Just Like a Man (14 page)

Thomas Brown, who was known elsewhere in Indianapolis—and elsewhere in the world—as T. Paxton Brown, rolled his Harley to a stop in one of the five parking spaces reserved for the CEO of CompuPax Computers, barely noticing the solid gold nameplate affixed to the wall. He had other things on his mind at the moment, things that were infinitely more appealing than gold. Miss Selby Hudson, for example. And Miss Selby Hudson's little plaid skirt, for another. And what it would be like to push Miss Selby Hudson's little plaid skirt up, and pull Miss Selby Hudson's panties down, and set Miss Selby Hudson bare-assed back on her desk so that he could do to her all the things he'd spent the evening fantasizing about.

Hell, if he'd had more teachers like her in high school, he never would have dropped out.

Christ, man, she's young enough to be your daughter,
he chastised himself.
But only if I got her mother pregnant in high school,
he quickly replied. Because Pax knew from the material he'd received from the adult returning education program that all the teachers who worked in the program had master's degrees or higher. So Selby Hudson had to be around twenty-three years old. Which only made her nineteen years Pax's junior.

And hey, nineteen wasn't so much. Especially for a man who was planning to live forever.

Unsnapping the black helmet, Pax pulled it forward, off of his head, and ran his gloved hands briskly through his hair. He'd been thinking he needed to get it cut, but now he thought he might grow it long. Or, at least, longer. No need to spook the board of directors again by letting it get too out of hand. They were still steamed over the tattoo he'd had inked on his back two summers ago. He couldn't imagine why. The dragon that completely obscured his left shoulder blade and half of his lower back was a goddamned work of art.

Pax nudged down the kickstand with the heel of his boot, then looped his leg gracefully over the vehicle's seat, not bothering to lock it up or take any security precautions. The CompuPax Pavilion, where Pax both lived and worked, was a fortress, plain and simple. No one came in without his say-so. And no one left without it, either. Nothing happened on any of the twenty-one floors that he didn't know about himself. And there was scarcely an inch of the place that wasn't in view of a security camera, many of which fed right into the media room of the penthouse he claimed as his home. He covered the half dozen steps to his private express elevator and shoved his key into the lock, and with a soft, immediate
swoosh,
the copper-covered doors unfolded. In a matter of seconds, they were opening again, this time onto a suite of rooms so elegantly and artistically appointed, they had been featured in
Architectural Digest.
Twice.

Harry Rutherford, Pax's personal assistant, was waiting by the elevator when the doors opened, standing at ramrod attention the way a good gentleman's gentleman should. Although it was nearly ten o'clock at night, Harry was still dressed for his workday, in an impeccable black suit with a conservative burgundy necktie knotted in a perfect Windsor at his throat.

He should have been standing in the foyer of a stately manor home on the English moors, Pax thought. Instead, his backdrop was a sleekly furnished urban penthouse. No stuffy antiques or mahogany paneling or chintz chairs or Persian rugs for Pax, no way. T. Paxton Brown was a technological wonder, and his decor reflected that, all neutral, smooth-lined leather furniture and brushed-copper accent pieces and abstract art in muted earth tones. He could never remember the name of the artist who had rendered them, but his decorator had assured Pax they'd be worth a fortune in no time, and she'd been right.

Whatever.

"Hello, Harry," Pax said as he entered his home and felt, as he always did upon entering, out of place.

Until a few years ago, Pax had always hired women to be his personal assistants. Mostly because he had fully expected things to become more personal once he hired a personal assistant, and, invariably, he was right. But women had an unfortunate tendency to stop being professional when things got personal, so, invariably, Pax had always eventually had to let his personal assistants go. The one before Harry had been especially difficult to dispose of, however, and it had cost Pax a bundle to settle a laughable sexual harassment charge—if anyone had been sexually harassed in the relationship, it had been Pax—so he'd decided to stick with his own gender when he hired her replacement.

So far, Harry had worked out great. Well, except for needing to drop everything at four o'clock on the dot every day for tea. Still, Harry's staunch Englishmanness was an idiosyncrasy Pax could overlook, since there was little chance it would lead to charges against him.

