She was guiding her car up the driveway to the Luthor mansion. When she came to the security guard post, she reached to flash the ID she had shown before. The guard just looked at her car and let her in without a second glance. With all of that money, he places his safety in the hands of that kind of security, she thought.
She had grabbed her artist's tube and her laptop and began walking to the door. It was still light out, but she assumed someone would be home. Before she reached the main door, it swung open. Mark stood smiling at her. She smiled and said, "Mark, good to see you again."
"It's good to see you again, Ms. Rhone," he said, moving aside so she could enter.
"Just Rhone," she said smiling and touching his elbow.
She really is nice, he thought to himself. "Mr. Luthor has," he hesitated, "left instructions for you to be allowed to see him when you arrived."
She looked at him, "He knew I was coming?"
Mark looked embarrassed, "Well, he left those instructions after you left on Monday."
She raised an eyebrow; that was the evening she came over and confronted him about the particle accelerator. It was before she even knew she had to leave to do that chemical arms job.
"I'll show myself up," Rhone said with a small smile.
"He is in his office," Mark said with a gesture toward the general direction of the office.
Lex had just sunk the last striped ball into the nearest pocket. He lined up for his next shot. There was a light knock on the door. He didn't look up. "Yes," he said clearly.
There was a pause, "Sir, I couldn't find the shovel."
Lex wrinkled his face but didn't move otherwise, "What shovel?"
"The one to dig the moat, you know, for around the castle?" the muffled voice said.
"Why would we need a moat?" Lex was agitated and started to walk swiftly to the door. This servant was going to get their ass kicked.
"How else are we supposed to keep the Black Knight at bay?" the voice said in a mocking tone.
Lex reached the door and angrily whipped it open, "YOU…" Lex stopped in mid sentence. He looked right into the wide smile of Rhone Chade. He paused. She was leaning against the doorframe, holding her laptop case in one hand and her artist's tube was over her left shoulder. She was dressed much more casually than he had ever seen her. She was wearing her "normal clothes," cargo pants and a dark fitted t-shirt. Her hair, however, was up as usual.
"Are you going to fire me, Mr. Luthor?" Rhone laughed as she straightened as to not lean on the doorframe. He smiled widely at her; she actually saw teeth. "It suits you," she said more seriously.
"What suits me? Being mocked by government employees?" he said as he gestured for her to enter his office.
"That too," she said with her back to him. She was walking toward his desk and he followed closely.
"What can I do for you, Rhone?" he asked, sitting behind his desk.
When he sat, she noticed the two katanas that were on a rack behind his desk. They hadn't moved since the last time she was here. What a waste. If a sword could feel dishonor, they probably were. Collecting the dust of the rich and famous instead of gleaming in the light of a battle. She looked at him with raised eyebrows. "The question is, Mr. Luthor, what can I do for you?" she asked. She reached in one of her pockets and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to him.
He opened it and in his handwriting it read:
Rhone,
Please contact me when you get this.
Lex
"You can stop calling me Mr. Luthor," he said. He refolded it and set it on his desk. He didn't know why he went to the Smallville Hotel or wrote that note or called -- a number of times when she didn't return. "I was wondering if there was something wrong with the invoices, you were gone for so long," he said, looking up from the desk at her.
She was still standing on the other side of his desk. "If there was a problem with your invoices, Mr. Luthor, I would have come to you directly. I think I have shown that to you through -- example," she said, dancing around the particle accelerator topic.
He gave her a wry smile as he leaned back in his chair. "Thank you for that," he meant what he said. Everyone always tried to go behind his back when they had a question, avoiding him.
He did notice that she was still calling him, Mr. Luthor. He wanted her to stop and just call him Lex.
She got the feeling that he wanted her to talk about where she went with that "gone for so long" comment. She didn't owe it to him, but she found herself giving an explanation anyway. "There was a problem at my office," she said. "Then, I had to wait for something. You know how that goes," she said with a small wave of her hand.
"Of course," he said with a small nod.
You have no idea, she thought.
"I tried calling your office," he began, "there was no answer."
Rhone didn't betray her surprise that he had tried so -- adamantly to find her. She lied all the time about what she was and what she really did. "We were busy," she replied simply.
"You don't have secretaries?" Lex asked about the oddness of the situation.
"We normally don't get calls," she answered. She picked the note off the desk again and looked at it. "We're pretty boring people," she elaborated.
"I don't believe that, about you anyway," he believed what he said. He raised his eyebrows slightly. He gestured for her to sit down.
