Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
Here Part 2 Part 3**********
Lex Luthor**********
As they stood to the side of crowd at the charity function, Jimmy filled Clark in on how great Lex Luthor was. Clark had forgotten how talkative the guy could be. All he had to do was ask him one question, and Jimmy was a never-ending fountain of information. Clark was so thankful; otherwise he wouldn’t have all these interesting factoids about the billionaire to add to his collection.
Poor little rich man. Let the violin music start. Luthor had been orphaned at a young age. Big deal. So had Clark, but he didn’t brag about it or wear the information on his sleeve.
The man had five unauthorized biographies. Five? Was there that much interesting and different information about the billionaire to warrant five books? Or were they like the Superman bios that had popped up in his dimension – full of lies, guesswork, and false interpretation of the facts. Clark would understand why Luthor didn’t like speaking with reporters. One bad quote could equal months of bad press. Clark knew this first hand. Lana had never forgiven him for speaking about the end of their engagement.
“Have you ever met him?” Clark asked.
Jimmy scoffed. “No. He’s a recluse, doesn’t come out much in public.”
Unless there was something to slap his name upon.
“Man of the year, every year,” Jimmy continued.
Clark shrugged. He had earned one of those for good deeds, for actually helping people, not for throwing money at a problem and self-promotion. He guessed there were people back in his dimension who would argue that the blue Suit in itself was a form of self-promotion, not to mention the Superman merchandising. Not that he had liked seeing his image and crest stuck on everything from kites to women’s lingerie. There just hadn’t been much he could do about it until James Olsen suggested that he form the Superman Foundation. Now every time he saw a Superman doll or balloon, he knew it was helping someone less fortunate and it made him proud.
Could this man claim the same thing?
The reporter looked around Luthor’s ostentatious penthouse and the “ball” the man had thrown to help underprivileged kids – the
Luthor House for Homeless Children – and thought of the money spent on food, champagne, and orchids alone, which could have been better spent on the kids.
Clark wondered where Lois had disappeared off to. She had vanished from his side as soon as they had entered, mumbling something about freshening up.
“Lex Luthor,” a familiar voice called out to their host, punctuated by a loud burst of ominous thunder from the storm outside. The billionaire had just descended from the grand staircase, greeting all those he met. “Why haven’t you returned my phone calls?”
Lois. She certainly knew how to get a man’s attention.
Now that she had removed her overcoat, Clark could see how much extra effort she had put into her appearance. She had donned a navy off-the-shoulder gown and pulled her hair back in a manner to frame her face, making her stunning doe eyes shine.
Clark watched as Luthor approached her.
“Lois Lane, Daily Planet,” she informed the man, holding out her hand. Luthor kissed the back of her hand – an opposite move to the one Clark had used earlier on Cat.
“Well, I can assure you that I won’t ever make that mistake again,” Luthor practically crooned.
“Wow. She’s something else, isn’t she?” Jimmy gushed.
Clark hovered in the air a few inches off the floor, behind his associate to see around a tall man who had blocked his view of Lois. “Something else,” he repeated in amazement.
“Well, when she sets out to do something, she does it,” Jimmy said with admiration.
“She certainly does,” Clark agreed, setting his feet back on the floor. He watched Luthor smoothly glide Lois onto the dance floor and put his cheek next to hers, which instantly cemented Clark’s dislike for the man.
After less than a minute, Clark moved towards them. “May I cut in?” he asked.
Lois shot Clark daggers with her eyes and then reluctantly remembered her manners. “Lex, may I introduce Clark Kent. Clark works with me at the Daily Planet.”
At least she hadn’t told Luthor that he worked
for her, like she had informed Clark earlier that day, or that his name was ‘Chuck’.
“A pleasure,” Luthor said without pleasure before moving off, murmuring a suggestive, “Later” to Lois.
*
Lois slugged Clark in the shoulder as soon as Lex was gone. “Clark, you idiot, I was this close to landing the interview of the century,” she complained.
Clark pulled Lois tighter against his chest. “
This close?”
Lois pressed her lips together. “It wasn’t like that!”
He loosened his grip slightly. “Maybe for you…”
“You’re making him sound like a used car salesman,” she said.
Clark raised a brow as if the comparison was unkind – to used car salesmen. “There are more interesting people in the world, Lois.”
She laughed sharply. “Who?
You?”
Clark smiled, and she scoffed at the sparkle she saw in his eyes at her question.
