I'll Be Your Everything Read online

“But to get you to work with me for the rest of my life, Shari,” he says, “I have to win this competition, and I can’t win it if I’m only thinking of you. Or what you’re doing to me right now.”

  He noticed. That spot must be especially tender. I graze his nipples with my nails. I don’t play fair.

  “Shari,” he groans, “it took me five years to get you, and I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You got me, Mr. Sexton.” I’d be certifiably insane to let this man go!

  He rubs the back of my neck. “I ... want to kiss you again.”

  I climb as far up his body as I can, and we kiss, tenderly, soulfully, our eyes open the entire time. And despite all the wonderful things I just know that his body can do to me, these kisses turn my legs to rubber and make me juicier than anything he’s done or said to me so far.

  I pull back. “Promise not to leave me.”

  “I promise.” He holds me close.

  “Don’t leave me, Tom,” I whisper.

  “Never,” he whispers.

  And as I listen to his heartbeat, I realize that win or lose, I win.

  I win... .

  Winning is the junk.

  Chapter 18

  Since we both decided that the bed would be too great a temptation, I awake the next morning on the couch smelling like citrus fruits. I also have a headache, cotton mouth, and a stitch in my side.

  And no Tom.

  Tom is not in this room.

  He broke his promise!

  Wait. The shower’s running. He’s humming? Imagine that. A man is humming in my shower.

  He stayed.

  I’m not going to cry. He said he would stay. I still might cry. He does what he says he’s going to do. I’ll have to nominate him for a Nobel Prize.

  I search for my glasses and find them on the coffee table. How’d they get there? He must have taken them off when I dozed off. I go to the bed, take off the bedspread, wrap it around me, and shuffle to the bathroom, where I stand there watching a god wash himself. Oh, I can’t see much because of the curtain. And the steam billowing above and below the curtain steams up my glasses.

  And my loins.

  I want to join him in there so badly.

  “Morning,” I say brightly. I start brushing my teeth with cold water.

  He sticks his head out of the curtain. “Morning. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Me? No, I do not mind that a god is showering in my bathroom. Heavens no. Feel free to invite me in and wash my back. And the rest of me. “Just leave me some hot water.”

  He smiles, returns to his shower, and continues humming.

  I rinse my mouth and spit. “You stayed.”

  “You asked.” He laughs. “Nice hair.”

  I look at my natural tresses flying every which way. I am such a wild woman. I shake my head, and my hair doesn’t move. And now I know what he’s been humming: “Natural Woman”!

  So I have to sing the words.

  We make a nice duet.

  “I’m going to buy you breakfast after all, Mr. Sexton.”

  He shuts off the water. I watch his arm come out and grab for a towel. I could get the towel for him, but I have to, um, see how far he can reach. A long, wet leg and half a perfect booty leaves the shower. I’ve never seen one of those. I don’t even see him take the towel or return his leg and half booty behind the curtain. I’m still blinking at where his leg and booty were when he slides open the curtain and stands there with just the towel around his waist.

  “I hope they have omelets,” he says.

  I drape my arms around him, and the towel stays around his hips. He must know a special towel trick. “You like eggs Benedict?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” I kiss him on the chin. “You’re gonna have to bend down lower.” I keep my eyes down as he does, we kiss, and the towel still stays put. Hotel towels need to be smaller. I bet they’d be easier to dry.

  “We need to get a move on,” he says. He collects his clothes, gives me a hug and a kiss, and leaves my hotel room only wearing that towel.

  I close my door quickly. I hope no one saw. I crack the door and take another peek. I close the door. Only I want to see that.

  After I dress and do nothing more than shape my hair, I decide to check in on Corrine, even though I have no idea what time it is in Australia. It rings this time, so I wait.

  “Shari! It’s about time!”

  The wench is awake and is obviously off her meds. “I had my phone turned off, Miss Ross. I’ve, um, been having some trouble with the, um, battery.”

  “But I got your message, Shari!”

  Oh yeah. Hmm. “It was working when I called you then, Miss Ross.” That was weak.

