Saving the CEO (49th Floor #1)(13)

She turned. "What is it like, seeing all this?"

Had she read his mind? "You mean with the dyscalculia?"

"Yeah. Is it like looking at another language?" Then she added, "But only answer if you want to. It's none of my business."

"It's a little like another language. But it's not that I can't identify  numbers." He pointed to a cell on the spreadsheet. "I know a seven when  I see it." He pointed to another number, one in red. "Or a negative one  hundred grand-that's bad, right?" She whipped her eyes to his, adorably  gullible. He grinned. "I know that's bad-I'm just teasing. I know the  numbers; I just can't put them together very well. I can't do anything  with them." He cocked his head. No one had ever asked him to explain  before. His father had tried to beat it out of him, but never once had  anyone asked what it felt like. "It's kind of like this," he said, an  analogy crystallizing itself in his mind. "If I taught you to say  something in Japanese, you could learn how to say it. Like, Tamago  kudasai."

"You do not speak Japanese!" she exclaimed.

"I do, a little, but that's not the point. Tamago kudasai. Say it."

"Taman … " She crunched up her nose, and he instructed himself not to lean over and lick it.

He helped her again, and she mastered the foreign phrase.

"What does it mean?"

"Eggs, please."

She laughed in incredulous delight. "What?"

"My point is, you could learn how to say it. I could teach you the  context in which you should say it. Every time a waiter came to your  table at breakfast, you could say it, and the waiter would bring you  eggs, the expected outcome. But that doesn't mean you know what you're  saying. For all you know, you could be asking for watermelon. Or a  telephone. You just have to trust, to go through the motions, and assume  that what's happening is what's supposed to happen."

"I get it. It sounds … awful."

He shrugged. "It's all I've ever known. Once it was diagnosed, I got  some therapy and learned some strategies. And at least then I finally  understood I wasn't stupid."

She blew out a dismissive breath. "You are about as far from stupid as it's possible to get, my friend."

My friend. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. "Well, my father took a different view of the matter."

"I'm sure he sees the light now." She gestured to the projection.

"He's dead. And even if he wasn't … " Jack trailed off. There was no point  trying to make her understand his father when he himself had never  managed it.

"And your mother?"

"Also dead. Before my father, in fact. My parents were in their early  forties when they had me-they'd been trying for more than a decade and  had resigned themselves to remaining childless."

"And then they had the miracle baby!"

The "miracle baby" who disappointed them every step of the way. But  judging by Cassie's moony expression, she was charmed by the fictional  version of his family she'd conjured. "Anyway," he nodded at the numbers  on the screen. "The truth is, I don't really understand what I see."

"All the more amazing that you built such a successful company."                       
       
           



       

"Carl deserves a lot of the credit. He's been with me from the  beginning. He was … " God, he didn't know what made him more angry, Carl's  betrayal, or the fact that he was so gutted by it. "He always covered  for me-I thought."

She was looking at him with sympathy, but not, amazingly, pity. "Well,  for what it's worth, I thought he seemed like a complete asshole."

He startled a little. Cassie so rarely used strong language. It was  almost like hearing one's grandmother call someone an asshole. "Strong  words coming from the woman who invokes pasta instead of swearing.  What's with the pasta, anyway? I've been meaning to ask."

"I used to work in an Italian restaurant."

"No," he said. "What's with the granny-style cursing?"

"I don't know." She dropped her gaze to the floor and sighed. "Well, I  do know. My mother swore a lot. It embarrassed me when I was a kid." She  shrugged. "So I never really took it up myself. That sounds stupid."

Apparently he wasn't the only one with family baggage. He could respect  that. Time to change the subject. "Carl wants us to start a swear jar in  the new year."

"What? So he can steal some more from you? I wish he was still here, I'd plant him a facer."

"You'd plant him a facer? What century is this?" In truth, though, it  tickled him to hear her jump so indignantly to his defense, in her  quaint, non-threatening way.

"Anyway, the best revenge is doing this Wexler deal without him, isn't it? Get Wexler to sell to you, and then get rid of Carl."

"That's the idea."

"Okay then, enough chat."

Jack sat back and watched Cassie's amazing mind click into some other  mode. Sparks might as well have been raining off her head, so absorbed  was she in her work. He clicked when she ordered him to, pulled up  supplementary data when commanded. Although she was engrossed, she kept  asking him questions. Not about numbers, but about the context.

"This number seems high," she would say.

"Is that the May travel budget?"

"Yeah."

"Amy had to go to Mexico a bunch of times with very little notice. We had to charter a private jet-it was killer."

Then she would nod and sink back into her trance-like state, utterly  riveted to the screen, so much so she hadn't noticed the sun going down.  She didn't blink when he got up and switched on the lamps. She didn't  even notice when, the room having grown cold, he took off his  blazer-she'd left hers in reception-and hung it over her shoulders. She  held out her arms obediently when prompted, never once breaking  concentration as she sat on the edge of her chair and stared at floor  plans of the Mexico resort.

Just when he started to wonder if he should start feeding her bites of  one of the granola bars he kept in his desk, she snapped out of it,  Sleeping Beauty coming to after a long nap. She yawned and looked around  as if she was seeing the room for the first time. "It's dark." Her brow  furrowed.

"That's enough for tonight," he said, touching her arm, trying to draw  her back to the material world. Another yawn while she nodded her  agreement. Then she stretched-God help him. Before his very eyes she  transformed from the avenging accountant back into the siren in the red  dress. All the blood that had been working so diligently to nourish his  brain as he took her through the financials suddenly hit the road for a  more southerly locale. Stretching her arms over her head caused her  breasts to jut out, and suddenly he hated that dress. Somehow it managed  to be wanton at the same time that it was too modest, allowing him to  see only the shape of her and none of … the actual her.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, looking at her arms and realizing the blazer she wore was not her own. "This is yours!"

"Don't," he groaned, feeling like if he saw even an inch of her bare  skin, he might combust. Too late-she stripped off the blazer and handed  it to him. The contrast between the bare arms and the black-tights-clad  legs did something to his already on-alert dick.

As she tossed the blazer at him, her eyes grazed over his crotch. He  should have used the blazer to cover himself. Instead he let his hands  fall to his sides, the better for her to see what she did to him.

"Ready to go?" she asked, smiling a little, though her tone was completely unreadable.

Okay, so it was time to be prudent. "Yeah. You must be hungry. Are you hungry?"

"Starving," she confirmed, letting herself be herded out of his office.  In the reception area, he stooped to pick up her abandoned blazer and  then retrieved her coat from the closet where he'd hung it, holding it  out for her to slide into.                       
       
           



       

The air between them was charged, heavy with something he couldn't quite  put his finger on. He pressed his hand against her lower back as they  made their way out of the office. He was supposed to be prudent, he  knew, but he couldn't keep his hands off her.

Was it possible that she was walking inappropriately close to him? It  wasn't overt, like Droppy from the bar the other night-or like all of  the other women he slept with. In fact, if it wasn't all in his mind, if  she was, in fact, listing slightly toward him, he didn't think it was  intentional. It was as if there was an invisible current swirling around  them, drawing them infinitesimally but inexorably closer, like they  were a binary star system, two burning nuclei rotating around each  other.