for Black Pearl....apparently i'm writing this for you and me at this point. Lol.
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Working Title
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Sunday Afternoon, Oct. 27
"Mr. Luthor, an Isis Ross is on Line Three."
Lex looked up from his laptop. "Put her through."
"Yes, sir."
"And Mrs. Caldhaume. . ."
"Yes, Mr. Luthor?"
"It's Sunday. Go home. I'll see you tomorrow morning."
She thanked him as flatly as she had told him he'd had a call. But that was Mrs. Caldhaume. The last time she made a great show of emotion was when Lex had asked her to come in on a weekend while she was retching-sick with the flu. Admittedly Lex hadn't known she was sick and Mrs. Caldhaume had been high on cold medicine.
Lex now made a point of asking how she was everyday.
"Ice. What's the verdict?"
"LL. It's a no-go. Sorry." Her voice was distant, tinny, omnipresent, over the speakerphone.
Lex considered switching her from surround-sound to his desk phone speaker. He left it. "Kwan won't set you free?" he asked.
He heard her sigh and it was like a soft breeze. He left her on surround-sound. "Something like that," she answered.
"How about dinner?" he asked. "Think we can manage that?"
"I'm not sure I trust that tone of voice, Lex. Especially when I can't see your."
Lex paused in his spreadsheet reading. "Oh?"
"Yes, 'oh.' This wouldn't happen to be a date, would it?"
"Why Miss Ross, I'm wounded."
She laughed. "I'm sure you are, Lex."
"So tomorrow night? Dinner? I'll tell you how your proposal went over."
Isis looked around herself. The room she was renting was tidy, if small -- even partially furnished. But it said something about her emotional state that she felt the need to sit on the floor and was seriously contemplating having Raspberry, her burgundy and black toy panda, express-mailed to Smallville.
"You're taking far too long to think about this, Ice."
"Sure. Why not? A girl's gotta eat sometime, right?"
"So I've heard. How 'bout you meet me at the office and we'll figure it out from there?"
"Sounds like a plan, Lex."
"Tomorrow then."
"Lex! Wait . . .How casual or not is this 'business' dinner."
He smirked at her air-quotes.
"I mean, will I have to fancy myself first or can I just be the jeans n'sneakers chica and truck-it direct from the H.S."
"Run that by me again. In English."
Isis passed a hand over her face. She knew she was tired when either (a) she stopped making sense or (2) she only made sense to herself. "Should I dress up or will jeans and sneakers be okay?"
"I didn't think you owned a pair of sneakers, Ice."
"You'd be surprised what you don't know," she muttered, her patience going the way of her energy. South.
"Whatever you wear will be perfect, I'm sure," Lex answered drily.
Surprisingly a smile cracked Isis' face. "'Til tomorrow Lex."
"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Parting is such sweet sorrow."
Laughing a final goodbye, Isis hung up. But then she looked around the room that was, hopefully, her temporary home and her laughter took on a decidedly darker mien.
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Monday Evening, Oct. 28
"Aren't you afraid someone's going to link us together?" Isis asked. They were well into dinner: past small-talk and just teetering on the edge of leaving the business aspect of their meal for the social.
There'd been a car waiting for her outside when school let out. She recognized Lex's driver. "Enrique, right?" He'd nodded. "Lex sent you to pick me up?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Spiffy. And call me Isis," she said as she tossed her bag in the opened back door. Her laptop bag went in after and she followed. "Isis," she reminded Enrique, just before he closed the door. "Isis."
"Yes, ma'am."
Lex wiped his mouth with his dinner napkin. "Link us how?"
He had been sitting in the outer office, waiting for her, when Isis stepped out the elevator. With unabashed admiration, she had watched Lex gracefully unfold himself from the chair. "Been waiting long?" she'd asked, her eyes roaming freely along his body.
"Not at all." He'd walked her back to the elevator bank. "You look lovely by the way."
Isis rested an elbow on the table, her cheek pressed into her fist. "As an item. A couple. Me, your latest gold-digging tart, and you my long-awaited beau. Depending on whose hometown paper you read, Metropolis or Gotham, of course."
"Of course."