  “Have you been able to contact Tom yet?” she asks. “He called my cell twice while I was heavily sedated, but he didn’t leave me a message. I have been leaving him messages for the last four hours!”

  Where do I begin to answer her question? Let’s see.... Yes, I was able to contact Tom, repeatedly in fact, all night if you really want to know. You might even call it some serious contact. “I haven’t been able to call him, Miss Ross.” Because he’s right here! Well, he’s walking to his room in only a towel right now. “My phone is so messed up.”

  “I don’t think he’s coming to see me, Shari!”

  I bite my tongue. I want to say, “Ya think?”

  “I must have left him a thousand messages, and I’ve heard nothing! Not a peep!”

  Well, I heard him snoring last night. He kind of growls. It’s sexy.

  “Where could he be, Shari?”

  Well, he’s in the room below me. I just watched a very mean towel stay on his perfect booty.

  “At any rate, Shari, I am coming home immediately.”

  Oh no! You can’t come back yet! “You’re, you’re all better, Miss Ross?”

  “I may never be completely healed,” she says. “There is still so much swelling. I had to buy some bras off the rack here.”

  Not off the rack! The horror! But you still can’t come back!

  “And they have the strangest numbers for sizes. I’m not staying here another minute. Did you air out my apartment?”

  I never even went there. “Yes, um, you have such a beautiful place, Miss Ross. Do you want me to shut your windows before you return?”

  “Of course, Shari.”

  Then I’ve already done it. That was an undone task done without me doing anything. Or something like that. But she can’t come back now! I need a few more days!

  “Didn’t you say you were sending me flowers, Shari?” she asks.

  Oops. “Miss Ross, they, um, they didn’t have the bird-of-paradise flowers at the florist there.” I might be right about that. “I know you like them, Miss Ross. I only wanted to send you the best.”

  “It’s just as well. I’m about to go into the terminal now.”

  Already! “Which terminal? The one on, um, Dunk Island?”

  “The one in Brisbane. I left Dunk Island hours ago. Why do you ask?”

  Why do I ask? “Um, no reason.”

  “Shari, you sound stressed. Is there anything I need to know?”

  “No.” I said that way too quickly. “Will you, um, be recovering at your apartment then, Miss Ross?” Please don’t come in to work, not until after Thanksgiving, you wench!

  “What day is it there, Tuesday?”

  “Yes.” She doesn’t even know what day it is! Oh yeah. The International Date Line thing.

  “Well ...”

  I hold my breath.

  “I’ve already taken the week off.”

  Sort of. You were in Macon, Georgia, yesterday and today. You ate at H&H, and oh, you even drank a bottle of wine with your, um, friend, who didn’t sleep with you but really wanted to, I’m sure. You had a busy night.

  “And I need to see my doctor right away,” she says. “Set up an appointment.”

  She has so many doctors! “Which doctor, Miss Ross?” She needs a witch doctor.
<
br />   “Dr. Fine, of course.”

  Her GP? “But don’t you need a specialist, Miss Ross?” One who specializes in box jellyfish stings and blown-up breasts?

  “Dr. Fine will decide that, not you, Shari dear.”

  I reach into my tote bag for some paper. “What day should I set it up for, Miss Ross?”

  “Thursday.”

  I write it down.

  “I won’t be getting in to JFK until late tomorrow night.”

  Whew. With her taking the rest of the week off, that gives me today through Friday to nail this thing. I can call in sick next Monday and Tuesday, and Corrine will be none the wiser. This could work, but it would stress me out less if ...

  “You could probably take all next week, too, Miss Ross,” I say. “Like you said, we’ve been really slow. All our clients seem to be content.” Just not the newest one yet.

  “I’ll let you know. Keep your phone on at all times from now on, Shari.”

  “I will, but I don’t know if it will work, Miss Ross.”

  “Get a new phone then.”

  Click.

  Yeah. On my way back to JFK, I’ll just pick one up somewhere. What a wench.

