Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhere we left off in Part 162 …“Anyway,” Clark said, trying to concentrate on his checklist for this ‘date’. He slipped the phone into her hand. “I bought two phones. This one is yours, in case you need to make a call without someone listening.”
“But…” Lois took the phone and looking down her own body for a place to hide it, probably so Lex wouldn’t see it when she returned to her apartment. “Never mind. I’ll find a way.” Finally, she lifted up the hem of her blouse and tucked the phone into her pants.
His checklist completed, Clark returned to the task at hand of imprinting his lips upon Lois’s. His hand rested on her hip by the phone, which allowed his thumb easy access to the loose hem of her shirt and the skin underneath.
Her hand caressed his cheek, down his jaw, throat, clavicle, chest, stomach…
“Lex.”
Clark felt as if she threw him against an iceberg floating in the Arctic Sea. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t… I didn’t mean… I want to stay with you, Chuck, but it’s already taken me way too long to dump my trash. Next time… um…” Her hands trailed up his chest and back down again. “Sunday night? Let’s meet in the laundry room,” she suggested, setting her hand on the doorknob. “Then we can compare notes.”
“Like about the fact that you’re getting married in two months?” he said wryly.
“Or the fact that I might be throwing this ring in Luthor’s face for submitting that announcement without informing me first. Maybe you should keep a close eye on me over the next few days to make sure I don’t end up killing the man,” Lois snapped, yanking open the door.
Clark set his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t go away mad.”
She paused and let the door slip out of her fingers as she relaxed back into his touch and then against his chest. “I’m mad at
him, not you. I never wanted this to go on so long.”
“At least, now, we have a deadline.”
Lois groaned.
“Are you covering Luthor’s press conference about the Planet tomorrow?” he asked.
“When is it?” she asked.
“Two.”
“I’m meeting him at 11:30 for lunch. I’ll make sure that I’m there,” she said, setting her hand on his arm encircling her torso. “Thank you. I needed this.”
He had thought that she might. “Just a reminder of what you’re missing,” he teased.
“Very funny,” Lois said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t happen to have any more cannoli on you, big boy?” She licked her lips and started to pat him down inside his jacket. “I’d love to try me some cream filling.”
Clark swallowed.
“Probably for the best,” she whispered huskily into his ear before kissing him gently. “I shouldn’t return to the apartment with cream filling on my lips, anyway. Lex might get the wrong idea.” With a wink, she passed through the doorway, leaving him speechless in the stairwell.
Ten paces towards her apartment, Lois murmured, “You do realize I was only talking pastries, right?” She laughed, and then added, this time he was sure to herself, “Always leave ‘em wanting more.”
That she had. That she had.
***
Part 163The things Lois did when she was furious had a funny way of coming back around and biting her on the behind. She knew this and, yet, she still hadn’t been able to stop herself from enacting the revenge Lex Luthor so justly deserved. She hoped Clark had taken her advice literally, when she recommended that he keep a close watch on her over the next few days to make sure she didn’t kill Luthor.
If her fiancé wanted to play wedding hardball, he clearly didn’t know his opponent. First, Lois was raised around sports and athletes. She knew how to play the game and how to throw better than some minor league pitchers. Secondly, since her father was in sports medicine, she knew just where to aim to inflict the most pain. Thirdly, if neither of these techniques worked, her relief pitcher was Superman. Like any starting pitcher, though, she wanted to finish the game
her way.
Lois and Nigel arrived at Lex’s private garage under Lex Tower shortly before eleven o’clock the next morning. She hated that she had to wait for Nigel and his key card to use the elevator. It made her feel like a child, and she had never liked that feeling, even as a child.
Nigel escorted her all the way to Lex’s office. Mrs. Cox was busy on the telephone and raised an index finger in the universal request that Lois wait.
Lois turned to stare at Nigel.
He didn’t even smile.