She'd laughed at him in the elevator. Looking from her chalk streaked blue-jeans and brown dress-boots to Lex's sincerely bland face, Isis had smiled. "You know I'd forgotten how charming you can be. How dangerous of me," she'd added, turning to the opening elevator doors.
Lex picked up his wine glass. "Well, it can't be worse than the last time my love life was front-page news. And at least I can justifiably deny all this." Nodding the glass in her direction, Lex took a sip. And remembered a different dinner with a different woman over the same glass of wine.
Isis frowned delicately, pushing a stray green braid out of her eyes. "I heard about that."
"Who didn't?"
"Her name was Desire or some--"
"Des'ree," Lex corrected her quickly. He took another sip of wine. "Her name was Des'ree Atkins . . .Luthor."
Isis sat back. "I'm sorry, Lex. I didn't mean to pry."
"Dangerous how?" Lex had asked, amused.
Isis had rolled her eyes as they stepped out the elevator. "Oh, you know . . ."
"No," he put a possessive hand on her elbows, "I don't."
She swiveled in his minor embrace, walking backward as she said, "Yes. You do." And then she smiled, righted herself and slid her fingers into his. "So what do you have in mind for din?"
It was Lex's turn to sit forward in his chair. He picked up his fork. "Sounds like you know something about prying." At her blank look he added, "About being burned by love?"
Storm clouds passed over her eyes and Lex imagined that he could see condensation flow from her nostrils as her blood became ice. He reached across the table and stole a shrimp from her penné. It was rude and distasteful, he knew, but it had the desired effect.
Funny, Lex rarely found himself on the other side of his own smirk.
"Burned, hmm . . ."
Lex sensed rather than felt her legs stretch out until a fractional motion on his part would have been a caress. Her right hand came up out of her crossed arms to caress her collarbone until she worked her hand to her right shoulder. Clasped it. Looked out the window. "I guess you could say I was burned," she answered finally.
This was the Ice Princess he had known at school, Lex decided. He had always suspected the cool haughty demeanor was a front she'd worn around him and his friends; had suspected that what he'd thought were wild personality fits were closer to the "true" Isis. If he could ever figure out who that was. Lex thought . . . Lex shook his head, deciding he thought too much.
"Well then, it sounds like we could both use some buzz," he said as he reached for her right hand, gently caressing her cheek.
"Lex?"
His fingers curled around hers until he could stroke them over the first knuckle. "People are going to talk. You said so yourself." Slowly he brought Isis' hand to his lips. "Let's give them something to talk about."
"'How about love?'" she asked skeptically, eyes focused intently on their hands.
"Love be damned." Lex's lips whispered across Isis' skin, his breath hot and moist, before he pressed a kiss onto her fingers. Someone somewhere was taking pictures, the knew, but that didn't stop Lex from lingering too long or Isis from staring too intently. Tomorrow they would be someone's front page news and they didn't care.
Lex saw the new Isis, or rather the old Isis he had never known, peek out from iced chocolate eyes. She smiled and it was all Seduction. Like the way her teeth tugged at her lower lip or how she had managed to be the one holding his hand, caressing his fingers with her thumb: Oh, Lex had freed the Ice Princess all right.
He raised an eyebrow when she slid a stockinged foot up his trouser leg.
With a small, deceptively innocent, laugh she answered his unasked question: "They're low boots. I can toe them on and off."
"That . . .certainly has its uses."
"Mmm, indeed."
"Weren't we supposed to be talking business, Miss Ross?" Lex said without much sincerity. He was enjoying himself. And they both knew it.
"I thought that was all done, Mr. Luthor."
"There have been rumors of your life being saved by a young Mr. Kent?"
Isis smiled fondly. "Clark's a great kid. I really must figure out a way to repay him. Too bad he's sixteen and my favorite cousin's best friend."
Lex made a noncommittal grunt. "Speaking of Mr. Ross, I hear from our favorite reporter that you two still aren't talking."
Isis dropped her foot and Lex's hand. "Yes, and me being the main item of importance in this weeks Torch really isn't helping. It's all your fault you know."
"Mine?"
"Pete thinks I'm sleeping with you. Or did. Oh jeez! And probably will again if some rag really does print pics of us together." Isis sighed heavily.
"You Rosses. So much drama."
