On His Desk by Mia Faye

Chapter 14

MICHAEL

My phone vibrates and when I see Paige’s number on my screen, my heart skips a beat. The first thing that comes to mind is that she must have heard something about us buying shares in Lavish cosmetics. Her number is not saved on my phone, but she’s never changed numbers and it never left my memory.

I contemplate not picking up the phone, but curiosity gets the better of me. I swipe it and answer. Muffled noises come from the other end.

“Paige, are you crying?”

She sniffs. “It’s Charles, he’s gone. He’s gone, Michael.”

I’m at a loss for words for a few seconds. She cannot possibly mean what she said. “What do you mean gone?”

“Charles died this morning,” Paige says, her tone hysterical. “He’s been sick with bowel cancer, but he didn’t want anyone to know. Oh God, Michael, what am I going to do?”

It sounds like a sick joke. Just days ago, Oliver told me that we were almost closing up the deal. I’d fantasized sitting opposite Charles and telling him that half his company belongs to me.

The door to my office swings open. Ava peers in and I wave her away. A confused look comes over her face, but I’m too upset to give it much thought. My moment of glory has been stolen from me. Yes, am a bastard for thinking that but it’s the truth.

I’ve been plotting Charles’ downfall for years and now when we’re almost done, he dies. It makes sense now why Lavish cosmetics started losing sales. Charles got sick and he probably hadn’t put systems in place to enable the business to operate without him.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Paige. To my surprise, I mean it.

All the years we were estranged suddenly shrink and all I remember is Charles, my best friend. Charles and I had been different from everyone else in our town. The boys had dreamed of working in their family farms and towns while Charles and I had dreamed of making millions of dollars.

“We need to talk,” Paige says, her tone solemn. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

The only thing I can think that she would want from me is something I cannot give or do. I cannot actively participate in Charles’ funeral. I’m not a hypocrite. We haven’t been friends for years.

“You know Charles and I haven’t spoken since—”

She inhales sharply. “I know that. What kind of fool do you take me for? You think I want to ask you to speak at his funeral?”

I’m too ashamed to admit that was the first thing I thought of.

“It’s nothing to do with Charles. Not directly anyway,” she says. “Can we meet this evening? If you give me your address I can come to your place.”

I don’t really want Paige in my apartment. Or in my life for that matter. She hears my hesitation.

“You’ll want to hear this, I promise. I won’t take up much of your time. I’m in mourning. Believe me, if it wasn’t important, I wouldn’t ask.”

“Fine,” I tell her and rattle off my home address.

Only after I end the call do I remember that Ava and I had a date tonight. I cover my face with my hands. Suddenly I don’t care that all the work we’ve done has been for nothing. The only reason we invested in Lavish cosmetics was to get back at Charles and now it doesn’t matter.

A headache is beginning to form. Then there’s the added problem of Paige wanting to see me. What could be so urgent that it cannot wait until her husband is buried? If I never saw Paige again, I’d die a happy man. That’s how much I detest her, though those strong feelings have abated the slightest bit with time. The door to my office opens.

“Michael— are you okay? What happened?” Ava says.

I drop my hands from my face and look at her. “I just got a call from my ex-girlfriend, the one who married my best friend? Her husband died this morning and she wants to see me.”

Ava frowns. “She wants to see you the day that her husband died? Maybe she wants you to read the eulogy?”

“That was my first thought but that’s not it. She insisted on seeing me in person this evening.”

“Oh okay. No problem, I’ll catch up with some reading.”

My admiration for Ava goes up a notch. Any other woman would have given me grief for meeting with my ex even if the last time we were together was more than seven years ago.

My concentration is crap for the rest of the afternoon and at five on the dot, I pack it in and tell Ava to do the same. We leave together and I instruct William to drop her off first. When the car stops outside her building, I pull her in for a long lingering kiss.

“I wish I was going in with you,” I whisper into her ear.

“Me too,” she says and gets out of the car.

I sigh and fall back into the seat. No matter how hard I think, I simply cannot figure out what Paige could possibly have to tell me. I’ll just have to be patient and wait.

I’m surprised by the intensity of grief I feel over Charles’ death. I keep seeing him as I knew him, with his mop of messy brown hair and quick laugh. I had always believed that our friendship would last a lifetime, but we had not survived having a woman come between us.

Pangs of regret come over me. I don’t know what I could have done differently after we fell out. It just feels such a waste of friendship.

Just as I finish dressing after a shower, my phone vibrates. Paige. She’s downstairs. I invite her up and unlock the elevator. Minutes later, the elevator doors slide open and she steps out.

She pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head and surveys her surroundings. I take that opportunity to study her. She’s still pretty albeit tired looking but that could be caused by grief. Her gaze comes back to me. Her eyes are red-shot and swollen. Sympathy comes over me.

“You’ve done well for yourself, Michael,” she says, an admiring tone in her voice. “I picked the wrong card, huh?”

