Anthony tried to stare him down. Mike just looked back, unwavering, with as neutral but commanding a look as he could. Narrowing his eyes, nostrils flaring, Anthony pursed his lips, c.o.c.ked his head, and seemed to be thinking. He then slowly turned back to the walkie-talkie, picked it up, and put it on intercom.

"Attention please, pa.s.sengers! We have a gentleman here who claims that his seat is wet, not by his own doing. We are a packed plane, there are absolutely no spare seats on the plane whatsoever, so any pa.s.senger willing to trade seats with this man in the back row, by the bathroom, please come forward. We cannot offer any compensation at this time other than our undying grat.i.tude for your a.s.sistance."

The t.i.tters turned to snorts, derisive sounds that all said the same thing. Yeah, right, Bud! You're on your own! Mike's jaw tightened, Anthony was smarter than he thought.

"Here, Sir!" A female flight attendant conjured up a trash bag; a plastic hefty that was still flat and unopened.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Mike asked angrily.

"You can put it under your... self when you sit down to protect you from whatever you... they.. someone left." She was fl.u.s.tered, young, and obviously had no idea how to handle the situation.

"I would like to speak to the pilot," Mike said.

"That would be a violation of FAA regulations, Sir. We are taxiing. You absolutely must sit down and fasten your seatbelt. If you don't we will have to stop the plane, call an air marshal, and have you personally escorted off the plane for a discussion with TSA agents."

Now Anthony's voice was hard. This was more like Dom when he was p.i.s.sed and protective and defensive, except Anthony wasn't protecting or defending Mike. The other pa.s.sengers suddenly turned away when Anthony said TSA.

"I'd like to escort myself off." Mike grabbed his bags. He knew he could get a private jet within an hour and this really wasn't worth it for the reality TV sham. Acting like Matt Jones at work was one thing, but acting like Matt Jones in real life, if it meant this? No way. He grabbed his bags and stormed down the center of the aisle.

"You can't do that, sir! The plane is moving."

"Then tell the pilot to stop it." He wasn't going to be bossed around by some flight attendant with a G.o.d complex.

A young mother looked at him, her eyes pleading. "Sir, please, I have to get on the connecting flight. My husband is coming home from Afghanistan and there's just...please...please. Please don't make them stop the plane."

Mike stopped. He hadn't antic.i.p.ated this. She held a toddler in her lap, a child of eighteen months or so. A little girl with blonde curls and big blue eyes. She probably didn't remember her dad, didn't have any sense of the meaning of what she was doing, just knew that she was on a plane. And Mike's heart melted. Dammit.

Gritting his teeth, he turned around, stalked back, s.n.a.t.c.hed the hefty bag from the flight attendant, settled it down on the seat and plunked himself down, fuming. Tomorrow he'd buy as much stock as possible in this f.u.c.king airline and exhibit some control. But right now, he was just a piece of cattle. And d.a.m.n Lydia for doing this to him.

The hotel clerk's desk was behind bulletproof gla.s.s. The last time Mike had faced a clerk behind bulletproof gla.s.s had been at an emba.s.sy. But this wasn't a foreign emba.s.sy. Lydia had apparently booked him in the seediest hotel in Detroit, in a place called Highland Park, one teeming, (and he did not use that word lightly) a teeming with filth.

"Ooowee! Honey, I must be in heaven 'cuz you're an angel." The words came out slurred, unfocused, and a little sloppy and Mike was uncertain because a was that spittle that someone had just splattered all over the back of his neck?

He turned, tensed, senses on alert, to find himself face to face a and at 6'2 there were not many people who were face to face with him a with, well... The polite term was lady of the night and the impolite term would be nasty old crackwh.o.r.e. The stench was what hit him hardest, a mixture of mold, Boone's strawberry wine and Ben Gay.