"Good evening, sir," Harry replied as Pax stepped back into his normal life.

Oh, yeah. And Harry's formality was another idiosyncrasy Pax had been forced to endure, since no amount of insisting that the other man call him Pax, as everyone else at CompuPax did, had swayed Harry. Automatically, Pax went through the rest of the evening ritual, listening to Harry's rundown of the mail, phone calls, e-mail, faxes, and every other manner of communication that came through on any given day. As always, though, Harry had already handled almost all of it.

"How was your class?" Harry asked.

Only two people in the world besides Pax knew that T. Paxton Brown, billionaire, had gone back to school to receive the high school diploma he had considered so unnecessary twenty-five years before. Harry was one, and only because Pax trusted him implicitly. And also because he'd had to give the man a damned good reason why he needed to keep Mondays and Thursdays open tor the next six months. The other person was Pax's Great-Aunt Ina.

He still bristled at how easily he had let the cagey old dame talk him into this.

But there had been a time, long ago, in a galaxy far away, when Pax was neither Thomas Brown, adult returning education student, nor T. Paxton Brown, billionaire. No, when he'd quit high school in his junior year, he'd just been Tommy Brown, rebel without a clue. Not to mention a dateless computer geek who'd had no friends whatsoever. But Tommy Brown had been brilliant, and he'd been surprisingly ambitious and driven. Ultimately, even without a high school diploma, he'd built a technological empire in the form of a computer company called CompuPax. These days, the entire world ran on user-friendly CompuPax computers. And if Pax had his way, the world always would.

In spite of his monster success, however, it had always bugged the hell out of Pax that, even though he earned his GED and went to college and ended up with not one but three degrees, he never officially graduated from high school. It had also bugged the hell out of Great-Aunt Ina, who, at eighty-nine years of age, had been recently diagnosed with kidney problems.

A former high school teacher, she'd been making it clear since her diagnosis that she'd go to the great beyond feeling much more content if her favorite nephew got that diploma she'd always considered so sacred. And even though Pax knew she wasn't going off to the great beyond for a great long time, he'd ultimately conceded to what she still insisted was her "dying wish" and had enrolled in night classes at a local high school that, once completed, would win him a real, honest-to-God high school diploma. But he'd felt like he needed to do it as Thomas Brown, incognito, because the last thing T. Paxton Brown needed was for the press to get wind of it. Although Pax had never made a secret of his diplomaless condition, he'd just as soon not advertise it, thankyouverymuch. And he sure as hell was never going to go anywhere as Tommy Brown again.

It helped that T. Paxton Brown had always been something of a recluse who didn't court public scrutiny. Yeah, Pax was sometimes a womanizing party animal, but he only womanized the most discreet members of the opposite sex—well, save one unfortunate ex-personal assistant—and he attended only the most exclusive parties. As a result, there weren't many photographs of him that had circulated in the tabloids, or anywhere else—at least not good, clear ones—so it wasn't going to be all that hard for him to pass himself off two nights a week for six months as Thomas Brown, high school dropout.

Still, he hadn't anticipated that his teacher, Miss Selby Hudson, would be such a nice fringe benefit, one that brought out the womanizing party animal in him even more than usual. But the minute he'd walked into the classroom and seen her sitting there, Pax had been completely enthralled by her. Because she was young and beautiful and spirited and fine… just like all those girls who had spurned and laughed at Tommy Brown in high school.

"Class went great," Pax told Harry now. "Better than great, in fact." He thought again about Miss Selby Hudson. And Miss Hudson's skirt. And her panties. And her bare ass. And he decided he wanted to get to know all of them better.

"Refresh my memory, Harry," he said. "How old am I?"

Harry, to his credit, didn't seem to be at all surprised by the question. "Forty-two, sir," he replied.

Pax nodded slowly. "That would put me right around the age when a lot of men start having a midlife crisis, wouldn't it?"