  I pack what little I brought, check all over the suite for anything incriminating, find nothing, put my picture in the tote bag, grab my tote bag, and open my door. Tom stands there blinking.

  “She left me seventy-three messages,” he says. “What kind of woman leaves seventy-three three-minute messages, all of which essentially say the same exact thing?”

  The desperate kind of woman might do that. “I just called her myself. She’s on her way back. She’ll be in the city on Thursday.”

  He hums a little. “So soon? Hmm. That scrambles things a bit, doesn’t it?”

  Like a bunch of eggs. “She’s still taking the rest of this week off, though.”

  He lifts my chin. “That’s ... that’s good, isn’t it?”

  I step into him, feeling his warmth. “It doesn’t give me much time, but I’ll manage.”

  “And next week?”

  “That ... that could get tricky. I guess I’ll just ...” Shoot. I haven’t thought that far ahead. So many variables. “If she should come in this week and Mr. Peterson calls and asks for her, I mean, me, what am I supposed to do?”

  He wraps his arms around me. “You’ll just have to be her again.”

  “Our desks are a few feet apart, Tom.” Think! “Tia will just have to route everything to my cell.”

  “A solution.”

  Sort of. Tia does have duties of her own that don’t include being my assistant.

  He grinds me a little. “Remember to keep your phone charged.” Then he hugs me. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out together.”

  I kiss his chin. “Thank you for the hug.”

  “You are so welcome. Now where are the omelets?”

  Watching Tom eat an omelet is an erotic experience. I may not ever be able to watch him eat again. He slurps, he tears, he sucks. If it weren’t for the green peppers, I might think he was working on me. But I’m not yellow. Hmm. What do I eat? Pancakes and link sausages, the three-inch kind. Yep. They’re disappointing, and no matter how much I try to annoy him by drizzling syrup on them and eating them end-to-end, he isn’t fazed at all.

  He looks at his watch. “We need to get a move on if we’re going to make our flight.”

  “Our flight?”

  “I, um, looked at your ticket,” he says. “I wanted us to travel together.”

  “And we’ll be driving together! Thank you!” I really need some more sleep.

  “We don’t have enough time to drop my car off and make our flight.”

  I shrug. “I can drop mine off.”

  “The bike might not fit in the Mustang.”

  Oh yeah.

  “Wanna race?” he asks.

  “What does the winner get?” I ask. I love betting with this man.

  “A kiss,” he says.

  Another bet I can’t lose. “You’re on.”

  After collecting our statements from the front desk and turning in our card keys, we race out of Macon on I-16. My GMC has some horsepower, but I have difficulty keeping up with Tom’s Mustang zipping in and out of traffic.

  Traffic thickens when we hit I-75, and Tom slows to a reasonable speed. I take a moment to call Tia.

  “How did it go?” she asks.

  “Okay,” I say. “Anything from Mr. Peterson?”

  “All quiet.”

  “Can you route anything from him to my cell?”

  “Will do.”

  I hesitate to say the next thing. “And if Miss Ross should return, um, early, like maybe Monday, can you still transfer all calls, especially if they’re to her, to my cell?”

  “She is coming back early?”

  “Yes. As early as Monday morning, I think.”

  “But that means ...” Tia’s voice trails off.

  “I know, I know.”

  “We will think of something. Oh, I am sorry. I should have told you this immediately. Mr. Dunn called this morning and wants an update from Corrine.”

  No! “I’ll have to give him the update.”

  “But what if he wants to talk directly to Corrine?”

  Yeah, what if? Hmm. “I’ll just tell him that Corrine has been working on it while on vacation, became temporarily incapacitated, handed the reins to me, I ran with it, here it is.”

  “Mr. Dunn is no fool. Why would Corrine go on vacation in the middle of a project, especially if she is in Georgia now?”

  Oh yeah. That. “I’ll figure something out. When did he call?”

  “A few minutes ago. At nine sharp.”

  A nine o’clock call from Mr. Dunn usually means the call is of utmost importance. “Well, if he calls again, route him to my cell. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  “I will be here. Bye.”

