The Next Ex by Maren Smith

Travis Dorsett owned one of the largest international distribution firms in the lumber industry. He was considered a powerful and influential man by his colleagues, a masterful strategist in the boardroom by his peers. He was a man who stood firm against opposition and always came out on top no matter how the odds were stacked. He was called The Mountain behind his back, not just for his broad and massive size, but because of his inflexibility. The Mountain never wavered, never backed down, and never lost. Ever. Not once.

Fifty-seven restaurants in the down-town Seattle area and he had to come to this one, Travis thought bitterly. He forced himself to smile and extend his hand in greeting. "Maxwell."

Halfway out the front door of the Golden Goose restaurant, Max Bicos smoothly extricated himself from his two companions, Kuronabe Yuko and Tetsuo--Japanese businessmen that Travis had been in heavy negotiation with for more than six months now. He grasped Travis’s hand, a gesture the casual observer might have mistaken as friendly. Anyone looking more closely, however, might have noticed how the two clasped hands just a little too tightly and how neither man’s smile reached quite as far as his eyes.

"Travis," Max said, his smile broadening just a bit. "What brings you out of the gutter?"

"Unlike you, I could never get used to the stench." Travis squeezed Max’s hand as he asked, "How’s my wife?"

"My wife now," Max replied, and their hands abruptly parted. "Marsha’s fine and doesn’t speak of you at all."

Travis glanced to Max’s lunch companions. They bowed their heads, a polite gesture that he returned even as he fought to keep from showing his frustration. As the Japanese men climbed into the back of his opponent’s car, it was everything he could do to keep from laying Max out on the concrete sidewalk.

"I’m moving up in the world, don’t you think?" Max asked with a grin. "Quite the stepping stool you’ve given me. I know this must be very painful for you to accept. Seeing them with me, I mean. You were so close to netting that account. But, sadly for you and fortunately for me, they have decided to go with the better man."

"Turns out, they prefer to do business with men who are stable, responsible and obligated. The strong family man type. You know the Japanese, business and family go hand in hand. I’m afraid they view you as something of a cold fish, what with your long line of broken relationships and that messy divorce last year. Imagine, they turned to me because. . .well," he laughed, "because I have your wife."

"The truth hurts." Travis cast a quick bow to the Japanese men as they glanced out at him from the back of Max’s car. "Have a good day."

By the window, Yuko impassively dipped his head in return, and Travis moved to the edge of the curb where his own car and driver still waited.

"What about your reservation?" Max called after him, smugly bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet. "These people charge whether you show up or not."

"I’ve lost my appetite." Travis climbed into the back of the car and snapped, "Dorsett Building."

Half an hour later, as his driver pulled up to the Building’s front steps, it struck Travis that taking a client to lunch was a business tactic used to garner business, not celebrate a done deal. One quick call on his cellular phone to the Kuronabe’s hotel confirmed his suspicions. He set up a dinner appointment to discuss a suitable counter to Maxwell’s offer. Though they had to fly back to Japan that night, they invited him to visit their corporation in two weeks time.

"That gives me fourteen days," Travis said to no one in particular. Fourteen days to find a wife and change the Kuronabe’s opinion of him from cold fish to family man.

And just when he thought he’d got his life back in order after Marsha, too. He shook his head in disgust, unable to believe he was about to dive headfirst right back into another mess of a marriage. He needed another wife like he needed another divorce lawyer with an alimony suit breathing down his neck.

He stalked through the lower lobby of the Building, heading for the glass elevators. Strange. He had walked through this lobby a thousand times and never once noticed how many women worked here. A plump blonde sat at the switchboard, her pleasant round face smiling and animated as she helped a customer find the office number of the executive he sought. A brunette in glasses and a business skirt was bent over the water fountain. One of the three security guards stationed near the front entrance was a woman.

He stopped to glance behind him, back out the large picture windows that overlooked the busy Seattle street. There were literally hundreds upon hundreds of women out there. The problem was finding one unscrupulous or greedy or desperate enough to agree to be his wife and further his ambitions.

He stepped onto the elevator next to a tall, dark-haired woman. Not too old, he noted. Perhaps in her forties. When the doors closed, he used their reflections in the polished metal to study her hands.