As she opened her mouth to smile he realized why the stench was so disturbing. About half her teeth were gone and her smile looked like a grin from the Gollum from the Lord of The Rings Trilogy. The fact that she may have put her saliva on his skin made a thin tingle of dread form in the small of his back, trickling up into his shoulders, making him stand taller, his muscles ready for a fight he knew he could win physically but that he didn't think was going to happen. And yet, why was his body so tense?

Tap tap tap! The hotel clerk was trying to get his attention. Mike turned, still in combat mode. "Yes," he said tersely. "I am here," he pulled out the printed reservations that Lydia had handed him. "I am here for my room."

The clerk was an odd looking man, about Mike's age, mid-thirties but looked easily to be fifty. Most of his hair was gone, skin ravaged by odd little sores that Mike didn't quite understand and fingernails that were literally half gone and a was that a fungal infection? Mike pulled his hand back to make sure there was no contact.

"You're stayin' here?" the clerk asked, squinting, peering at Mike and then looking at the a well, he didn't want to call her a woman, but the being standing next to Mike grinning madly, eyes loopy and half out of it.

"Hey, hey! Jess, go away. Leave the customers alone."

"I'm tryna make him into a customer," the old prost.i.tute said. Now that Mike glanced at her again he realized that "old" wasn't quite the right word because she probably, biologically, was about his age even though she looked to be at least seventy. Her wig traveled halfway down her back, long curls matted and a was that a cigarette b.u.t.t in there somewhere? Her pale skin had a yellowish tone to it that spoke of a liver that had raised its white flag of surrender a decade or two ago. The whites of her eyes had long ago given up the battle with her liver, now the color of cigarette smoke residue on old white walls.

The clerk slid a key, an actual metal key, through the small hole in the plexigla.s.s. It was attached to an oval made of orange plastic with the room number burned into it. Mike hadn't touched a hotel key, a physical, pressed metal key, in a good fifteen years. Where was the coded plastic card? Where exactly was he?

"So you go, you got room 237, so," the clerk explained, pointing. "You go past the ice machine a it don't work 'cuz it's been out for a long time, but there's a pop machine next to it. It works, but no Canadian coins. We don't take that stuff here. Then you go up the stairs, but watch out for Bernie. Sometimes he p.i.s.ses in there and you just have to walk around it."

Mike's eyebrows shot up. He'd had quite enough of someone else's body fluids for the day.

"Then you're gonna go around the corner and then you're in 237. Just let us know if you find any mouse droppings. We haven't had a problem with em for-"

"What? Say that again?" Mike stopped, interrupting him. "Mouse what?"

"Mouse droppings, you know, mouse t.u.r.ds."

"You're telling me that you're renting me a room that may be infested with mice and that your establishment's hallway has b.u.ms in it that urinate and that I may end up stepping in this urine?"

"Well, not if you're careful." The clerk looked at him as if he was the stupidest human being on the planet. A hand on his forearm made him flinch, the feeling like cold lizard.

"Hey, baby, I got a better room. I can take you to a place where there ain't no mouse t.u.r.ds, I can take you to some places you ain't neva seen," the woman crooned. "You got fifty bucks? I got heaven for you."

Mike s.n.a.t.c.hed the key, plucked the paper back, and stormed upstairs. Indeed, Bernie the b.u.m sat in a pool of his own urine and, although Mike tried not to actually examine it too carefully, probably his own vomit. The screams of some woman in the distance behind a door pierced his ears. He heard a smack and then a scream, a smack then a scream and realized that what he was hearing was not a fight between domestic partners a the smacks were not abuse a but were some sort of s.e.xual game. Cringing, he worked to ignore every bit of sensory input from this place, breathing now through his mouth and approaching room 237.

His key slid in the lock and he turned and found that he had to jiggle the doork.n.o.b, pulling the door slightly toward him to get the bolt to turn out of place so that he could enter. He almost wished that the lock hadn't worked and that he hadn't succeeded because the bolus of odor that hit him upon opening the door made him understand the phrase knocked flat on his back. Lysol combined with vomit and urine and a his eyes lit on one of the outlets a some sort of Glade product of undetermined floral origin. No petroleum product was going to overcome the biological permeation of whatever cloth fibers or polyester imitations filled the room, absorbing an olfactory history of very human deeds.