Rhone didn't like talking about herself. He did that the last time she was here. Before she met him, she thought he would be the kind of guy who only wanted to talk about himself. Why did she think that? When people have money, you assume things about them. That is why she took the precautions she did.
She was tempted to sit and talk with him. It was only 3 pm. To make a show of it she actually checked her watch as she stealthily put the note back into her pocket. "I would love to, Mr. Luthor, but I have to…" she smiled widely when she looked back at him, "throw some serious shit down while it's still light out."
He looked confused at what she just said. "…What?" he asked softly. Maybe he didn't hear her correctly.
She continued to smile at him. She gestured toward her clothes, "I just stopped by before I went skating. Are you offended?"
"You look great," he said. He thought she really did look great. She looked comfortable and relaxed with who she was. She always did, but she seemed to like the clothes she was in.
"That isn't what I meant," she said. That comment made her feel -- she didn't know. The last guy that said something like that to her wound up -- indisposed for an indefinite amount of time. But he said it a much more coarsely than Lex had said it.
"You should stay for dinner," he changed the subject.
She wasn't forgetting it was early in the afternoon. Rhone thought about eating at the local sub shop, again. She didn't mind eating there. She had eaten much worse but she had been getting a lot of it in the past week. "You eat dinner this early?" she asked.
He smiled, "No, normally 5." He saw her thinking about it. She was living in a hotel; she was eating out every night at best. She might be eating out of the hotel vending machines.
"I -- couldn't bother you until then," she thought of how intrusive that would be.
"You wouldn't be bothering me," he got up, walked to the other side of his desk, and leaned his hip against it.
She furrowed her eyebrows, "Are you going to keep me in the dungeon until then?"
"There is no dungeon," Lex said with a small laugh.
"No moat and no dungeon. Mr. Luthor, I'm disappointed. I've been playing D&D long enough to know that this castle is sub-par," she said with a wide grin.
He kept the smile on his face. No one ever spoke to him the way she did. He doubted anyone ever spoke to any Luthor the way she spoke to him. She was always joking he knew, but most people never took the chance. What was it about her that was different from almost everyone else? He realized that she wasn't afraid of him. As he came to that realization, he self-consciously ran his hand over his smooth head. "Do you avoid every question that is asked of you?" he asked.
"Normally," she said, suddenly stoic.
There was a pause. He remembered the invitation that he had extended to her. "I believe we are having Italian," he said. Maybe she wouldn't catch that he decided for her. She gave him a sideways glance. She noticed.
She loved Italian, not that she wouldn't eat anything put in front of her. She had eaten more kinds of bugs and bizarre creatures (both cooked and raw) to not care about something like that anymore. She set her computer case on one of the chairs that she had been offered previously.
Lex inwardly smiled. Victory. He looked at her artist's tube still on her back, "Until then, why don't you show me your art."
This was a bad idea. She never kept her art in the tube. "I don't have any with me," she said. He gave her a disbelieving look. "Really," she began, "it's blank right now." She gestured at the tube on her back, implying the "paper" inside. "I was going to start something new when I was done skating," she finished. She didn't know why, but it felt -- wrong lying to him. That never happened. No, actually that was happening a lot lately.
He didn't believe her, but the fact that she was lying didn't anger him. He had a lot of expensive art in his house; that could be intimidating. Maybe she just started doing it and wasn't that good. He wouldn't mind if it sucked. He would still tell her it was good, just for sharing it with him. "Well, when you get something…" he started.
There was a small beep that began emanating from his desk. He recognized it as the call transfer signal on his phone. Out of habit, he walked over to the phone. There weren't many people that called his house, especially on a Sunday. Remembering he wasn't alone, he looked up at her.
She gestured for him to take the call. He had done the same courtesy for her when they were in his office and her cell phone rang. He sat down in his chair and picked up the phone, "Lex Luthor." There was a brief pause as his listened. "No, Dad," he said flatly.
That was enough for Rhone. She knew enough about their relationship to know that she should not be in this room. Lex was just too nice to tell her to get the hell out. She turned and took a few steps to leave but heard a noise behind her. She looked back and Lex was standing again, looking at her.
He thought she was going to leave. She looked at her computer still on the chair and then back to him. She wouldn't just leave it at his house. He sat back down and said into the phone, "I'm still here."
She didn't like the tone that he had in his voice. Something was going on. Maybe she should make it her business -- or it was a family matter and she should stay out of it. Her military side said to find out all that she could, Luthor Corp. wasn't the cleanest or nicest company in the country. This could be great inside information. But another side told her that that wasn't why she was here. She wasn't in Smallville for military reasons. And besides, it was Lex's personal life. She turned again and walked out the door.