One down; half a billion more to go. How was he going to sift through them all in the next fourteen days? He was probably courting disaster by considering any of the women in this building as possible nominees for the position of his next ex. No, from now on he would only look for a woman outside the company, or at least one who didn’t work in his home office.

Maybe he could advertise: Attractive, wealthy businessman seeks single woman for matrimony.

Couldn’t hurt to be honest. And anyway, if he was going to be desperate enough to advertise, he may as well get what he wanted.

Of course, the papers would have a field day with an ad like that, especially if they found out who placed it. And once that became public knowledge, then there would be no way to hide the fact that he was marrying to snatch a business contract out of Max’s grasping clutches. An extremely lucrative contract, and one that he had poured a lot of effort into winning. But he wasn’t likely to fool his Japanese associates that way, and it certainly wouldn’t count in his favor if they did find out. It might even count against him.

The elevator stopped on a lower floor. The brunette disembarked and another young woman stepped on, wheeling a janitor’s cart in behind her. At first irritated at being forced to make room for the bulky cleaning cart, Travis then found himself studying the woman.

She was lovely, whistling softly as she bobbed up and down on the heels of her ratty sneakers, staring at the neon numbers above the elevator doors that indicated the passing floors. The name tag on the left side of her grey sweatshirt read ‘Jamie M.’

He forced his attention back to the closed elevator doors, only to find himself watching her in the reflection instead. He shouldn’t even considered it. She was definitely an employee, and in his home office to boot. And what had he just decided about employees, he told himself sternly. But a moment later, as the elevator made its slow ascent, he found himself looking at her again.

She was a red-head; that was the first point in her favor. Travis generally did not like carrot-tops. He was attracted to blondes first, then brunettes. Red ranked somewhere between black-haired women and grey-headed ninety-year-old ladies.

Her blue eyes were a point against her, though. He was very much attracted to blue eyes. However, they were framed by long red lashes that would constantly remind him of her carrot-top so he could probably live with that.

The second point in her favor was her diminutive height. Standing several inches over six feet himself, Travis usually gravitated towards amazons, with long slender legs and nubile bodies that wouldn’t be crushed beneath his own. The shortest woman he’d ever dated had stood in at five foot six inches. He sized Jamie M. up and down, finally deciding she might be five feet even, give or take an inch, and maybe with heels on. He doubted if the top of her head came to his shoulders. He’d probably get a crick in his neck every time he bent to kiss her.

Travis frowned. He banished that rebel thought from his mind. Kissing her was definitely not on the agenda.

Although, were she so inclined, he wasn’t likely to reject the opportunity, either. He was only human after all.

By rights, she should have been as stubby as she was short. But nature had been abundantly kind in that department and had formed her exquisitely with plump breasts that would be a pleasant handful, a trim waist, round hips, a pert little bottom that just begged to be turned over the knee and given a sexy slap or two. . .or twenty. Oh, who was he kidding? He could make a night out of smacking those pretty, little nether cheeks.

Nope. Under the pale fluorescent elevator lights, she was really looking quite vanilla to him. Another point in her favor, since that would make it easier to leave in two years time. He had no intention of spending the rest of his life with a woman who didn’t share his interest in spanking, either for fun or otherwise. He’d done that already with Marsha and once was more than enough for Travis, thank you very much. There was absolutely no way that he would consider another life-long marriage without a means of accountability.

Marriage for a year or two, now that was an entirely different matter. And he stepped sideways, looking at the reflection they made together in the silver shine of the elevator doors. She might not be the stuff that poet’s vied one another to write sonnets over, but she looked. . .well, she looked like someone’s wife. His, to be exact. He glanced at her hands, resting lightly on the handle of her cleaning cart.

He opened his mouth to introduce himself, catching himself in the nick of time and abruptly stepping back again. What in the world was he doing? He was a businessman for heaven’s sake, cool, calm, reasonable and--reputedly--somewhat intelligent. She was an employee in his main office, the stuff that lawsuits for sexual harassment were made of. If one intended to run a business without yielding half of everything one earned to a grasping woman’s lawyer, than one did so without seducing the staff.

