Before She Was Mine

by Amelia Wilde

  There’s a full-length mirror on the wall next to the double doors, and I take a moment to make sure that my appearance is on the sharpest point imaginable. My ensemble today is Chanel. I picked it up from the dry cleaner on Friday, along with the other pieces that will hopefully get me through this week, as long as I don’t have any food catastrophes. That should be easily avoidable. Lunch breaks are an unnecessary distraction.

  My hair is piled on top of my head, impeccably dried and arranged in the messy, carefree look that actually takes an hour to achieve. The only thing I need to touch up is my lipstick. It’s my signature shade—Rouge D’Armani, No. 103—and I keep a tube of it in my desk at all times. I swipe it on, the movement expert.

  Outside the glass doors, people are materializing in the hallway. They’re slotted for the first meetings of the day. Some of them don’t have appointments until 9:30, an hour from now, but they find things to do in the meeting rooms across the hall, poring over mockups, chatting in low voices to each other over presentation boards.

  One meeting room is taken up almost entirely by a group of five of the hottest men you’re likely to ever see in your entire life, and they’re dressed in outfits that look like a sexy twist on businesswear. They’re here to have Sandra approve the looks for the shoot on Thursday, and two stylists flit around them, adjusting sleeve cuffs again and again, making sure jackets hang just so. One look from Sandra and they’ll find themselves making frantic calls to the designers for replacements. The only people who seem entirely at ease are the models. They have the least to lose. Bryce, a blonde, blue-eyed model with All-American looks, catches me looking through the doors and winks.

  I give him a small smile. Bryce likes to stop at my desk after meetings and chat, and if Sandra’s tied up with a designer, he likes to bitch about work and boys, tell me who stood him up for a date last weekend, who turned out to be a terrible dancer and worse in bed. Those conversations are like pressure valves for my day. I would have cracked months ago if it weren’t for him.

  For a second my mind wanders. Bryce has a once-in-a-lifetime body. If he weren’t gay, I’d like to take him back to my apartment and strip off that shirt, tug down the charcoal pants, and slide my hand...

  Sandra’s face on the other side of the glass startles me so much that I jump. I can’t believe she caught me off guard like this. I came to the door to watch for the signs of her imminent arrival—the way people’s heads turn and then swivel back so they can pretend they weren’t watching her like a hawk as she came down the hall.

  When my body leaps Sandra’s eyes narrow, and then she pulls the door open with her free hand.

  “Catherine,” she says by way of greeting. “Cancel my appointments.”

  As she says this she tosses the summer-weight coat she had been carrying folded over her arm to me and thrusts her purse into my arms. I catch all of it with practiced ease and slip the coffee cup into her hand.

  Something about her expression seems...off. Sandra isn’t one for big smiles and keeps her emotions tightly under wrap, but I’ve spent the last year studying her. Something’s going on. My mind spins into overdrive. It’s not about the meetings, or else she would have emailed me at some point this morning or during the night. Some personal issue, maybe? Her husband doesn’t like the long hours she puts in. That could be it.

  I swallow. She’ll tell me the reason if she thinks I need to know. Still, this isn’t the first time my meeting-confirmation efforts have been completely wasted. The frustration almost doesn’t touch me. “Should I clear your schedule for the entire day, or only for the morning?”

  “Morning,” she says, then glides into her office and takes a graceful seat behind her desk.

  It takes me less than five minutes to hang her coat and bag in the closet and step outside to shoo the crowd away from the double doors. Bryce gives me an exaggerated pout—this means he’ll have to hang around the office for at least the next couple of hours in case she reschedules—but I give him a tiny shrug. I’m the messenger. Nothing I can do about that.

  “Catherine.” Sandra’s summons isn’t a question. It comes as soon as the glass doors swish closed behind me. I step over to her desk, picking up a small notepad and pen from my desk on the way. It’s extremely rare for Sandra to give me only one instruction at a time.

  “I’ve cancelled the morning appointments. Would you like me to start rescheduling them now?”

  She doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve spoken. Instead, she reaches into a desk drawer and pulls out a pair of reading glasses, which she perches on the edge of her nose. Reads something on her computer screen.

  The silence reigns for several moments.

  Then she shatters it with an announcement that makes my stomach twist with panic.

  3

  Jax

  Too many women have my phone number.

  The texts come in one after the other, at random hours, whenever they think I might be distracted. Receptive. It’s not going to happen. It’s never going to happen not for them.

  The treadmill slows beneath my feet and I let my breath come down, letting my heart thud, thud, thud in my chest. That’s the sensation I’m interested in right now. That, and focus. I’ve got a business empire to run. That’s why I start at the gym. Control the body. Control the mind. Control the business.

  No feelings.

  I pick up the phone from the cupholder of the treadmill—why is there a cupholder?—and swipe through the messages. She’s blocked in a matter of moments. Out of sight, out of mind.

  It’s best this way. Having “feelings” for women is a surefire way to lose control over your life, over your reputation, everything.

  Mine is too valuable for that. On the scale of ten billion in net worth, at my last count.

