A/N: A busy end to a busy Friday.
HER GIFT
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Muddles
Sarah felt like she would explode.
Chuck was muttering, interrogatively, about 'sires', and 'royalty' and 'Special Projects'.
Roan was grinning smugly at Chuck's confusion, Roan's head turning from Chuck to Sarah and back, like a fan at a tennis match, enjoying the consternating effect of Chuck's confusion on Sarah.
Enough!
Sarah reached out and grabbed Roan's sleeve, tight. "I need to talk to you, Roan."
She tugged him away from the group, so annoyed that she was willing to leave the Jaegers and Briana wondering at her abruptness and to strand Chuck in his mystified lurch.
She tugged a slow-footed, reluctant Roan out of earshot, into another corner of the large room. They were standing beneath a suspended miniature Santa sleigh and nine miniature reindeer, the front one red-nosed. Roan looked up and grinned.
Sarah frowned murderously. "What are you doing, Roan Montgomery?"
He chuckled silently. "Just jingling your bells."
"Haven't you ever heard of attorney/client privilege? I could have you disbarred!"
Roan shook with make-believe horror, then just grinned and smoothed out his sleeve.
"Well, Sarah, my dear, I haven't revealed anything. Mr. Bartowski seems no wiser for all that I've said. And I said it more for your benefit than his. You're the only one who heard me and understood. I don't like this plan — and now that I see the Mr. Deeds you intend to turn into Mr. Seeds, I like it less. If you want a child, find a man, fall in love, do things with him horizontally, or in whatever orientation suits you, get knocked up — do it the old-fashioned way, the way the missionaries did it, say."
Sarah blew out an angry breath. "How dare you tell me what to do?"
"I dare because I know you. I dare because I've known you since you took over WI, and I knew of you before that, and I've watched you watch people who live normal lives, and I have seen the envy you try to hide in your eyes. Jack Walker took your childhood from you — don't let him take any more."
For the first time all evening, Roan seemed serious. He grabbed his lapels with his hands, pulling them out and forward, readjusting his jacket. He looked Sarah in the eyes.
Sarah's anger ebbed. She went on in a less edgy whisper. "Look, Roan, what I'm doing, planning, with Mr. Deeds — I mean with Chuck, damn it, you've gotten me so annoyed I'm losing track — is me taking my life back." Sarah's face lengthened; she continued although the words were hard for her to say. "If Jack Walker were here, if he had his way, I'd die alone and childless, seated at the head of the table in the WI Conference Room, counting money."
Sarah's voice broke despite her whisper. "What I want is to have someone to love, someone of my own, a son or a daughter, someone to teach what I wish I'd been taught…" Sarah gazed up at the sleigh for a minute, then looked back down, swallowing a sudden lump in her throat. "...Someone to start traditions with and hand down traditions to. To have the family I wish I'd had."
Roan nodded slowly. He reached out and took Sarah's hand, turning her so that she could see Chuck.
Chuck was talking seriously with Mr. Jaeger and Marten. Briana had moved to the buffet table and was filling a plate.
"But look at him, Sarah. He's obviously a good guy. He reeks of decency; I smelled him coming down the hallway. Lawyers have to be able to do that. No one is more treacherous for a lawyer than a decent man. — Do you really think Mr. Deeds will sell you what you want?" Roan gave Sarah a long look. "He just might, he just might, give it to you. As a kindness. But once he knows what you've done, and what you really want, and that you expect to buy it from him, he will bolt, and you'll be ordering sperm at a Formica countertop, from a laminated menu."
The comment was a joke but the image repelled Sarah. Sarah took a step back before realizing she had done it.
She glanced at Roan, then back at Chuck.
Chuck — and the Jaegers — watched Sarah pull Roan across the room.
Chuck's confusion worsened. He had not understood what Roan was talking about — Special Projects, sires, Gertrude Stein — but it seemed somehow to have something to do with him. But what? Chuck felt pixilated.
Mr. Jaeger turned to Chuck. "I wanted to tell you, Chuck, tell you in person, that you were the reason I chose to sign with Walker Insurance. What you said to us that day, to myself and Ms. Walker, made the difference. I trusted you, Chuck, and I trust you, to ensure Walker Insurance does what you said, to ensure that Walker Insurance adds mercy to policy." Mr. Jaeger paused. "You know, I went to LA on the fence about Walker Insurance, maybe even leaning toward saying no to Sarah Walker." Mr. Jaeger looked at Sarah, standing beneath a Santa sleigh, whispering to Roan. "I like Sarah Walker but I find her hard to read — a cipher. I wasn't sure I could trust her — not until she brought you into the discussion. If she is willing to hire someone like you, to listen to someone like you, then I trust her."