As if!Lois walked off the dance floor in annoyance and, like a favorite puppy, Clark followed after her. She opened the door to Luthor’s private office and slipped inside. She had seen Lex exit out of this room when she explored his residence after ditching Clark upon their arrival.
“Lois, what are you doing?” Clark hissed in a low tone, coming into the room behind her.
“
My job,” she replied, shutting the other doors to Luthor’s office, so she could snoop in private. “You should try it sometime.” Did he really think that
investigative reporters got anywhere in life without
investigating?
Clark had hit a nerve when he accused her of taking Lex at face value and then again when he accused her of using sex appeal to get close to the billionaire. Just because she might use her good looks to land an interview didn’t mean the person being interviewed wasn’t going to end up nailed to the wall by her questions, and it certainly didn’t mean the person being interviewed was going to nail her.
“How would you like it if someone started going through your things?” he asked her as she took a quick look around Luthor’s desk and then moved into the adjacent room.
“Who are you, my mother?”
Lois was tempted to tell him to do as she was doing, but if there was something rotten in Lex’s apple, she would be the one to find it, no thanks to Clark.
She wandered around Lex’s sitting room or library, based on the number of books lining the wall. She found a series of photographs, but they were of him and famous people and politicians, nothing personal. All the items she saw were there for other people to admire. His books were all leather bound and hadn’t looked touched since the designer had put them there.
Was Clark right? Was Luthor as fake as he implied? He had seemed so charming on the dance floor. True, she had been flattered at Lex’s attention, but that didn’t mean she was losing her edge. She heard Clark speaking with someone back in Lex’s office and decided she better return before her underling got in trouble.
“You surprise me, Mr. Kent. I’m not often surprised,” Lex was saying to Clark as she re-entered the room. The two men were looking at one of the swords in Lex’s collection of weaponry.
Damn! How in the world had Clark gotten a one-on-one with Lex? All she had discovered was nada. “I hope you don’t mind us looking around,” she said, laying on thick the sweetener and moving up to the men. “You have a beautiful home, Lex.” She wanted to remind the man that she was a reporter and a serious one at that.
Lex didn’t answer right away as he looked at her. Was he angry that she had poked around his private office? If he was, he was too polite to say so. Instead he said, “Have you seen the view from up here?” He led her to his balcony doors, which he opened despite the downpour. “Tallest building in Metropolis. I must confess I love the fact that everyone in the city has to look up to see me,” he said, pointing down to the street far below them. Not that they could see the streets below – they would have to step to the edge of the balcony and, in this storm, would be easily soaked in seconds.
“Well, let’s get back to the party. I think you’ll find my announcement will interest you,” Lex continued after neither she nor Clark said one word about his view.
The view had been impressive, but Lex’s words that accompanied them reminded Lois that Clark thought him to be nothing more than a self-important windbag who threw money around. This announcement better be something that
would interest her. She’d hate to have to buy her own coffee the next morning, or worse yet, buy Clark one.
They returned to the living room. Lois watched as Lex had the band stop the music and play something to announce him. “Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests, my friends,” Lex said, walking into the center of the dance floor. “Well, we’ve come here tonight for a good cause. Thanks to your generosity, the Luthor House for Homeless Children will soon be a reality.”
Everyone applauded, and Lois saw that Clark’s clapping was more polite than enthusiastic. Why, oh, why did Lex have to put his name on everything? He better not stick his name on anything else tonight or Clark would have ‘I told you so’ rights over her. Nobody, and Lois meant
nobody, had the right to tell her that.
“Thank you,” Lex said to the applause. “As you know, I have dedicated myself to improving the lives of citizens of Metropolis; tonight I’d like to go further. It is my sad understanding that the Congress of Nations plans to cancel the Space Station Prometheus.”
This announcement indeed sent a ripple of worry throughout the room. How come she hadn’t heard that rumor? Lois wondered.
“Profits aside, the potential benefits that a zero-gravity laboratory could bring, most importantly, the pharmaceuticals that could end many crippling diseases here on Earth must not be lost to the citizens of this planet. Therefore, I have decided to commit my total financial support towards the building of a privately owned space laboratory. I’ve submitted my proposal to the Congress of Nations, and I’m awaiting their outcome. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Space Station Luthor.” Lex waved his hands and suddenly before him appeared a hologram of the model she had briefly seen in his office.
Lois didn’t have to look at Clark, standing beside her, to hear his thoughts. ‘I told you so, Lois. That man puts his name on everything.’