  One of the rolled-up towels on the stand in the corner is enough for my face. Not so much the rest of me.

  Next up? A shower.

  My phone rings before I can get there. It’s a number I recognize.

  “Hunter.”

  The voice on the other end of the phone launches into a business proposition and I get a whiff of a challenge. If there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s a business on the brink. This kind of opportunity is my favorite. A company teetering on the edge of failure. People bursting with nervous energy. And me, at the center, making it all bend to my will.

  “What happened exactly, John? It seems like the resource management here has been abysmal.”

  On the other end of the line, John, the representative for the board at the Williams-Martin publishing group, sighs. Williams-Martin, John has explained, owns Basiqué—their heavy hitter—and puts out a bunch of other magazines that lose money every second they exist. Not that I give a shit about magazines. But this company is about to go over the edge, and I could stop it…if I choose.

  “I can’t argue with that.” He sounds defeated.

  I take another long moment to consider my options. I don’t need this business. People can’t stop giving me money hand over fist. Come up with your own revolutionary development in condom technology and watch your net worth shoot into the stratosphere. But I can’t get enough of this shit. I’ll probably find out that none of these magazine properties are worth anything, and I won’t feel an ounce of sadness about shutting most of them down. Maybe all of them. Who knows? I buy them out, I have all the power. And another successful turnaround will only increase my legitimacy.

  My slimy, weakass father wasn’t legit. I’ll never forget the day they came to arrest him for a laundry list of embarrassing white-collar crimes. It wasn’t until the trial that I saw him for what he was: a coward and a fraud. The last thing I need is to get into a situation that looks like it’s more of his “creative accounting.”

  This isn’t creative accounting. From what John has said, this is a bailout.

  And who has more power than the guy writing the checks?

  I take a deep breath in. This is the kind of emotion I’m allowed to have. This i
s the kind of interest that does nothing but benefit me in the long run, even if it’s a “learning experience.”

  I’ll do it. Why the hell not? I can afford to lose a couple million if it goes south, and either way I’ll come out smelling like roses. If I can’t turn around some publishing company when they’re up against the Internet, I won’t be the first.

  “Tell you what, John. I’ll bite. But I’ll warn you—I don’t plan on leaving power structures intact. I’m going to be doing some reorganizing.”

  “We expected as much.” The relief in his voice is palpable.

  “Be ready for a call from my business manager by the afternoon,” I say crisply, then let him thank me too many times before I disconnect the call.

  The thought of the destruction I’m about to wreak on Williams-Martin has my blood thrumming in my veins. I could go another round right now.

  But there’s no time to head back down to the gym. No, that’s not true—there’s always time, when you’re in charge, but I’m not interested in being that guy. Not today. Today I wring the waste out of another business with the palms of my hands, reforming it into something worthwhile. There will be casualties. It will be worth it.

  My heart is still beating with leftover anticipation as I strip off my clothes and step into the shower. It’s a pet project, something I wouldn’t normally pay much attention to. God knows I don’t need the distraction. But it rattles around in my mind. I want it.

  All I need to do is get to the office.

  4

  Cate

  Sandra shuts herself in her office for most of the morning while I force myself to sift through the daily deluge of emails, tracking shipments, scheduling, confirming, confirming, confirming. It’s hard to type with jittery hands, a jittery mind. But the work never ends. There’s always another issue in the works, always another set of clothes, models, designers to slot into Sandra’s schedule. It gets done first, or the afternoon will be a nightmare.

  That bitch.

  The thought bubbles up from behind my barricade of professionalism and I swat at it like it’s in the air in front of me, like I’d swat away a mosquito. Sandra isn’t a bitch. She’s demanding and hyper-focused on her work, and the problem she’s faced with—that we’re both faced with—is something I can’t help her with, even if it takes everything I have not to press my ear up against the doors to her office. A single word. A single word is all I need to take the edge off after what she told me this morning.

  Her words reverberate endlessly in my mind. “Williams-Martin is bankrupt,” she’d said, slipping her reading glasses off and placing them precisely back into the drawer. “They’ll need a solution shortly. If one isn’t found, the office will close. In a matter of weeks, I assume.”

  Instead of letting my mouth drop open, I pinched my lips shut to keep from screaming.

  I’ve been at Basiqué for fifteen months. Fifteen agonizing months. Back in college, I struggled with pulling all-nighters for important projects. I’d start out determined with a stack of granola bars and some off-brand energy drink and by 2:30 in the morning I’d find myself in the dorm-room bathroom, brushing my teeth too hard and fast before a frantic dash back to bed. How long has it been since I went to bed early or slept past 7:00? Months. And all for this job.

  The phone on my desk starts to ring, and my hand is on the receiver before the first tone is over. In that split second I register that it’s Sandra calling from her office and not an outside request of some kind.

  “Hello, Sandra—” I say before she cuts me off.

  “Tell editorial to stop work on the policewoman feature. The content will be substituted.”

  “I’ll do that right away.” The line clicks off.

