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Rebecca

A fter much thought, Rebecca wore one of the new single-breasted black suits with big baroque pearls on her neck, wrists, and ears. Her hair was up, and she looked like a ball buster. Perfect.

She planned it so that she was early for her first day.

Her new boss, Bruce, was expecting her. He was in his fifties, ex-military, and a bit cocky, if she had to put a word to his attitude.

He was short and had a crew cut, and she could tell he was always ready for a hostile who might breach the premises of Donovan Security.

His suit was too tight, making his muscles appear as sharp lines when he folded his arms. It looked uncomfortable.

She wondered if he spent much time in the gym.

She bet he did. She wondered if Mitch liked him. She bet he did not.

She had a tablet and paper in front of her to find out what she needed to start with, but the list he gave her was daunting.

“There are some certifications every employee of Donovan Security must get in the first few months. As time goes on, you will have more, but we will start with the basics. Some of them will not feel like they belong in your realm of work but having them means everyone here has the same background. With your education, they should be easy. You’ll start with the Intelligence Fundamentals Professional Certification, which is offered in the United States by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence work.

You will need a CISCO Secure Virtual Private Networks certificate, then a Certified Electronic Systems Technician certificate for the cyber work that you will be responsible for.

We will also want you to have a Security 5 Certification, which is an IT security certificate offered by the EC-Council.

Down the road, you will need a Commercial Driver’s License.

You will also need to complete Certified Computer Service Technician training, earn a Board Certification in Criminal Trial Law, and you must be certified in Homeland Security.

Lastly, you will be starting your self-defense classes immediately to make sure you can protect yourself if you are compromised. ”

Did Mitch have to go through all of this?

Alex said he had. In fact, Alex told her he still practiced his taekwondo regularly.

No wonder he’d felt so solid when she held him.

He could have done a lot more to stop her if he’d wanted to.

Heck, he could have probably snapped her neck like a pencil. It was a dark thought she filed away.

“The first dozen classes of taekwondo will be in a group that meets twice a week, then you’ll have private lessons,” Bruce said, producing a card with an address in Chinatown.

“Your first class is tonight at six. Leave a few minutes early if you need to change out of your skirt, which I recommend. I’ll show you the locker room and assign you a locker so that you can bring your own workout bag directly to the office from here on out.

Physical fitness is a big part of being a member of Donovan Security.

We regularly work out in a private gym on the third floor.

We are even more into it in New York than they are in London.

It is a bit of a competition and a bit of a rivalry.

We kick Limey ass all the time. Once a year, we meet and compete, usually in late spring.

We met three weeks ago. We’ve won the last three years in a row.

You do not want to be the weakest link. That person is ostracized for a year in between our competitions. ”

“I wouldn’t want that,” she said.

“Here’s the information you’ll need to sign up for your other certifications. It is a source of pride that we all have passed the certifications on the first try. Now, don’t go breaking my heart. I need you to be sure before you try an exam. I’m here if you have any questions. Understood?”

“Yes,” she promised and felt the first trickle of dread.

Yes, they had mentioned that there would be certifications, but this was a little more than she had imagined.

She was a computer geek. She had been told there was little chance of her ever being in the field, but maybe that wasn’t true.

Self-defense class? Well, living in New York, that added defense would make her parents very happy.

That night, for her first self-defense class, she wore a variation of the outfit she usually wore to the gym. She thought she was in pretty good shape. After all, she went to the gym four times a week. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

An hour later, she lay face down on the mat, where she had landed like a sack of rocks.

The mat smelled of mold and old sweat. When she could find her breath again, she swiped at her running nose, and her hand came away bloody.

They were not messing around in this class.

It was a bit of survival of the fittest, and they were not mock fighting.

She wondered if anyone had ever been killed. She hoped she wouldn’t be the first.

If she had gone to work for her father, she would be at her apartment right about now sipping something like a gin and tonic, wondering what outfit to wear tomorrow.

There was no such luck with Donovan Security.

She wondered if her nose was broken. Some scrawny little girl named Bethany Ann had taken her down.

Rebecca needed to get in the game. And if that bitch tried to touch her again, Rebecca was going to punch her, much like she used to punch Alex when he pissed her off.

But then Bethany Ann held out a hand to help her up, with a big smile on her face, and asked Rebecca if she wanted to join the others for bubble tea and sushi at a place called Three Doors Down, she decided to join.

It turned out to be a good group of ladies.

If she wasn’t worried that they could kick her ass, she’d have liked them.

The next morning, Rebecca hurt. Everything in her body hurt as she silenced her alarm and forced her way out of bed. And after a shower to wake her up, where she noticed a few new bruises, she looked in the mirror and said aloud, “Oh no.”

Well, at least they couldn’t accuse her of not taking her job seriously.

Rebecca Stark—hotel heiress, second in her class at Wharton, wearer of expensive jewelry and designer clothing—had her first set of black eyes, given to her by a Clinique salesperson from Bloomingdales, who chewed bubble gum, said ‘like’ a lot, thought Paul Newman was a brand of salad dressing, and was named Bethany Ann, which sounded like a coming-of-age perfume that every tween would want to wear to attract their jock boyfriend, who no doubt smelled like a jock strap after a game.

She accessorized her black eyes with a cobalt blue summer silk suit her mother had told her looked “hot” on her.

She wore a broach that depicted the sun and put on matching sun earrings in gold that accentuated the tan she was getting on the weekends, when she hung out at her parents’ house to lay by the pool.

It was odd going home with them spending so much time in Portland, but they still came to their family home in New York, just not as often.

She decided not to try to cover the slightly swollen eyes with makeup. They were too tender to the touch, and it least would show she was giving her all to her training.