"In this country?" Harry asked, though Pax knew no reply from him was necessary, as Harry always answered his own questions. "Yes, I believe most American males do begin to behave like children when they reach the age of forty or so."

"Do you recall," Pax continued, "if I myself have had a midlife crisis yet?"

"Well, there was that small matter of the tattoo," Harry said, his voice reeking his disapproval of the decoration.

Somehow, Pax refrained from rolling his eyes. "That wasn't a midlife crisis," he said. "That was something I'd been wanting to do since I was a teenager."

"Well, there was also the purchase of that… that… that vehicle."

The Harley, Pax translated. "That wasn't a midlife crisis, either," he insisted. "That was an investment. That bike's already appreciated by thousands of dollars."

He wasn't sure, but he thought Harry sniffed his disapproval this time. Pax, however, let it go. "What I mean, Harry," he tried again, "is a
midlife crisis.
You know. A fullblown episode of stupid, irresponsible, embarrassing behavior. Like, say… dating a woman half my age."

"Dating
a woman half your age?" Harry asked dubiously.

"All right, all right. Having a woman half my age," Pax amended.

"If you mean sexually—"

"That's exactly what I mean," Pax said through gritted teeth.

"No," Harry replied. "You're not one of those middle-aged men who chase after young, nubile women because those men are clearly terrified people will think they can no longer…" He cleared his throat indelicately. "Cut the mustard. At least, you haven't been one of them yet. You've always seemed to appreciate more experienced women."

"You got that right," Pax agreed enthusiastically, ignoring everything else Harry had said, because Harry was never able to go more than a few minutes without offering some kind of social commentary. "So then I haven't had a midlife crisis yet," he said instead.

Harry pretended to give the remark much thought. "Well, / certainly never scheduled one for you."

"I didn't think so," Pax replied. "I would have remembered."

"Well, I don't know about
that,"
Harry said, not even trying to hide his disapproval now. "There's been more than one morning when you woke up not remembering what happened the night before. And I recall more than one woman
I
had to send home, because
you
couldn't even remember her na—"

"I think, Harry," Pax said, interrupting his assistant, because sometimes Harry just needed interrupting, "you should put me down for a midlife crisis as soon as I have an opening."

Without hesitation, Harry tucked a hand into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew a slim, leather-bound notebook, then flipped easily through the pages for a moment. "You're completely booked up tomorrow," he said. He flipped the page and scanned the next day's entries. "And Wednesday, as well." After another page flip, he added, "But I can probably rearrange Thursday so that you have both the afternoon and evening free. Shall I schedule you for a midlife crisis then? It won't interfere with your studies?"

Pax thought again about Selby Hudson and her little plaid skirt and her schoolgirl shirt and her prim, button-up sweater. He recalled her expression when he'd asked her to spank him, a mixture of shock and surprise and being generally pissed off. He'd rattled her, but she'd stood her ground. Not that it would do her much good in the long run. Still, he had to hand it to her. Instead of squealing like a girl, Selby Hudson had done her best to nail him to the wall. He couldn't help wanting to return the favor. Only when he nailed her to the wall, he'd really nail her.

Because he also remembered the way she had looked, standing in a puddle of pale blue lamplight on the street corner as she waited for her bus—he had been parked in the shadows nearby, waiting for her to come out, because he'd wanted to see what kind of car she drove, just in case, you know, he wanted to look for it whenever he was out driving around. He'd been surprised to see her go to the bus stop instead.

And as he'd watched her standing there, he'd been reminded of other girls standing on corners, waiting for buses, in their plaid skirts and white shirts and prim, button-up sweaters. And he remembered, too, the way they'd always laughed at him behind their hands whenever he walked by, and called him names before he was safely out of earshot. The taunts in elementary school had never even made any sense, but they'd cut to the bone anyway.
Tommy, Tommy, run to Mommy. She'll make you some hot pastrami. Tommy Brown is such a clown, he wears his undies upside down.
And in high school, it had only gotten worse.

Geek.

Dork.

Pizza Face.

Freak.

"No," he told Harry, "this midlife crisis won't interfere with my studies at all."