IF YOU WANTED THE MOON
IF YOU WANTED THE MOON
MALLORY MONROE
c2009
All rights reserved. Any use of the materials contained in this book without the expressed written consent of the author and/or her affiliates, is strictly prohibited.
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake.
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ONE
Tori Douglas pushed through the revolving doors of Chandler Development, Inc. ready for whatever storms the day might bring. She’d spent her entire weekend doing absolutely nothing for a change, beyond going to church and to various yard sales. But now, as she hurried her way up the silent stairwell to the fourth floor, to the logistics department, she was refreshed and ready to go. She expected to find all sorts of procurement requests and material transport authorizations awaiting her analysis, including many, she knew, she would have to dispute. What she didn’t expect to find, however, was Arthur Coughlin waiting for her, too.
“Arthur Coughlin?” she said as she stood in front of her secretary’s desk, trying pointlessly to make sense of this unexpected news. “Mr. Chandler’s assistant?”
“One in the same,” said Mildred, her secretary, without so much as looking away from the copy she was typing so feverishly on her computer.
“Well, what does he want?”
“Your hand in marriage.”
“Come on, Mildred.”
“My hand in marriage.”
“Will you stop!”
Mildred did stop typing and looked at her suddenly distressed boss. “Like that man is gonna tell me what he wants. Go and find out for yourself, Tori, goodness. You are a department head, after all. It shouldn’t be that unusual that Mr. Chandler’s assistant has come to see you. And for goodness sakes smooth down that wild hair of yours if you please!”
Tori sighed as she looked through the small mirror Mildred so readily handed to her. She thought she was ready for anything after she’d spent such a restful weekend at home. Now she couldn’t even get her hair together. It was thick and black and long, with a natural silkiness that often made it look bouncy and healthy, or, like now, just a tangled mess. She tried to shape it up or smooth it down, as Mildred had suggested, but it was just too wind-blown to make much difference. She therefore pulled a thick rubber band out of her purse and threw it all together in a ponytail. Mildred looked at her and shook her head.
“You don’t deserve all that hair,” she said.
Tori, however, ignored her as she took a deep breathe, smoothed down the skirt hem of her business suit, and walked into her office confidently, as if having the boss’s assistant pay her a visit meant nothing at all.
Except that it did. Just the mention of Ethan Chandler’s name sent chills down her spine these days. Which was remarkable since she’d only laid eyes on the man twice in the five months she’d been employed with his company, and both times were disastrous.
The first time was during her job interview when he dropped in briefly, and the second time was four days ago, when she nearly killed him. A truth, she often recalled sadly, she didn’t even want to think about.
But ever since their first encounter he’d been on her mind. She even searched the internet for any mention of his name and then read every article where his name happened to appear. From US News and World Reports, to National Review and the Wall Street Journal, she read and re-read every single article. She knew more about Ethan Chandler than she knew about any man she’d ever worked for.
Early on she told herself that it wasn’t an interest at all, that naturally she was curious about the head of the company that had dared to hire her. Besides, she’d heard so many horror stories about Chandler, about his ruthlessness and heartlessness, that there was no way, no way at all, that she could ever be infatuated with a monster like that.
And now, just like that, his assistant was sitting in front of her desk. What was this about, she wondered. Was it because of that crazy encounter? Had Chandler finally found the time in his busy schedule to do what he’d probably meant to do four days ago and sent his assistant over to fire her? She began to pray, to literally ask the good Lord to spare her this one humiliation, as she hurried toward her desk.
“Arthur, good morning!” she said jovially, extending her hand, her briefcase gripped tightly to her side. Arthur Coughlin, a tall, rail-thin man with weary green eyes and a likeable disposition, immediately rose to his feet and shook her hand.
“Hello, there,” he said, just as cheerfully. “How are you, Tori?”
“I’m good. You?”
“I’m good, too. It’s all good.”
Tori smiled breezily and motioned for him to sit back down, as she took a seat behind her desk. Arthur wore his customary expensive suit that ill-fitted his thin frame, looking his usual over-worked, bedraggled self. Word around the office, at least around the quarters Tori were privy to, was that old man Chandler worked poor Arthur so much that his own wife and children left him. Now he lived to follow Chandler’s orders, working eighteen hour days most days, while Chandler continued to push him harder and harder, never satisfied with anything Arthur did for him, constantly threatening to fire the man if he didn’t do more.