Chuck gave Mr. Jaeger an earnest look. Martens was looking at his father too; Marten had been following the conversation. "You trust Sarah Walker because you trust me?"
Mr. Jaeger chortled. "I suppose you might put it like that, Chuck. I doubted Sarah Walker valued the human touch — for the lack of a better phrase. But hiring you showed me that she did value it, and then her response to what you said in her office — that decided me."
"Thank you, Mr. Jaeger. It's kind of you to tell me that. And, let me say, despite the fact that she can be hard to read, Sarah Walker has a good heart. I believe it."
Mr. Jaeger gave Chuck an amused smile. "I know you do. I can't imagine a man like you in love with a woman you did not believe to have a good heart."
"No, I — wait, what, Mr. Jaeger? — I just work for Sarah Walker. I'm not…I don't. She's my boss."
Mr. Jaeger and Martens shared a glance, then Mr. Jaeger leaned to Chuck. "Don't tell anyone, but when we first met, I worked for Claire, my wife."
"You did?"
"I did. She had started a small company with money she inherited from her father. She was a beauty, a blond, blue-eyed Texas visionary, and she saw the need for sustainability long before anyone knew the word. She hired me — I was a biochemist, a German, educated in Germany, and I met her at a Paris conference. She hired me that weekend, and I relocated to the US. A few weeks later, she married me. We renamed the company — she liked the sound of my name — began expansion, and the rest is history. So, don't let the boss/employee thing make you think it's impossible."
"But I don't…"
"Chuck, I saw you look at her during and after the signing. I know a stricken man; I have been one."
Chuck's mouth worked but he managed no words. He stopped trying when Roan and Sarah rejoined them. A moment later, Briana did too.
The conversation shrank to small talk. Chuck tried not to meet Sarah's eyes and she returned the favor.
Sarah slid into the rear seat of the car. The driver, the same one from earlier in the day, was holding the door. Chuck was waiting to get in.
For Walker Insurance, the evening had been a great success. For Sarah, it felt like a failure.
Chuck slid in beside her and Sarah smiled at him, knowing her smile was weak. He nodded to her and looked out the front window.
The driver got inside. "StoneHurst Place has a small dinner catered for you. Mr. Jaeger arranged it, knowing that finger foods often leave a body hungry. A small table has been set up in the Fowler Suite, Ms. Walker's suite."
It took Sarah a moment to understand. "Someone's been in my room?" she asked, outrage rising.
The driver hurried on. "Only StoneHurst Place employees. The table will be removed when the two of you are finished."
Sarah looked at Chuck and he looked at her. She turned back to the front, speaking to the driver. "I just left some things out, in my room. Things that were meant to be returned to my suitcase. Things I didn't know were in my suitcase." She kept watch on Chuck from the corner of her eye and saw what she said registered with him.
The driver was perplexed, uncertain. "It will be fine, Ms. Walker. StoneHurst Place has an unimpeachable reputation. Trustworthy and discreet."
"I'm sure," Sarah said, her outrage quickly becoming relief. The driver had inadvertently given her a chance to communicate what she wanted to Chuck without having to say it to him. She hazarded another look at Chuck. He was staring out his window, his head turned from her.
She sat back, feeling like she had cleared the lingerie hurdle.
But there was a higher hurdle, her plan. Roan had her worried about it. She had unthinkingly assumed that Chuck would jump at the chance to become instantly wealthy. But not everyone had the values of Jack Walker, despite her father's constant assurance that anyone who seemed to have different values was only pretending.
Anyone who tells you he or she values anything other than money is conning you, Sarah.
Sarah had experience enough of the world, experience enough of her own, to know that was cynical self-justification, a con's way of excusing himself by making everyone partners in his guilt. But her expectations so often reverted to her father's; she could not help it; it was reflex.
Chuck no doubt could use the money. Sarah had a sense of how he had lived, how his sister lived. Ellie's apartment complex was old, small, dingy. But that Chuck could use the money, needed the money, did not mean he would do just anything to get it. Maybe he would sign the contract, take the money, sell her what she wanted. He was more likely to give it to her, though.
Roan was probably right about that.
And Sarah did want Chuck to be the father of her child. The plane trip had settled that for her, she realized. She wanted him to make her donation. She wanted her child to be half Chuck, so to speak. A little boy or girl who had Chuck's open nature, his palpable goodness.
His smile…
"StoneHurst Place," the driver announced, calling Sarah out of her reverie.
