The Tsai family sees us back to our hotel before saying dramatic good-byes to my assistant. Hell, they even give me air kisses before departing.
Finally! I have the intriguing Miss Steele all to myself. I invite her to join me in the hotel bar for a celebratory drink. As we cross the lobby, she tucks her adorable little hand into the crook of my arm without missing a step in her sexy-as-fuck Louboutins. I put my hand over hers and flash my patented, panty-dropping grin. She returns the smile with a twinkle in her eye. This little hurricane makes me feel ten feet tall.
Before I can review the English version of the wine list, Mrs. Steele summons the server and orders in Mandarin. I raise an eyebrow.
"Sorry," she laughs. "I didn't think that you would mind."
"That depends. What did you order?"
"A good bottle of sake. I thought that we could toast to your new shipyard."
"Great minds think alike. I was going to do the same."
She bites her lip. My dick begins to press against the zipper of my Tom Ford suit pants.
We toast to the deal and every other thing that we can think of. Ms. Steele insists that I start calling her Ana. She keeps me laughing as she tells me stories of her semester abroad with Thomas.
After our second bottle of sake, she lets it slip that Thomas is gay. It turns out that Ana intervened when Thomas was contemplating ending his life. He confided that he felt like a disappointment and failure to his family. On one of their many weekends together with his family, Ana sat and held his hand as he came out of the closet to his very traditional parents. The only shame that Mr. and Mrs. Tsai felt was that their son was afraid they would reject him. The Tsai family embrace their son's homosexuality and credit Miss Steele with saving his life. No wonder these people love her so much.
Over our third bottle of sake, I realize that I am just as smitten with Ana as is the Tsai family. She is enthralling. Her stories are laced with equal parts humor and humility. She tells me of her over-the-top roommate, Katherine Kavanaugh. She describes Kate as her ride or die, whatever that is. I notice that Ana fails to mention her family. When I ask about them, she is quick to redirect the conversation.
I find myself telling her about my family. She asks me about my brother and sister as well as my parents. I find myself offering up details that I never discuss like my adoption and dropping out of Harvard to start GEH. Our conversation flows effortlessly from one get-to-know-you topic to another. I cannot recall ever enjoying myself as much as I do talking with this five foot, four inch firecracker.
"You have explained why you didn't reveal that you speak Mandarin, but why didn't you tell me that you know the Tsai family or that you spent time in Taipei?"
"Well, I had no idea that Thomas's family owned the shipyard, I swear." She holds three fingers up in some sort of scout pledge. "I know that his family's business has its hand in a lot of pots, but I had no reason to believe that the shipyard was part of their holdings."
"Surely you contacted Thomas to tell him that you would be in his home country? He and his father seemed surprised to see you this morning."
Cue her angelic giggles, "I should have let them know that I would be here. Honestly, you seemed so pissed off after I booked this trip. I knew that if the Tsai's knew that I was going to be in town, they would want to see me. I was worried that you would be even angrier if you found me carving out time to visit them. I decided that it was just easier if I kept myself available to you the whole time that we were here."
Damn straight, I need Miss Steele available to me 24/7.
"Also, the GEH NDA is pretty ironclad. I wasn't even sure if I was allowed to tell the Tsai's that I work for you."
"Your surprise visit certainly made negotiations easy. I have a feeling that Mr. Tsai would have sold the shipyard for pennies on the dollar if only I had let you handle the deal."
"Probably," Ana jokes. "What can I say? They love me!"
She shrugs her shoulders and gives me a big smile. When Ana gets up to use the restroom, I catch a glimpse of her backside. She has a perfect ass framed by cute, little swaying hips. Her dress hugs her in all the right places despite its simplicity. I find myself wondering what type of lingerie she has on under it. I run my finger across my lip as I consider the many options for what her undergarments might look like. A delightful number of scenarios run through my mind and straight to my dick. Visions of peeling off her panties leave me hard as stone.
I wonder If Miss Steele might be up for getting down in my hotel room tonight? I quickly force the thought out of my head. Rule number one: Don't fuck the staff. Ana has been nothing but professional on this trip. The last thing she needs is her new boss pawing at her in a foreign hotel room.
Just as I manage to talk my dick down, Ana returns from the ladies room. Every man in the bar stops to stare as she rocks her stilettos in a razor straight line to me. That's right, fuckers. She is with me.
"Are you up for another bottle," I ask her, pointing to the empty sake bottle on our table.
"Heavens, no," she laughs. "I am pretty sure that I am going to be praying to the porcelain gods in about an hour."
"Are you drunk?" Odd, she seems perfectly sober.
"Yep," she says, popping the P.
