Anything You Say: An Enemies to Lovers Standalone Romance

by Chloe Finch

  Already she’d put too much faith in Zach. The alarm bells were ringing the moment she got onto the back of his motorcycle. And when she met up with him in the office Saturday morning. And the kiss before that. There were a lot of alarm bells, actually.

  Then he looked at her and nothing else mattered. She was drawn like a magnet to him, turned to a puddle of desire at the curve of his mouth. All week she stared, but couldn’t touch him. He looked like a GQ model in the jewel-tone wardrobe of perfectly tailored suits. That smirk always painted on his face. Those crinkly eyes.

  Zach was still playing it straight, as if he and Grace hadn’t spent all day Saturday together. At the front of the training room, Brad was explaining Apex weekend, the big annual celebration for the sales team that was coming up in just a few short weeks. There was really no need to explain it—Apex weekend was a big deal, and most fellows had heard about it before they were even accepted to the program.

  “We want to make sure you guys are all prepared,” Brad said.

  “So make sure you get all your work for the week done by end of day Thursday,” Zach added. “It’s Joe’s expectation that everyone who goes to Apex—which is everyone in sales across the whole company— has already finished their work and isn’t slacking off on anything.”

  There were a couple of murmurs in the room.

  “This is an opportunity for you to make a good impression on the higher-ups,” Brad continued. “Probably a first impression for a lot of them. So even though you can party like everyone else, remember that you’re being watched.”

  Zach interjected again. “Speaking of the banquet, it’s black-tie. That means tuxes, gentlemen. And for our two ladies,” he looked directly at Grace, “wear something fitting for the occasion.”

  The only indication that something had changed was that he was giving June the brush-off more often than usual. One morning that week, June came up and put her arms around Zach, and he smoothly slipped out from under her grasp. She appeared unfazed and went back to talking to Brad as if nothing happened. Grace had no idea what was going on between the two of them, but she believed him when he said they hadn’t had sex. And to her relief, it looked like whatever it was might actually be over.

  All week she watched, with a new smugness, as the women in sales support flirted with him. This didn’t bother her at all compared to the June thing.

  One day, Megan, an account assistant, came to the training room with a message for Zach. She stood in the doorway and waved a folder in the air, calling his name in a singsong voice. Grace had never spoken to her, but knew she was one of the people in the office most prone to gossip. She had long brown hair straightened within an inch of its life and she went a little heavy handed with the self-tanner.

  “Coming, dear,” Zach said as he made his way to the door. She stood in the hallway while he leaned against the doorframe.

  “I got a call from Automat Processing,” she said.

  “Oh Jesus, what is it this time?” He said good-naturedly.

  “Behave!” She swatted him with the folder.

  He made a big show of pretending to be hurt. “Ow,” he said, rubbing his arm.

  She rolled her eyes as if to say Oh, Zach.

  Women were always doing this with him. Being overly familiar. Always acting like there was an inside joke between them. Of course, he egged them on. Megan would go back to her desk and recount the whole thing breathlessly to her cube neighbors, playing it off like it was no big deal but making sure everyone heard. Meanwhile, he would forget about it three seconds after it happened. The thing was, he was being overly polite in these situations. He never turned the charm on with other salespeople, only support staff.

  “They’re threatening to go to Miller,” she said.

  “They are the biggest ten-thousand-dollar pain in my ass, I ever had,” he said.

  “Should I tell them to fuck themselves? I know how you are.” If she thought Zach would toss out ten thousand dollars for no reason, she didn’t know how he was.

  He ran his hand through his hair absently. “No, better not. I’ll meet with them and remind them they’re our favorite client. Take a look at my calendar and set up something next week.”

  “Of course.” She seemed let down by the direction the conversation had taken.

  “Thanks, Meg. You’re a peach.” He smiled that thousand-watt smile at her, as if she had done him some huge favor.

  She recovered from the disappointment and smiled wistfully. “You got it, boss.”

