Page 4 of Kiss and Makeup
Chapter Two
Xavier
Yes. Hell yes.
Finally, it was here. Hardly glancing at the wooden steps that I took two at a time, log walls, or heavy carven door, I banged through the door without regard to the glass set into the paneling and threw myself into one of the plush chairs before the massive fireplace.
Excitement shook my fingers, but I opened the thick envelope with the utmost care.
After months of box seat tickets and cheering myself hoarse, I was about to watch the Chicago Cubs play on their home turf in the World Series. I could name more than a few of my friends at Club Chicago who would be more than a little jealous when I mentioned this baby tomorrow after working out.
Of course, I also had plenty of friends who had the same ticket. Watch and party—those were all the plans we’d made so far, but we didn’t need any more than that.
Something across the room caught my eye, a splash of bright pink against the beautiful authenticity of the browns, blacks, and grays of my log mountain cabin.
I picked up the offending object carefully between my forefinger and thumb. Panties. Pink, lacy, and probably very expensive.
As I tossed them in the very modern touch-sense trash can under the polished slab countertops, I wondered who they belonged to. Maybe that girl from the club… but which one? There were so many rich women at the club….
Maybe that last one, the one who always had two or three men wrapped around her fingers. She’d thought I was one of those guys for a while. The little look-at-me fluttering thing she did with her eyelashes, the way she laughed at everything I said— everything had been carefully planned to get her closer to me. I had let her come home with me when she pushed, had sex with her, then told her I was done and didn’t want to see her outside of the club.
I’d met so many girls. Vain ones, nice ones, busty ones, gold-digging ones, sporty ones, classy ones… The circles I lived in had them all.
But I couldn’t go for any of them. Rather, I could go for them physically when they pursued me, thinking they could make me theirs.
It was my heart that couldn’t let them in. If I let any woman into my heart, I would be settling, because no woman would ever be as perfect as the one I had lost years ago.
I shook my head. No point in thinking about her. She’d been out of my life a long time now.
Anyway, I had this ticket and the World Series to think about now.
I set the ticket on the purposefully-rough-hewn coffee table and switched on the TV over the fireplace. As part of the hype for the World Series, some reruns of this season’s Cubs games were being played on the sports channel. Perfect. I could spend the morning and afternoon relaxing, then go to the club this evening to work out.
I listened to the announcer list out the lineup for the Cubs with half an ear. I knew the name of every man on the team, their positions, and their strengths and weaknesses—probably just as well as the manager. How amazing would it be to be the manager of the Cubs or the Bears? Or even the owner of the teams! I’d give all of my considerable wealth for a chance to own an MLB or NFL team…
The ringing of my phone disrupted my half-formed fantastical vision of me, the owner of the Cubs, giving a pump-up speech before a World Series game. Making sure my heavy sigh ended long before I answered the call, I said cordially enough, “Hi, Dad.”
“Hey, Xavier. Do you have time to come in to the office?”
I tapped a button on the remote so the time would pop up on the TV screen. 10:43. Traffic into Chicago wouldn’t be too bad right now, but coming back would be a nightmare. “Not really. Can I do it from home?” I asked when the silence on the other end grew a little ominous.
“You’ve only come to the office once this week, and this isn’t something you can handle from home. I expect you here in an hour.”
“I can’t even—” I was talking to no one. He actually hung up on me. “I can’t even get there in an hour,” I muttered to myself. Getting into one of my rarely worn suits that probably needed ironing, making my hair presentable, and driving to Cruise Media’s company building in Chicago through even normal traffic would take more than an hour.
Oh well. I’d get there whenever I got there, and Dad would just have to deal with it.
“You’re late.” He barely looked up from typing at his desktop when I finally walked in, half an hour after he had wanted me here.
“Yeah, well, I had to get dressed, and traffic sucked. What did you expect?”
Dad stood up so suddenly that the desk shook and the metal nameplate that read “Marcus Caruso” fell facedown. “I expected you to at least try to be on time, Xavier. I expected you to come into the office this week. I expected you to act like the man who will replace me as CEO one day.”
“That day isn’t coming anytime soon,” I countered, a little off balance. Dad being irritated at me for some reason or another was nothing new, but this disappointment… that was new. And it hurt, just a little bit.
“Thank God, because you’re nowhere ready for it. You don’t show up, you’re late when you do, you pass off all your responsibilities to the heads of departments. This isn’t how you run a business.”
I knew I hadn’t exactly put my heart into my family’s company, but I wasn’t as irresponsible as all that. “I know,” I began with forced patience, “but I don’t run the business. You do. I can handle my part from home, and the departments are better qualified to handle some of the tasks you’ve given me—”