Mike took a step back, crossing the threshold, his brain mildly aware of the sound of a gunshot, of squealing tires, and of a new scent. He turned and looked and there was the man he presumed to be Bernie, standing over the balcony railing facing the parking lot and urinating. When Mike looked down over the railing, following the trail of liquid, he realized that Bernie was peeing directly on the hood of his rental car, which Lydia had so kindly rented for him. It was a sprite can, quite literally.

Somehow General Motors had managed to convert a sprite can into a car.

Tongue twisting inside his cheek, jaw flexing, body tensed, he took note of everything around him. Bad flight. Bad car. Bad hotel. Bad travel arrangements.

Lydia.

What kind of game was this? He looked at his watch: 11:49 pm. Pulling out his cell phone, livid beyond belief, he punched in the number for work and then stopped. What good would calling her at work do when she wasn't even there? And what good, frankly, would calling her at home do a even if he had her number?

He had no reason to have it no matter how much he wanted to have it. G.o.ddammit. That woman. What was she doing? Why would she punish him like a oh. Oh s.h.i.t.

Following his request, she was economizing. He had told her to make the business arrangements for Detroit and to save money. Somehow, she managed to turn everything around so that whatever he told her to do, she did to the letter of the law.

Ah, so this was how she wanted to play? She was capable of more a he knew that. Social graces weren't something she lacked. He'd been in the corporate world long enough to know that there were plenty of people who were competent at doing the actual work of the job but who had the social skills of a stuffed monkey draped with Mardi Gras beads.

Not her. So what was this game? Why on earth would she book him in the seediest, nastiest possible set of arrangements you could ever expect a billionaire to a hold on there.

Not a billionaire yet, and she doesn't know you. Matt Jones, yes a but not Michael Bournham.

Mike leaned back against the railing, his hand sinking into something hard and wet, and then he heard a cracking sound, pulling back from the railing just in time before one of the rods a cheap wood faded by weather, sun, and time a popped off and fell to the ground with a rattle. A clacking sound as it made its slow, crooked path down to settle by the tire of his car pierced the night air, joining in the muted chaos of traffic, sirens, and machinery.

He had had enough. Enough of this game, enough of this place, and just plain enough. No matter what Jonah told him, he didn't need to play the part of Matt Jones 24/7. And this? This entire situation made him think that being Matt Jones wasn't worth it. The only thing that made it worth it was Lydia.

Who had booked him in a hotel with more germs than a bird flu research lab.

Grabbing his overnight bag, he stalked past Bernie, whispering, "Make sure you give it a good shake." As he descended the stairs with more athleticism than he'd exhibited outside of a gym with a personal trainer in months, his legs practically running as he sprinted for the car, he stopped cold.

f.u.c.k this s.h.i.t. He wasn't driving that thing. Grabbing the phone, he called Dom, who seemed to know everyone, everywhere in every major city. This wouldn't be the first time that Dom got him out of a mess.

The phone was pressed up to his ear, Dom's number ringing, when the prost.i.tute seemed to materialize out of nowhere. His only tip off was her odor, which made him gag. A look to the left and he discovered her leering in his face, only inches away.

"Hey, babe." She looked like she had a hit of something in the five minutes between seeing her last. Oh, G.o.d, he thought, Lydia must hate my f.u.c.king guts.

"Hang on, Dom," he said into the phone, putting his hand at his side.

"Hey babe, you got some money? I need some money. I don't.. you don't have to do nothin' with me," she said, her nose covered in pimples, forehead shiny, eyes a faded, muted blue. He wasn't quite sure if those were dimples when she smiled a or scars. She was rode hard, put back wet and about as appealing and f.u.c.kable as a dead zombie with lice.

