Just One Night, Part 1: The Stranger Read Online Free Page A

Mr. Dade. How I had told him what I did for a living and boasted of professional successes as we stood in a painfully long airport security line. I said I had given Mr. Dade my card but been separated from him before getting the name of his company.
    Even as I utter my explanations and excuses, I can see their transparency. But I so want Tom to suspend disbelief. I want him to accept the ridiculous idea that I inadvertently and unknowingly gave a powerful CEO the pitch of a lifetime. I want him to put away that curious smile he’s been sharing with me these days. I want him to stop looking at me like he suddenly realizes that I might be hiding something under my boxy blazers and wide-legged pantsuits. I want him to stop treating me like I’m as unscrupulously ambitious as he is.
    Tom now stops to talk to me on a daily basis.
    But right now I’m not in the office. It’s Friday morning. I take extra care with my appearance. I pull my hair back into a severe twist. My navy blazer falls in a straight line to my hips without so much as a hint of femininity. I pair it with a matching straight skirt. There is no invitation whispered within the folds of this fabric. There’s nothing here to entice.
    As I stare at my reflection in my pale blue bathroom, I debate the problem of make-up. Without it I look softer, younger, more vulnerable.
    I always wear make-up.
    I drag a moist sponge across my skin, spreading foundation over my little imperfections; a small pimple along my hairline, the few freckles I earned while bicycling through those childhood days of summer . . . covering up all the tiny details that make me human. I darken my cheeks with bronzer and press a gray pencil against the tender flesh beneath my lower lashes.
    This is the version of me that I’m allowed to show the world. This is not the woman Mr. Dade met in Vegas.
    I buried that woman in a garment bag.
    *     *     *
    B ECAUSE I ARRIVE at the offices of Maned Wolf Security Systems fifteen minutes early, I can pause to admire the building that houses them. It should have been cold with its darkly mirrored exterior but here, in Santa Monica, it reflects the sun and the palm trees that surround it, adding warmth to its power.
    And he had been warm when I had touched him. The kisses against my neck had been gentle even as he had pinned me up against the wall. Then there had been his fingers . . . when he had stroked me with them, pushed them inside me, playing me just so as if he was a master pianist bringing forth the aching notes of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata . . . warm, powerful. . . .
    My purse vibrates as my phone jerks me back to reality.
    “Hello?”
    “Miss Fitzgerald? I’m Sonya, Mr. Dade’s executive assistant. There’s been a slight change of plans. Mr. Dade would like you to meet him at the bar Le Fête. It’s located one block south of our office building.”
    “Any particular reason for the relocation?”
    “Mr. Dade will of course cover the expense of anything you order and the valet.”
    That hadn’t been my question but it seems unlikely that this woman would have been able to give me a satisfactory answer.
    I look back up at the building and then down at the briefcase in my hand. “I’ll be there. . . . My firm will cover all additional expenses.”
    “May I ask how far away you are?”
    “I’m here,” I say, “at your building. One block away from Le Fête.”
    I hang up and walk past the building, with its darkly tinted windows and reflected palm trees, to Mr. Dade.
    *     *     *
    H E LOOKS THE SAME . I stand by the host station so I can discreetly observe him. He sits alone at a small bar table while he reads something on his iPad. He’s wearing a light gray cotton shirt with black trousers. Still no tie, no blazer, nothing that demands deference from the world he controls.
    Then again, Mr. Dade doesn’t need clothes to announce his authority. That statement is made in the way he holds himself.