Now, if she were Clark, how would she…
“Thank you, Nigel,” Lois said in a dismissive tone. Okay, maybe she wasn’t
exactly sounding as polite as Clark.
Her words seemed to catch the Englishman by surprise, nonetheless. “Pardon?”
“Thank. You,” she repeated, enunciating the words she used so infrequently.
“You’re welcome, Ms. Lane,” Nigel said unsurely, almost suspiciously.
Lois sighed. He was going to make her say it. Fine. “You may go now unless you think there’s a reason I might need your protection from Lex.”
At this, Nigel smiled. It raised Lois’s guard more than reassured her. “Very well, Ms. Lane,” he said, doing that slight bow move he did before leaving a room.
One down…Mrs. Cox set down her telephone receiver.
“Please tell Lex I’ve arrived,” Lois instructed her.
“Mr. Luthor isn’t in, Ms. Lane. If you’ll just have a seat,” Mrs. Cox said, indicating some leather sofas in a little waiting area between her desk and the elevators.
“Isn’t in? But we have an eleven o’clock lunch,” Lois insisted, even though she had secretly hoped for this response.
“Eleven
thirty,” Mrs. Cox corrected with smugness.
“No! No! It’s eleven o’clock, I’m sure,” Lois replied, starting to dig through her briefcase.
“I handle Mr. Luthor’s calendar, Ms. Lane. I have yet to make a mistake, nor am I likely to do so. Your lunch is at 11:30,” Mrs. Cox said, once more indicating the waiting area.
Lois removed her datebook from her bag and flipped it open. “Oh, dear. 11:30,” she said as politely as she could muster, despite wanting to slam her briefcase across the woman’s face as Mrs. Cox preened in victory. All that stopped Lois was the knowledge that she had known the correct time of the luncheon date before arriving. “You’re right, Mrs. Cox,” Lois said, opening Lex’s office door. “I’ll just wait in here.”
“I cannot allow that!” Mrs. Cox said, rising to her feet. “Guests must wait in the waiting area.”
“But
I’m not a guest, Mrs. Cox. I’m Lex’s fiancée. He would want me to wait in his office,” Lois said, continuing inside.
True enough, Lex wasn’t there.
Two down…Lois hadn’t been convinced that Lex was out of the building merely because Mrs. Cox had said he was. She had needed to verify the information with her own eyes. Lois wouldn’t put it past Mrs. Cox to lie to her just to force Lois to wait.
“
Everyone waits in the waiting area,” Mrs. Cox repeated, following her inside Lex’s office.
“
I’m not ‘everyone’. For my protection, Lex would want me in the safety of his office.” Lois had known that Lex’s overprotective streak would come in handy at some point.
“You’re perfectly safe in the waiting area,” Mrs. Cox insisted.
“Nonetheless,” Lois said, raising her voice. She wondered if Mrs. Cox had nerve enough to call security or Nigel to have her forcibly removed. Neither move would sit well with Lex, Lois imagined.
Finally, Mrs. Cox’s phone rang. Lois had asked Perry to call shortly after eleven to quiz Mrs. Cox about the upcoming Daily Planet press conference. She hadn’t thought he would wait this long.
The phone rang again. Mrs. Cox’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Lois.
“Don’t you need to answer that?” Lois asked innocently with a smile. “I doubt Lex would approve of you shirking your duties to play nursemaid to me.”
With a sharp scowl, Mrs. Cox marched from the room.
Lois followed her to the door, calling, “Oh, and Mrs. Cox, three for lunch today. If you could inform the chef on this change.” She shut the door in the woman’s face as Lex’s assistant turned around to respond to Lois.
Three down… time to get to work.Lois bet she wouldn’t have more than five minutes, tops, before Mrs. Cox wrangled herself away from Perry’s inquiries. As Lois surveyed the room, her mind returned to the question she had been pondering since she had come up with this harebrained scheme.
Would Lex videotape his own office?