Oooh. She was so going to prove Clark wrong somehow. She didn’t know when or how, but she would put the shine back on Luthor’s golden idol. She smiled at Lex as he went on with his spiel and actually got a flutter of excitement when he returned her smile. She had the interview. She knew she did. Clark could just go suck on pickled eggs for all she cared. She was getting the interview of the century with Lex Luthor, a private one-on-one interview before anyone else. Lois was giddy with anticipation.
“My gift to the future of mankind and the children of Earth,” Lex finished up saying.
Lois watched as the room once more filled with applause and calls of ‘Bravo!’ from Lex’s guests. She clapped enthusiastically herself, a big grin covering her face, not at what Lex had announced but the knowledge that she had once again bested her reporting peers.
***
The next morning, Clark walked to work with an extra skip in his step. He had a job at the Daily Planet, working side-by-side with Lois Lane, and he had had a date with said woman the night before. He was one happy camper.
True, Luthor had once again outdone himself the night before with his lavish party in support of disadvantaged kids. Clark only hoped the man was kind enough to send the leftovers to the kids at the Luthor House for Homeless Children. Then Luthor had actually had the gall to suggest a privately owned space station of his own. Ugh. Luthor. Clark was sick of him already.
Lois, on the other hand, it seemed couldn’t get enough. If her grin at the end of his speech was anything to go by, she was swallowing Luthor’s Tang by the gallon.
Clark crossed the street and saw Lois stepping out of a cab. “Good morning, Lois,” he called out to her.
“For you perhaps; I’ve been at it for hours. I went back to EPRAD, followed the truck with the wreck of the Messenger inside. I tried to get in, but your friend, Dr. Baines, threw me out,” Lois told him with annoyance.
She sounded slightly jealous of Dr. Baines’ slight flirtation with him from the day before. Clark was perfectly okay with Lois being jealous; it meant she felt something for him. Maybe not something she would acknowledge yet, but it was encouraging.
In front of them, some city workers were working under the street. The ground started to shake and something exploded, probably a gas line.
“Hey! There’s a man down there,” one of the other workers called.
Clark watched as Lois rushed to the caution tape to get a better look.
“Everyone stand back. We need help,” the worker continued to say. “Back up! Back up!”
This looked like a job for Superman. Only Superman hadn’t made his official debut in this dimension yet. Clark had gotten the blue Suit from the safety deposit box after his failed first interview at the Planet. This wasn’t how he wanted to reveal the Man of Steel to the world, but he couldn’t stand idly by either. If he was lucky, he could make this rescue and nobody would be the wiser.
Clark lifted up a nearby manhole cover and slipped underground, spinning into the Suit as he did so. Superman easily found the man and pushed him up through the manhole to the other workers above ground before sealing up the leak. Then Clark Kent re-emerged through the other manhole down the street and jogged up moments later to be standing next to Lois, just as she pulled out her notebook.
The worker he had saved sat on the street in front of them coughing in a stunned daze.
“Are you okay? You okay?” his co-worker repeated asked him.
“A man… A man saved me,” the injured worker coughed, disbelief still written across his face. “A man in a blue jumpsuit and red cape saved me.”
Lois glanced over at Clark and then back at the worker. Her jaw hung open.
“He’s delirious,” Clark said to her with a shrug.
“Obviously,” she retorted, pulling on his arm. “Come on.”
Clark was thankful he had worn the blue Suit. If not, his brown jacket would certainly be looking worse from the rescue. Instead, he looked clean and sharp as they entered the Daily Planet building.
****************
Dr. Platt’s Report****************
Clark stepped out of the elevator and ran, literally, into Cat Grant. She took hold of his tie, running it through her fingers, and placed a pout on her lips. Great. She still hadn’t given up the chase.
“Good morning, handsome,” she practically purred.
“Oh, hi, Cat,” Clark said politely. “If you’ll excuse me, Lois and I have been kind of swamped…”
“Noooo, I don’t think I will excuse you.” Cat held tighter onto his tie, pretending to straighten it. “Now that you’ve had your date with Miss Lacking Personality, wouldn’t you like to know how cuddly a Cat can be instead?” she inquired, looking up at him somehow with a demure expression to her not so innocent words.
Lois? Lacking a personality? No, Clark didn’t think so. Multiple personalities, perhaps, but definitely not lacking one. “Cat, I really should go,” he said, trying to move away.
