Taking the Lead(37)

I poured myself some tea while waiting for him to get to the point.

"At any rate this is one of the deep tenets of the group and one of our safeguards of the security of all concerned."

"Of course," Gwen said, holding her teacup in both hands and leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, as if she were rapt by his tale. Gwen was a much better actor than Schmitt, though.

"I did not want to bring this up until I had gauged your reactions at the previous gathering, of course." He sipped his sweetened cream while we hung on his words. "The fact of the matter is that neither of you is exempt from the participation rules."

Gwen tittered nervously and covered her mouth with her hand.

Schmitt cleared his throat noisily. At least this time I wasn't hearing it in stereo. "Technically the minimum participation rule, to be met, gives each member a full year between public displays, but I would not wait a year to establish yourselves or the members may become restless and distrustful. And we all know what is at stake."

"How public does it have to be?" I asked, since we were talking technicalities.

"We have never had the issue raised, but I would say at least one other guest should witness the scene, or at least the door should be open even if no one bothers to look."

So my impromptu scene with Axel probably didn't count.

"Well, Madison and Chita can put me on the Catherine Wheel anytime," Gwen said with another laugh. "Oh, I know! It's my birthday next month! They can give me my birthday spankings!"

Schmitt's eyes crinkled up as Gwen's enthusiasm amused him and he let out a wheezing laugh. "Yes, that would do nicely." Then his attention moved to me. When I offered no suggestions for myself, he moved on. "Well. I just wanted you to be aware of the necessity. Overall I felt the party went very well last time around."

There was a knock at the door then. I went to see who it was, hoping it was Mina with a sandwich.

It was. "You read my mind," I said, as I took the covered plate from her gratefully.

"No problem, Ricki," she said. "Leave the dish on the tray and I'll take care of it after you're done in here."

"You should go home," I said. "You shouldn't be here this late."

"Don't be silly. It's not like you're paying me by the hour." She shooed me back into the room.

I returned to my seat under the eagle. The sandwich was a pressed baguette with melted cheese. I bit into the crisp crust and felt better immediately.

Gwen and Schmitt went over some upcoming dates for the monthly parties and I mostly just nodded in agreement while eating. Paul would check it against my calendar.

And then the meeting was thankfully over. Gwen stood and thanked Schmitt for coming. "See you at breakfast, Rick'? I've got that audition early in the morning."

"Yep. See you in the morning, Gwen."

She flounced off and I brushed the crumbs from my hands over the tray. "Will you see yourself out?" I said to Schmitt.

Schmitt stood also and set down his empty teacup. "Rickanna, I did want to say one more thing."

"Oh?" Where I was standing the wings of the eagle loomed over me and I moved to the desk, pretending to look for something in the small stack of papers and things on the blotter.

"Yes. I know it can be quite intimidating to have one's first BDSM experience in public, so I wanted to extend the offer to you." He coughed noisily. "The offer, that is, of my services. Perhaps something as simple as a spanking? I am quite experienced in these matters. I would be happy to enact the scene in private if you so wished."



       
         
       
        

So that's what all his jockeying for time and trying to have a meeting with me alone was about: propositioning me. What I felt most at that moment was disappointment. I wasn't afraid of Schmitt. I wasn't even particularly disgusted at the come-on. Men can be like that. I suppose what disappointed me most was that Grandpa Cy had mostly associated himself with good people, trustworthy people. Schmitt had been his closest associate of all, and when I was little he'd been almost like an uncle or a second grandfather. So although I expected men to be pigs and hit on me inappropriately-this was hardly the first time it had happened to me-I'd hoped Schmitt was better than that.

But, no. Just a filthy pig in the end. I broke out of my frozen deadpan and forced myself to laugh a gentle yet dismissive laugh. The don't-be-silly laugh. "Oh, Conrad, you're always thinking of my well-being. But you know I think of you like an uncle." I hoped an incest implication was enough to deter him.

"I do care for you dearly, Ricki," he said, and I wasn't sure my message of "no" was getting through.

