Blonde, petite, always impeccably dressed, and even though Crosby was eighteen months, she hadn’t lost all of her baby weight.
She didn’t care. She’d ended her pregnancy addicted to My Nana’s tortilla chips and Baby Ruth bars, and since she wasn’t finished reproducing, she wasn’t bothering with the effort to kick those habits.
Stellan thought this was wise.
Then again, Susan was the opposite of dumb, and that was not the only reason he was as devoted to her as she was to him.
Within moments she assessed his mood had changed, tossed a hand toward the palm fronds and orchids, and remarked, “So I can now assume those aren’t from your Ahsweepay in an all-new but never improved effort to apologize yet again for being a gargantuan ahsweepay.”
Ahsweepay was the name she’d given his father, a moniker that originated from a skit from Saturday Night Live, and although phonetically correct as per the skit, it was actually spelled much differently.
“I believe upon his announcement of his engagement to his latest there and gone, I made it clear how I felt about him continuing to consider me a part of his life,” Stellan replied. “So no, the flowers are not from him.”
She walked right up to his desk and leaned a thigh against it, not hesitating a second to reach out and grab the card.
Stellan’s lips turned up.
“What’s a Flamma?” she asked.
“A sexual gladiator,” he answered.
Her hazel eyes shot to him and got wide.
When they did, his smile did the same.
There was nothing Susan did not know about him. Nothing he hid. Nothing that was not hers to have.
She reciprocated that gesture.
Which meant she was his assistant.
But although he paid her (handsomely) to be all she was to him in the office, missing only the blood ties, in his life she was something else entirely.
And she felt the same.
“A present for a woman I’ve started seeing,” he explained.
“You gave her a … person?” she asked, her voice pitched high.
And an auditorium where she could command that … person, though he didn’t sign over the deed.
“Yes,” he answered.
She burst out laughing.
Stellan smiled at her indulgently as she did.
“Only you,” she muttered toward the card, then looked to him and shook it in the air before she plopped it on his desk. “And who is ‘S?’”
“Her name is Simone.”
“Pretty,” she murmured.
“She is,” he replied.
Her gaze slid to the bouquet then back to him. “She’s got class.”
“Her father was a drug dealer.”
Susan blinked.
“He was killed in a turf-war massacre that also killed her mother,” Stellan continued. “A mother who shared the profession of distributing narcotics.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“Unsurprisingly, this was not a loss, in either instance,” he shared. “What was unfortunate was that she witnessed it. They brought her with them to meet their supplier. She was one of only two people in the room to survive. That room contained nine, four of those the rival foot soldiers of the supplier who instigated the incident. She was twelve.”
He watched her pale.
“Stellan,” she said softly.
“She was then raised by her uncle, who was also a drug dealer, and the succession of women in his life, all of whom were junkies, some of these underage junkies not much older or even the same age as Simone.”
She shifted, moved slowly back, and lowered herself to the edge of one of the minimalist, backless, black leather chairs behind her.
His office was beautifully appointed.
But except for him, it was not meant to be comfortable.
He was there to work, not socialize, and that was the message he conveyed with the two chairs opposite his desk.
Susan, of course, could spend as much time as she liked with him, and if she needed to be comfortable doing that, she stretched out on the modern, white-leather-with-chrome-arms sweep of a lounge chair at the other end of the office. And she did … often.
Which was good, since he wouldn’t own it if it wasn’t to give it to her.
“She used her natural intelligence, firmly ingrained survival skills and familial criminal contacts to become what’s known as a fixer,” he told her.
“As in, what Olivia Pope does on Scandal?” she inquired.
Really, Susan needed to stop watching so much television.
“What does this person do on this show?” he asked.
“Fixes jams people get in, mostly politicians.”
Stellan nodded and didn’t lie, precisely, since Simone fixed “jams” people found themselves in, those people were just not politicians.
“Mostly, but not entirely.”
“Do I want to know all that entails?” she queried.
He gave her the truth.
“No.”
This answer didn’t make her happy. She also didn’t hide that.
“Are you … unsafe … being with her?”
“Not at all,” he assured.
She fell silent, and did this examining him closely.
Then she said in an awed voice, “Oh my God, you’re in love with her.”
He shook his head. “I’m infatuated with her, Sue. She’s fascinating.”
“If she’s like Olivia Pope, I can imagine.”
He raised his brows. “Does this Olivia wear a lot of leather?”
She grinned. “Not unless you count her Prada handbags. And why am I not surprised your Simone wears leather?”
His Simone.
This made Stellan return her grin. “It cuts deep, honey, that I’m such an open book to you. I much prefer to be thought of as the brooding, mysterious boss.”
“You can be broody, case in point, the last two days before these flowers showed. And just to make you feel better, I’m the only female in your offices that doesn’t find you mysterious. The rest twitter about you around the staff room and in the john all the freaking time. And to further soothe your ego, all of them want to jump your bones. Even Darby.”
“Darby?”
“She’s one of your recorders. She’s set to retire in August. She’s sixty-seven.”
It was Stellan bursting out in laughter at that.
When he was done, Susan’s expression had changed.
She didn’t make him ask after it.
“So this is just an infatuation?”
“We’ve known each other for years, but Tuesday evening was our first date.”
Both her brows stretched high. “And you gave her a person … on your first date?”
“I like to make an impression.”
She shot him a huge smile. “I’ve no doubt you did, but you probably would have done that even if you hadn’t gifted her with a human being.”
Stellan shrugged.
Her head tipped slightly to the side. “And she gave you all that history on a first date?”
“No. I had her investigated.”
Her face shut down and her lips mumbled, “Uh-oh.”
“It’ll be fine,” he assured.
She leaned toward him. “Stellan, she’s a … a … fixer.”
He felt his lips twitch before he said, “Sweetheart, you don’t even know what that means.”
Her shoulders straightened. “Well, I do know what it means to be a woman, and seriously, no joke this time, women don’t want to seem broody, but we absolutely do like to be mysterious. We like to be the ones who share all our inner secrets and past histories. And I can only assume a woman who’s also a fixer feels that more than just your average chick.”
“I’ve already told her I looked into her.”
“Looking into her and investigating her are two very different things.”
Stellan made no reply to that because unfortunately, she was right.
Her gaze narrowed on him. “You’re more than infatuated with her.”
This was absolutely true.
“The week is winding down, but there’s still work to get done,” he noted, his message not vague, his hopes she’d read it also not high.
And as suspected, they were dashed.
“That trick done left the building, boss man,” she declared. “My kid has spit up more on you than he has his own father.”
“That’s not true,” Stellan murmured.
“Okay, than he has his own grandfather.”
“That wouldn’t be hard. You haven’t spoken to your father since fruitlessly telling him the news Crosby was coming.”
“I mean Harry’s father, Stellan,” she snapped, losing patience.
“Of course,” he muttered.
“And he’s a good guy,” she went on.