“I’ve asked you to dinner twice now, and that’s two times more than I’ve ever had to ask any man to do…
anything,” she clarified.
He pulled his tie out of her hand as Lois stepped out of the elevator. “Can I take a rain check on that dinner?” he suggested, hoping it would be a dry year in Metropolis after last night’s storm.
“All right, but don’t wait too long,” she whispered, playfully tapping his nose with her index finger.
Clark finally escaped with a final, “Excuse me.” He had seen Lois notice their discussion, and he could see her adding up digits that didn’t exist. He caught up with her in the conference room.
“Scheduling a Cat nap?” Lois asked.
He pressed his lips together, resisting the urge to spout the retort regarding her behavior towards Luthor from the night before. Instead he changed the topic back to work. “Anything?”
“I’ve must called fifty ex-employees who worked at EPRAD at the same time Platt did, but nobody’s talking or even heard of Platt’s report. Maybe there’s nothing to talk about. So, now we need to piece together his report, if we can, and then we somehow need to prove Baines got a copy of this report, a paper trail or something, and ignored it.” Lois sighed.
“Sounds like a long night. Good thing I didn’t make any dinner plans,” Clark replied.
She raised a skeptical brow as if she couldn’t believe he turned Cat down again. “What? You’re all mine?”
Clark rested his arms and head on the partition between their desks with a smile. “All yours,” he agreed wholeheartedly.
***
Later that night Lois set down the jumble of papers that was Platt’s report. “I’m starving. I could use some good Chinese.”
“I know a place,” Clark volunteered, standing up.
Thankfully, he hadn’t mentioned their coffee bet all day. Perhaps he figured he lost, even thought he hadn’t. If he didn’t remember, she wasn’t going to remind him.
“Do they deliver?” she asked.
“I can be back before you know it.”
Lois doubted that, but maybe Clark needed to stretch his legs – so she agreed, and he said he’d pick out an assortment of dishes. Often, she worked through dinner until it was so late that only the real seedy dives were still open. It was nice to have someone fetch food for her, so she didn’t have to break for dinner. Actually, she could use a little circulation in her legs herself. She stood up and walked to the windows.
They weren’t up that high, but she loved seeing the city at night. There was always something happening. She saw a blur of something blue and red shoot into the sky and disappear.
What in the…? She rubbed her eyes. It was faster than any rocket, and it was too big for a missile. Lois shook her head, believing she must be seeing things.
She was back at her desk reviewing her notes when Clark returned a few minutes later. “That was quick,” Lois told him as he set some bamboo bowls down on her desk. It looked like something straight out of China.
“I took a short cut,” Clark said.
She flipped open one of the bowls and stuck a dumpling in her mouth. “Ow! It’s still hot.”
Clark smiled as if she nominated him for a Pulitzer.
“You’re a strange duck, Chuck,” Lois said with a shake of her head. The food was delicious, but she didn’t want to say so in case that, too, went to his head.
There was something different about Clark. She wished she could put her finger on just what, but he was an odd shaped puzzle piece in her even world. Then an idea struck her. Maybe it had something do with Kansas, his country manners out of place in the big city and all.
She smiled, satisfied with her conclusion regarding Clark. She leaned back in her chair. “I’ve figured you out,” she informed him.
“Really?” He chuckled with almost a tsk-tsk to it. “That didn’t take long.”
So, he didn’t believe her. Was he hiding something? Or did he think
he was actually a complicated fellow?
Lois grabbed her fortune cookie and opened it. “It’s in Chinese,” she said, pressing her lips together in annoyance. She had been right; Clark had picked up dinner in Chinatown. How had he gotten back to the Planet so quickly?
Clark took her fortune out of her hand.
“Oh, don’t you tell me that you can read…”
“‘A good horse is like a member of the family’,” he read.
She wasn’t sure if he could actually read Chinese or if he made that up, but his words and facial expression said he was telling the truth.
“I hate that,” Lois said, taking it back and looking at it again to make sure she hadn’t missed the English on the back side. “That is
not a fortune.”
Clark chuckled. She liked it when he laughed. He seemed so relaxed and confident, like he could take on the world and win. He appeared that he could do that, but that he would much rather be sitting in the office with her. He held eye-contact with her as his laughter subsided into calm silence.
Lois couldn’t look away. It was sexy, too sexy, the way he stared at her as if he could reach out and caress her very soul. She swallowed. She didn’t need another man to come between her and her work.
