Saving the CEO (49th Floor #1)(21)

He helped her again, and she mastered the foreign phrase.

“What does it mean?”

“Eggs, please.”

She laughed in incredulous delight. “What?”

“My point is, you could learn how to say it. I could teach you the context in which you should say it. Every time a waiter came to your table at breakfast, you could say it, and the waiter would bring you eggs, the expected outcome. But that doesn’t mean you know what you’re saying. For all you know, you could be asking for watermelon. Or a telephone. You just have to trust, to go through the motions, and assume that what’s happening is what’s supposed to happen.”

“I get it. It sounds…awful.”

He shrugged. “It’s all I’ve ever known. Once it was diagnosed, I got some therapy and learned some strategies. And at least then I finally understood I wasn’t stupid.”

She blew out a dismissive breath. “You are about as far from stupid as it’s possible to get, my friend.”

My friend. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “Well, my father took a different view of the matter.”

“I’m sure he sees the light now.” She gestured to the projection.

“He’s dead. And even if he wasn’t…” Jack trailed off. There was no point trying to make her understand his father when he himself had never managed it.

“And your mother?”

“Also dead. Before my father, in fact. My parents were in their early forties when they had me—they’d been trying for more than a decade and had resigned themselves to remaining childless.”

“And then they had the miracle baby!”

The “miracle baby” who disappointed them every step of the way. But judging by Cassie’s moony expression, she was charmed by the fictional version of his family she’d conjured. “Anyway,” he nodded at the numbers on the screen. “The truth is, I don’t really understand what I see.”

“All the more amazing that you built such a successful company.”

“Carl deserves a lot of the credit. He’s been with me from the beginning. He was…” God, he didn’t know what made him more angry, Carl’s betrayal, or the fact that he was so gutted by it. “He always covered for me—I thought.”

She was looking at him with sympathy, but not, amazingly, pity. “Well, for what it’s worth, I thought he seemed like a complete *.”

He startled a little. Cassie so rarely used strong language. It was almost like hearing one’s grandmother call someone an *. “Strong words coming from the woman who invokes pasta instead of swearing. What’s with the pasta, anyway? I’ve been meaning to ask.”

“I used to work in an Italian restaurant.”

“No,” he said. “What’s with the granny-style cursing?”

“I don’t know.” She dropped her gaze to the floor and sighed. “Well, I do know. My mother swore a lot. It embarrassed me when I was a kid.” She shrugged. “So I never really took it up myself. That sounds stupid.”

Apparently he wasn’t the only one with family baggage. He could respect that. Time to change the subject. “Carl wants us to start a swear jar in the new year.”

“What? So he can steal some more from you? I wish he was still here, I’d plant him a facer.”

“You’d plant him a facer? What century is this?” In truth, though, it tickled him to hear her jump so indignantly to his defense, in her quaint, non-threatening way.

“Anyway, the best revenge is doing this Wexler deal without him, isn’t it? Get Wexler to sell to you, and then get rid of Carl.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Okay then, enough chat.”

Jack sat back and watched Cassie’s amazing mind click into some other mode. Sparks might as well have been raining off her head, so absorbed was she in her work. He clicked when she ordered him to, pulled up supplementary data when commanded. Although she was engrossed, she kept asking him questions. Not about numbers, but about the context.

“This number seems high,” she would say.

“Is that the May travel budget?”

“Yeah.”

“Amy had to go to Mexico a bunch of times with very little notice. We had to charter a private jet—it was killer.”

Then she would nod and sink back into her trance-like state, utterly riveted to the screen, so much so she hadn’t noticed the sun going down. She didn’t blink when he got up and switched on the lamps. She didn’t even notice when, the room having grown cold, he took off his blazer—she’d left hers in reception—and hung it over her shoulders. She held out her arms obediently when prompted, never once breaking concentration as she sat on the edge of her chair and stared at floor plans of the Mexico resort.

Just when he started to wonder if he should start feeding her bites of one of the granola bars he kept in his desk, she snapped out of it, Sleeping Beauty coming to after a long nap. She yawned and looked around as if she was seeing the room for the first time. “It’s dark.” Her brow furrowed.

“That’s enough for tonight,” he said, touching her arm, trying to draw her back to the material world. Another yawn while she nodded her agreement. Then she stretched—God help him. Before his very eyes she transformed from the avenging accountant back into the siren in the red dress. All the blood that had been working so diligently to nourish his brain as he took her through the financials suddenly hit the road for a more southerly locale. Stretching her arms over her head caused her breasts to jut out, and suddenly he hated that dress. Somehow it managed to be wanton at the same time that it was too modest, allowing him to see only the shape of her and none of…the actual her.