Yes, she was sure Lex would like visuals of any activities occurring there without his consent, or any activities involving his personal assistant. On the other hand, Lois wouldn’t believe everything that went on in this room was above reproach or legal, not that Lois had any proof of such behavior. Would Lex want photographic evidence of what he did, or
whom he did in the case of Mrs. Cox, behind closed doors? Or would the billionaire want to protect his privacy?
She knew Lex doubted he would ever be caught doing any of his nefarious schemes, or that the police would ever see such security video footage, but would he risk it?
Lois decided to err on the side of caution. She looked around the office, but in a casual manner of one only interested in objects on display. While her manner was casual, her focus wasn’t. She wished she had asked Clark to scan the room for cameras last night and made herself a mental note to do so when she saw him on Sunday night. This would be the first of many times that she planned on being alone in Lex’s office, deciding that it would take numerous times to breach Lex’s security completely until she could prove Jimmy’s innocence. She wanted Lex to become comfortable with her remaining alone in his office, and if not ‘comfortable’, used to the fact that she would often be there.
She studied the bookcases and browsed the titles. As she did so, she made sure to look at the fixtures in the display for secret cameras. If he had any, he had hidden them well. Lex had hired someone to professionally decorate his office and nothing in it, with the exception of Lex’s weapon collection, could be described as having personal meaning to her fiancé. She had reached the same conclusion she had when she first entered this room back on the night of the White Orchid Ball. He wanted to depict a certain image and this room did that.
The only difference to his office that she could ascertain between that night almost a year ago, and now, was that Lex had added a photo of her to his desk. It wasn’t a professional photo in that she hadn’t posed for the photo. Actually, she couldn’t name off-hand the time or place at which it was taken. It was just another example of Lex invading her privacy without her permission.
Lois moved to his weapon display case, examining each ancient weapon. Perhaps it was overkill for someone who was going to ask Superman to case the joint for her, but maybe Superman’s x-ray vision would overlook something obvious, such as a green stone in one of Lex’s weapons, that wasn’t an emerald. Who knew what would happen if Superman scanned Kryptonite? Would it affect him at a distance just to look at the rock with his vision gizmo or would he be safe? She didn’t want to chance Clark being exposed twice on her watch... well, thrice, actually, because of her. One could argue that it was her fault that he was exposed to the red and green Kryptonite watch as well.
Damn! She still had to pay that littering fine. She rolled her eyes.
Henderson.Focusing back on the task at hand, she took an inventory of Lex’s weapons. There were swords, guns, and even a statue of what appeared to be Buffalo Bill. Nothing jumped out as particularly enlightening for her investigation, or seemed to have any green on them at all. She also doubted Lex would leave a weapon he used to kill someone out in the open. That thought brought up another interesting point. Would Lex kill someone with his own hands or merely hire someone to do it for him?
Lois recalled the investigation into Monique Kahn’s torture and unsolved murder. Clark had always suspected Lex’s involvement, because rumors had it that Ms. Kahn had secretly been dating someone high in the LexCorp hierarchy. Clark had also thought the death of Miranda, the perfumer and admitted ex-girlfriend of Lex, was suspicious. The case was also still open as the findings had been inconclusive. Then, there was that persistent image in Lois’s head of a naked, disemboweled, and rat-invested Ralph hanging in the sewers under Metropolis. Lois took a deep breath and exhaled as goose bumps threatened to jump to the surface of her arms.
Lex loved Lois enough to marry her, and deep in her gut she knew that he wouldn’t hurt her.
Nevertheless, she thought as she sat down in Lex’s chair and swiveled around to look out his huge windows at the city that she loved, the expression Nigel had given her before he left gave wiggle room to doubt her gut. She hoped to catch a glimpse of her favorite man in blue, but to no avail. He was either busy or well hidden.