"Thank you for the kind offer," I said, "but I've got this one covered."

"You needn't even be unclothed for a spanking, you know," he said, and I wondered just how much "no" it was going to take to get him to give up. Had he even heard what I said? "You could simply  …  bend over  …  right now."

Sigh. Very disappointed. I folded my hands and gave him what I called my "skeptical schoolmarm" look, complete with headshake and clucking of my tongue. "And you could simply walk out that door and never, ever mention this conversation again."

He opened his mouth to protest but something must have started to sink in because nothing came out.

For emphasis I twirled one finger in a circle and pointed it at the door.

"Perhaps I've been mistaken," he said gruffly, blinking almost in surprise. "If so my apologies. My sincere apologies." I think I know why they call it backpedaling now. He practically walked backward out of the room, repeating the apologies a couple of times on the way, vacillating between looking at me and looking at where he was going. Pathetic, really.

I waited until he had shut the door behind him. Then I e-mailed Paul asking him to take care of booking a locksmith to come sometime when I could be present to change the lock on the office door and to redo the combination on the safe.

And then I texted Sakura.

What the fuck is wrong with men? Why is it always guys who are making utterly inappropriate come-ons who can't take a hint?

She wrote back: Because they live in a fantasy world and reality doesn't intrude. A fantasy world where you lust after them as much as they lust after you. 

Hah, I replied. I think it's just that once their dicks get hard there's no blood left for their tiny brains.

This isn't about Axel, is it??

No. Not about Axel. Not at all. If anything the incident made it painfully obvious to me how well Axel did listen to me. I think me and Axel are getting along just fine now.

I still had to figure out how the heck I was going to keep us out of the papers, but  …  one thing at a time.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


HOLD FAST


AXEL

The next day The Tinseltown Tab came out and I learned more about Ricki Hamilton in the ten minutes I was sitting in the waiting room outside the recording studio reading it than I had in the previous two months. I found out she got her MBA at Wharton-Ivy League!-right out of UPenn and that her sister Gwen was Ivy, too. Well, okay, the Ivies let in a lot of the kids of the rich and famous: that's how they afford the less affluent kids, right? Still. They don't take you in if you're a complete dunce. I was pretty sure Ricki and Gwen were every bit as smart as they seemed.

She was going to hate the article, though. The reporter had managed to get an interview with her father, who was supposedly in rehab and, I would have thought, wasn't allowed to talk to the media. But what did I know? Maybe the woman had talked to him before he went in and they'd held the story until now.

After reading the article all I could think was, despite her protests, no wonder Ricki was weird about rope. I considered tearing out the pages and taking them with me to read again later, but decided that might be frowned on by the nice folks at the record company who put magazines out to make a friendly impression in their waiting room. They probably wouldn't want it sitting there all ripped up.

So I took the entire magazine. I stashed it in my shoulder bag with my lyric notebook and tablet.

Mal and I went to check out our new rehearsal space after that. Ford, Chino, and Samson met us at a boring-looking strip mall. Next door was a former video rental store (now vacant), and next to that a tanning salon. Our space had once been a small gym of some kind. The front was the office and reception area, and the back was a fairly large, fairly soundproof room, which was what we needed. The floor was concrete and you could see marks where various pieces of equipment had been bolted down once upon a time. That the place had a whirlpool bath still installed, that we could use if we cleaned it out a little, was an unexpected plus.

The rest of the day was spent moving gear into the new place from Mal's condo, Christina's office, and a room at Capitol's offices we'd been using as storage since the Grammys. The plan was to start working on material for the next album, but we weren't going to record anything for a while. Now was the time to start jamming, and playing bits of songs for each other that we'd been writing, and see what came together. We didn't need any fancy audio equipment for that. Anything we wanted to stick down on demo we could use our phones or a laptop for. For now, not only did the regular gear need to be set up, but we had to make a run to the store to buy chairs. Then, after playing halfway through one song-"Rock the World," which is kind of loud-we decided we needed a little more sound-dampening, so we made another trip to Home Depot for egg crate foam and mats for the floor.