Tori used to feel sorry for good-natured Arthur, no-one, after all, deserved to be treated so harshly. But over time, and as she read more about Chandler, she lost all sympathy. Her father always told her that people will treat you the way you allow them to treat you, and Chandler, Tori concluded, wasn’t doing anything more than what Arthur allowed.
“So what’s up?” she asked, too anxious to know the deal regarding her future status with Chandler Development, Inc., or CDI as it was often referred, to small-talk with Arthur. But Arthur, who already knew the deal, wasn’t anxious at all.
“You’re looking very fit and fresh this beautiful Monday morning, Tori.”
/> “Why, thank-you, sir. Don’t look bad yourself.”
“Liar.”
“You look tired.”
“Always.”
“Need to take better care of yourself, Arthur.”
“I know. I know. Love that hair.”
Tori began smoothing it down. “I can’t imagine why. It’s a tangled mess.”
“It’s silky and beautiful,” he went on, ignoring her self-deprecation. “Soft too I’d bet. How in the world do you manage it?”
“I don’t. It manages me, to tell you the truth. But what’s going on, Arthur? What brings you to Logistics of all places? We are, after all, the department of no repute.”
Arthur chuckled. “That’s what every department head says. Their one little division is always the hardest working, the least regarded, and the most underpaid.”
“It’s true in our case. So what’s up?”
Arthur smiled. Tori was always a straight-shooter, always a bottom-line girl. That was what he liked about her. “Mr. Chandler is going to scout for land in Cedar Key.”
“Cedar what?”
“Cedar Key. It’s in the Florida Keys. You know, like Key West and Ernest Hemingway? Key Largo and Bogey and Bacall?”
“Yeah, sure,” Tori said, although she was only marginally sure about his Bogey and Bacall reference. “And what does this visit to the Florida Keys has to do with me?”
Arthur hesitated. Then exhaled. “It’s my privilege to inform you that you’ve been selected to accompany Mr. Ethan Chandler to his next scouting mission. To Cedar Key.” Arthur said it quickly, as if he was hoping she’d misunderstand him.
But she hadn’t misunderstood a word. Ethan Chandler often took trips to scout for new land for development projects, and it was always a high honor to be chosen to accompany him. But she’d been chosen? That sounded crazy to Tori, almost sinister. Usually the employee of the year, or the most senior of staff was accorded that honor. Now she was being accorded it? She of only five months on the job? She knew she looked baffled. “Arthur, what are you talking about?”
“You, Victoria Douglas, has been selected to accompany our boss to the Florida Keys tomorrow.”
“Why would anybody have selected me to go anywhere with Mr. Chandler, let alone to something as major as a land scouting mission? That’s for the senior staff, not the company’s newest employee. This doesn’t make sense, Arthur. I’m just a logistics analyst!”
“You’re head of the logistics department, Tori.”
“Okay, I’m the head of the smallest department in the smallest section of the entire company, a department with a tiny staff of very overworked analysts. So how does that answer my question? Why was I selected?” Don’t you know I nearly killed the man four days ago! she wanted to scream.
“I wish I had answers for you, Tori,” Arthur said, his exhaustion beginning to show, “but I don’t. I just do what I’m told. And I was told to come down here and notify you of your selection.”
“You mean notify me of my punishment.”
Arthur looked genuinely hurt by her comment. “Punishment? He’s not that bad, Tori.”
“Yeah, right.”
But it was true. Ethan Chandler was nothing like the image his employees often painted of him. Arthur remembered the time when his mother was so gravely ill that he thought she was going to die. He went to Chandler, hoping to get a day or two off to go and see about her, but Chandler told him to take as long as he needed, and to take it with pay, and that he should never place any job ahead of his family. It was a month before Arthur returned to work and Chandler would have given him more time if he would have needed it. Of course word around the office was that Chandler had fired Arthur but that Arthur, given his position as the big man’s assistant, knew where the bodies were buried - they loved to joke - so Chandler had no choice but to allow his return.
“This is a joke, isn’t it?” Tori asked him, when it appeared Arthur wasn’t going to say any more in defense of his boss. “Baxter put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“Baxter?”