She turned back to Lex’s desk and subtly tried the drawers, but she found them locked. She glided her fingers along the edges of his desk, hoping to appear to be admiring its craftsmanship. Instead, her fingers brushed a button and she heard a clicking snap sort of noise as if a deadbolt had been locked. She also noticed an additional low level humming, which hadn’t been there before.
She shrugged the noises away at first, but after another minute, she decided it must mean something. That button must have activated
something. She glanced around the room, but didn’t notice any outward differences to the room. She saw a flash of blue out of the corner of her eye and turned towards the windows.
Superman hovered some ten yards off Lex’s balcony staring at her with wide worried eyes. He had noticed something had changed. She shook her head slightly, and he pointed to his ear. Was Lex coming? She glanced over her shoulder at Lex’s office door and listened, but couldn’t hear anything. Lex must have solid doors, because she couldn’t even hear Mrs. Cox on the telephone with Perry. Lois stood up and walked to the balcony doors, but they wouldn’t open. Superman pointed again at his ear.
What else could Superman mean other than he heard someone coming? He couldn’t hear her? Of course, he couldn’t hear her; she was being quiet. Then, she recalled Superman once mentioning that he could tell her heartbeat from other people’s, which meant he could hear her heartbeat from a distance.
So, why couldn’t he hear her? Was there Kryptonite? Had she exposed it with the press of the button? That wasn’t good. Would it affect Superman so far away? No, if it had been Kryptonite, Superman wouldn’t still be hovering just outside of LexTower.
If it wasn’t Kryptonite, what else could it be? Soundproofing?
Lois spun back around to Lex’s desk, found and pressed the button again. The low level humming stopped and the locks clicked once more. She glanced over her shoulder and out the window in time to see Superman give her a quick thumbs-up signal and zip away. She swallowed, reassured in Superman’s presence, but the goose bumps persisted. She tried the French doors again and found she could open them.
Doors that locked automatically and Superman-proof soundproofing system at the touch of a button. Damning, but it wasn’t against the law to want privacy. At least, Lex considered his office high enough up and out of view of others, that the button didn’t fog the windows as well. Although, with what she didn’t know. Was there such a thing as leaded gas? She didn’t think so. Lex must have had the system installed before Superman came on the scene last spring.
Lois stepped out onto the balcony and took a breath of the cool air of freedom. After another moment, she returned to her exploration of Lex’s office. She was even more convinced that it wasn’t as innocent as it appeared and was determined to unearth its other secrets. The only personal area of the whole room seemed to be his trophy case with the weapon collection. If he had a button on his desk, did he have other similar toys hidden somewhere? As she slid her fingers along the edge of the case, the door to the office opened and Lex entered.
“Darling,” he said, spreading his arms wide as if expecting an embrace. “This is a surprise!”
Lois approached him and took his hands in hers instead of stepping into waiting arms. “Why? I’m on schedule. Lunch at 11:30.”
“Yes, but you’re early,” Lex said, drawing her close and kissing her cheek. “A rare treat to see more of you.”
“I have some things to discuss,” Lois said. “— which can’t wait.”
His returning smile oozed charm. “And I have some things to discuss with you, Lois.”
Lois glanced over his shoulder at the waiting Mrs. Cox, who stood in the doorway. “Is there anything else, Mrs. Cox?” she asked, her gaze narrowing.
“Those papers I needed to sign,” Lex said, waving his assistant away. “I’ll get them from you after lunch, Mrs. Cox.”
“Ms. Lane invited me to join you,” Mrs. Cox said.
“I did no such thing,” Lois said with scoffing laughter.
“Why not? I believe it an excellent idea for the two main ladies in my life to better acquaint yourselves,” Lex said, and Lois felt tempted to punch him in the gut. She was as acquainted with Lex’s mistress as much as she ever wanted to be.
“You told me to inform the chef that there would be three of us for lunch,” Mrs. Cox reminded Lois.
