Double Standards // ziam

Chapter 13

Zayn walked into the office the next morning wearing a stylish burgundy velvet blazer with tight black slacks and a determinedly bright smile. Harry took one look at him and grinned.

"Zayn, you're gorgeous-but aren't you supposed to be upstairs?"

"Not anymore," he replied, handing him his mail. He had assumed that because their "game" was over, Liam would no longer want him upstairs in the mornings.

He was wrong. Five minutes later, as they were discussing a report Zayn was working on, the phone on Harry's desk rang. "It's Liam," he said, passing the receiver to him.

Liam's voice was like a whip crack. "Get up here! I said I wanted you here all day and I meant it. Now move!"

He hung up on him, and Zayn looked at the receiver as if it had just bitten him. He hadn't expected Liam to sound like that. He'd never heard anybody sound like that. "I-I think I'd better go upstairs," he said, hastily standing up.

Harry's face was a study in incredulity. "I wonder what the hell has gotten under his skin."

"I think I have." he saw the thoughtful smile that slowly spread across Harry's attractive face, but he had no time to ponder it.

Only a few minutes later, Zayn tapped on Liam's door and, with an outward calm he didn't feel, walked into his office. He waited a full two minutes for him to acknowledge him, but after having practically shouted at him to get up there, he continued writing, ignoring his presence. With an irritated shrug Zayn finally went over to his desk and held the little elegant box toward him.

"This is not my father's watch, and I don't want it," he told his rigid profile. "My father's watch was an old Omega. This watch isn't worth a fraction of what it was to me; its only value was sentimental, to me it's priceless. It means so much to me, and I want it back. Are you capable of understanding that?"

"Perfectly capable," he replied icily, without looking up. He reached out and buzzed for Mary to come in. "However, your watch is lost. Since I couldn't get it back for you, I gave you something that had sentimental value to me. This watch belonged to my grandfather."

Zayn's stomach knotted sickly, and the resentment left his voice as he said quietly, "I still can't accept it."

"Then leave it there." He nodded curtly toward the corner of his desk.

Zayn put the box down and went back to his temporary office. Mary followed him a minute later, closed the door to Liam's office behind her and came over to Zayn's desk. Smiling kindly, she relayed the instructions Liam had obviously just given. "Sometime during the next few days he's expecting a call from Signor Rossi. He wants you to be available to act as translator whenever the man decides to call. In the meantime, I would be very grateful for your help with some of my work. If you still have time to spare, you could bring some of Harry's work up here to do."

During the next three days, Zayn saw sides of Liam that he had only imagined existed. Gone was the teasing man who had held and kissed and pursued him so relentlessly. In his place was a powerful, dynamic businessman who treated him with a brisk, aloof formality that thoroughly intimidated him. When he wasn't on the phone or in meetings, he was dictating or working at his desk. He arrived before he did in the morning and was still there when he left at night. Acting as his auxiliary secretary, he grew petrified of displeasing him in any way. Zayn had the feeling he was merely waiting for him to make a mistake so that he would have a legitimate reason to fire him.

On Wednesday, Zayn made the mistake he'd been dreading: he left an entire paragraph out of a detailed contract Liam had dictated to him. The moment his summons snapped over the intercom he knew his time had come, and he walked into his office with limbs shaking and hands perspiring. But instead of flaying him alive, which he could see was what he wanted to do; he pointed out the error and shoved the contracts toward him. "Do it again," he snapped, "and this time, get it right."

He relaxed slightly after that. If Liam hadn't fired him for that blunder, he obviously wasn't looking for an excuse to get rid of him. He must need him at hand for that call from Rossi no matter how poorly he performed.

"I'm Vicky Stewart," a breathy voice announced to Zayn at noon that same day. Zayn looked up to see an incredibly glamorous brunette standing in front of her.

"I happened to be downtown and decided to stop by and see if Lili I mean-Mr. Payne-is free for lunch," she informed Zayn. "Don't bother announcing me, I'll just go in."

A few minutes later, Vicky and Liam strolled out of his office together, heading toward the elevators. Liam's hand was resting familiarly at the small of her back, and he was grinning at whatever she was telling him.

Zayn swung back around to his computer screen. He hated Vicky Stewart's drawl; he hated the possessive way she looked at Liam; he hated the woman's breathless laugh. In fact, he loathed everything about her and he knew exactly why-Zayn was hopelessly, completely, irrevocably in love with Liam Payne.

He adored everything about him, from the aura of power and authority that surrounded him, to the energetic confidence in his long strides, to the way he looked when he was deep in thought. He loved the way his eye crinkle when he laughs. He loved the way he wore his expensive clothes, the way he absently rolled his gold pen in his hand when he was listening to someone on the telephone. He was in his eyes the most attractive man in the world. And he had never seemed further beyond his reach.

"Don't worry too much, my dear boy," Mary Callahan said, getting up to leave for lunch. "There have been many Vicky Stewarts in his life in the past. They don't last long."

The reassurance only made Zayn feel worse. She'd suspected that Mary not only knew everything that had happened between Liam and him in the past, but that she also knew exactly how Zayn felt about Liam now. "I don't care what he does!" he said with angry pride.

"Is that right?" Mary retorted with a smile, and left for lunch.

Liam didn't return until afternoon, and Zayn wondered furiously whose bed they had gone to-his or Vicky's while nearly snapping the pen in his hand.

By the time he left the office, he was so overwrought with jealousy and so filled with self-loathing for loving such an unprincipled libertine that he had a splitting headache. At home he wandered aimlessly around the elegant living room.

Being near Liam was hurting him more every day. He had to leave Pay-co-he couldn't bear to be so close to him, to love him as he did and have to watch him with other people. To have him look at him as if he was a piece of office equipment whose presence offended him but whom he was obliged out of necessity to have nearby.

Zayn had a sudden wild longing to tell both Liam Payne and Sophia Sinclair to go to hell, to pack up and go home to his parents, his friends. But of course he couldn't do that. They needed...

Abruptly he stopped pacing, his mind seizing on a solution that should have occurred to him before. There were other large corporations in Detroit that needed good secretaries and that paid high salaries for them. When he bought Jim's birthday cake that night he would also buy a newspaper. Beginning immediately he would start looking for another job.

In the meantime, he would phone Jonathan Van Slyke, whom he had studied under for the past year, and offer to let him buy his grand piano. He had wanted it the moment he'd laid eyes on it.

Despite the ache he felt at the prospect of selling it, Zayn felt peaceful for the first time in weeks. He would find an inexpensive little apartment and move out of this place. Until then he would do the best job he could at Pay-co-and if he happened to hear one of the names Sophia had given him, he would forget it just as soon as he heard it. Sophia was going to have to do her own dirty work. He could not and would not betray Liam.