what to do about it. You’re mine.”

“What?” I asked, stupidly. I still wasn’t getting it. Or I was afraid to get it, afraid of what it might mean. Or worse, that my hopes and dreams had caused me to completely misunderstand.

“You’re mine, Chloe. You’ve been mine for three years and neither of us realized it. But I’ve finally figured out what to do with you. So you’re staying here. And I bought you new clothes because you needed them. You deserve the best and I wanted you to have the best. So I got it for you. That’s my job. To take care of you.”

Speechless, I shook my head at him. “You’re crazy,” I said. “The only ‘us’ we can have is in the office. There can’t be an ‘us’ outside of that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I work for you,” I said, frustration and confusion making my voice rise. “And I’m not the kind of woman who has an affair with her boss.”

“I’m not talking about an affair,” Sam said, his own voice rising.

“Then I don’t get it. You want to go out with me?” I asked, hesitantly, terrified I’d misread him and he was going to start laughing.

“I think we’re past that stage, don’t you?” Sam said, laughing just a little. “I’ve spent more time with you than most men have with their wives.”

“That was work.”

“Was it only work? At lunch? Or the conversations we’d have in the car? Was that just work for you?”

I might have continued to argue with him, but the faint note of uncertainty in Sam’s voice disarmed me. Instead, I shook my head.

“No, of course not,” I said. “But we can’t get involved. I’d have to quit.”

“Who said anything about you quitting?” Sam asked, alarm spreading across his handsome features. “You can’t quit.”

“Well what would we do when you moved on?” I asked, trying to make him understand what it would be like from my perspective. He went from partner to partner, commitment never a big deal for him. I’d slept with one man in my life and I’d had only a few boyfriends since college, all short term. I wasn’t built for a casual affair.

“Who said I was going to move on?” Sam asked.

At that, I rolled my eyes and took another sip of my coffee. I loved Sam. I had for a long time. But he wasn’t made for long term monogamy any more than I was for sleeping around.

The impossibility of the whole thing somehow made me feel like I was back on solid ground. Putting my mug on the counter, I got my breakfast back out of the warming oven where Sam must have put it while I got dressed and sat on one of the stools tucked beneath the island. “Chloe,” he said, interrupting me, “I’m serious.”

Cutting my french toast into smaller squares, I resisted the urge to meet his eyes. “I know that you think you are, Sam. But this isn’t a good idea. I can’t have a relationship with you outside of work and still be your assistant. Maybe you could handle it, but I can’t. And I won’t sleep with you just because you’ve decided you want to have an affair with me.”

“I’m not talking about an affair,” he yelled, startling me. Taking a breath, he lowered his voice. “I’m not talking about an affair. I’m talking about a relationship. Between us.” I was shaking my head before he could finish.

“No. It wouldn’t work,” I said, taking a bite of French toast to cover my uncertainty. My heart hurt and I felt a little nauseous. For the first time in my life, I had absolutely no interest in breakfast, even one created with the culinary talents of Sam’s housekeeper. I was in love with Sam. I knew that. And I truly, deeply, sincerely did not want him to know that.

Sam was a good man. But he wasn’t going to fall in love with me. He cared for me. I knew that he did. We had a great friendship. And I loved working for him. I had no idea why he suddenly wanted to change our relationship, but sleeping together would ruin everything.

He’d eventually grow tired of me as he did every woman he slept with. He’d move on and I’d be shattered. Destroyed. I had no illusions that my heart could survive sleeping with Sam intact. I’d fall even deeper in love with him and it would break me when he left.

“So that’s it?” he asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yes. That’s it. Let’s just forget we had this conversation and go back to normal.”

“And you’ll forget I kissed you?”

At the memory of that kiss, I flushed and looked away. I’d never forget he’d kissed me. I was going to hold on to that kiss, remember it so often I’d never lose a single detail. This whole idea might be crazy and impossible, but I would always have that one perfect kiss from Sam.

“I can change your mind,” Sam said, his eyes locked on my face with a predatory gleam. Meeting them, I drew in a deep breath, steadying myself for what I was going to say.

“I’m sure you could. You know exactly what you’re doing with a woman, and I’m practically a virgin. You could probably seduce me in your sleep. I’m asking you not to try. Please just let this go, Sam.”

He was silent for a long moment, still studying my face. His eyes had flared when I’d admitted my inexperience. That was probably a mistake. Sam could be easy going, but he was still an alpha male and admitting vulnerability was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. After what felt like a year, he said,

“You don’t trust me.”

