I'll Be Your Everything Read online

He hits another button. “Sorry for the delay. I was unzipping my pants.”

  The nurse immediately shouts, “Yes!”

  Oh ... my ... goodness!

  He mutes the phone. “Dinner.” He shakes his head. “I’ll end it now.”

  “Double or nothing,” I say way too quickly.

  He sighs. “Okay.” He hits the mute. “You still there?”

  “Yes!” she shouts again.

  He mutes the phone. “I guess that means ... breakfast.”

  If I knew that this wench was the horniest woman in Tully, Australia, I never would have made the bet. “That was an unfair bet.”

  He shrugs. “I just made a nurse in a closet twelve thousand miles away scream and shout without really trying. Want to bet lunch tomorrow?”

  “Leave the poor girl alone.”

  Tom shakes his head. “I like lunch.” He hits the mute button. “What’s your name?”

  I hear heavy breathing before she says, “Angela.”

  Tom rolls his eyes. “Oh, Angela.”

  The freaking wench shouts again! Then the nurse actually howls. “Ooh. Someone’s coming. Gotta go.”

  Click.

  Tom snaps off his phone, reclines in his seat, and smiles.

  No way that just happened. Is it getting a little steamy in here? I restart the Suburban and roll down the window. “Let’s get back to work.”

  “That’s it?” Tom says. “I induce a perfect stranger in Australia to do some shouting, and you just say, ‘Let’s get back to work’?”

  I don’t want to give him more credit than he’s due. He really didn’t say anything that erotic at all. “So she was hard up. Big deal.”

  He only smiles.

  “You really didn’t do anything amazing,” I say. “It wasn’t even that kinky. You didn’t even mention her happy space.”

  Tom drums on the dash. “Corrine told you about that?”

  I nod and start to laugh.

  He laughs, too. “Yeah, Corrine and her ‘happy space.’” He puts on his seat belt. “By the way, I like omelets. Lots of ham, onions, and green peppers.”

  Grr. “I’ll call room service for your dinner and for your breakfast, and I didn’t bet on your lunch.”

  “Well, you have to join me for dinner at least.”

  Which would be very nice, I’m sure.... “I bet you dinner and breakfast, and that’s all you’re going to get. I wasn’t part of the bet.”

  Tom snaps up the phone.

  “Who are you calling?” I ask.

  “I’m going for four shouts so you’ll eat with me.”

  And he’ll easily get it. “I’m not betting you.”

  “I don’t expect you to. Hello? This is Tom.”

  A male voice says, “Yeah?”

  “Um, I’m trying to reach Corrine Ross. She’s a patient there.”

  Click.

  “I think,” I say, “your little bimbo left Corrine’s phone in the closet.”

  Tom pockets his phone. “I wish he didn’t hang up. I was going to hand the phone to you.”

  No, he wasn’t. “To do what?”

  “So you could try to win back breakfast.”

  “Uh-uh. I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

  Tom hums along with a radio jingle. “So you’re saying you wouldn’t have satisfied me.”

  Hey now. Watch it, man. “You know what I mean. I don’t just ... get all freaky in the presence of someone I just met.”

  “But, Shari, we’ve known each other for five years.”

  Kind of true. “All of it on the phone.”

  “Until now.”

  And that’s where I have to draw the line. Now is a scary word sometimes. “Right or left?”

  “Straight. Up the hill, take a left.”

  And we’re back at the plant. The man has a good sense of direction.

  I park in Mrs. Peterson’s spot, a simple wooden sign announcing her as “THE REAL BOSS.” I get out, and Tom gets out and goes straight to the plant.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  He points to the plant. “To work. You know. Take some notes, get some ideas.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I say, gathering my goggles, gloves, and hard hat.

  Tom returns to my side, and his shadow engulfs me. “Why? Don’t you trust me?”

  “I trust you.” A little.

  “I thought you were a solo act.”

  “I am.” Shoot, I’d need a stepladder just to kiss his chin. I mean, not that I would ever kiss his chin. I’m just trying to describe how tall he is. Either a stepladder or longer lips. “I want to learn from the master. I want to look at the world through your eyes.”