The Fowler Suite, Sarah's suite, was two-level.
On the first level was a white bed with a white half-moon loveseat against its foot. To the side were the desk and the pink and red flowers. Steps, white with black geometric designs climbed, turned, and climbed again to the second level.
On the second level, a loft, was the glass and tile bathroom, replete with a soaking tub for two. The Suite suggested old Hollywood, like a set in a 1930s romance.
Chuck gazed around it. He had no had time when he was there before, when the only color that registered was lavender.
That color was missing now.
Sarah's suitcase was on the floor beside the bed, closed. In front of the loveseat, in front of the sleek electric fireplace (currently burning low since the Atlanta November night had cooled), was a long, narrow table with plates covered with silver lids. Candles burned on the table, their flames seemingly in a dance with the fireplace flames, and they reflected off the silver tops and silverware. The room was alive with flames.
The driver had left them with a StoneHurst Place employee, and she had walked them to the Suite, letting them in. She was now pouring wine at the table. Chuck looked at Sarah, who was still standing by the door. She smiled at him, the first Sarah Walker smile since they had left StoneHurst earlier. Chuck smiled back, making himself stop fighting his confusions and questions, telling himself to enjoy the evening.
He had never been in such opulence, and with a woman of such beauty. His confusions and questions seemed to soften in the candlelight, and make the Suite mysterious, even portentous, as if anything was possible.
The woman finished with the wine and she took Sarah's coat and hung it up, then excused herself.
Sarah waited for her to leave, then she gestured for Chuck to sit down at the table. He did, his back to the fireplace. Sarah walked to the bed and kicked off her heels, sighing. She sat down across from Chuck. As if on cue, they both laughed, awkwardly at first and then more comfortably, more whole-heartedly.
"So, you saw it." Sarah finally said, her tone not quite interrogative, not quite declarative.
"I did," Chuck said softly, "I didn't know what to think."
"No," Sarah commented, shaking her head, "I'm sure you didn't, especially after all that stuff on the plane about me not looking for romance. It must have seemed like I staged the whole thing. The lingerie, the bed, the bottle of water…"
"It sort of did, but…that was not possible…I really didn't know what to think."
During Chuck's following pause, Sarah lifted the lid from her plate.
Beneath it was a steak, a baked potato, and green beans. It smelled terrific and made her mouth water. She knew neither of them had eaten much on the plane or much at the signing. It was good of Jaeger to provide the meal.
Sarah picked up her wine glass and took a sip. She knew better, but she suddenly felt relaxed, and she allowed herself to gaze at Chuck across the top of the glass, and smile. "Why wasn't it possible, Chuck?"
Chuck had taken the lid off his plate and picked up his knife and fork. He was cutting his steak.
Putting down his knife and fork slowly, he looked at her and gave her that rueful smile again. "We covered this on the plane. As I told you, you are Sarah Walker. As you told me, you've stopped dating. You're the boss, I'm the employee. There had to be some other explanation, other than the apparently obvious one."
"It was a practical joke, Chuck. But not mine, Carina's. Carina put it in my suitcase when I was out of my room. She put it right on top, I assume hoping that you might be here when I opened my suitcase so that it could embarrass us both. But it worked out better than she could have hoped, joke-wise."
Chuck laughed — but not with much feeling. He finished his laugh through a small frown. "Yeah, …yeah, I guess so. She's a wildcard."
"A thorn in my flesh," Sarah added, but she felt the shift in Chuck's mood, its quick collapse.
He was being a very good sport about it all, but it was obvious that he had not only thought Sarah might have put the lingerie on display for his benefit, but he had also hoped she had.
Chuck was disappointed, deeply disappointed, but struggling not to show it.
Sarah had spent almost all her time considering her feelings or non-feelings for Chuck, and she had spent nearly none considering his for her. He wanted the lingerie to be for her, for him; he wanted her. His remark on the plane, the one she had heard but not listened to, about recovery, came back to her and she understood it.
Her Personal Assistant had feelings for her. For a moment, Sarah soared.
It was not that being wanted was new to her; it happened often enough — witness the morning's flight attendant.
But it did not happen often where the feeling was fully reciprocated, where she felt all for the man that he felt for her, where she thought her desire matched his.
That had never been true with Bryce. She had liked Bryce at first and had liked him well enough to hope it would become more, but it never really had. Bryce was all bright marquee, dim show. If nothing else, Sarah owed Chuck a debt for emotional clarification: having Chuck near her had shown her how shallow it all had been with Bryce — any depth it seemed to have was an optical illusion, a trick of the lights. Wholly unlike Bryce, Chuck awakened a deep spontaneity in Sarah, one mostly dormant, capped off, a deep spontaneity she both loved and feared…
And then her soaring crashed.
