“Then when we’re done with our meeting, could you call Grace and schedule a time for her to meet with me today?”
Grace crosses her arms and snorts bitterly. “I’m here to do you a favor, Robert.”
“Do me a favor?”
“We’re losing clients because my father is—gone.”
I shrug nonchalantly. “Let them go.”
Grace huffs. “Is that really your attitude?”
I sit back down. My point has been made. “It’s not a problem. If a client wants to leave because he’s a fan of Ralph’s, I can’t stop them. That’s the nature of fandom.”
Grace rolls her eyes then takes a deep breath. She uncrosses her arms. “Robert,” she says in a kinder tone, “I have a lunch meeting today, then after that, a meeting with two very worried clients. I would love it if you could delay your meeting with Zoe for at least thirty minutes and lend some time to me.”
I crack a smile. Wow, she does have a diplomatic side. It’s patronizing as hell but nevertheless more persuasive than the impolite bitch. “Zoe, is it okay if we continue later?”
Zoe looks between Grace and me. “Um, yes.”
Grace keeps her glare on me as Zoe walks out the office. Grace is a sore loser of a frivolous war. A woman, or man, who must assert herself in the most meager situation is a sad person. I have a million problems, but that isn’t one of them.
Grace takes the abandoned chair. “I would advise you to not fuck your assistant.”
She wants to keep fighting until she wins, but I calmly sit back in my chair. “Advice taken. Now what in the hell do you want?”
“I want you to come with me to meet some of our clients.”
“Why?”
“Because if you lose them, then I’m sure my father will not sell his company to you.”
“The company is already sold to me.”
She shakes a finger. “No… you have three months.”
“I promised I would keep you on for three months, but I assure you that this company is as good as mine.”
Grace frowns as if she’s confused. I take a moment to study her expression. What I see is a woman who wanted this operation for herself but feels as though she’s been double-crossed. I suspect she ran the company from the day Ralph brought her on board. What baffles me is why her father hasn’t told her the whole truth. Our contract is ironclad.
Grace snaps out of it and hands me a sheet of paper. “Here’s the list of clients.”
I hesitate then take the page and read the names on the list. “I’m familiar with two of the companies.”
“All of them are very familiar with you,” she says.
That sounds like a dig. I ignore her because she can’t help herself. Grace is miserable. I was in her shoes about ten years ago, but I sought help.
I spent five years on a shrink’s couch, sifting through most of my shit. I stopped going to counseling because I hit a brick wall, and the wall was Vince. The therapist tried to get me to admit the hardest thing to confess—I was jealous of my best friend. I’d hidden the truth deep down inside until Maggie brought it to the surface. She said I fucked her because I wanted to play with Vince’s favorite toy. As soon as she said it, the truth swelled up inside me like a hot poison that boiled over. At that moment, I was determined to stop wanting what Vince had, but it was too late. I had already gone past the point of no return.
“If they’re so familiar with me, then why in the hell do we need to meet?” I ask.
“So that you can assure them that you’re capable.”
“I’m not in the business of kissing ass. If they want to go, let them go.”
She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Are you going to fight me at every turn?”
I look off to ponder. Zoe was pretty intimidated by Grace. I need to let the entire company know with one broad stroke who the fuck is in charge around here. “No. I will have a company-wide meeting tomorrow morning. I would like for you to be there.”
She checks her watch. “Well, what time?”
“Nine in the morning.”
“That’s early.”
I show her my classic smirk. “Are you going to fight me at every turn?”
That gets a small chuckle out of her. “Okay, I’ll be here.” Her skin has turned red. It’s nice to know I’ve still got it.
“Good. See, we’re becoming friends,” I say.
Grace rolls her eyes and stands. “That remains to be seen.” She walks to the doorway then turns. “Since we’re becoming friends and all, why don’t you come with me tomorrow to meet with Dan Green?”
I shake my finger. “Very good, but the answer is still no—at least for now.” I wink.
She narrows an eye curiously. “At least for now?”
“You never know what the future holds.”
Grace snorts and walks out of my office. I think she’s ascertained that I’m flirting. Instead of calling Zoe back to my office, I head down to the finance department and introduce myself. Each person seems happy that I’ve taken over, which is good. Richard Hopkins, the chief financial officer, comes out of his office to shake my hand. I ask for the billing statements from the last two years.
“Oh,” Richard says as if he’s caught off guard by my request. “Well…”
“I need them in the next”—I look at my watch—“I need them now.”
He rubs his chin as he thinks. “I guess I can give you access to the database.”
I’m smiling Zoe style. “That’s perfect.”
After receiving access and passwords to all of the financial databases, I spend hours reading through all of the billing and the architects attached to each project. I compare the details and crunch the numbers. I keep my eyes on the figures, but I notice bodies pass my window all day long. A little after four, Zoe knocks on my door. I look up. She’s holding a white bag. I motion for her to come in.
“I bought you naan, four samosas, tandoori chicken, butter chicken, and basmati rice. You do like Indian food, don’t you?”
I would joke with her and say no if I weren’t so hungry and the figures that I’d studied hadn’t revealed some bad news. Basically, buying this company was like buying a lemon.
