***
On the flight home, Red seemed carefree in a way that surprised Nicole.
He was smiling and happy, even though she knew things were terrible on the business side of things. She knew he’d essentially given up on trying to fix the German advertising agency they’d acquired, and he was ignoring almost all of his phone calls.
She didn’t bother him about it. Nicole figured that as long as he seemed happy, she wasn’t going to rock the boat.
But mid-way through the flight, as the two of them sat holding hands, she looked at his face and saw in his eyes that he was bothered. It wasn’t anything obvious—she just knew.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked him.
He sighed. “Take my lumps like a man, I guess.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means I’m going to wait patiently until the board of directors meets, and then I’ll go in, give a little speech, and get fired.”
She nodded, hesitant about the next thing she wanted to ask him. Red looked at her and pushed her bangs out of her eyes with the tips of his fingers. She licked her lips, started to speak and then thought better of it.
“What’s on your mind, babe?” he said.
“I don’t want to make you mad.”
“You can tell me anything.”
She exhaled. “Okay. Well, I was just thinking—are you sure you don’t want to take Kane Wright’s offer after all?”
Red uttered a high-pitched laugh of disbelief. “Please tell me you’re joking, Nicole.”
“I knew you’d be mad.”
“I’m not mad, I’m baffled. How many times are you going to flip-flop on this thing? One second you’re telling me to make a deal with him, the next you’re taking it all back and telling me he’s a creep. Now you’re telling me to reconsider yet again?”
“No, no, it’s just—“
“Just what? Did you have another conversation with him?” Red asked, peering into her eyes with a look that was bordering somewhere between humorous and mistrustful.
“Of course I didn’t have a conversation with him. I’ve been with you pretty much every second of the day.”
He breathed heavily through his nose and settled back into his seat. “I’m not going to deal with that snake in the grass. The moment he called you behind my back, he proved what I knew all along—that he absolutely cannot be trusted.”
“I’m sorry I brought it up. It just seems like you’ve stopped fighting.”
Red closed his eyes and smiled a little. “Well, maybe it’s about time I stopped fighting. I’ve been fighting my whole damn life and I’m sick of it, Nicole.” His hand reached out and found hers.
“Has Kane been trying to contact you?” she asked.
“I really don’t want to keep discussing him,” Red said softly, his eyes still closed. “But yes. He’s called a few times. It’s been kind of fun to ignore him, I’m sure it’s driving the idiot insane.” That brought another smile to Red’s lips and then he drifted off to sleep.
***
When they arrived home to the mansion in Connecticut, Red didn’t want to have any contact with the outside world. He turned off his phone and told Nicole to do the same, unhooked the Internet router, unplugged the television sets in the house—at least most of them. Who had time to go through twenty guest rooms and unplug every single TV?
Instead of spending time on their phones or the Internet, they did things around the property. They swam, sunned themselves, played a few games of tennis (she was terrible and could barely get her racquet on the ball), walked the grounds, and of course made love.
All in all, Nicole thought, as night fell on the second day home, things could have been a lot worse.
Maybe Kane Wright had been wrong about his predictions for Red—maybe Red really was ready to let Jameson International go. He seemed happier and more relaxed than he’d been in a long time—maybe the most relaxed he’d been since she knew him.
Nicole told him she wanted to cook dinner that night, so while Red hopped in the shower, she got to work on making him a nice meatloaf dinner. It was amazing the amount of food and sundries that were available in this kitchen, she thought to herself as she gathered the ground sirloin, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, garlic onion, cumin, and the other fixings.
She began chopping the onion, enjoying the smell of it and knowing how good this meatloaf would come out if she could follow her mother’s recipe to the letter. Sure, it might not be the fancy pants stuff that Red was used to eating from Chef Roland or those five-star restaurants, but sometimes a nice home cooked meal made with love was even better.