“Don’t fall for me, Chuck. I don’t have time for it,” she warned him, although the warning could have applied to her as well. If she could convince him to stay away, then she wouldn’t have to deal with the messy stuff herself. Standing up and picking up the papers, she said, “Come on. Let’s go over to Platt’s and see if he can decipher this for us.”
Clark gathered up the bamboo bowls and dropped them off at his desk without further comment. She hoped she hadn’t hurt his feelings. Damn! If she cared about his feelings, it meant that she cared about him. She really didn’t need a complication like that in her life right now.
***
The next morning, Lois walked up the hall to Clark’s room at the Hotel Apollo. What was he doing living here? There was transitory and there was transitionary and this dump was definitely the former, not the latter. It certainly didn’t seem like Clark’s style. Not that Lois knew Clark well enough to know his style. Not that she
wanted to know him well enough. Not that she thought that he would be around all that much longer – not as he was. Metropolis had a tendency to change people and not for the better.
Not that she liked Clark for who he was or that she liked him at all or would be thinking of him at this very moment if she wasn’t consciously trying not to think of Samuel Platt sitting dead in his armchair.
Damn! The image popped into her head again. She needed something to distract her quick.
Lois knocked on Clark’s door and he opened it a second later, dressed – or undressed as the case dictated – in only a towel wrapped around his hips.
Clark’s muscle tone was well defined, very well defined, and there were a lot of them to boot, muscles upon naked muscles.
“That will do nicely,” she murmured to herself as Clark’s semi-naked body pushed the thoughts of Platt’s dead body completely out of her mind.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
Lois cleared her throat, hoping he hadn’t heard her and misinterpreted her words. “I said nine. I thought you’d be naked… I mean ready.”
Clark smiled at her gaffe. “I’ll be just a minute,” he said, entering his bathroom. “I called Dr. Baines’ office this morning to get a comment on Platt’s murder and to see if we could get access to the Messenger wreckage. They returned my call as I stepped out of the shower.”
Her jaw dropped. He wasn’t dressed because he was making calls for work? Why wasn’t he dragging his feet from being up all night like her? “You and I both know his death was murder, but officially, Detective Henderson wants it ruled a suicide,” she called to him in the bathroom as she opened the refrigerator to get a drink. The small fridge was packed top to bottom in fresh fruit and vegetables. No beer, no soda, no chocolate syrup. There was a bottle of juice and an almost empty gallon of milk. What single person bought and drank an entire gallon of milk? She was lucky if the quart she bought got used before going sour.
As she sipped her juice, she opened the cabinet to find cans of vegetables, packages of dried pasta, and bags of rice. The only snack food she saw was dried fruit. No potato chips, no cookies, not even a cracker. Who lived like this?
Clark opened the bathroom door; he was fully dressed already. That
was quick.
“How do you do it?” Lois gaped.
“What?” Clark seemed startled by her question.
“You’ve got more food than I’ve bought in the past six months here and yet you look like Mr. Hardbody. What’s your secret, and how do I get it?”
Clark smiled that smile as if she was complimenting him again and didn’t answer, which was well and good with her since her question had been rhetorical.
Lois set her empty glass in the sink and watched as he cleaned it before they left. She must have given him a perplexed look because he explained, “Bugs.”
She nodded in understanding. There wasn’t enough food in her apartment to attract bugs if she left a dirty glass in the sink. Clark, on the other hand, had enough food here to feed the entire Daily Planet news staff. At least it was all healthy food, unlike Jimmy’s fridge which she expected would be filled like an eight-year-old’s pipedream.
“So were you able to charm Dr. Baines into showing us the wreckage?” she inquired as they emerged onto the street.
“No,” he replied regretfully. “Her assistant implied that Dr. Baines was no longer speaking with us and referred me to EPRAD’s Press Office.”
Lois patted his cheek. “See, you’ve learned your first lesson in the news business, Chuck. A pretty face will open a door only so far.”
He again gave her that charming smile that she was about to name after him, but instead of commenting on her misplaced note on his good looks as most men – Claude and Paul for example – would have, he said, “Why do you keep implying that I’m some greenhorn fresh off the boat? I do have some experience doing investigations.”
“I’ve never heard of you. If you were any good, I would have,” she responded dryly, flagging down a cab.
“Or it means I’m twice as good as the others,” he replied with a twinkle in his eye that she wasn’t sure whether was honesty or a jest.
“Ugh,” Lois groaned, stepping into the cab.