"We were having such a good time, that I didn't pay attention to how much I was drinking. I'm usually a cheap date when it comes to alcohol. I'm not much of a drinker."
"Let's get some water in you and get you back to your room before you turn into a pumpkin," I suggest. More giggles. I could make it my life's work to elicit those giggles.
I sign for our tab and offer Ana my arm. Despite her self-proclaimed drunkenness, she keeps it high and tight on our walk across the lobby. I am a proud peacock.
The first sign of Miss Steele's downward spiral comes when she removes her high heels while we wait for the elevator. By the time we enter the lift, her face is bright red and she is fanning herself like a grandma at singles' bingo. She leans against the wall to steady herself for the ride. Upon exiting the lift, Ana leans into a large trash can and proceeds to repeatedly vomit. I hold her hair and rub her back as she begins to speak Drunk Girl, another foreign language that she speaks fluently.
I half support, half pull her to her hotel room door. Only, she picks the wrong door. A very large man, speaking what I think is Portuguese, throws open the door. He holds up his fist in the international sign for 'run for your life.' This only serves to make Ana throw her head back in roaring laughter. I grab her arm and carry-drag her further down the hall muttering apologies to the Portuguese over my shoulder.
After pissing off a second room's occupants, I phone Taylor to ask him for Miss Steele's correct room number. It turns out that we aren't even on the right floor. Ana catches her second wind. We run for the elevators before hotel security responds to reports of attempted break-ins on the sixth floor.
Ana is exceptionally fluent in Drunk Girl. She is now rapidly cycling between cackling laughter and sloppy tears. I cannot fully translate, but I think that she is both crying and laughing because she puked in front of her boss.
By the time we reach her room, I am carrying my emotionally labile assistant piggyback. At some point, she manages to tuck a Louboutin in each of my suit coat pockets. Her hands brush across my chest but the touch does not hurt. That's unexpected. I use her key card and drop her on the bed. Fuck, when did she pass out? Is it safe to leave her here alone? Ana is the only female traveling in our group. I have no female colleague to come babysit her.
What is the etiquette in this situation - young female assistant loses consciousness after drinking alone with her single boss while out of the country? I resort to pressing my equivalent of the nuclear launch button. I call my brother Elliott.
"What," he groans into the phone.
"Are you sleeping, asshole?"
"Of course I am, dickhead. What do you want?"
"Why are you in bed? It's, like, 8 am in Seattle."
"8 am on a Sunday morning, asshole. That's the middle of the night for normal people. What time is it where you are?"
"It's 1 am here."
"Why are you calling me at 1 am? You never call me when you are out of town."
"I need your help, Elliott." This catches my older brother's attention. I have never, and I mean never, asked him for help.
"Fuck, what did you do? Did you kill a hooker? Oh my God, you did, didn't you? Ok, you need to get rid of the…"
"For God's sake," I interrupt. "It's nothing like that. Nobody is dead. Focus, Elliott! I have a problem with an alive girl, and I don't know what to do."
"Oh, that's easy, you just squeeze the tip of the condom and roll it down your dick. Make sure that it's lubricated or else it will hurt when you pop your cherry."
"SHUT UP, YOU IDIOT!" I whisper-yell. "I know how to use a condom, jackass. That's not the problem." Elliott goes silent.
"My assistant and I went out for drinks to celebrate closing a big deal. She got drunk and threw up in the hallway. Now, she's passed out drunk in her room. I don't know what to do. If I stay to babysit her, she might freak out and think that I raped her or something. If I leave, she could vomit again and choke and die. What do I do, Lelliott?"
To my brother's credit, he takes my question seriously. "Ok, Christian, Here's what you are going to do. Call down to the front desk and ask if they have any female staff that are about to get off of work and want to make some extra money. Get whoever it is to sign one of your fancy NDAs. Make sure that you ask for someone that speaks English so your assistant won't freak out when she wakes up with a strange woman watching her."
"She speaks Mandarin."
"Who speaks Mandarin?"
"My assistant. She speaks Mandarin so she wouldn't freak out if the woman doesn't speak English."
"Is she Chinese?"
"Is who Chinese?"
"Jesus lil bro, are you drunk, too? Your assistant. Is she from China?"
"No, she's from Montesano. We are in Taiwan."
"Shit, you are drunk, Christian."
"Probably."
"Do I need to call Taylor to babysit the both of you?"
"No way," Why do I suddenly feel so tired? "I don't want him staring at my girl."
"Your girl? Christian, are you fucking the staff? You know that's against the rules. Never fuck the staff!"
"I'm not fucking the staff. I gotta go. I need to lie down." The last thing that I remember is falling face first onto the bed beside Ana.