"I don't want no nothing, Ma'am," he said, the last word a form charity.

"I'm just hungry, man. You got five bucks? Ten bucks? Something?"

Mike groaned on the inside. Some part of him relented, the good part that remembered his dad giving buskers money on the street. Or telling him that you never know what another person's lived and that we all walk through life with some level of trouble. If you could afford to be generous, be generous. Mike certainly could afford to be generous, especially if this deal went through at work.

Wallet in his back pocket, he reached back and pulled it out, opened it up, and handed her a twenty. Surveying the parking lot to make sure there was no threat, no one hiding in the shadows and about to mug him, he was about to climb in his rental car when a voice startled them both.

"Freeze!" The shout was aggressive, clear, and he heard it before his brain registered the light, the bright searchlight shining on him and the streetwalker. Mike looked around, frantic and confused, sliding his wallet back in his pants, wondering if this was some sort of mugging. Had the prost.i.tute set him up? Was he about to get rolled? h.e.l.l, for all he knew Lydia did this. She was responsible for everything else that had gone wrong tonight.

"Freeze! Detroit police! Hands up, hands up in the air now!"

Aw, s.h.i.t. "No, Sir, you misunderstand, mister...officer...I'm not...I haven't done anything wrong..."

Slam! His face smashed into the gla.s.s of his car. He was shoved over the top of the hood, the remnants of Bernie's p.i.s.s now burning into the side of his face, leaking into his eye.

Rough hands, strong, muscled and very accustomed to the movements that they were executing on him, frisked him. Plastic handcuffs tightened around his wrists and he heard the prost.i.tute crooning, "Hey, baby it's okay. We gon' be fine. They'll treat you right at the jail, just don't clench up too much when they do that strip search and you'll be good."

Strip search? Mike fought to come up with the right words to explain. "No, no, no, no, no. Sir, sir, sir," he argued. "I'm the CEO of company, I'm a...I...I am not here for-."

"Yeah, right, bud, we're all CEOs of a company." He could feel a sharp elbow in his ribcage. He needed to go silent.

"h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo? Mr. Bournham? Mr. Bournham?" Dominick's voice came from the cell phone that had clattered onto the ground.

"Dominick! Dom! Dom, I need your help. I'm in Detroit a " Smash! A thick black boot sole crashed down on the gla.s.s surface of his smart phone, destroying it with one very carefully aimed grind.

"Oh," said a man's voice, presumably one of cops. Mike couldn't see him as his face was currently more intimate with Bernie's urine and the hood of the car than it had been with anything in months. "Oh, did I step on it? I'm such a klutz. I really gotta watch where I'm stepping. You know what, though, Mr. CEO? You ain't gonna need that cell phone where you're going tonight."

And with that, Mike found himself hauled up by his tightly bound wrists, his head shoved down as he was pushed into the back of a police car, a police car that was a h.e.l.l of a lot nicer than his rented sprite can.

Dom's alarming speed made Mike do a double-take, the thick, burly man appearing in the flesh at the local jail within hours. While Mike had expected a swift resolution to his arrest, and that freedom would be around the corner, he was nonetheless deeply impressed with Dom's efficiency.

Impressed and grateful. Give the man a huge bonus, he thought, his hand grazing something sticky on the bench he sat on in the holding cell.

For a guy who used to be part of the throng of the middle cla.s.s, being in jail a however unfairly a triggered a sense of shame and outrage. The CEO in him knew this could be taken care of with a few bribes and a well-placed threat, if needed.

Mike Bournham, the geeky kid from Easthampton, Ma.s.s., the one who always followed the rules and who had paid the price for doing so, though, couldn't believe he was behind bars, with an open metal toilet that was currently occupied by the head of a drunk. Bugs crawled down the visible skin on the back of the man's head.

Note to self: get some RID. And a steel brush. And take a five-hour shower.

"Jones? You're free to go." Three men stood up, none of them Mike.

