Lovers and Takers by Katherine Cachitorie Page B

surprised, but she was just a wee bit disappointed.   “You too,” she said.  
    “Sure,” Jake said, and quickly hung up.
    She hesitated, her phone still in her hand, and then tossed it back onto her desk.
    “Who was that?” Griff asked.
    Roni was still working out the implications of the call herself.   He sounded almost upset with her refusal to just drop everything and go have sex with him.   Men , she thought.
    “Who was that?” Griff asked again.
    “Jake,” she said.
    “And who is Jake?”
    Roni suddenly felt oddly vulnerable, and she hated the feeling.   That guy wasn’t phoning her because he wanted to get to know her better, and she wasn’t about to have any such illusions.   “Jake is,” she started, and then decided to just tell the truth.   “Jake is some guy trying to get some.”
    “To get some,” Griff asked perceptively, “or to get some more?”
    At first Roni was startled by his comeback, especially by the accuracy of it.   And then she smiled, and raised her eyebrows.   Griff laughed.

     
    In his office on the top floor of the Varnadore Corporate headquarters building, Jake was anything but lively.   He swerved his executive chair toward his wall-sized window and looked out at the Miami skyline.   He couldn’t explain why he even bothered to call the woman to begin with.   It had been a week and he hadn’t phoned her.  
    He hadn’t phoned mainly because he wasn’t in the country.   He has just returned today from Eastern Europe, where negotiations there had his schedule packed from early morning to late night.   But even in Europe he thought about her often.   And as soon as he got back in town, he felt a need to phone her.   He felt a mighty need to phone her.   And then to break down and do it, and to have her turn him down, again, was just too much.   Who did she think she was dealing with, he wanted to know.   Who did she think she was to do him this way?
    But he knew who she was.   She was the best fuck he’d had in years, he thought.   That was who she was.  
    But he thought again.   Was that all she was to him?   Was that the reason why he thought about her for days on end and then gave in and phoned her?   It wasn’t as if he had all of this free time on his hands.   He would have to move around a ton of meetings and briefings and even a phone conference with a shareholder just to have dinner with her.   And he was willing to do all of that just because she was good in bed?   He’d had good fucks before and he was never willing to go to those lengths with any of them.   What made Veronica Wingate any different?
    He didn’t know.  
    But she was different.  
    He knew that much.  
    But forget it, he thought.   He had too much work to do to be thinking about some woman.   And for the remainder of the day he did just that.   He got his work done.   He went from meeting to meeting with shareholders, many of whom owned less than two percent of his company.   But every percent counted if he had any chance of averting Craig Halprin’s hostile takeover attempt.  
    By ten at night, after a conference call with yet another shareholder who wasn’t willing yet to commit, he felt as if he’d been spinning his wheels all day long.  
    When Aubrey came into his massive office, and saw that his father was leaned back in his chair staring out of his wall-sized window, he knew his trip overseas had not gone well.   He slowly walked around, and stood in front of the window.
    “It’s late, Dad,” he said to him, a look of concern all over his face.
    Jake just sat there, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his hand cupping his chin, staring out of the window.
    “No takers?” Aubrey asked.
    “None,” Jake said.   “Every single shareholder balked.   Halprin had already gotten to most of them and had apparently promised them the moon.   And they want to see if I can match those offers.”
    “After all you did for them,” Aubrey said bitterly.