Chuck's feelings for her muddled her plan.
His feelings for her made it less likely he would sign the donor contract, take her money. The donor contract would take what Chuck considered personal and ask him to treat it impersonally. Chuck distrusted impersonal much as Sarah distrusted personal.
But she realized that his feelings for her might make him more likely just to give her what she wanted, to make it a gift to her — once he understood. Once he understood what she wanted, needed.
It would be a circus tightrope to walk: keeping Chuck close enough that he might give her what she wanted, but not so close that asking would be a betrayal, revealing all her dealings with him as manipular from the start. And it would be hard to walk because she was not just ballasted with Chuck's feelings, she was ballasted with her own, extra weight — and not dead weight, living, changing weight.
Sarah ate for a moment as she thought. Then she sat back again, picked up her glass, and smiled at Chuck over it.
She shared not the truth, the whole truth, but a substantial piece of it. "Chuck, just because I'm not dating doesn't mean I'm blind or hard-hearted. You are a terrific man — I told you I was a good judge of character, and I am. At least, I was right about you. All that I told you in my office the day I hired you has proven to be true.
"In just a week, you have impressed me as much as anyone I've ever hired. And I've seen the devil herself kiss you," Sarah joked, although she didn't enjoy her own joke. "You say you are not a ladies' man, and I understand what you mean — you're no player, no Bryce Larkin. But in a different sense, you are a ladies' man. Ladies like you."
Chuck had put his knife and fork down again and listened to Sarah. He seemed to sit straighter as she finished. "Thanks for that. It is true that I'm at a strange, unprecedented stage in my life. Two women seem very interested in me, two lovely women."
"Two?" Sarah said without thinking, still too caught up in the layers of her previous reflections to cotton onto Chuck's meaning.
"Yes, Hannah, the devil, and Amber, the Austen woman from IT."
Chuck's talk of Hannah on the plane had dampened Sarah's jealousy of her. But Sarah had let herself forget about Amber Kitchens. And now she was reminded and reminded that Chuck had not forgotten Amber.
"Oh, yes, right, Amber Kitchens. — You're interested in her?"
Sarah kept her voice neutral but she wanted to throw her glass at the electric fireplace. Sarah's plan was snarled enough without another woman to snarl it more.
Amber Kitchens would not go away, despite Sarah's efforts to get her out of the way.
Chuck studied the question for a moment, looking abstractedly at his plate. "I suppose I am." He glanced up at Sarah and then back down at his plate. "But there's a lot to think about . — I don't know Walker Insurance's policy on workplace dating."
Sarah shrugged. "It's permitted, as long as both remain professional at work. I dated Bryce, remember. Hard to disallow to the employees what the boss herself is doing."
Chuck seemed happy about the policy but he seemed unhappy to be reminded about Sarah and Bryce. A flash of envy crossed his face and was gone — but Sarah caught it. His eyes strayed to her suitcase.
He pulled them back to her and composed himself, his face. He picked up his glass and drained it.
"Well, this was nice, but I'm going to excuse myself and go to my room. The flight, the city, the contract signing, the party — it's all tired me. Thanks for everything today, Sarah." He stood up and began to gather his things.
Sarah stood up and walked to the Suite door, arriving ahead of Chuck. When he reached it, she was standing with her back against the door. He stopped, puzzled.
"I'm sorry about Carina's joke, Chuck, that my tormentor became your tormentor too. Put all that out of your mind. I have some plans for us tomorrow, starting with a place for breakfast. Meet me here early, say at 8 am?"
Chuck nodded. And then Sarah said something she did not plan to say, something spontaneous. "You know, I bought that lingerie one day when I was shopping with Carina. It was when I was dating Bryce. But I never wore it, never took the price tag off it. Bryce never so much as saw it."
Sarah was unsure why she shared that. But Chuck's demeanor shifted. He smiled and nodded and slipped out the door when Sarah opened it. "See you tomorrow, boss. Bright and early."
Sarah closed the door.
She stood there for a moment, trying to gauge the point and effect of her final words to Chuck, then she sighed and gave up. She called the desk and the woman from earlier came and quickly gathered up the dinner things, put out the candles, turned up the fireplace, then left.
When the woman was gone, Sarah got up from her seat at the desk and walked to her suitcase, put it on the bed, and opened it. There, carefully folded, was the lingerie.