"You forget your own name, man? Maybe Sunshine made you lose your f.u.c.king marbles?" the cop cracked, pointing at Mike. Jones a s.h.i.t, that's right. His fake last name. Secret ident.i.ties might be great for superheroes, but right now he was sick of it. Leave that s.h.i.t to the movie makers.

Movie makers. Jonah. f.u.c.k. Were they getting this on camera? For all he knew, they had someone tailing him. Or maybe Lydia was in on this somehow? If Jonah could give him a script with drama he needed to provoke, were they doing the same with her?

Walking out of the holding cell and catching another glimpse of Dom made him want to hug the man on the spot. Instead, he grunted, "Thanks."

"No prob, Mr. Bournham. Glad to help." Like gravel rolling through mola.s.ses, Dom's voice seemed eerily impossible to push through vocal chords, yet the effect was mesmerizing. Even the cops froze in place, just staring. "When your phone cut out with a crunch, I knew something was wrong." His glare could peel paint, and he aimed it at the officer processing Mike's paperwork. Gooseb.u.mps appeared on the cop's forearm, though he didn't look up.

"Here you go. You're free, Mr. Jones." The tiniest of eyebrow twitches from Dom told Mike he would be asked the rarest of questions from his chauffeur. One of the many privileges of wealth a and power a he had learned was that of privacy. Enough money, enough connections, and you could make anything go away.

Add in a touch of illegal activity, and someone like Dominic could make a person go away. Never one to touch that, Mike simply took the guy at face value. He was a good bodyguard/chauffeur, and this mess a the one time Mike had found himself in trouble with the law, ever a proved Dom was a loyal, good guy.

Mike would pay, though. Somehow, some day.

All thanks to Lydia.

"Hey, Dom," he asked as they climbed into a rented Suburban. "Can you find someone's personal phone number?"

"Can Tom Brady throw a pa.s.s?"

Mike chuckled. "Lydia Charles. I need her cell number. She works for me, so it should be in company records."

"Consider it done, Mr. Jones." The closest muscle movement Dom had to a smirk flittered across his thick, wrinkled lips.

Ha ha," Mike mumbled. "Touche."

Mike leaned back against the tan leather and took a deep breath. Urine. Bernie's masterpiece was still dried into his hair. Dom's nostrils began to twitch, and Mike opened his mouth to explain.

Nope. He was done managing and explaining and protesting and adjusting.

Time to get back to being in charge.

And that would start with one phone call.

Chapter Ten.

Mike put his hands under Lydia's shirt as they kissed, fingers and palms gently caressing her back. "Your skin is so soft," he whispered into her mouth and she helped him to slide the blouse up over her head and toss it onto a nearby chair. She could see the waiting bed over his shoulder, but there was no rush. Dreaming of this moment for too long meant that it was better to let it unfold slowly, his hot hands burning her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, beading her nipples, sending a trail of fire to her soaked p.u.s.s.y.

She followed his example, her fingers deftly undoing each of his b.u.t.tons in turn, working her way down, the backs of her hands brushing against his tight chest and muscled abdomen. When the shirt fell off him and landed at her feet, she couldn't resist stealing a glance down at his magnificent upper body, lithe and tanned, muscles rippling as he slid his hands back up to her bra clasp and the white softness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s burst forth onto his chest like heavy cream splashing onto a bronze platter.

And then she stared brazenly, as if it were all hers. Mine, she thought. Mine for now. Perhaps a she hoped, mine forever.

She didn't stop there. As his fingers pebbled her nipples and his tongue explored hers, her hands continued on, unb.u.t.toning and unzipping his pants, sliding across tight flesh and finding his even-tighter c.o.c.k, ready and throbbing, needing to be in her. Soon enough, yes. For now, she wanted to hold him in her hand and to exert control over his deep pleasure. He groaned and kissed her urgently, his hands practically tearing off her remaining clothes and also his own, realizing she had struck a nerve.