This woman on her knees is the only thing I see.
8
Kai
WE FALL INTO a routine. Wake up, have breakfast together then sex. Or have sex then breakfast, and then I drive to the office. I stay inside her office the whole day while she works. While she talks to everyone.
Diana is a machine when it comes to work. She rarely takes a break. Three, four hours can pass without her lifting her head from her computer, so I start bringing her coffee from the beverage station tucked into the far corner of her office. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon. The first time I set the cup on her desk, she looked up at me with an expression, and then she took a sip without saying a word. The second time, she smiled. By the third day, she’s started glancing toward the beverage station around two o’clock, and I’m already on my feet.
She never asks me to do it. I never ask if she wants it.
This has been our routine for four days now.
Today, I’m sitting on the same sofa inside her office, watching her type. Every few minutes she pauses and reads back what she’s written, her lips moving over the words without making any sound.
I drop my eyes to the coffee table in front of me. The magazines are fanned out in a neat arc.Better Homes and Gardens.Six issues, different months. They weren’t there yesterday.
I pick one up. The cover has a white farmhouse with green shutters and a wraparound porch. I flip it open and land on a spread about raised vegetable beds. A woman in a linen shirt is watering tomato plants.
“You like gardening?”
I look up. Diana is watching me. She’s wearing a cream blouse with a low neckline inside the blazer that’s hanging on the back of her chair. I find cream is her color. Though really, everything is her color. Her hair is pulled back into a high ponytail, and the diamond earrings catch the sun.
“Not anymore.”
My heart’s been doing this thing lately. Expanding. Filling up past what it was built to hold. A smile from her and it balloons. A glance and it swells until my ribs ache from the pressure. I’m the fish in the tank, darting to the surface every time the lid opens, mouth first, no dignity. Stupid and grateful and alive only because she keeps me alive.
“Anymore?” she asks.
“I used to garden when I was younger. We kept moving though. Most of the time we didn’t have a place to plant anything, so I lost interest.”
“I can’t keep a cactus alive,” she says. “But I like reading that. It quiets my brain.”
She says it the way she says everything. Matter-of-fact. No sentimentality.
I don’t get to respond. The door opens after a single knock, and a man walks in.
Tall, well-built, salt-and-pepper hair swept back from a tanned forehead. The smile on his face freezes the second he sees me. He recovers quickly, though. Schools his face into pleasant neutrality.
“Michael.” Diana stands up. She doesn’t stand up normally.
“Diana.” He smiles at her, and the smile is sultry. “I was in the building. Thought I’d stop by.”
“This is Kai Romero. My bodyguard.”
Michael turns to me. His gaze lands on the Rolex and stays there for half a second too long.
“Michael Gordon. Corporate restructuring.”
I nod. Don’t offer more.
He turns back to Diana, and the look on his face tells me everything I need to know. He’s not here to discuss work. He’s not here to borrow a stapler.
I look at Diana.
Diana is looking at Michael. The recognition moves across her face, and she smiles. She knows what he’s here for.
My heart squeezes.