  * * *

  Sterling did this thing called Sterling Serves, where everyone in the company was supposed to do eight hours of community service so they could brag about it on the website. Jessica invited Grace to a fundraiser her aunt and uncle were hosting, promising it would be an easy gig and get them the whole eight hours in one quick swoop.

  The fundraiser was on a weeknight at Jessica’s aunt and uncle’s loft in Midtown. Jessica had told Grace to wear all black and gave her the address, but that was all she knew beforehand. When she showed up at the nondescript building in Hell’s Kitchen, she wasn’t sure if she’d be bartending or mopping floors or being a go-go dancer. She buzzed the fourth floor as instructed and a voice answered, “Is this the fabulous Grace Lockwood here at last?”

  As it turned out, Aunt Leslie and Uncle Brian were the kind of New Yorkers every out-of-towner wanted to meet on their first visit. They were loud and eccentric and artsy, and Grace liked them immediately. The fundraiser was this big swanky affair for the Wildlife Preservation Society of New York. One of those fundraisers where everyone wore floor-length dresses and they auctioned off art for thousands of dollars.

  Grace was assigned elevator duty with Jessica. It was an old freight elevator, big enough to fit a car in, leftover from the days when the building was a warehouse. The elevator had a rug laid down, and art hung on the walls and had a double function as the foyer. When a guest arrived, they entered the elevator through a garage door open to the sidewalk.

  Grace’s job was to stand in the elevator and check guests in and radio up to Aunt Leslie to tell her who was on their way. Then, she closed the door on the street side and got to ride up, mesmerized, as Jessica drove the elevator to the fourth floor—no buttons in a freight elevator. Sometimes when they started moving the guests gasped, having not realized they were on an elevator at all.

  At the fourth floor, Jessica stopped the elevator at a tick mark and opened the door on the other side, unhooking the massive latch and pushing the doors apart like a jaw. This was the other big reveal. Just outside the metal elevator door, they were greeted with opulence. Thick, velvet curtains framed the entrance, and the massive white event room was laid out before them. A DJ was spinning in one corner, waiters passed hors d’oeuvres, and the walls were lit up with dramatic magenta and purple lights.

  “Everyone looks good in pink lighting,” Aunt Leslie had explained when she was giving Grace the tour before the party started.

  After the initial wave of guests arrived, they had some downtime waiting for late arrivals on street level.

  “This place is amazing,” Grace said. “Do your aunt and uncle live here?”

  Jessica laughed. “No, definitely not. They have an apartment a few blocks away. This is their job.”

  “What is, hosting fundraisers?”

  “I guess you’d call it an event space? Or a production company maybe? They bought the building in the late seventies for dirt cheap. Back when Hell’s Kitchen was Hell’s Kitchen, you know? They started doing events in it, and now they do all sorts of things. Product launches, TV shoots—they even hosted a prom once.”

  “That is seriously cool,” Grace said. It was all so glamorous, it made Sterling seem even lamer than usual. “Why don’t you work for them?”

  “The pay is terrible,” Jessica said. “And I’m trying to retire early. Besides, you should never work with family. I used to come out here to work for them in the summer when I was in school. I’d sleep in
the event space and work for them during the day, and it was horrible.”

  “Really? It seems like it would be so cool.”

  A man in a beanie and skinny jeans walked past on the sidewalk and did a double take at the open elevator door. He didn’t say anything but kept glancing back at the elevator until he was almost at the end of the block.

  “Sure it’s cool, for the first hour or so. When Uncle Brian is flailing his arms around telling you to move a couch across the room for the eighth time or when it’s four in the morning and you’re painting scuffs off the floor before the 7 o’clock appointment arrives, not so much.”

  Just then a town car pulled up, and a man and woman in formal attire climbed out of the back seat. They were in their sixties, dignified, and the man looked familiar in a way Grace couldn’t put her finger on.

