Stephanie Doyle - One Final Step

“Goodbye, Mr. Langdon.”

“See you soon, Ms. Kane.”

His choice of words was deliberate and they weren’t lost on her. She gave him a brief smile, straightened her suit jacket and walked out his office door.

He was right. He didn’t like the feeling of seeing her leave. But he had confidence she would be back. He wasn’t wrong in his description of her. She was a kingmaker and he was a man who would be king—at least in this arena.

Sitting, he turned to the flat screen on his office wall and pulled up the specs of his electric car. It moved and rotated, showing him each side. It was a thing of beauty. It was revolutionary. It was going to change the driving experience for the millions of people who would buy it.

But right now it wasn’t capturing his attention half so much as the woman who’d just left his office.

* * *

MADELEINEOPENEDTHEdoor to her hotel room and felt a sense of relief when the door closed behind her. She was staying in one of the best hotels in downtown Detroit, not too far from Michael Langdon’s offices. The room was like any other she’d spent her life in so many years ago. Two beds, a desk, an uncomfortable chair, with meaningless, boring art covering the walls.

The sentimental side of her said it was good to be in familiar surroundings again.

It felt good to kick off her shoes and take off her suit jacket. It had been a long time since she’d actually had to meet with a client and needed the barrier of formal business attire. In her opinion, nothing said “back off” like a woman in a buttoned up, dark colored business suit.

Checking her watch she could see it was just after six. Ben would hopefully still be up. She extracted her tablet from her briefcase. Calling his number, she hit the button to interface. If Ben was up, which was likely given the time, he would either be sitting at his desk or would have his tablet with him in bed.

“Why do you insist on calling me like this?”

His voice was gruff, but still as strong as it was when she’d left. She’d caught him in his office.

“I like to see your shiny bald head. It makes me smile.”

“I think you’re afraid when I die Anna is going to simply record my voice and run the business on her own and you’ll never know she’s got me buried in the backyard.”

“Hardee, har.” Anna’s voice came from off the view of the computer’s camera. “Death humor. I love it.”

It was comforting to know Anna would never leave Ben’s side. She was either the most dedicated assistant in all the world, or his very best friend. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

The redhead popped her face over Ben’s shoulder. “Hi, Mad. So what do you think? Ready to come out of obscurity and take the world by storm again?”

“Don’t pressure her,” Ben said, shooing Anna away with his hand.

“I’m going to make your dinner. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” he growled, not looking at the computer but at his assistant, who was once again off camera.

“Steak and mashed potatoes? With asparagus in hollandaise sauce? That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“Please, God, tell me you’re not going to attempt to cook that.”

“Uh, duh. It’s called delivery.”

Madeleine smiled. She shouldn’t have been worried about leaving him. Not with Anna there. “I see you are in good hands.”

“I’m in impossible hands. I fire her daily, yet she keeps coming back. She knows I don’t have the strength to physically remove her and I find that absolutely galling.”

Madeleine took note of the flannel robe and the lines around Ben’s mouth and eyes. He’d been a superhero once. First a servant to his country, then a man who charged in and rescued people from their failing lives. Now his life was failing and Madeleine wondered what the group would do without him.

Not that everyone in the Tyler Group wouldn’t ultimately recover. Everyone Ben hired had a unique skill set that would always be valuable to people who needed that particular service. What Ben provided that no one else could, however, were the connections. Putting people together who needed each other the most. That was his special skill.

She shivered a little and hoped he hadn’t seen it. She needed to think positive thoughts. “How is the treatment going?”

“Treatment sucks.”

“So I’ve been told. What are the doctors saying?”

“I don’t want to talk about the doctors, I want to talk about you and the job. What did you think of Michael?”

Where to begin? Her impressions raced through Madeleine’s mind at lightning speed. Handsome, intelligent, forceful, tightly wound. Not too dissimilar to the politicians she used to work with back in the day. The differences were subtle but they were there. Michael was not as polished. The Armani suit, which was tailored perfectly for him, still didn’t quite fit. His language wasn’t always refined, though there was no hint of the streets where, according to his famous bio, he apparently grew up.

The boy from 8 Mile who went from stealing cars to becoming a legend in the racing world to creating an empire of specialty high-end vehicles sought out by millionaires and billionaires around the world.

Now he was ready to turn his talents to mass marketing a car for the future. It was ambitious and noble, probably unlikely. Definitely unlikely considering the world still saw him as a frivolous speed jockey who liked to drink champagne from women’s cleavage after each victory.

Strange, but the man who had sat across from her hadn’t looked much like the pictures she’d seen when doing preliminary research. His hair was natural brown with gold streaks rather than bleached white, as it had been during his days on the racing circuit. While his hazel eyes had been more prominent with the extreme color, they seemed fairly normal on a face that wasn’t as darkly tanned as it had been back then.

Of course, in most pictures he’d always been wearing his custom-made trademark wraparound sunglasses. No real chance for a person to see his eyes and detect the intelligence and determination within them.

“He was okay.”

“Okay. What an abysmal word. Talk to me, Madeleine.”

She wasn’t sure what to say. “He’s got potential. If he plays his cards right and changes his public persona, I think he would stand a better chance of having his ideas reach his target audience.”

“Does he need your help to do that?”

Yes. Madeleine was confident about that. She was sure he didn’t see himself the way she did. “I think so. You know my concerns.”

“I know your concerns. I also know what it meant for you to leave your house to fly out there and meet him. And I appreciate that you did it because I asked. But, Madeleine, it’s been seven years.”

She hated when people recited the number. It was like there was some magical timetable in the universe for recovery. After two years she should have moved on. After five years she should have put it in perspective. After seven years she should have forgotten it entirely.

None of those things had happened. It made her feel weak. She hated feeling weak more than she hated people reciting the number of years since the incident.

“I’m considering it.” She would sleep on it and decide if the fear of getting back into this line of work outweighed her need to do more than simply read or write about a subject.

“Good girl. This job would be good for you. I know it. And Michael…well, Michael’s not what he seems. You know how the media can distort things.”

“You mean like when they christened me the ‘Whore of the Twenty-first Century’?”

Ben actually smiled. “Yeah. Like that. When you think about how ridiculous the name— It doesn’t matter. You can’t go back. Only forward. I’ve been letting you bury your head in the sand for five years coming up with idea after idea that other people take credit for. That time is over, Madeleine. You’re ready.”