They reached the twentieth floor and Jamie M.’s destination. Whistling softly under her breath and without once glancing at him, she wheeled her bulky cart out of the elevator. As she passed him, Travis detected the faintest scent of baby lotion. Ooo, big point against her. He found himself not only liking the smell, but certain feelings began to stir in a place that gave credence to sexual harassment lawsuits.

Yet, when the elevator doors started to close after her disembarkment, Travis caught them and pushed them firmly open again.

This was the data entry floor. There were over a hundred desks, placed side by side with little more than a three foot distance between them for walking. Each desk had a computer, dictation recorder, phone, and an overflowing ‘In’ box. A community laser printer dotted the end of each row. Without a single cubicle to block his view, Travis watched Jamie over a virtual sea of hunched shoulders and rapidly typing fingers.

With this many clacking keys, ringing phones, and more than a hundred laughing, gossiping women, the noise level was all but deafening, and yet Jamie paid little attention to any of it. She simply steered her cleaning cart to the middle of the first row of desks and tapped the wheel brakes down with her foot. Weaving her way between crowded clerks and office chairs, she began emptying trash cans and recycling bins.

The seat of her jeans was so worn, it was a wonder they did not split every time she bent over. Her sneakers weren’t much better, either. There was barely enough material stitched together to keep them on her feet. His mouth tightened briefly. While the company dress code did not require daytime janitors to look glamorous, they didn’t have to look homeless, either. But that also was perfect. She obviously needed money, and that was one thing which he had in abundance.

There was a beep from the intercom above his head. "Hey, who’s holding up the elevator?"

That was when Travis became aware of the small group of people to either side of him, waiting patiently for him to decide whether he was going up or down. Suddenly irritated again, he let go of the doors, sealing out the sight of Jamie M.’s beautifully upturned and entirely too-spankable backside. Though he had spent several minutes watching her, not once had she so much as glanced in his direction. He wondered what she was thinking about so intently.

Jamie sifted through her trash cart, her hands fairly flying as she sorted the garbage from the recyclables. As her daydream spun webs of fantasy over the monotony of her life, a soft smile curved her generous lips. Eyes drooping half-closed, she was the very depiction of seduction as her imagination took her from the data entry pool to the private living room--no, kitchen, No! Bedroom--yes, to the private bedroom of an as-yet-unknown Mister Right.

Jamie felt herself tense and her breath catch in the back of her throat. She was not so lost in the daydream as to reach back and protect her cringing backside with her hand, the way she’d likely do if ever this scenario were to play out in real life. But her fantasy self had no such inhibitions. And in fact, she didn’t use just one hand, she used both.

Oblivious to those working around her, Jamie reached for another trash can. She was not quite successful in stifling a soft, half-wistful, half-apprehensive groan.

At the desk beside her, a woman paused in the middle of typing a memo to cast Jamie a sympathetic smile. "Don’t I know it. I’ve been doing this so long, yesterday I sorted my kids into categories and cross-referenced them for my husband. He told me to ask for vacation time."

"Looks like you’ve lost your admirer," said the woman next to Jamie, craning her neck to see the now closed elevator doors beyond the shoulders of the woman sitting in front of her. When no response to her observation was forthcoming, she turned back to Jamie. "Jamie, honey?"

Jamie jumped, dropping a half-full recycling box to the floor even as she cried out, "Ow!"

The office came suddenly and sharply back into focus, and she turned a slow hot shade of red as she saw those nearest to her turning in their chairs to look at her in surprise.

Jamie quickly stuck a finger in her mouth. "Paper cut. It’s nothing. What did you say?"

The woman shook her head, a wry smile turning up the corners of her mouth. "Girl, if I had a dime for every one of your daydreams, I wouldn’t need to work here."

Caught, Jamie blushed and took her finger from her mouth. "Sorry, Nita. I didn’t mean to ignore you."

"It’s not me you ought to feel sorry for." Leaning closer, Nita said in a conspiratorial whisper, "You missed that gorgeous hunk of man flesh giving you the once over."

"Those elevators," Jamie thumbed over her shoulder to the glass elevators. "You’re kidding! I just came from there. I didn’t see anyone."

