The gunmetal gray PDA phone did not belong to Janeal, but it came to be in her possession as the result of Milan’s carelessness. She might have given it back if he had not been so careless with her heart and body as well last night—but no, it was time. So she gave it to board president Thomas Sanders, who left a movie with his wife in order to arrive at her office within twenty minutes.
Which meant that when Milan Finch paid her a surprise visit at eight forty that night, twenty minutes after Thomas had departed with Janeal’s information, he was the one to be surprised.
Milan closed the door. Through the glass panels that overlooked the newsroom, Janeal saw the lingering workaholic heads turn in their direction.
“You have my PDA.” He spoke as if they were in a public café and didn’t want to be overheard.
Janeal sipped her coffee. “I don’t.”
Her lover—ex-lover, she would think of him forever forward—sat opposite her, his back to the panes of glass, and crossed an ankle over his knee. This chess game they had played for a decade, as amicable opponents content to use each other and be used, was about to come to an end. The rubberneckers in the newsroom returned to their work, unaware of the pinched frown that contradicted their publisher’s easy body language.
“I left it on your coffee table last night.”
“Do you also remember where you left me last night?”
She had found the PDA after picking herself up off the floor, nursing a goose egg at the back of her head where her skull had met an oak armchair. Milan had not exactly forgotten the device on the table; he had slammed it down onto the glass with such force that she found a chip in the shiny surface after he was gone. It was a wonder the electronics hadn’t shattered.
“Do not misrepresent what actually happened, Jane.”
“What is there to misrepresent? You were so emasculated by losing that acquisition that you thought beating me within an inch of my life would somehow restore your manhood. Tell me if I misunderstood.”
“You like it rough.”
“You’re lucky I’m not pressing charges.”
Milan sneered. “Like anyone would believe it.”
“Thomas Sanders was credulous enough.”
“You talked to Thomas ? When?”
Janeal leaned back in her chair and waved a hand to indicate her impatience with Milan. “I thought he was on board with your acquisition effort,” she said, knowing full well that Milan’s attempt to take over the nation’s second-ranked publisher of porn had been an entirely private investment attempt.
She thought Milan’s eyes might fall out of his face. “Really, Milan. Don’t overreact. What’s the harm in one publisher wanting to expand his domain?”
“Jane Johnson, where is my PDA?”
“Are we talking about the one you use for All Angles business? Because I'm pretty sure I can see the outline of that one staring out at me from your breast pocket. Or is there another one, Milan? One you use for purposes illicit enough that you have to pretend you’re not affiliated with it?”
Milan’s hands were shaking and his face was a shade darker, though he had not moved since sitting down. “I am not a man you want to mess with.”
“No, you have that backward. I am not a woman you want to abuse. Do you know why I never moved in with you after all these years? Because I am not a kept woman. Ironically enough, standing just outside of your grasp was the best way to get you to think I was. Do you think I have done a single thing in the last ten years that was not planned?”
“For all your planning, you’ve turned out to be one of the most dissatisfied women I have ever met.”
“I’m happier than I’ve ever been, now that I’m free of you.”
“You’re a victim of your own ideals. Your level of misery goes up with every goal that you set.”
“Ha!” She slapped her palm down on the desk. “Well said by the man who’s about to lose everything he’s worked for. Let’s speak frankly: a man like you has no need of a woman like me, not really, not unless you believe I’m better than you are and present a challenge to you worth conquering.”
Janeal cocked her head to one side as Alan walked past the office on the other side of the interior windows. He should think they were discussing where to go for dinner, not the pending upheaval of the magazine. That, after all, was where this would end.
“You’re sitting in that seat because of what I have done for you,” Milan whispered.
“I’m sitting in this seat because of what I’m capable of doing for myself. And you know it, or else you wouldn’t be so distressed over what will happen now that I have your private PDA, the one you use to operate that little moonlight venture of an escort service—oh, don’t look at me like I’m the brainless one! I've known for months.”
Janeal stood to indicate that their meeting would end now. She felt tired, having spent the last ten years of her life waiting for the right time to tell this little weasel of a man to step aside. But that was the nature of this game, in which the trophy went to the most strategic and most patient. Until last night, she hadn’t minded the wait so much.
“Our board meeting has been delayed until Monday. Expect Thomas to request your resignation tomorrow afternoon, before the story breaks and All Angles gets the wrong kind of publicity.”
Milan sighed and closed his eyes. “No one cares about sex scandals anymore, Jane.”
“Really? Thomas was just here wondering how many different points of view we can spin out of this one. Three cheers for lawbreakers! Perhaps if you had come earlier—”
“I’ll fight you all.”
“Fight away. I’ll be sitting at your desk upstairs by Monday morning.”
Milan did not have the boldness to look at her as he left the room, smoothing the sleeve of his jacket and tugging at the cuff.
Janeal resisted the urge to place her palm in the center of her forehead to calm the pounding. Her phone was ringing again. Instead of answering it, she scanned the AP feed coming across the bottom of her computer monitor.
The first headline caused her to gasp. Like a remissive cancer rearing its ferocious head, Salazar Sanso couldn’t have reentered her life at a more inopportune time.