  “Hello,” Grace said. “Welcome to the Wildlife Preservation gala. May I have your names, please?”

  “Gore,” said the man.

  Grace scanned the list and found the name, and it finally hit her why he looked so familiar. It was Al Gore. Grace had met a handful of famous people from her days as a young tech darling, but usually just other entrepreneurs, not the freaking former vice president.

  She tried to keep cool and not show how suddenly nervous she was.

  “There you are,” she said brightly. Did the vice president keep their title after they were out of office? Should she call them Mr. and Mrs.? Vice President? She turned her back to them when she radioed up so they wouldn’t hear if she said the wrong thing.

  When the doors closed after they dropped them off on the fourth floor, Jessica burst out laughing.

  “You were totally starstruck!”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, it was adorable,” Jessica said. “I just thought the girl who was on the cover of Forbes wouldn’t be fazed by it.”

  “It’s Al Gore, not Jeff Bezos.”

  “Are you saying you wouldn’t be starstruck if Jeff Bezos walked in?” Jessica said skeptically.

  “No, his labor practices are abhorrent,” Grace said.

  They were back at street level, and Grace opened the elevator door on the street side. There was a man in a tux with his back turned to them, rocking up on his heels while he waited.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, sir,” Grace said as the door clanked open.

  He turned around and her heart stopped. It was Zach. Spend enough time in New York and you’ll learn it’s not a big city at all. It’s these tiny little gossipy towns all mashed together in one spot. And once you started running with one social circle, you ran into the same people again and again. It seemed impossible, yet time after time she spotted the same strangers in bodegas, the same guy she had one bad date with. And now Zach.

  He grinned wickedly upon realizing it was her.

  “Sir,” he said, mulling it over. “I like that, Gracie.”

  He stepped into the elevator, hands in his pockets. For some reason, seeing him out of context like this had her all nervous. Her hands were shaking for some ridiculous reason. She didn’t want him to notice, so she didn’t cross his name off the list. She pressed the talk button on the radio earpiece.

  “Zach Smith on his way up,” she said. His name felt foreign in her mouth.

  He looked hot as hell in a tux. Like everything he wore, it was perfectly tailored, hugging his lean, muscled body in just the right way. He didn’t say anything, just stood there with his hands in his pockets, smirking at her.

  The elevator wasn’t moving yet. She looked at Jessica, wondering why she hadn’t started it yet. Jessica pointed at the door. Grace never closed it. She set the clipboard down and hurried over to shut it, and the elevator finally started moving. The silence was excruciating. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say. She had a feeling Zach was letting it drag on intentionally, to make her uncomfortable.

  “So, you a big wildlife supporter?” Jessica asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Zach said. “Love wildlife. Can’t get enough of it.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Jessica said, matching his sarcasm. “What’s your favorite animal?”

  Zach thought for a moment. “I’ve always been partial to hawks.”

  Jessica nodded. “Good choice, hawks. Endangered, I think.”

  The elevator stopped, and Jessica opened the door. Zach winked at Grace on his way off the elevator, and she nearly fell over.

  After she closed the door, Jessica didn’t move the lever.

  “Are you gonna tell me what the hell that was about?”

  “I don’t know why he’s here, if that’s what you’re saying,” Grace said.

  “What I’m saying is you guys were making gaga eyes at each other the whole time, and you just stood there like a statue,” Jessica said.

  Grace shrugged. What could she tell her? Where would she even start? She might not actually hate Zach? They hooked up last weekend and had plans to do it again this weekend?

  “Is there something going on between you?”

  “Not really,” Grace said, choosing her words carefully.

  Jessica’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds an awful lot like a yes.”

  Aunt Leslie came over the radio. “Someone just called the buzzer, girls. Can you go let them in?”

  Jessica started the elevator.

  “Girl, you are not getting out of this that easy,” she said. “I have follow-up questions.”