  Tom stares into my eyes. “If you could only see what I see now.”

  I brush past him and head for the door to the plant. “What do you see?”

  “The word beautiful.”

  I open the door and look back. “So I’m just a word.”

  He holds the top of the door. “It’s a good word.”

  I put on my goggles and hard hat. “What if I consider myself to be pure, chaste, and wholesome?” See, God, I haven’t forgotten about You.

  He puts on some goggles but has trouble with the hard hat. “You would still be beautiful, Shari.”

  Yep. The man is good. And he’s right. I am beautiful, and he’s ... he’s the poster boy for the fantasies of horny nurses in Tully, Australia.

  Ah, who am I kidding? He’d be a poster boy for fantasies of any woman anywhere.

  Including mine.

  Sorry, Lord, but the man is hot. Well, You made him. I’m just sayin’.

  And then we wander. I take notes where he takes notes, and he takes notes where I take notes. When I doodle, he doodles, hiding his drawings. He takes more notes. I doodle some more when I see the guys working on the handlebars. I bet I could film over those handlebars while the bike is moving. I could even put the tire just about anywhere since “PETERSON” is visible on the fork. I could use Photoshop and have the bike “go” anywhere, like the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore—landmarks. Yes. I could make a collage of famous American places the bike could visit. No matter where you ride, you’re home. Sweet!

  “Yes!” I cry.

  Tom blinks at me. “You just shouted, and I didn’t even say a word.”

  I ignore him. “I just nailed my print ad.”

  “I did that yesterday morning,” he says.

  “Liar.”

  “You should talk,” he says with a smile.

  I put my hand on his chest and push. Nothing happens. I push harder, and he moves maybe an inch. “Get lost, man.” I now know what a wall of muscle is.

  “You must work out,” he says. “I bet you have some nice cuts.”

  I have plenty of those, and some are of the verbal kind. “I said, get lost.”

  I go outside to the employee eating area and find a picnic table in the sun. Get lost, I told him. As if my little arm could push him anywhere he’d ever get lost. Hmm. Get lost ... in America. Fantastic! “No matter where you ride, you’re home—Get lost in America.” That would make a great T-shirt. And it’s another tagline! I don’t yell this time. I look up and smile at Tom, who is standing in the doorway. The man can sure fill a doorway.

  I know what I’ll do. I will ride across the Brooklyn Bridge for the thirty-second shot. Sound? No sounds but the natural sounds of the city, no announcer, just a graphic like ... “Come home to America.” That’s good! Silent commercials get my attention more than the talking ones, mainly because they don’t say anything stupid. Okay, the print ad is done, and the T-shirt is done. What about the radio ad? I could use the sound from the Brooklyn Bridge crossing again, and an announcer—probably me—will say the tagline. That only leaves the fifteen-second spot.

  Shoot.

  Those numbers again. Three hundred and thirty feet at fifteen miles per hour. I look up and still see Tom filling the doorway. I look down at the table where someone has drawn a diamond
ring with some initials carved inside. It’s kind of cornball, but it’s not as bad as the one next to it: “I Billy Sue.” I trace the diamond onto my paper and find it’s roughly square. Nice diamond. Wait—

  A diamond! I draw three bases and home plate. That could be the infield at Yankee Stadium. That’s home plate. The leftfield foul line is really short at the new Yankee Stadium. I could ride from left field and skid across home plate in a cloud of dust. An umpire’s voice yells, “Safe!” Ride one home! No. Drive one home. Better. No matter where you ride, you’re home....

  “Wow,” I whisper as I write it all down.

  “What’s wow?”

  How did Tom get across from me without shaking the table? I know I have amazing powers of concentration, but he has to weigh at least two-twenty. His shadow should have blocked the sun. Oh yeah. The sun’s behind me. “Nothing is wow.”

  He leans closer to look, and I pull back my notes.

  “You like baseball?” he asks.

  Shoot! He saw my idea. “I was just tracing a diamond ring I found on the table here.”

  He folds his hands on the table. “A diamond ring doesn’t normally have bases.”