“That’s not it,” I protested. “You’re my closest friend, Sam. I do trust you. But this would be a bad idea. Give it some time and you’ll see that I’m right.”

“No. You don’t trust me, Clo,” he repeated. “You think I’m just interested in what I want and I’m not thinking about you. Like you’re some new shiny toy or a momentary distraction that I’ll get bored with and forget. As if I could ever get bored with you.”

“Sam, don’t do this.”

“Fine, I won’t,” he said easily, his change of heart throwing me off balance. “We have bigger things to worry about. Nolan is missing. You’re in danger. But I’m not going to forget about this.”

“Sam,” I started to say. He cut me off.

“No. Shut up for a second and let me talk.” Surprised, I did.

Sam wasn’t always polite. He ran a construction company - some of the things I’d heard him say on the job could blister your ears raw. But he was always a gentleman with me. Or, he was most of the time. I couldn’t recall him ever telling me to shut up before.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he went on. “I’ll back off for now. But you agree to stay with me until we resolve whatever is going on with Nolan. And you keep the clothes Lola brought over. Consider it a bonus from the company if that makes you feel better.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved. “And we can just forget we ever had this conversation?”

“No fucking way,” Sam said. He sat down on the stool beside me and leaned his shoulder into mine, his mouth dropping beside my ear. Whispering, he said, “I know you’re scared Chloe. I know you don’t trust me and you’re afraid I’m going to hurt you. But I’m not. I’ve wanted you for longer than you know and I’m tired of pretending I don’t. If you can’t believe what I say, I’ll just have to show you how I feel.”

He rose from the stool and left the kitchen, saying over his shoulder, “Finish your breakfast and we’ll go check out your place. I’m going to get a few things together for the office.”

Then he was gone, leaving me staring at my half eaten French toast and wondering what the heck had just happened.

M
y apartment was a mess
. Cushions torn off the couch, food hanging out of the fridge, flour strewn on the floor. Our bedrooms, mine and Nolan’s, were both equally destroyed. His might have been worse, but it hadn’t been neat to start with, so it was hard to tell if the disarray was new or pre-existing.

For the first time since I’d seen the clothes on Sam’s table, I wasn’t conflicted about my new wardrobe. Everything in my closet had been torn from the hangers and thrown on the floor. The drawers were emptied. The things on my night stand had been swept to the carpet.

“I can’t tell if they were looking for something or just really pissed off,” Sam said, joining me in my bedroom.

“I know. I guess I should say thanks for the clothes now,” I said, a quaver in my voice. Sam’s arms came around me and I rested my head against his chest, grateful he was here with me. He’d been right, we had more important things to worry about right now than our stupid argument. Like what to do about the men who had trashed my apartment.

It was bad enough that they were after Nolan. But looking at the deliberately torn pair of underwear on the floor by my foot, I shivered. This wasn’t just a search. This was rage. Whatever happened, I did not want these men to find me. Sam tightened his arms around me and gave me a squeeze.

“Let’s get out of here, honey. Axel’s guys can go through this stuff and see if there’s anything to find. They know what they’re doing. And I don’t think it’s safe here.”

“Okay,” I said, too shaken to argue. He was right. I’d thought if I came home to look around I’d spot a clue. But I wasn’t Nancy Drew. All I saw was a mess. “Let me just get some stuff from my bathroom and then we can go to work.”

The bathroom I shared with Nolan was largely untouched. A box of face powder I rarely used had been knocked to the floor, but most of my make-up and other toiletries were intact, if not where I’d left them. I packed my travel bag, sorting through the disarray to separate my things from Nolan’s. Of the many things I didn’t love about my brother moving in with me, sharing a bathroom was at the top of the list.

Almost done, I was leaning into the shower to grab my shampoo when I spotted a flash of lime green paper wedged half under the bottom of the toilet, as if it had fallen out of a pocket and been pushed aside by a careless foot. Picking it up, I saw it was a matchbook. A sketch of a pool table was on one side with the name ‘Balls and Sticks’. Creative. On the other side someone, not Nolan, had written ‘Feliks’. I froze.

I knew that name. The guy with the gun had said it the night before. Shoving the last of my stuff in a bag, I brought the matchbook out to Sam, who was looking through the books and DVD’s that had been dumped out of my bookcase.

“I found this in the bathroom,” I said, holding it out to him. “The guy with the gun last night said that name. Is that a pool hall? Do you think he’s there?”

Sam turned the matchbook over in his hand, studying it. “Maybe. I’ll give this to Axel.”