I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean?” I know what she means but even for Paige, that’s going too far. We haven’t met in more than seven years, her husband is dead, and one of the first things she tells me is that she picked the wrong card?

She shrugs. “You had the drive, but I didn’t think you had it in you to go from rags to riches.”

Icy coldness settles in my heart. “I see you haven’t lost your bitchiness.”

She turns to me in surprise. “It’s the truth, Michael. I’m complimenting you.”

“No, what you’re doing is reminding me that you left me for my best friend because he had more money than me.” I can’t help the bitterness that creeps into my voice.

“No, I’m admitting that I made a mistake. I should have stayed with you and supported you,” Paige says. “Charles was a good husband and dad, but he wasn’t you.”

I ignore that. “Was he in a lot of pain?”

She shakes her head. “No. They gave him enough meds to knock out the pain.”

That makes me feel better. I hate to imagine him in constant endless pain.

“He talked about you a lot, especially in the last few weeks. I think he wanted to see you, but he was afraid of rejection,” she said. “And he didn’t want anyone’s sympathy either.”

I’m glad he didn’t reach out. Not at that time. It would have broken my heart to see him so sick. Not to mention the knowledge that all along, I had been working to destroy his company. I’m glad he died without knowing that Hyperion investments had a share in his company.

“We used to have a lot of fun, didn’t we?” Paige says.

I look at her and cannot for the life of me remember how it was between us. I can’t remember the fun moments she’s talking about.

I let out a sigh, exhausted with the conversation. “What do you want, Paige?”

“First, I could do with a cup of coffee.” She drops her bag on the chair and strolls towards the kitchen as if it's her house.

I have no choice but to follow. She takes charge of the coffee machine and talks as she makes coffee for both of us. She talks as if we are close friends rather than a former couple who have not spoken in years.

“It’s been a horrible couple of months,” she confides, her voice shaky. “Charles may have died today but we lost him a long time ago. Since he got sick, we lost a bit of him every day.”

I push away the image of a sickly Charles. I wanted to remember him as the last time I saw him. Healthy and nervous as hell as I confronted him about him and Paige.

“How is your daughter?” It hurts to ask. Even now. Memories of how she told me linger in my mind.

Paige told me she was leaving me for my best friend and in the next sentence told me that she was pregnant with his child. It had been like a physical stab to my chest; the kind of thing that you never really recovered from.

“She’s sad of course, though she and Charles never really spent a lot of time together. You know how he was. His company came first,” Paige says, her voice tinged with bitterness.

“Let’s go to the living room,” I tell her. “It’s more comfortable.”

It’s a distraction tactic. I don’t really want to play therapist with Paige. She made her bed when she chose Charles. It isn’t fair to cry to me about what was not right about their marriage.

In the living room, Paige grabs her bag and carries it to the couch. She places the coffee on the table and gets her cell phone from her handbag.

“Here, I want to show you pictures of Elly,” she says, and I groan inwardly.

She shoves the phone in my face, and I register a blond-haired girl. She would be about six years old.

“She’s pretty isn’t she?” Paige says.

“Yes.” What can you say about someone’s kid?

“Actually, she’s the reason I wanted to see you.” Paige rubs her hands on her pants, a sign that she’s nervous. She sits down and takes a sip of her coffee.

A lot of scenarios go through my head, but none make sense. Charles and Paige’s daughter would not need anything from me.

I grab my coffee, take a sip, and put it back down. It tastes bitter.

Paige finally looks at me. “I know that this is going to come as a shock to you.” She licks her lips.

I’m getting impatient. Paige always had a flair for being dramatic. “Just say it will you? I had a long day and I’d like to relax—when you leave.”

I expect her to admonish me about my rudeness, but she doesn’t.

“Okay. Here goes. There’s no easy way to say it so I’ll just say it. Ella is your daughter.”

All air leaves my lungs. I stare at her open-mouthed and she stares right back. I break the stare and look behind me, just to make sure there’s no one else behind me.

The words don’t make sense. “What did you say?”

“Ella is our daughter, you and I. I never slept with Charles when we were together. I was two months pregnant when we broke up,” she says.

I search her face. She’s telling the truth. “Did Charles know?”

She nods. “He did and was happy to take on Ella as his child, which was just as well because we found out later that he couldn’t father a child.”

I lean back on the chair and fork my fingers through my hair. The silence stretches on between us. I don’t know what to think or say. I have a daughter! I don’t know how I feel about that. I’ve never thought about having children. Not after Paige left me anyway.

“Let me see that picture again,” I tell her.

She removes her phone from her bag and hands me her phone. I peer at the smiling girl staring at me with blue eyes that resemble mine. I have to admit that she looks nothing like Charles. Charles was brown-haired with green eyes.

“If you want, we can do a DNA test,” Paige says.

“I insist on having one done,” I tell her.