A petite woman with shoulder length blonde hair pushed past Mrs. Cox and into the room, her arms held wide. “Lois! Darling! I’m so glad you invited me to join you for lunch,” the woman said, hugging Lois long enough to kiss each of her cheeks before turning to Lex, waiting for Lois to introduce them.
Lois swallowed, taking time to savor the moment of bafflement she caught in her fiancé’s eyes. “This is…”
“He needs no introduction,” the woman said, shaking his hand with enthusiasm. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Luthor… Lex. Lois cannot stop talking about how wonderful you are.”
Lies, all lies.
“Lex,” Lois paused for full effect. “Meet Ellen Lane, my mother.”
***
“So, how did the two of them get along?” Clark asked, as he folded another one of Lois’s towels. He had heard on more than one occasion Lois muttering under her breath regarding her mother and it was never positive.
Clark didn’t understand her consternation. He wished every day that he could have his mother around, and was thankful to have Martha Kent to turn to when he needed advice and wisdom, especially about women. Lana had loved her mother. The two of them had been like two peas in a pod, personalities, likes and dislikes, hobbies, treatment of him, etc. Then again, all the Lang sisters had been just like their mother.
“Fabulously,” Lois grumbled from her perch on top of the dryer. “Until she had William pour her fourth glass of wine. I had warned Lex that she drinks too much, so he shouldn’t have served wine at all. It was only lunch, after all. I suggested that she drink iced tea like I was, but trying to get parents to improve themselves is like…” She rolled her eyes. “Trying to get parents to break their bad habits.”
He raised an eyebrow at her circular logic. “Orphan,” he reminded her.
“Right. Sorry. Let me explain. Parents will rarely admit that their adult children could possibly know better about anything, even when we do. They still want you to see them as the infallible people you admired when you were growing up, even if you never saw them in such a light back then. If they were stubborn about how things were done when we were children, multiply that number by seven by the time we’re adults. They will
always be right and you’ll
always be wrong. End of story.” She bent her knee and rested her elbow on it, so that she could prop up her head. “It didn’t help matters when Lex sided with her.”
“Ouch!” Clark winced. He decided to refrain from mentioning that her fiancé probably sided with her mother because they were from the same generation.
“‘Let her live a little, Lois. It’s not every day her daughter gets engaged,’ he said. I could just hear the implied ‘
to me’ dangling from the end of that statement, as if that was some improvement over any other man,” Lois went on, mocking Lex. “My mother, then, beamed at Lex, praising him as someone I should listen to and learn from.
This from a woman who has been three time president of the Metropolis chapter of Women Against Husbands!”
W.A.H.?“It’s his money, Chuck, all his hundreds of billions of dollars. If I had introduced you and told her that
we were getting married, she would be giving me every reason under the sun why it was a bad idea, starting with a list of your faults and how marrying you would ruin my life, career, and figure – not necessarily in that order – even though you’re twice the man Lex could ever be.”
Terrific, Clark thought sarcastically, and then frowned.
Wait. Only twice? His modesty slapped him across the face. He reminded himself that not only were they
not getting married, but that Lois must have still not fully forgiven him for the list of faults
she had listed on why they weren’t at that stage of their relationship, even covertly. Anyway, that list would only pale in comparison to not being able to give Lois the children they both wanted, because he’d never be able to consummate their marriage. Twice as good as Lex could ever be was actually a fair assessment with those defects considered. Clark was lucky Lois was talking to him at all, let alone allowing him to touch her laundry. He bent down and pulled her flat sheet out of the dryer. He folded it in two seconds and went to remove the fitted sheet.
“What happened?” he probed, when he added the now-folded sheet to the pile.
Lois wiped her finger across the empty wax paper, which the cream-filled cannoli had been wrapped in, and stuck it into her mouth. “She gestured too wildly while insisting on a flock of doves to be released after the wedding, as if I would want bird droppings instead of rice, and knocked Lex’s glass of merlot into his lap.”