The physical stuff would be the hardest, she knew. The book stuff was easy, but physical strength was her weakness, which was a tad surprising.

Bruce saw her as she walked in that morning.

“Damn, Stark. You’ve got a pair of shiners.”

“You should see the other person,” Rebecca said.

“That is the spirit. Like it, Stark. Keep it up.”

The twenty-person staff that made up Donovan Security New York filed into the conference room a little before 9 a.m. for their meeting with the London office.

Rebecca had hoped she would look better for Mitch, but she also needed to let go of the fantasy that she somehow had a future with him.

He was on another continent, for God’s sake.

She sat in a chair that was the seventh chair from the left and the seventh chair from the right. She liked the symmetry, but more importantly, it didn’t appear to be anyone’s “chair,” which she had been told was a thing.

One of the secretaries, Shanice, Rebecca knew because she had been nice to Rebecca the day before, telling her where the ladies’ room was as well as where to grab a quick lunch (not in their building, but the building next door). Shanice had also told her about the territorial chairs.

The Zoom call began, and they were seeing everyone in London, where it was two in the afternoon.

Greetings were made, Rebecca was introduced, and then business was discussed.

They went over five clients who spanned both London and New York.

Mitch was in a navy suit with a burgundy tie and didn’t even look her way, but she recognized the tie.

She’d given it to him for Christmas when she was seventeen.

Fine, he was going to pretend that he couldn’t see her. Well, two could play at that. One thing she noticed was that he commanded attention. Lucien Donovan was in the room, but it was Mitch’s meeting.

An hour later, the call was over, and they all filed out.

Rebecca went to her new office and had picked back up on studying for her first certification when the phone on her desk softly buzzed.

She didn’t recognize the number, but they had told her the day before how they wanted her to answer her phone. This was her first call, but the salutation hadn’t been rocket science.

“Good morning, this is Rebecca Stark of Donovan Security. How may I help you?” she asked confidently and waited.

“Are you alright?” Mitch asked impatiently.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” he replied after a long pause.

“I’m working on my certifications.”

“Was one of them self-defense?” he asked.

“Yes. A big man named Luther threw me to the ground during my first taekwondo class last night. I smashed into the mat with my face. We had bubble tea and sushi later, so I think he was sorry.”

“What the hell, Bex?”

“What are you asking me exactly? I’m confused.” She smiled to herself. “Luther” was a good improvisation. She didn’t want him to know a chick named Bethany Ann had done this to her.

And Mitch, Mitch was calling her. She couldn’t believe it. “I’m trying to do what I need to do, the basic certifications for Donovan Security. Am I doing something wrong? Bruce is mentoring me?—”

“You know you can hit back, right?”

“I did a face plant with the mat, right on my nose. Luther wasn’t trying to hurt me. He just got the upper hand, and I went down hard.” Bethany Ann had been trying to hurt her. And Rebecca intended to punch Bethany Ann if she tried it again.

“I will talk to Bruce today about getting you out of that class. You shouldn’t be hurt. The class is meant to keep you from getting hurt. Your eyes look painful.”

“Please don’t. I’ve got to start somewhere. And Bruce would think I complained to you. He would make my life harder. And if I’m not mistaken, you learned taekwondo when you started at Donovan Security.”

“I’m a guy. I don’t want you to ever need it. You will not have to do that kind of work. Not on my watch. Your work will involve a computer screen in a plush office in New York.”

“What if they need me in the field?”

“Over my dead body,” he said.

“You sound like a protective older brother, but it’s not your decision. I live in New York. It might be good for me to know a little self-defense. I’m not a delicate flower, Mitch.”

“We both know I’m not a brother to you. And you should avoid dangerous situations. Bex, you don’t need to purposefully scare me. I’m too far away to help.”

“For the last six years, I’ve walked in the dark, cavorted with edgy men, taken a few of them home to ravage me, drank too much, driven too fast, and I even smoked to look cool, and I survived. Where were you then?”

“I don’t want to know about the other men, okay? It bothers me. Just because we didn’t talk then, we are talking now, and I feel very protective of you.”

“What? You’ve been celibate for six years? Try this shiitake on your fiancé. I’m not your concern. You made that abundantly clear.”

“Shiitake? Like the mushroom?” he asked.

“It is my nice way of saying shit in the workplace.”

“Damn it, say shit,” he said. “You’re an adult.”

“Well, then you can fuck off. How is that for being an adult? Goodbye.” She hung up on him then. She tried to get back to studying, but she couldn’t concentrate as she needed to. Mitch had called her.

When she got home that night, she put an ice bag on her face and drank a gin and tonic while she relaxed in her big, comfy chair. She had almost fallen asleep when her cellphone started vibrating. She didn’t feel like talking, but the caller was Donovan Security, so she picked up.

“This is Rebecca Stark,” she said.

The caller at the other end sighed and then said, “It is Mitch. I’m sorry. I called to tell you that.”

Rebecca looked at her watch. “It is after midnight in London.”

“I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about you.”

“What did you tell Lily when you got out of bed to call me?”

“Why would I tell her anything? She lives with her parents.”

Rebecca hung her head and said, “Well, if I was her, I’d be in your bed.” Why had she said that? Maybe because it was the truth.

“That’s where I’d want you.”

“What are we doing here? This call…”

“I don’t know, but I miss you. I just didn’t know how much until I saw you again. Now I can’t get you out of my mind,” Mitch said.

“I know the feeling. Tell me about life in London. I’ve been curious for six years. Tell me everything, because I want to know.”

They ended up talking for two hours. And when they finally said goodnight, neither of them wanted to be the first to hang up.