  I had been in the middle of writing three related emails—now that Sandra has cancelled this morning’s meetings, the approvals process for a photo shoot scheduled later in the week has to be pushed back, so I need to re-coordinate the photographer and the designer for later in the week at a time that won’t completely screw up the rest of the week. It doesn’t help at all that tomorrow is a bank holiday. I must need to sleep more—how did the Fourth of July slip my mind?—but more sleep is a joke, especially now. I can’t afford to let anything slip.

  It’s not an ideal situation, leaving my desk empty so I can go talk to Kirk—the head of editorial—but I slip my cell phone in my pocket and push the “forward” button on my phone. I’ll only be gone a few minutes.

  Once I’m in the hallway, striding toward the editorial bullpen, my blood pressure equalizes a little. I have a purpose for being out of the office for a few moments. Nobody can fault me for that.

  Kirk is hunched over his desk, fingers flying over his keyboard. I hover for a second, and after a final burst of words, he swivels around to face me.

  “Hey, Cate,” he says, his eyes locked on my face. “Come on in.”

  He stands up from behind his desk and reaches down to the mini-fridge he keeps tucked between the desk and the window, pulling out an energy drink.

  “How’s it going?” I tilt my head toward his computer screen.

  “Good, good,” says Kirk, opening the can and downing half of it in one gulp. “You’ve got news.”

  “She’s stopping the policewoman feature.”

  Kirk lets out an epic sigh, dropping his chin to his chest for several moments. Then he looks up at me, rolling his eyes, and shrugs his shoulders.

  I shrug back.

  “Any replacement?” he asks, his body already turning back toward his desk.

  “Ha, ha.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “I’ll let you know, okay?”

  “Thanks, Cate.”

  News delivered, I hustle back down the hall to Sandra’s office. There are a few people lingering in the conference rooms across from the glass doors with a hopeful shine in their eyes. It’s not going to happen for them.

  At the doorway, two things happen at once: I reach for the polished handle of the doors, and I see him.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  This would happen. The one time I step away from my desk—and how long was I gone? Three minutes? Four?—someone has to show up. I run through the list of cancelled meetings. No one should be in there right now. Sandra won’t be happy if she discovers that someone has been loitering out here.

  I pull open the door and step through, the words already there on the tip of my tongue. “I’m so sorry,” I say, my voice low but confident. “I had to step away for a moment. Ms. Sarzó isn’t—”

  He turns to face me and the words die in my throat.

  I know the instant that he smiles at me—a cocky, sexy half-smile that’s almost a sneer—and shifts his weight so that he’s facing me head-on, giving me a glorious view of what I am certain is a rock-hard body underneath layers of expensive, understated fabrics, that I want him out of here immediately.

  He’s been standing here for long enough that the scent of him fills the air—a hint of spicy cologne underneath a pure clean that sends a bolt of electric lust directly between my legs.

  My next breath is an undignified gulp, and then I get my shit together…just enough.

  “Ms. Sarzó isn’t available for meetings right now,” I say crisply, crossing to my desk and stepping behind it. The closer I get to him, the more he overtakes me—and he hasn’t spoken a word. Male models are in and out of this office every day, but none of them, not a single one, has ever rocked me like this. Even fully covered by his suit—it must be custom, Italian, no way it came off the rack—his body is muscled, athletic, setting off his razor-sharp jawline.

  He considers me with eyes the color of steel. In the sunlight outside, I know they’d be as blue as the ocean. I want to look away—he’s blinding—but I’m not about to give him the satisfaction.

  When he finally speaks, his voice is dark and smooth with an edge to it. “She’ll be available for me.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say quickly, the heat rising to my
cheeks. I don’t know who this man is, or what he thinks he’s doing here, but with each moment that passes I’m desperate for the tension in the air to burst and dissipate.

  He leans closer. The expanse of my desk is still between us, but even his slight movement toward me seems to take up all the rest of the space in the room. “And what makes you think that?” The corner of his mouth quirks slightly, like he might laugh at me.

  I open my mouth, then close it again, pressing my lips together. “I’m Catherine Schaffer, Ms. Sarzó’s lead assistant. I canceled all of her meetings for the morning. If you’d like to make an appointment—”

  Then he does laugh, and the sound is as musical as it is calculating. He must be enjoying this. “So you’re a woman with a fiery personality, Ms. Schaffer?” Crossing his arms casually over his chest, he gives me an indulgent look. “I’ll bet you hate to be wrong.”

  My eyes narrow. I can’t stop myself—I’m on the verge of bursting out with an indignant reply. He can’t talk to me like this. He can’t look at me like this.

  I’ve opened my mouth to speak when Sandra’s office door whips open.

  “Mr. Hunter,” she calls in a cold, clear voice. “Please, come in. We have several matters to discuss, it seems.”

  My face burns. Mr. Hunter. There’s another layer to the laughter in his eyes. Something is lit up there, too.

  He doesn’t mention it.

  Instead, he heads toward Sandra, his hand extended to shake. Holds the door for her while she steps inside. Turns as he guides the door closed behind him.

  He locks his eyes on mine one more time, and those blues burn into the core of me.

  I might never recover.

  5

  Jax