"Do you know who that was?" asked a blonde woman, as she passed them on her way to the desk behind Nita’s. She set her fresh coffee cup down.

"Wasn’t he delicious?" Nita said, fanning her face with her hands. "He looked so familiar, too. I wonder where I’ve seen him before."

"How could you not see him?" a forth woman interrupted, a stack of collated insurance packets fresh off the copier in her arms. "He was practically drooling on you when you came off the elevators."

"You didn’t recognize him?" The blonde woman asked incredulously. "That was the big man himself."

Eyes grown wide as saucers, Nita sat back in her chair with a gasp. "No! Mister Dorsett? Really?"

"I didn’t know he was back in town," the forth one mused. "Watch yourself, Jamie. He was staring at you something fierce."

"I’d say he wants Jamie," the blonde woman said, and she and the copier woman giggled at Jamie’s sudden, obvious discomfort.

A heavy-set black woman came to join the group. She clapped her hands twice, commanding attention. "Get busy, girls. We’ve got a quota to meet."

Jamie pushed her cleaning cart to the center of the next row, glancing back over her shoulder at the closed elevator doors as she reached down to pick up another trash can. How in the world could she have missed seeing the company president? Even worse, how could she have possibly missed his seeing her? She swallowed, a tremor of unease tickling down her spine as she hoped to high heaven that she hadn’t done something wrong.

Like using the customer’s elevator instead of the service shaft located at the back of the building.

Jamie groaned, leaning on her cart as she covered her eyes with one hand. Why oh why, when she first discovered she’d slept through her alarm, couldn’t she have followed her instincts and called in sick?

At a few minutes to four o’clock and the end of her shift, Jamie’s supervisor handed her a note. In a bold, neat pen, her immediate presence was requested on the top executive floor. And by all means, someone had scrawled across the bottom, use the main elevator.

Think positive, Jamie, she told herself. Maybe there was a stopped sink or a clogged toilet, or something had been knocked over. Maybe she was only being summoned to vacuum paper punch holes off the rug or mop up an unexpected mess. It wasn’t likely, but she could always hope. So once again, Jamie wheeled her bulky cleaning cart into one of the Dorsett Building’s three main elevators and pressed the button for the top floor.

These elevators were among the grandest of features of all Seattle based superstructures. Made almost completely of glass, they attached to the outside of the building and gave their passengers an unobstructed view of the city, sprawling as far as the eye could see in all directions. Since none of the surrounding buildings were higher than fifteen floors, once the elevator rose above that, the view was absolutely awe-inspiring. At eighteen stories high and to the right, Jamie saw the Space Needle only a few blocks away, as well as the Woodland Park Zoo. She leaned forward to rest her forehead against the cool, transparent panes. She loved riding these elevators. Surrounded by luxury, glass and gold, she would imagine she was someone else. It didn’t matter who, so long as she wasn’t a cleaning lady trapped in a mind-numbing job, with a mountain of bad debts holding her hostage there.

But this trip to the top was different. This time, Jamie was too nervous to daydream. Travis Dorsett, the same phantom who had supposedly been watching her earlier, had requested her presence personally.

This would be her first time meeting the legendary recluse face-to-face. For years, it had been rumored that he didn’t really exist. That the entire Dorsett Corporation was run by a huge, inter-galactic space alien, with three eyes in the middle of his stomach and an elephant’s trunk that stuck out of one ear. Today had pretty much dispelled that myth for what it was, since everyone but Jamie, it seemed, had seen him. According to Nita, he looked just like the dark, solemn portrait of him that dominated the entrance lobby.

As the world shrank far below her, Jamie quietly cleaned the glass where she’d touched it and fogged it with her breath. Above the doors, the red neon lights dinged the sixty-third floor and her destination, and she drew a deep, fortifying breath. Turning around, she wheeled her cart into the company president’s reception room. Her eyes slid to the waiting area, but the long L-shaped couch by the window was vacant, so it was safe to talk.

Despite her nervousness, she cast a quick smile to Travis’s very pregnant secretary. "Hi, Greta."