“We should go check it out,” I said. It was a lead. An actual lead that might get us to Nolan. We could give it to Axel, but I still wanted to follow it up.

“No. We should go to work. Axel can find this Feliks guy.”

“Sam. We talked about this last night. We’ll give everything to Axel, but I’m not sitting at home waiting for him to find Nolan. I can’t do that. He has other clients, other responsibilities. I don’t. I have Nolan.”

“Honey,” Sam said with a sigh, taking my arm and leading me to the door, “You need to let him grow up. Your whole life can’t be about Nolan.”

“It’s not,” I said, pulling my arm out of his grip and beating him out the door. I hated it when he gave me a hard time about my brother. Sam would never understand. I’d practically raised Nolan. He might be a mess, but he was mine.

“No?” Sam asked, his hand on my arm again in a tight grip as he walked me out of the building. “You can be pissed at me all you want, honey, but stay close. I don’t like being here when we don’t know what’s going on.”

I didn’t answer, but relented, allowing him to tuck me into his side as we walked. He was right. It had been a risk to go back to the apartment, though I was glad we had. At least we knew a little more than we did before. Whoever those men were, they’d been looking for something, not just for me and Nolan. And we had a name and a location to start our search for Nolan. Feliks at Balls and Sticks.

I let Sam lead me to the truck and help me in, both annoyed and grateful for his protection. Once the doors were shut, and he’d started the drive to work, I said,

“I’m going to this place to find Feliks.”

“No way,” Sam said immediately.

“I’m not asking, Sam. I’m telling you what I’m going to do.”

“And I’m telling you no fucking way.”

Supremely aggravated by his bossy attitude, I said, “You’re not my father, Sam. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Well maybe if your father had bothered to say ‘no’ once in a while, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Maybe we wouldn’t,” I said quietly. “But he didn’t. He was a terrible dad, and he left raising Nolan to me. And I completely messed it up. I know that. But I’m going to fix it, Sam. I have to.” Sam swore and pulled the truck into a parking lot as I whispered again, “I have to.”

He threw the truck into park and turned to me, taking my face in his hands. “I shouldn’t have said that, love, it was a shitty thing to throw at you. Your dad is an asshole, but that isn’t your fault. And Nolan being a fuck up isn’t your fault either.”

“I raised him,” I said quietly.

“And who raised you, Clo?” Sam asked in a gentle voice. I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. We both knew the answer was that no one really had.

“You raised yourself,” Sam went on, “And you’re the most amazing woman I know. So you did something right. Whatever is going on with Nolan isn’t on you. We’ll find him because he’s your brother and you love him. But don’t blame yourself for this. He’s twenty-two years old. He makes his own decisions. You’re only three years older than him. Hardly old enough to baby-sit him, much less be responsible for him.”

Sam waited for me to respond, but I didn’t know what to say. He was right. When he put it like that it was absurd for me to feel more like Nolan’s mother than his sister. I’d been barely more than a child when my Mom had left and our Dad stopped caring about us. Still, logic couldn’t shake my sense of responsibility. Nolan would always be my little brother. To make Sam feel better, I said,

“I know.”

“Okay,” Sam said, dropping his hands from my face to place a kiss on my forehead.

“I’m still going to the pool hall,” I said.

“Fine,” Sam said, the gentleness burned out of his voice by his renewed anger. “But you’re not going without me.”

“Fine,” I said. I hadn’t planned on it, but I wasn’t telling Sam that. For a laid back guy he’d been having some serious mood swings lately. I didn’t tell Sam that either. Somehow I didn’t think he’d take it well.

I was lost in thought as we pulled back onto the main road, trying to take in Sam’s sweetness in sticking up for me against my own guilt and wondering what Axel would find out about Feliks. Out of the blue, I thought about Nolan’s job. I’d called Monday morning and asked to talk to him, only to find that he’d been fired a few weeks before.

I’d been too worried about him to process that he’d lost his job. I could yell at him about that when I found him. But before the destruction in the apartment had distracted me, I’d meant to call one of his friends. He didn’t hang out with a lot of the guys there, but he had been friends with a programmer named Tim. It was possible Tim knew something. Frantic to find out, I started digging around in my purse.

“What?” Sam asked, his eyes flicking off the road to watch me digging for my phone.

“I just thought of a friend of Nolan’s I can call. From his job.”

“Did you call them to let them know he was missing?” Sam asked. I hadn’t mentioned the situation with Nolan’s job yet. I hadn’t wanted to hear what Sam would say.