Clark tried not to laugh, but the thought of that red wine staining Lex’s lap was too entertaining. He could hear in his mind his mother’s disappointing ‘tsk’ and he pulled the grin from his face. “I’m sorry.”
“It was beyond humiliating,” Lois said. “I really thought she was on the wagon, Chuck. When she told me that she was going on her ‘spa retreat’ next month, I truly thought it was a refresher course to prep for the wedding. I deluded myself that perhaps there was another benefit to this investigation. I didn’t think she would ‘live it up’ until then. Who knows, maybe it really is a ‘spa retreat’, at a regular ol’ spa.” She groaned. “I never would have gotten her involved if I had known she couldn’t handle herself through one lunch. I thought her interference into Lex’s carefully laid plans for the wedding would be payback for him announcing the date of our wedding without discussing it with me first,
which, by the way, he claims he picked because there was a cancellation. He ‘said’ that it would’ve been impossible to book a location elsewhere at such short notice and that he thought that all women wanted to be June brides and hated for me to have to wait another year to become Mrs. Luthor.” She dropped her knees over the edge of the machine.
Luthor clearly knows Lois well, Clark thought wryly.
“He also claimed that he wasn’t planning on sending in the announcement to the Met Star until after discussing it with me first, at lunch that day, but Mrs. Cox misunderstood and sent it in early. Ha! I bet she did it on purpose, the witch,” Lois grumbled.
Clark said nothing, merely glanced over at her.
“What? The woman hates me. She undermines me at every opportunity,” Lois explained.
“You are trying to bring her boss to justice,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but
she doesn’t know that. She’s just jealous because Lex proposed to me,” Lois replied.
Clark wasn’t going to go anywhere near that comment, and went to remove her last towel from the dryer.
“Anyway, my mother apologized and then some to Lex, but the damage has been done.”
“The wedding’s been called off?” Clark asked hopefully.
Lois set a hand on his shoulder, and he lifted his head. She cupped his jaw with her other hand, causing him to stand up. She drew him into her arms.
He hadn’t meant to show her how uncomfortable he was with this undercover assignment or how much he hated it, knowing it must have been harder on her. Apparently, he had failed. How else was he supposed to act when she kept describing her wedding plans to Luthor, including introducing her mother, who Clark had yet to meet, to Luthor, and how jealous Luthor’s assistant was of her, because
Lois was marrying Luthor? He was trying to be supportive of her undercover part of this investigation, but it was eating him up inside.
“Wedding or no, Chuck, I’m not marrying him,” she said, moving her hands to his chest.
“I know,” he murmured.
“I love you,” she reminded him.
He smiled. “Not as much as I love you,” he whispered, lowering his mouth to hers.
Lois leaned back, and he opened his eyes to find out why. She was staring at him. “Don’t make this into a competition, Kent, because you’d soooo lose.”
His heart felt full of sunlight and his smile increased. “Would I, then? I doubt that, Lane,” he replied, leaning towards her again.
“Prove it,” she challenged.
Clark pressed his lips to hers and did just that.
When the washer with her whites in it beeped a few minutes later, he stepped back to move the load into the dryer. Lois swayed and appeared a bit star struck. He couldn’t help the gloating smile of victory, which crossed his face.
Five seconds later, he was popping quarters from her coin purse into the dryer and starting it, having already shifted the whites. She hadn’t made a comment about him touching her underwear or even opened her eyes from his kiss. Challenge fulfilled.
He leaned back against the laundry room table and grinned at her with his arms crossed as he waited for her to regain her equilibrium.
Lois’s eyes opened and she looked him up and down. Grabbing the front of his t-shirt, she pulled him towards her and said, “Nice effort, Chuck. Now, let me show you how it’s done. You better start working on your concession speech.”
No chance of that happening, Clark thought as her body melted against his. It was a good thing he could hold his breath for a long time.
That long list of things that they still needed to discuss started to gather dust in his mind.
***End of Part 163*** Part 164 Comments