Glancing up from her computer, Greta grinned. "Jamie! I haven’t seen you for days! Where have you been keeping yourself?"

Greta was a pretty woman, with long, dark brown hair and laughing brown eyes that could coax even the most irritated individuals into more cheerful dispositions. As her secretarial skills were nothing out of the ordinary, this was probably the reason she worked directly for Travis. It had also been rumored that Mister Dorsett was not a chipper man.

"What’s the news?" Jamie gestured towards the secretary’s child-swollen belly. "When’s the little fellow going to make his birth day debut?"

"He’s his father’s boy." Greta grimaced. "There’s not a force on Earth that could ever make Jim arrive anywhere on time, either. Nine months come and gone, and my stomach still sticks out to here. He’s just as happy as a little clam, staying where he is and kicking my insides black and blue."

"If I was you, I’d just take the maternity leave and stay home all day. Put your feet up, and eat bonbons while you can still say you’re eating for two."

"Jamie, you have no idea what staying at home with a soon-to-be, first-time father is like," Greta said, then caught herself. Her eyes widened, then softened with sympathy. "Oh, Jamie, I’m sorry. I said it without thinking."

Waving her hand, Jamie shrugged. "That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you’ve got someone there for you. Put all that nervous energy to good use and make him rub your feet."

"He already does that." Greta grinned and her eyes fell to the cart Jamie leaned against. "You can leave that out here; you won’t need it." She nodded her head meaningfully at the giant twin doors, the entrance to the only office on the entire floor. "He wants to see you."

Gnawing at her bottom lip, Jamie studied the doors. "Do you, um, know why? Does he need his rug vacuumed or his plants dusted? You know, this isn’t my floor. Don and Jim have everything above the fiftieth floor. They should be here in about an hour. . ."

"He asked for you," Greta said gently. "First thing after lunch he requested your personnel file. Then a little while ago, he asked to see you before you went home. I don’t know his reasons; I’m just a secretary. But I do know there’s nothing wrong with his rug."

"He looked at my personnel file?" Jamie echoed dully. "Does it already show I was late this morning?"

He was going to fire her. Jamie clutched the handle on her cleaning cart so hard her fingers turned white. "What am I going to do, Greta? I can’t afford to lose my job! I just can’t!"

"Oh no, no, it’s nothing like that," Greta hastened to assure her. "Think, sweetie. If he wanted you canned, he wouldn’t bring you up to his office to do it. Your supervisor would have handed you your severance check at the end of your shift. Don’t worry about that. Just go on in, find out what he wants, and let me know, okay? The curiosity’s just been driving me nuts all afternoon."

Not at all comforted by the secretary’s reassurances, Jamie crept towards the giant office doors. As Greta picked up the phone to announce her, Jamie took another fortifying breath. Too bad the option to cover her head and run screaming back to the elevators wasn’t a practical one. Swallowing, she reached for the silver door handle and pushed her way inside.

Travis’s office was quite possibly the largest single office that she had ever seen, with plush blue carpeting, soothing white walls, and several pictures and plants for decoration. A mammoth desk dominated the room, big enough for three people to work at and shaped like a great, mahogany horseshoe. The window behind it stretched the length and width of the entire wall and provided an uninterrupted view of Seattle. From sixty-three stories, it was even more spectacular than the view in the elevator. And at the bow of the ‘shoe,’ like a king on a leather-covered throne of a chair, Travis sat studying a small stack of papers on the otherwise immaculate surface.

A space alien would have been easier to believe. For an instant, Jamie felt a fleeting sense of betrayal that the rumors could have allowed her to work here for so long without knowing the truth. Travis was like a well-imagined dream. There was simply no other way to put it; he was beautiful.

He made several corrections on the page in front of him, then turned it over and studied the one beneath. As she watched, one dark eyebrow arched slightly above the other and there was a noticeable tightening in that square, clean-shaven jaw. He glared at the paper, as though that single, innocuous-looking page had committed some horrible offense--gracious, he was even more handsome when he was mad--and he made a note in the margin.