  * * *

  Zach

  Zach found fundraisers horrifically boring, but made a point of going to at least a couple per quarter. For all the fanfare of closing deals in the middle of the workday in front of the fellows, this was where the real money was made. The crowd tended to be a bunch of rich people who thought of themselves as benevolent, then turned around and were condescending to the bartenders. The type of people Zach couldn’t stand. If you were going to be rich and snobbish, at least own it.

  Anyone he met tonight he wouldn’t pitch for at least a few months. This was all about making friends. Well, “friends.” Flattering the big donors and telling charmingly raunchy stories that made old men pat him on the back and invite him to go smoke a cigar on the roof terrace with them.

  And after that it was sitting at a table pretending to be interested in speeches, maybe buying something from the auction just to make a good impression on the donors. At least there was usually free booze at these things. He ordered a whiskey at the bar and surveyed the room. A couple of familiar faces. Old, rich couples he’d seen at other fundraisers. A guy he went to the driving range with once.

  That was another mind-numbingly dull thing he did for clients: golf. Playing right into the cliché, every old white CEO still loved to make deals while they golfed. Somehow even in Manhattan they found a way to work it in. More than once he’d taken a helicopter to a golf course on Long Island for the afternoon. That part at least was fun.

  He wondered what Grace was doing here. Certainly not networking, not while she was working the door. That was something he learned the hard way—rich people ignore the help.

  Zach made a circuit of the room, stopping to say hello to the people he knew, grabbing an appetizer off a tray. He was distracted though. He couldn’t stop thinking about Grace. How, just now in the elevator, she turned into a nervous, shaking mess when she saw him. It was such a fucking power trip. She was so into him she flipped totally into teenager-with-a-crush mode. Submissive mode. Did she even realize she was doing it?

  He couldn’t wait for the weekend. He needed her like he needed air to breathe. Especially with all this drama with his brother. Speaking of which… He stepped out on the patio to try calling Derek again. Straight to voicemail. Again.

  Last Saturday, after he dropped Grace off at the train station, he checked his phone and realized with a sinking sensation, as he scrolled through the five voicemails, that he completely forgot about the money drop with Big L. He had originally planned to screw around with Grace in the morning and then go to th
e money drop with the scumbag in the afternoon, but he ended up so totally out of his mind with Grace he wasn’t thinking straight. For some reason decided to drive all the way out to the Hamptons on a whim, and in the process pissed off the meanest guy his brother had ever owed money to.

  He was angry at Grace for distracting him so completely. It was her fault he was coughing up fifty thousand bucks in the first place. But he was obsessed with her, and it was totally pathetic. If he could get his head on straight, he could handle hooking up with some random girl from work and dropping a bag of money off. Not like it was rocket science.

  From the voicemails, he learned Big L was not happy to leave the drop spot empty-handed. He said there would be hell to pay. Zach normally wouldn’t be concerned—it wasn’t the first time he’d been in deep shit with some lowlife—but he really didn’t need to get his ass kicked again. Another mess of an item on his to-do list. Pick up laundry, follow up with prospect, pay fifty grand to the angry drug dealer who thought he was Derek.

  After realizing his mistake, he had gone to check on the money like a superstition. But when he opened his closet, it wasn’t there. He knew exactly where he left the bag, on top of the Tom Ford shoes. He specifically remembered Jay-Z popping into his head when he set the money down, getting the lyrics to Tom Ford stuck in his head.

  Now it was gone. Coincidentally, this was right after Derek learned his new address. There was only one thing that could have happened.

  Zach wasn’t worried about it yet; this kind of thing always worked out. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a giant pain in his ass. He really didn’t want to go back to the bank. He had the money, but who wanted to burn a hundred grand on nothing?

  Big L had been calling him constantly since Saturday, and Zach had been using every trick in the book to stall, but there was only so long he could hold him off before this guy started to really come after him. And who knew what could happen then. Derek had better turn up soon, and better still have the money.