“Herb Baxter in Accounting. Ever since his budget was cut last month he’s been telling my staff that he’s going to get back at me, as if I had something to do with it.”
“No, Tori—”
“My budget was cut too, and I told him so, but does he believe me? I’m the golden child around here, let him tell it, just because I’m the youngest department head. He even has a rumor circulating that Mr. Chandler made Lassiter hire me.”
Arthur frowned. “He made him hire you?”
“Yes! Ain’t it crazy? Baxter even told one of our colleagues that Chandler went so far as to grab Lassiter by his coat lapel and tell him he either hire me or hit the road himself. Can you imagine such a lie? As if I’m some favorite of Mr. Chandler’s when that man doesn’t know me from Adam!”
“Tori—”
“I always thought Baxter was petty. But for him to result to this. And to use you of all people!”
“Tori, you don’t understand,” Arthur finally was able to say. “Herb Baxter has nothing to do with this. Mr. Chandler himself requested you.”
If Tori’s jaw didn’t drop, it should have. Ethan Chandler selected her? The man she nearly killed wanted her to go all the way to Florida with him? Now her mind was really reeling with questions. Why, chief among them.
But Arthur stood up. He was no confidant of Ethan Chandler’s. He was just his assistant, or, as many around the office referred to him behind his back, his flunky. He knew Tori had nothing going for her in terms of company power and access, but he had next to nothing going for him which, he’d admit, was quite a distance from nothing, but it was light years away from knowing why Ethan Chandler did what he did.
“I can’t answer any of the zillion questions I know you have, kido,” Arthur said as he stood. “All I know is that Mr. Chandler expects you at the airport 9 am tomorrow morning. So be there or be square. Okay? That’s all I can tell you because that’s all I know.”
“Then don’t tell me what you know,” a now distraught Tori implored. “Tell me what you think, Arthur. Why me?”
Arthur looked at Tori with some consternation. The sympathy in his eyes scared her. “What I think,” he said, weighing his words carefully, “is that you’d better work very hard to prove to him that you deserve what you have.”
Tori was terrified. “You’ve heard something, haven’t you? He wants to fire me, doesn’t he?”
“No,” Arthur quickly interjected. “I haven’t heard anything like that. But I know Chandler, and . . .”
“And what, Arthur?”
“And he expects excellence, Tori. He tries each and every one of his management team members in some way or another. To see if they’re worthy. You’re just going through the fire early.”
“And what if I go through that fire and be found wanting?”
Arthur looked Tori dead in the eye. “If that does happen, if you are found wanting, then I suspect that your days at CDI will be numbered.”
Tori’s heart dropped. There was no way she could lose her job, not with the financial responsibilities she had, but Chandler’s little selection was putting her in jeopardy of doing just that. She wasn’t like Arthur. She couldn’t put up with other people’s mess. She and Chandler would be at each other’s throat by nightfall if he turned out to be anything like those periodicals said that he was. And the man who’d been haunting her dreams, would suddenly become her nightmare.
TWO
She phoned one of her closest friends, who in turn phoned another one of her closest friends, and before she knew it she was pulling out of the parking lot at CDI to meet them for lunch. They wanted all of the lurid details, they both had told her, as if she was lying; as if she had to know more than what she’d already relayed.
But she didn’t know a thing more, she thought, as her BMW sat idly in the thick of Chicago’s noonday traffic. Her closest friend, Macy, lived and worked in Northwest Chicago too, but their o
ther friend, Sheila, a first-year resident at Children’s Hospital in Lincoln Park, could never be far from where she worked. They, therefore, often found themselves adjusting their own schedules to accommodate hers, a fact none of them was thrilled about. Today, however, Tori didn’t mind the drive. It was the first chance she had all morning to clear her head; to try her hardest to make sense out of this senseless news Arthur had laid on her.
She’d only seen Ethan Chandler twice in the entire five months of her employment with his company, and now he was specifically requesting her to be his assistant in Florida? Her? Not one of his senior executives? Not one of his tried and true veterans like Herb Baxter or, here’s a novel idea, she thought, his real assistant Arthur Coughlin? It didn’t make sense. None of this, she thought, as she parked near the restaurant and began walking toward it, made a lick of sense.