  I want to share all these new complications with Tom, but they are not his problems. I just have to get back. I think better in New York.

  We turn in our rentals, and we meet in the main terminal. I’m not hard to find because I’m pushing a bicycle. He makes me kiss him for losing the bet, but he returns the kiss just fine. Checking the bicycle isn’t as tricky as I thought it’d be. They must fly bicycles all the time. Bicycles that fly ... over potholes. That is still a good idea.

  We sit several rows apart on a packed flight to JFK, but that’s okay. I’d probably be messing with him instead of thinking all this through. I try to think about all the possible variables, the wild cards, the tragedies that could happen ... and I fall fast asleep.

  And I dream.

  It’s kind of an ordinary dream at first. I’m walking across the Brooklyn Bridge on a sunny day, only the bridge is completely deserted. Halfway across, I see a man on a bike rolling my way. As he nears, I look down and see my boots. I look up and he makes a beeline for me. I have to jump out of the way, but it’s all slow motion like something out of The Matrix. He hits the brakes. He smiles. I walk over to him. He takes my hand.

  “Shari.”

  I open my eyes. Tom is holding my hand. “Hi.”

  “We’re here.”

  I look around at an empty plane. I jump up. “Wow. I was out of it.”

  I keep holding his hand out of the plane, through the tunnel, and out into the terminal. I like this feeling. It’s as if we’re returning from a business trip together, which we kind of are. He turns to me in front of all these people, kisses me tenderly, and gives me a hug.

  “I guess we can’t be seen together till this thing’s over,” I say, pouting.

  “We’ll survive.” He squeezes my shoulders. “We’re survivors.”

  “Yeah.” I stand on tiptoe and lightly brush his lips with mine. “Call me, okay?”

  “I will.”

  And then I stand there with all those people rushing around me and watch Tom walking off ahead of me. He’s not hard to see. He walks with purpose, his head up, his eyes straight ah
ead. I want to run up to him and, I don’t know, dip him to the ground and suck the tongue from his head.

  But I don’t.

  Mainly because I’m at JFK.

  Without a ride.

  Hmm.

  Why didn’t I put this part in my itinerary?

  Taxi?

  Why not?

  I’m just full of firsts these days.

  Chapter 19

  As soon as I leave the terminal and turn on my phone, I see voice mails waiting for me. I listen to the newest one first: “Corrine, this is Dunn. Give me a call soonest.”

  I shudder a little. That was a recent transferred call. What if I hadn’t had Tia do that? Wait. It would have gone straight to Corrine’s office phone, and she never checks her messages on that thing. I have to do that for her. I stop shuddering. Because of my boss’s incompetence, the holes in my plan fill themselves.

  I listen to the next voice mail: “Oh, this is ridiculous. What kind of a phone do you have? I will reimburse you for whatever phone you get, now, just get one! Oh, for goodness’ sake! Call me now, Shari! I need you!”

  I sigh. I’ll bet the rest of these are from Corrine, too. I listen to the next one: “Shari, this is Tia. Dunn needs an update from Corrine. You better call him.”

  Okay. I’ve already gotten this information. I listen to the next one: “Shari, I told you to keep your phone on. Don’t you ever listen to me? I leave and you fall completely apart. Call me immediately!”

  And the next: “Shari, where are you? We need to talk! Call me now!”

  I erase them all and prioritize. I have to deal with Mr. Dunn first since I will be seeing him in a little while. I call the office and have Tia transfer me to him.

  “Mr. Dunn, this is Shari Nance. I understand that you’ve been trying to reach Corrine.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Mr. Dunn, Corrine’s been in Australia.” Please don’t ask me any questions!

  “But I have an itinerary right here in front of me that says Corrine was in Macon, Georgia, yesterday touring the Peterson Bicycle plant.”

  Okay now. Get your “facts” straight, Shari. “That’s right, Mr. Dunn. She was in Australia for a little R and R following the LA fiasco, you know, just to clear her head.” And get stung by a box jellyfish, have her breast become a big football, the usual Down Under adventure.