I pat my pants pocket for my wallet. “Yes, I like Indian. How much do I owe you?”
She holds up a hand. “Nothing. I paid for it with your lunch card.”
I don’t know what the hell a lunch card is, and Zoe must see the question on my face.
“There’s a credit card that I used to buy Ralph’s lunch. He was busy all the time too—especially lately.”
“Why lately?”
She brings the food to my desk, takes each item out of the bag, and sets it on my desk, careful not to disturb my work. “Ralph has just been stressed out lately. Everybody’s been stressed out.”
“But not you, right?”
Zoe shrugs. “There.” She steps back. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
I wonder why she’s being evasive. Maybe she knows what I’ve just discovered.
“Could you get me that list of employees?” I ask.
“Oh, I left it here.” She picks up a folder at the corner of my desk. Her extreme smile has returned, and for some reason, it doesn’t irritate me anymore.
I take the folder. “Thanks, Zoe.”
“Call me if you need me!” She turns to leave.
“Wait, what’s her name again—the one who rides the motorcycle?” I ask.
“Carter?”
“Right. Thanks.”
She looks at me as if she wonders why I asked her that, but I don’t owe her an answer.
“Another thing—could you send out a company-wide email? I want to have a meeting tomorrow morning at nine.”
“Okay,” she says. And just like that, she seems to forget how interested she was in why I asked about Carter.
Carter Remington is one of the company’s most sought-after architects, but she’s been given the most mediocre projects. I’ve notic
ed a lot of incomplete project reports where clients decided to pull their account from the company. Carter hasn’t had one cancellation, and regardless of how much a client appealed to have her as their architect, she hasn’t been put on the project. No wonder she sits in that corner like a shrinking violet. There’s definitely been some funny business going on around here, and I plan to end it. Three-quarters of the architects on staff are under the age of thirty and were hired within the last three years. Ralph hired Carter; Grace hired all the others.
I figure out how to buzz Zoe and ask if she can get me all of Carter Remington’s, along with four other architects’, project packages. She gets them to me in less than fifteen minutes. As soon as I have the packages, I comb through them. What I see is some impeccable work, and Carter’s is the best of the bunch.
I look up to rub my tired eyes and notice the clock on the wall. It’s seven forty-five at night, yet the office hasn’t thinned out. I find that strange. Even Zoe is still at her desk. I buzz her into my office, and she comes right away.
“What can I get you?” she asks.
“Why is everyone still here?”
She looks out the window at the office and shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Are they still working?”
“I guess.”
The fact that we still have a full house is pretty odd, but my mind is too full to deal with it. I rub my temples. “One more thing—can you get me all of the active project packets?”
“Yes!” It’s late, and her eyes are still bright.
“Thanks, Zoe. Once I have the packets, I want you to go home and get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Are you sure? I can stay here as long as you’re here.”
“No, go. I’ll be here all night.”
Her eyes grow wide. “All night?”
“All night.”
Zoe steps all the way into my office and closes the door. “So can I ask you something?”
I see the worry on her face. “You can ask me anything.”
“How bad is it?”
“How bad is what?”
“Are we really in trouble? There have been rumors that there’s no equity in this company.”
There is no equity in this company, but there’s potential. I know enough not to disclose any of that to my assistant. I show her my exhausted grin. “Don’t worry about anything. I’m on it.”
She reads my expression. It takes a while, but what has quickly become one of my favorite smiles returns. “Okay, active projects coming up.” She practically skips out of my office.
Once she brings me the active projects, I spend the night combing through them. I haven’t been this involved with the business of a company since the early days of A&Rt Media Group, before it got so large.
It’s three o’clock in the morning when I look up from the reports and rub my eyes again. I can hardly stay awake. The entire room beyond my office is dark except for one small light in the far corner. If I remember correctly, that’s where Carter sits.
I get up and follow the light. The closer I get, the more I’m able to see who’s sitting there—it’s her.
Tango
She is bent over her desk. Her hand moves across the page like a needle across a polygraph machine. Carter has on earbuds, and I can hear the music coming from them. I’m surprised she hasn’t noticed me standing behind her. Judging by the intensity with which her hand is scribbling, she’s in the zone. I’ve been there many times before.
* * *
Carter
“Keep working,” Carter told herself.
She felt Robert Tango behind her. His energy was like a mega wave, washing over her and wiping her out. Who would’ve thought that he would buy the company she worked for? She wondered if he remembered her. If he remembered her, then he would’ve hugged her, messed up her hair, and said, “Sup, Carly.” He’d always called her Carly instead of Carter. Then he would trot off into the woods with Vince, and they wouldn’t return to the main house until just before sundown.
Carter was five years younger than her cousin Vince and his best friend, Robert Tango, but because of the breadth of their personalities and presence, she’d always felt as though they were much older. All of Vince’s sisters and cousins had had the biggest crushes on Robert, and she wasn’t exempt. He had a natural way of flirting with every person in the room. The first time she’d played with herself, she imagined Robert Tango’s sensual and wicked smirk.