She took it out and put it on the bed, digging her PJs out of the suitcase.
Upstairs, Sarah took off her pants suit, took a bath, and got ready for bed.
When she came back downstairs, the lingerie stared at her with one unblinking lavender eye.
Sarah picked the lingerie up and held it out again, then held it against her.
Again, it ignited visions in her head.
Holding it in one hand, she pulled back the covers and got in bed. Sitting up, she draped the lingerie on the white bedspread.
She wanted to put it on and phone Chuck. Tell him to run back to her. She wanted to see him see her in it.
She wanted that so badly that her whole body was aflame with longing — as if the flames from the fireplace had jumped to her bed, moving like a forest fire, raging.
But she did not make the call; she would not allow herself any more spontaneity.
She scrunched under the covers, balling herself up, pulling the covers over her head. She left the lingerie above the covers, empty and alone.
Ellie had the remnants of the merlot in her glass and she was on her sofa, sipping them slowly.
Ellie had changed into a t-shirt and PJ bottoms, her old floppy house slippers. She'd replayed dinner in her head and then coasted along on her emotions, her pleasure, and her excitement. A feeling of newness suffused her. It seemed like her apartment was larger, that she was younger.
She did not want to get ahead of herself. It had been one date and ended with a kiss only a smidgen more than sisterly, but it had been a good date. Ellie had felt like herself all evening, and the worry that she would feel like a betrayer had passed before John arrived, never to return. Devon would always be the great love of her youth, her marvelous first husband, and father of her daughter, but she now knew she could move on.
She could remember him without forgetting that she still had a future.
She finished the wine, got up, and padded to Clara's room. Captain Murderer was still on the foot of the bed where John put it down. Ellie picked it up and returned it to Clara's shelf of favorites. Bending down, Ellie lightly brushed her lips against her soundly-sleeping daughter's forehead. As Ellie stood up, she saw the red streak on Clara's face and chuckled softly.
Ellie would call John tomorrow. She wanted to go out again soon. Chuck would be back, so he could watch Clara.
Ellie wanted to go out with John Casey, and she wanted more kisses, less sisterly kisses.
Gregory did not like coffee, but Bryce had demanded that they meet in a coffee shop. Gregory had ordered a cup, and taken it to a corner booth, but he had not taken a drink. He just stared at it when he was not staring at his phone.
Gregory's phone read 9 pm. Bryce should show up at any minute.
Stupid scheme. He should never have let Bryce talk him into it. But he had been so flattered when Bryce Larkin singled him out, wanting to be his friend. Gregory had spent all of high school jealous of guys like Bryce Larkin, laughed at by them, lorded over by them.
Until college, and then those guys were paying Gregory to write their papers, do their homework. Bryce had befriended him, cultivated him, and then asked for the favor. He wanted Gregory to find a way to download WI in-house documents. Gregory knew that Bryce was working for Langston Graham at Mutual of Omaha. But Gregory thought someone was behind Graham, that this attack on WI was not just the product of a rival company. Someone else was footing the bill, paying Larkin's money, Gregory's money.
Gregory should never have agreed to Larkin's proposal, but Gregory wanted desperately to impress Amber Kitchens, to find something to move her from occasional bedmate to girlfriend. More money seemed like it might do it. But once Larkin paid him, Gregory found himself afraid to spend the money, afraid that if he did, he would be fully involved in Bryce's scheme; Gregory would have taken the thirty pieces of silver.
So, he had a bulging bank account, and yet he was watching as Amber fell for another guy, Chuck Bartowski, the Cinderella Man.
And Amber was making Gregory's efforts to obscure or erase all traces of what he had done for Bryce much more difficult. So far, Gregory had made little headway. Amber was seated beside him, normally exactly what Gregory wanted, but now she was watching what he did, and he was afraid that she would figure out what he was working at.
He was trapped between his past, which he now regretted, and a future that felt like it was slipping through his fingers.
He looked up; the door opened. Larkin strode in, King of the World, in a suit that Gregory could not wear even if he could now afford it. The young woman behind the counter, a pretty barista with blonde hair and a Hollywood smile, gifted Bryce with that smile. She hadn't shared it with Gregory. The smile made it clear she was willing to share more with Bryce.
Gregory took a swig of his cold, bitter coffee, mud.
The world's a fucked-up place; it probably tastes like goddamn coffee.
A/N: Next time, we learn more about Bryce's espionage, Chuck reckons with his Friday and begins his Saturday in Atlanta with Sarah. Ellie goes back to the Buy More for more batteries, and Casey's Larkin suspicions expand.