His hair was dark, almost blue-black in color and cut at a neat, professional length. There was a hint of curl at the sides, just long enough to almost be able to run fingers through. His age she placed somewhere in the mid-to-late thirties. Jamie could well image what one smile from a man like that could do to a girl. Here he hadn’t even done that, and already Jamie felt as if she was melting. A kiss--why, a kiss could very well bring about the end of the world. If only the situation weren’t quite so scary, the idea of such a kiss from him might have been more appealing.

Travis raised his head from his papers and looked at her. His eyes--a deep amber, flecked with hints of light brown and golden yellow--settled on her face, clear and penetrating. He smiled slightly, though only with his mouth, and set the papers aside.

"Come in, Miss Miracle." He stood up, resting his fingers lightly on top of his desk. "No need to hover in doorways. I’ve been waiting for you."

Hover? Jamie started, glancing back over her shoulder. At her desk, Greta was making shooing motions with her hands, encouraging Jamie further into Travis’s office. A sudden warmth filled her belly, spreading up to her cheeks. She didn’t know which was more embarrassing: this awful, uncertain, lock-legged, teenager-with-a-crush feeling that left her unable to move and feeling like an idiot; or the fact that he’d noticed.

The corners of his handsome mouth turned up a little more. "No need to be. Come in, please."

Jamie took a hesitant step, but then stopped again. Her ratty sneakers looked atrocious on the dark blue carpeting. She tucked the worst looking one behind her right leg, hiding it from sight and hoping he hadn’t already seen it. Oh for heaven’s sake, now she looked like a stork! Biting her lip, she put her tattered shoe back on the floor. Her face flushed even hotter. She felt so foolish, at this point getting fired would almost have been a kindness on his part.

She cleared her throat again. "Look, Mister Dorsett. I--I know I wasn’t supposed to take the cleaning cart into the glass elevator, but the service lift was in use and--"

"You didn’t?" Jamie shifted her feet nervously. "Well, um. . .why am I here then?"

He gestured to one of two vacant chairs on her side of the horseshoe desk. "Would you like to sit down?"

She shook her head. "This. . .This isn’t my floor. If you need something cleaned or repaired, um...I could get Don for you."

The corners of his mouth went up a little more, and this time his eyes seemed to warm. "It’s not Don I want to talk to. I really do promise not to bite. Please." He indicated the chair again. "Sit down. If I have to talk to you from this distance, I’ll grow hoarse."

Rubbing her sweaty palms against her jean-clad thighs, Jamie hesitantly approached his desk and sat down. As he returned to his chair as well, she jiggled her leg nervously up and down. Now that she was up close, all she could see was how truly huge he was. A virtual mountain of a man. And he was staring right at her, hands folded over his desk, amber eyes studying her intently.

Not used to being scrutinized, Jamie shifted nervously. She cleared her throat, then stretched her hand out over his desk. "Jamie Miracle. How do you do?"

There it went again, that light in his amber eyes that suggested he might be laughing at her. But obligingly the mountain stood up again and reached across the desk to take her hand. His completely engulfed hers in a firm shake that sent a sudden spark leaping up through her arm the instant their fingers touched. Jamie all but snatched her hand back, staring at it as though horribly betrayed, then blushed profusely as she realized how ridiculous she must look.

"I, uh..." she cleared her throat and tried to collect her scattered thoughts. Her leg began to jiggle up and down again. "Why am I here?"

Travis sat back down again and leaned back in his chair. Bracing his elbows on the rests, he steepled his fingers. "I have something I want you to do for me."

Jamie glanced first into the near empty garbage can to the right of his desk, then at the spotless rug beneath her. "What?"

"Boost my career," he said bluntly. "I’m willing to pay you for it. How does two million dollars sound?"

"Two million," he enunciated, his smile widening by the barest of degrees. "Are you interested?"

She looked around the office again, this time for a hidden camera. "Am I on America’s Funniest Practical Jokes or something?"

"Two million dollars," Jamie repeated. She eyed him suspiciously. "What, do you need me to assassinate somebody? I’ll warn you now, I’m a terrible shot."

For the first time since she’d walked into the room, that spark of humor touched both his mouth and eyes at the same time. A low, rumbling chuckle rolled from him. "I don’t want you to shoot anyone."

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