  “I was just ... tracing.”

  He drums his fingers on the top of the table, and it’s got a nice rhythm. “You know, Shari Nance, it might be easier if we worked together on this.”

  He’s kidding. “I don’t work for you or your company.” I smile. “And I never will.”

  “I happen to know that there’s an opening in the junior account executive program,” he says.

  He can’t be serious. “Um, Tom, I’m twenty-seven, I don’t have an MBA, the MBA will eventually be from LIU, not Harvard, in three years, and I’m a black female. Oh yes, I’d be perfect for Hairy Ads, Hershey’s Syrup, and Moldy.”

  Tom laughs. “Well, maybe you wouldn’t have to work for Hairy Ads.”

  “Who would I work for?” I ask.

  “Me.”

  Oh sure. Tempt me. “Right.”

  “Seriously. I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for a long time. I’ll never make partner. That’s a given. But with my track record and your brilliance, we’d make a fantastic team. We should open our own agency.”

  Oh sure. Tempt me some more. What does Corrine say at a time like this? Oh yeah. “Go on.”

  He sits back. “I mean ... I manage a bunch of accounts.”

  “Forty-three,” I say. “I checked.”

  He nods. “And you, I mean, Cringe manages ...”

  I sigh. “Fifteen.”

  Tom seems genuinely surprised. “That many?”

  “Hey, I’m good at what we do.”

  Tom stands and walks around to my side, sitting a few splinters away from me. “Well put. You are good. You get down and dirty with the client. You take an interest in what you’re selling. You care. You know how rare that is in this business?”

  I know I’m rare, Mr. Sexton. You just haven’t convinced me yet. “Go on.”

  “I know I won’t be able to take all those clients from Hairy Ads, but if I retain even a third of my clients, that’s a great start for us.”

  It’s an incredible start, actually, especially for two people. “Did you make this offer to Corrine, too?”

  He takes a short, quick breath. “Wow, you’re sharp.”

  The sharpest. “And I’m betting it was, oh, two years ago.”

  He bumps his knee with mine. “Yeah.”

  “But let me guess,” I say. “Corrine wanted to play it safe. She wanted the sure thing. She loved having an assistant like me do all her work for her.”

  “You’re right,” Tom says. “Corrine doesn’t have an adventurous bone in her body. She only wanted to talk about all the risks involved, and she wanted me to find out if my current accounts would retain me if I left Hairy Ads. She likes the status quo, and I just want to go.”

  Time to hurt him a little. “So you stopped sleeping with her because she didn’t follow your dream?”

  He nods. “Something like that.”

  Which, as it turns out, is similar to my own situation with Bryan. An interesting coincidence. “Are you really serious about this offer?”

  “Yes.”

  Again, no hesitation. It would be so nice to prove my worth to the world, but what can I bring to the table? “So you’ll try to bring your clients on board, and I’ll bring nothing, Tom. I’m not exactly an asset.”

  He moves his leg to rub fully against mine. Geez, his thigh is as big as both of my legs. “Nothing? Shari, you will bring realism. You will bring down-to-earth common sense. You’ll bring sanity. You’ll bring fire. And we wouldn’t represent any product we didn’t believe in.”

  “We’re going to starve.” I said that out loud? I mean, I said the “we” part out loud. “There are a lot of products out there not to believe in.”

  “True. But we’ll find the worthwhile ones together. You’re outdoorsy, and so am I. We’ll do ads for any product that’s good for the environment or helps put people in the great outdoors. We both like to eat healthy, so we can promote health foods.”

  I look at his chin. “How do you know I like to eat healthy?” I had Hot Pockets all weekend.

  “You look very fit,” he says, “and you have flawless skin.”

  I, um, yeah, I do. Flawless.

  “You don’t strike me as a junk food queen,” he says. “Except for maybe ... donuts. Yeah, you look like a ... glazed donut eater.”

  How does he know this?

  “And once we’re established as an environmentally conscious and outdoorsy agency, the West Coast will come calling, I guarantee it.”