“Not exactly,” I admitted, dreading Sam’s commentary when he found out Nolan had been fired. Again. “I called hoping he’d shown up, and they told me they let him go a few weeks ago.”

“And he didn’t tell you?” Sam asked, his voice flat. I shook my head. Sam took my hand in his.

“I’m sorry, honey.”

That was it. No barbs about Nolan being irresponsible or needing to get it together. Just 'I’m sorry'. My heart squeezed in my chest. If I thought there was a chance I could get involved with Sam and have it work out, I’d be all over him. I couldn’t bring myself to trust that he was serious about me, but he was such a good guy.

Finding my phone, I reluctantly withdrew my hand from Sam’s and started looking for Tim’s number. I’d never called him, but a while ago Nolan had lost his phone and gave me Tim’s number in case I needed to call when they were going out. I never erased my texts, so it had to be in here somewhere.

We were almost at work when I found it. I dialed and listened to the phone ring, a knot in my stomach.

“Hello? Nolan?” Tim’s voice echoed through the speaker.

“No, it’s Chloe, Tim. I’m looking for Nolan. Have you seen him?”

“No. I’ve been calling him. We were supposed to hang out the other night, but he didn’t show. I thought maybe he lost his phone, and he was calling from yours.”

“No. I wish. So you have no idea where he is?” I asked, the knot in my stomach getting worse. I don’t know why I’d thought Tim would be able to help. At this point I was grasping at straws.

“To be honest, I’m kind of worried about him,” Tim said. “He said some things when we last talked that made me think he was into some weird stuff.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Stuff I don’t want to talk about on the phone,” he said. “Can you meet me after work?”

“Sure. Just tell me where,” I said, eager for any information he could give us.

“That coffee house down the street from where we work. Where Nolan used to work. You know-”

“I know where you mean, Tim. When? Five?”

“A little after. I’ll see you then.”

He hung up, and I did the same. As soon as I put the phone down, Sam said,

“So he knew something? We’re meeting him after work?”

I told him what Tim had said and tried not to worry about what it might mean. Sam pulled the truck into the parking lot in front of the office and came around to help me out.

Despite my concern over Nolan, it was time to get in gear. We had a day’s work to do, and between my sleeping late and stopping by my apartment, we were late. Really late. Sam held open the front door, a sheet of glass trimmed with polished wood and stone that opened into a high-ceilinged lobby with a slate floor and matching front desk. We both smiled and nodded at the receptionist who was speaking quietly into her headset.

The building had been designed by the same architect who created Sam’s house. It was a testament to the quality of construction and design that Desert Vistas produced. Both elegant and desert rustic, it was a piece of art as much as an office building. Every time I passed through the door, it reminded me of Sam. As we walked to the executive suite, I ran over the day in my mind.

“You have a conference call on the Givvins project in forty-five minutes,” I said, double checking the time on my phone. “The power point and the spreadsheets are in the file. I updated them with the latest numbers from John before I left last night.”

Sam walked into his office and I followed, dumping my purse on my chair as I went on, “The preliminary contracts for the golf resort are on your desk. Jack marked anything he thought you should pay extra close attention to. Otherwise they’re what you agreed to.”

“What did you think?” Sam asked as he shrugged of his jacket. I tried not to be distracted by the way his button-down pulled across his broad shoulders. I didn’t know why, but I’d always loved the way he looked when he took off his jacket. I yanked my mind back onto the contract.

“It was fair. But they tried to wiggle on the due diligence for the land. It’s not what you agreed to.”

“How much did they take off?”

“Seventeen days,” I said. Sam whistled. We spent another few minutes going over business before I left the office and went to make us a pot of coffee. I usually drank the tea Sam hated in the afternoon, but today was a coffee day. A few minutes later I was sliding a steaming mug in front of Sam, along with a leftover muffin. I didn’t know how much he’d eaten for breakfast, but he’d missed lunch, and he’d be hungry.

As I moved around his desk to get back to my own, he reached out to grab my hand, pulling me to a halt. “Thanks,” he said, his eyes meeting mine with a heat that made me momentarily dizzy. “You look gorgeous in that suit. Don’t let any of the guys hit on you while I’m busy.”

He said it smiling, but gave my hand a squeeze before he let me go and I couldn’t tell if he was joking. We did work with a lot of men, it was usually that way in a male dominated field like construction, but none of them ever hit on me. I was Sam’s executive assistant. Not eye candy. And he’d never worried about the other men before.

Or maybe he had, and I just hadn’t noticed. Shaking my head, I went back to my desk, determined to catch up on work and forget about everything else, just for a little while.