Isis swatted Lex playfully. "Hey, let's get out of here. I have the sudden need for an ice cream cone. And a favor to ask."
Twenty minutes later they were in the limo and halfway through their cones. "What favor, Isis?"
"Hmm? Oh. Be my date for the Harvest Ball. I've been roped into chaperoning and--"
Lex gave a soft chuckle. "And why would I want to do that?" he asked, taking a long lick of an ice-cream drip racing toward his fingers.
"Excuse me?" Isis rounded on him. "You owe me, Mister."
"No, I believe you owe me."
"Nuh uh, buddy. At worst we're probably dead-even."
"What about the rescue from Metropolis?" he asked.
"I practically wrote your proposal," she countered.
"I've kept your less-than-legal drug use secret too," he reminded her.
"And I've kept some of the more incriminating parts of your past to myself as well, Lex. So you see: dead-even." Isis took a triumphant bite out of her cone.
"All right then," Lex conceded, "then what do I get out of it?"
With a tsk Isis said, "I thought it would have been obvious. Good PR, Lex. Good PR. C'mon, LL, it's one evening out of your life. Why are you fighting this so hard?"
"Actually I'm not. I have every intention of going." Lex turned to her. "I just wanted to see how far you'd go to convince me. How good your negotiating skills are."
Isis' mouth gaped. "Why you . . .!" She reached over and ate the last of Lex's cone from his hand. His eyebrows climbed when she made a show of finishing hers off, then licking her already pristine fingertips clean.
She spared him a faux-haughty glance. "Serves you right." There was a devilish twinkle in her eyes that made Lex wonder if she'd lick his hands clean, but he didn't bring it up. Instead their talk turned rather mundane until it petered out altogether into, surprisingly, companionable silence.
Lex noticed how she stroked her arm rest with her thumb unconsciously as their trip neared its end. He was about to mention it when he felt the car slow. "There can't be traffic this time of night. Not in Smallville at least," he amended after nightmare memories of LA traffic-jams surfaced.
"No traffic," Isis assured him, "just my stop. Me and Enrique worked it out on the way to your office."
Although no one could see into the private car Lex had a very good view out. "This isn't the Ross'."
"Why Holmes, you've done it again," Isis said with an affected English accent.
With a slight frown Lex admitted that he didn't understand.
"Which only means you're the only person in town who doesn't know I've 'moved' out of my aunt and uncle's house." Isis slid out the car and looked up at the boarding house.
Lex followed. "You moved out?"
"Well that's what my people are telling the press," she said in full Hollywood gossip-queen mode. But then she slumped against the car, as if it were all too much and she was tired of pretending. "Actually they kicked me out. Bad influence on the cuz and all that rot. Disrespectful. Blah blah blah."
"Would you go back if you could?"
Isis turned to face Lex. She had been staring up at what she knew was her room. "No. I really do keep erratic hours and . . .Well the last time they saw me I wasn't quite thirteen and I don't think an adult Isis -- the idea of an adult Isis -- has really sunk in yet. And I'm just grown enough to not want to deal with my family's hang-ups, you know?
"All too well."
Isis cracked a smile. A quick one. "Thanks for dinner and conversation Lex. I'll call you about the whole Har-"
"How about staying with me?"
"-vest Ball thing. Huh?"
"Stay with me at the Mansion. There's more than enough room for you. And it's rent free."
Isis took a step back, mildly shell-shocked. "Feeling generous, Lex?"
"Yes. Now agree before I change my mind."
"And demanding too." Isis laughed. "Maybe I will. Does that mean I owe you now?"
Lex thought about it. "If you had asked, probably, but I'm offering. C'mon Isis, let me surprise you by being a decent human being."
"Hey, sure. Why not."
They decided she'd move in after school, before the ball, giving Isis time to re-pack and the staff to prepare a room. "You mean I won't be sharing with the master of the house?" Isis quipped.
"No," Lex said with finality as he climbed back in the car. Watching her cross the street to the boarding house before Enrique sped away, Lex added a "Not yet," for his ears only.
Author's Note: so I took someone's advice and italicized the past scenes. i wasn't going to do it initially, but now that i have i'm glad i did. thx for the advice peeps.