She’d seen him mostly during the summers when all of the families vacationed at their great-great-grandfather’s estate at Sag Harbor, New York. The house sat on fifteen acres of land adorned with green grass, healthy trees, and muddy lakes. The servants’ quarters at the back edge of the property was used as a guesthouse. That was where Vince and Robert stayed. Robert started joining the families on vacation when he was about eleven years old. For the first three years, when Robert and Vince were younger and not yet interested in girls, they spent the summer days swimming in the lakes, climbing trees, catching fireflies, and trying to avoid getting bit by ticks while doing totally gross things like looking for animal carcasses.
Four years later, when the boys turned fifteen, things changed. In one year, they grew taller and filled out. They looked more like twenty-year-old college boys than pubescent teenagers. They were also horny as hell. Vince’s sister Allie, who was the same age as Carter, used to accuse Vince and Robert of taking women twice their age back to the guesthouse.
“And do what with them?” Carter asked.
Allie just rolled her eyes and told Carter to grow up. Allie used to talk to Carter as if she knew nothing and Allie knew everything—seventeen years later, that hadn’t changed. Allie used her knowledge as leverage. She had always threatened to tell on Vince and Robert if Vince didn’t drive her to the movies on his moped or take her shopping for a new swimsuit or something else stupid. Once she made Robert Tango kiss her like he kissed the other girls. He happily obliged, and she never asked again.
Carter knew the kiss had scared Allie. They were taught that good girls waited to have sex with the boy they wanted to marry. Robert Tango had kissed her and dismissed her, and that broke Allie’s heart.
That same year, on the day after the Fourth of July celebration, Carter had ridden her bike into town for ice cream. The afternoon was humid but not hot. Her bike rolled to a stop in front of the ice cream shop, and she saw Robert and an older girl inside. The girl giggled about something. He watched her with a sexy smirk. Carter remembered pretending it was her he was watching like that. Then Robert put his hand on the girl’s thigh. She looked at her lap and back at him. They shared a moment. Robert whispered something in her ear, and they stood up.
Carter had felt her heart beating and thighs pulsing. They were walking toward the door, so Carter quickly rolled her bike farther down the street so Robert couldn’t see her when he walked out of the ice cream shop. Not that he would’ve recognized her anyway. He only paid her attention on day one, when all the families first arrived. He would mess up her long copper hair and say, “Sup, Carly.” Vince would stand behind him grinning, never correcting his friend. Vince laughed and jokingly called her Carly too. Admittedly, she liked the attention. They were the big boys. But she was a little girl, and the big boys only played with big girls.
The girl Robert had left the ice cream shop with was a big girl—not in physical stature but in rank. They got into her white Volkswagen Rabbit. The top was down. Robert put his arm around the girl’s seat as she sped off. Carter jumped on her bike and pedaled as fast as she could to follow them. As soon as the car turned down Madison Street, she knew exactly where they were going. Carter over-exerted herself, pedaling as fast as she could back to the estate, except she didn’t head to the main house.
Twenty minutes later, she’d reached the guesthouse. The white Rabbit was parked in the short driveway. Carter quietly rolled her bike to the side of the house and leaned it against the wall. The window at the front o
f the house was open. She looked through it, but they weren’t in the living room. There wasn’t much to the tiny house other than a living room, kitchen, a bathroom, and one bedroom with two twin beds for the boys.
Carter crept around the side of the house. The bedroom window was open. She heard the girl moaning and Robert grunting. It hadn’t taken him long to get between her legs. Carter could only watch him thrust in her for so long. The sight of him enjoying sex with another girl made her sick to her stomach. From that moment on, she had been determined to get over her crush on Robert Tango. After that summer, it was pretty easy. He and Vince turned sixteen and stopped coming up to Sag Harbor for summer vacations. They would go summer skiing in Switzerland, New Zealand, and sometimes Canada.
So it had been so many years since she’d seen her cousin Vince’s best friend. She’d almost run into him at Allie’s wedding. Rumor had it that he only stayed long enough to watch Allie exchange her vows because weddings made him nervous. Although one drunken night, when Allie came to San Francisco to visit her, Allie confessed that she thought Robert left early because he couldn’t bear to see her marry another man.
“And you know this how?” Carter asked.
Allie gave her that same look that used to make her feel like a dork. “I just do.”
“Did he say that to you?”
“No, but I know.”
For the first time ever, Carter saw right through her know-it-all cousin. Allie’s declaration was merely wishful thinking.
Earlier that day, when Carter had slammed into Robert in the courtyard on her way back to her motorcycle to retrieve the new set of drafting pencils she’d bought and left in the storage bin, Carter had thought for sure he would recognize her. He didn’t.
As soon as Carter had graduated from high school and entered college, she shedded her oversized T-shirts and baggy jeans for form-fitting V-neck T-shirts and tight jeans. She dyed her bronze hair black and sliced her long tresses. Her parents had bought her a sensible, fuel-efficient car for college, but Carter got a job as a waitress at a local coffee shop and traded the car in for a motorcycle. A motorcycle had been her primary vehicle ever since.
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