  And that’s his old stomping grounds and a place I’ve always wanted to visit. “I don’t know. It sounds ... okay.” It sounds freaking wonderful, but I have to keep him guessing.

  “So, what do you say, Shari Nance? Are you willing to give old Tom a chance?”

  And now he rhymes. “That was a cheesy rhyme,” I say. I take a deep breath. “I say that you’re just trying to A, get into my jeans, and B, get into my notebook. In that order.”

  “You got it half-right.”

  Which half? Do I ask him out loud?

  “To prove my good intentions,” he says, “here are my ideas.”

  He opens up his little notebook and I see cartoons. Cartoons? Each page has four boxes, and there are little stick riders on simple bikes. No words, just pictures. There’s some sort of order in these drawing, but I’m not seeing it. “You can’t draw a lick, Tom.”

  “I’ve been too busy watching you,” he says. “I had to sketch quickly.”

  “There are no words, no taglines, no hooks.”

  “They haven’t come to me yet.” He touches my arm with a single finger, and my whole body shudders. “My mind has been kind of ... occupied.” I watch him trace a heart on my forearm.

  My happy dance is about to begin under this table.

  “I was all gung-ho this morning, but then I saw you through that window at the restaurant. The light hit you just right.” He traces a diamond on the back of my hand. “You make it so hard to concentrate, Shari.”

  I slide my hand from under his. “How’d you know it was me in that restaurant? Where have you seen me before?”

  He puts his hands on his thighs. “I’ve seen you about, oh, two hundred times over the last two years.”

  I blink. “Where? At the office?”

  “Mostly on the Brooklyn Bridge,” he says softly. “I don’t always stay in my lane.”

  Him! “You’re the guy who can’t read signs!”

  He nods.

  “You nearly ran me over just last Friday.” And he called me just thirty minutes or so later.

  “Yep, that was me.”

  I blink. “So you weren’t at JFK.”

  He shakes his head. “I flew out after I talked to Mr. Peterson at the Millennium. Who was that woman you were talking to after your meeting with Mr. Peterson?”

  He has bee
n stalking me! “Um, just a lost tourist.” My eyes are so wide that my eyelids hurt. “You saw me while I was talking to her?”

  He nods. “And she took your picture. What was that about?”

  “I don’t know.” I’ve been followed for two years by every woman’s fantasy, and I have no idea why. I am so confused!

  “I just don’t see how you stay so trim,” he says. “You get a dozen glazed, mainly on paydays, and yet you stay so svelte.”

  Oh my goodness. “What are you? A stalker?”

  He looks down. “No. I’m just the guy who’s too shy to stop and talk to you, um, because ...” He sighs. “Because you intimidate me with your beauty.”

  I cannot believe this. “You nearly hit me a dozen times with your bike! What, were you hoping you would hit me so you’d have a reason to stop to admire my beauty?”

  He shakes his head. “I, um, I didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, if a random white guy on a bike just skidded to a stop in front of you and smiled, what would you do?”

  “I’d run!” I say with a laugh. No, I wouldn’t. “No, I would have probably ... kept on walking, I don’t know. I might have... .” I know I would have talked to him, especially if I knew it was him. “I know I would have recognized your voice, but we’ll never know now, will we?”

  He looks sideways at me. “Whenever I was in town, and it wasn’t as often as I would have liked, I used to follow you on your way to and from work. At a distance, okay? I wasn’t ... stalking you. I was, um, shadowing you.”

  “Why?” I ask, though I think I already know the answer.

  He sighs. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you. I know it’s crazy.”

  I had a knight out there when I was walking at night? “I’m a big girl, Tom,” I say, which makes no sense because I’m so small. “I can handle myself.”

  He catches my eyes for a moment. “I can see that, Shari.”

  Geez, I’m blushing. “So you’ve just been out there watching over me, huh?”

  He nods.

  “Right.”

  “Really.” He flattens his hand on the table. “I’ve always liked talking to you, and if I had any guts, I would have somehow found a way to talk to you face-to-face. In my mind, I saw you dropping something, like your purse or a package, and I would rescue whatever it was and bring it to you. But you don’t carry a purse.”