***
“So, I gave Star Labs Dr. Platt’s report,” Jimmy said, peering out the conference room door to make sure they weren’t being overheard. Then he turned back to Lois and Clark. “They recreated the launch in a hologram. It was really smooth. Anyway, they concluded that Platt’s theory was right on. It was deliberate sabotage, and the transport explosion was no accident. Congrats!”
Lois’ face burst into smile that seemed to fill the room with sunlight. Clark couldn’t help but feel her excitement and have it double his. To see her so happy almost sent him floating in air. Jimmy waved at them and then left the room.
“He was right! Platt was right,” Lois said, turning to Clark.
“Now we can write the …” Clark started to say, before Lois interrupted.
“
I can write the story.”
“With
my help,” he corrected.
“With your help,” Lois conceded. “If we can convince people there was sabotage and who was behind it…”
“We can stop them,” Clark finished.
“Oh, God!” Lois launched herself into his arms with an excited hug. Their excitement turned to joyous laughter as she pulled back. Not all the way, she remained in Clark’s arms, like she wanted to be there and the laughter fell from her face as she looked at him.
“Why don’t we have dinner?” he suggested, instead of doing what he really wanted to do: kiss her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said.
Clark could sense both the attraction and the fear in her eyes, but he wasn’t going to let her get away that easily. He could see that she wanted to say ‘yes’, he just needed to give her a reason. “We
should celebrate,” he reminded her.
“Okay,” she relented. “Dinner.” She nodded, staring at him like there was nowhere else she would rather be.
Clark knew that there was nowhere else
he wanted to be.
She laughed nervously as if she knew where dinner might lead them. That nervous laughter was contagious for, a split second later, Clark had it as well.
Dinner would be the first step in getting Lois to see him as someone other than a colleague, in letting her guard down. Dinner could lead to hand holding, which could lead to a goodnight kiss, which would shoot him off to the moon. He had wanted to kiss Lois again, really kiss her, ever since that first kiss with the other Lois in his Daily Planet over a year ago. This time she would be kissing him for
him and not for confusing him with another Clark, because there was no other Clark, just him. His heart raced with anticipation.
“Oh, wait a second. What am I talking about? I have plans tonight,” she said this in a tone of voice that implied she would rather break them and have dinner with Clark.
His jealousy spit out the name before he could stop himself. “Luthor?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. Then she turned on her heel and left the conference room.
Clark followed her. He wasn’t going to leave their almost date wadded up on the floor, so she could go to dinner with that… that… “Tell me something. How far are you willing to go to get this interview?”
“Not that it’s any of your concern, but as I told you before, this is business,” Lois retorted dismissively, grabbing her coat and briefcase. The anxious laughter from their moment in the conference room was now a distant memory.
Crap. What had he done? Clark refused to be rejected, so she could go out with some billionaire scumbag, even if it was for a story. “What’s your problem anyway?” he asked her. They had been doing just fine two seconds before, and now he was persona-non-grata again. “You’ve had a chip on your shoulder since the day I met you.” Oh, God! What was his tongue doing? Yes, he was mad that she broke their almost date to go out with Luthor, but this conversation wasn’t going to win him any points. “You’ve resented the fact that…”
“Perry foisted an inexperienced…”
“Snob!” he announced, continuing to follow her to the stairs.
“What?” Lois swung back around and glared at him.
The word was hanging between them now, and he wasn’t going to back down first. “You are a snob, Lois.”
“Well, coming from Mr. Greenjeans that’s really…” Lois let her words fade as she walked up the stairs towards the elevators and away from him. She must have realized that her very words had proved his theory correct. Stopping her retreat, she turned back to him. Had Lois had his abilities, Clark would have been a pile of ashes. “I live by three rules. I never get involved with my stories. I never let anyone get there first, and I never
sleep with anyone I work with.
This is business.”
Before she could pull her sharp gaze away and march off to the elevators once more, Clark calmed his voice down enough to say, softly so no one else could hear, “I asked you to dinner, Lois, not to sleep with me. Can you say the same of Luthor?” He raised a brow because they both already knew the answer.
*** End of Part 3 ***Tang is a powdered flavored fruit drink whose brand is owned by Kraft Foods and made famous by the John Glenn and NASA. I’m using it here as a substitute for the usual “Kool-Aid” allusion to the Jonestown Massacre, implying that in the alt-dimension this other powdered beverage was used instead. I am by no means stating that drinking either Tang or Kool-Aid would be hazardous to your health.
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