“That wouldn’t do me no good,” the man joked.
“They don’t do anybody any good, Frank. No, that’s my assistant’s number, just call her and she’ll set it up.” He patted the top of the shelter, and thankfully it didn’t come down on the man’s head.
“Ingenious.” Talbot stood, losing the protection of the umbrella, and turned to her. “Oh, there you are. I couldn’t find the limousine.”
“It’s this way.” She tried to keep on umbrella duty, holding it high enough for both of them, but he walked ahead, his long gait too fast for her.
He didn’t say a word after they climbed into the limousine, the view out his window once again apparently impossible to miss.
As the limo pulled out into traffic with a jerk, she laid off the small talk. They could download about the meeting another time. Midtown traffic hadn’t geared up to its climactic gargantuan fuck-up as yet, and the limousine had to run up on the curb of the expressway only once or twice to jump a slower vehicle. A smooth ride comparatively speaking. It was only twelve miles to Teterboro, the private airport where a corporate jet awaited.
In the muted light of the drizzle all around them, Talbot’s face appeared paler than it had in the fluorescents, making his hair seem even darker, like a gypsy’s with all its wild curls. If he looked at her, she felt sure his eyes would be an even deeper blue, contrasts all around. Like him to begin with.
“What were you doing with the homeless man?”
“Just admiring the construction of his shelter. It was three-plied. Very sturdy.”
“He didn’t pick a very good place to squat, though. Outside the Time-Life Building. The police will probably move him along. Can’t have the tourists tripping over homeless folks. It’s so sad.”
He said nothing.
“Why did you give him your card?”
“I want him to work for me.”
“Uh…really? Doing what?”
“Not sure yet. But building something like that, in the rain, no resources.” He shrugged. “There are all different kinds of intelligences.”
It was a sentiment everybody in her family had expressed, many times, and firmly believed. Not something she heard elsewhere, though, especially in this city where they worshiped at alters of elite degrees and bursting bank balances.
Talbot took out his phone and tapped on it, undoubtedly a text to Marcia about the man who would be calling her.
“His name was Frank,” she offered, and he glanced up, smiling.
“I remember.”
A warm sensation formed in the pit of her stomach.
When he put his phone away, he said, “I hate those big meetings, by the way. But they tell me my attendance is mandatory.”
“It’s a lot of posturing,” she agreed. “They talk to hear themselves, while everybody’s meter was running.”
“So, Marcia says you’re going to teach me some manners,” he reminded her. “Actually, she sold it to me more like coping skills. In any case, you can start there because I feel as uncomfortable as hell in those types of situations, everybody trying to get at me. Makes me want to reach for the hand sanitizer.”
She laughed.
“And I never have anything to say while they all look at me sort of accusingly for it. I don’t give a shit, but…”
She wondered if that was true, her fingers automatically straying to her pearls. His eyes followed the motion. Maybe she’d sit on her hands.
“Well, we could try something, if you want. It worked in all my PR classes.” And in her psychology class with certain phobias, though she declined to mention it. “You pretend I’m a stranger at a meeting, just like in there.”
“You are a stranger. Pretty much.”
“Right. But let’s say I know you, by reputation of course.”
“Don’t you?”
She rolled her eyes, but one corner of his mouth came up, the dimple she’d noticed before making even the hint of his smile very attractive.
“Didn’t you ever act out plays or anything when you were a kid with your siblings?”
“I don’t have any siblings. That I know of.”
“Oh.” She’d walked right into that one. “Well, with friends then? Even if it wasn’t actually a play, but more like cops and robbers or army sergeant and cadets?”
She and her sisters had played the military one. As the game was age-correlated, however, she was always relegated to cadet, being at the bottom of the brood. Such was life.
The dimple disappeared. “I didn’t have many friends.”
She coughed. “Well, that’s a difficult time. Childhood, I mean. Or it can be.”
She thought of the graceful old Tudor, three stories in all, where she had been raised, with faded hardwood floors and carpets beaten down under generations of little feet. Dogs that got bigger and more numerous each year, and cats that had litters before anybody even knew they hadn’t been spayed, the kittens as tiny as mice when you perched them on your palm. Pure chaos. And tremendous fun.
She had loved her childhood, but not everybody was lucky enough to have warm enveloping protection all mixed in with rowdy camaraderie, and of course love.
“The important thing, Mr. Talbot, is you’ve made a success of yourself and of course you have friends now.”
He opened his mouth and she forged on, determined he not correct her. “So let’s role-play. I’ll be that person trying to shake your hand and talk to you, and you think of something you want to say. No rush. No pressure. And next time you’re in that situation, you won’t feel at a loss. Let’s try it.”
She extended her hand, and though he looked doubtful, he took it, the blue eyes concentrating on her face, first only her eyes, but then he seemed to take a trip along the whole expanse, the cheeks, the hair, the chin. She suddenly wished she had worn more makeup, not the quick swipe of mascara and blush and the dab of glossy lipstick probably gone by now.
Unlike the brief handshake they had shared at his office, the prolonged clasp of his large, long-fingered hand over hers felt intimate. His breath seemed to come a little quicker. She knew hers did.
Seated opposite each other in the limo, they both leaned forward until they were only inches apart. She swallowed, remembering what it was she was supposed to be doing. “Ah, okay.” She pasted a brighter smile on her glossless lips. “So, Mr. Talbot, I’m so honored to meet you. I’ve read all about your company and I think—um, let’s make her—”
“Who?”
“The person I’m pretending to be. Let’s make her an investment banker because they are the absolute, bar none, pushiest. So I’ve read about your company, and I think you’re doing a fantastic job, but I know my firm could add fifty-whatever basis points to your stock and lower your debt cost a hundred-million basis points.”
She pursed her lips at the exaggeration.
“Now, take your time, just think about it. I’m shaking your hand, pressing you for future business, whatever, and you say…”
She waited, and with the hand that wasn’t shaking hers, he touched her strand of pearls, just one finger. So gently she almost thought she imagined it.
Then he said, “You have beautiful blue eyes.”
Damned if that wasn’t just what she was thinking!
Chapter Two
She coughed. “Uh, well, uh…”
“Sorry.” His voice was low. “It was what came to mind. Very light. Your eyes, I mean. But I guess that’s not what I should say when I’m shaking hands with an investment banker, right?”
“No, that’s okay. Everybody in my family has blue eyes. If one of us had brown,” she babbled on, “that’d be a big deal.”
He pulled his hand away and sat back, folding his legs, eyes on the window again. “It was just an observation.”
“No, really, that’s fine, Mr. Talbot. That’s part of the role-playing. So we don’t say the first thing that comes to our mind. You know, we practice.”
“And I should have said what?”
“Well, something more generic like, ‘I’m always open to new ideas. Feel free to give my secretary a call.’ Then you could screen them and only talk to the ones you want.”
“Very helpful. Thank you.” But he was still looking out the window as the exit sign for the airport came up.
When they got to the airport and the car pulled up to the sleek private jet on the runway, two co-pilots hustled out to meet them holding umbrellas aloft to shield them from the driving rain. They grabbed Talbot’s briefcase and her own roller suitcase, though she kept her computer bag.
“The weather’s pretty bad, Mr. Talbot,” one of them said as they climbed the steps to the plane. “But if you want to get to the UK today, we better go now.”
“Fine,” Talbot said shortly, taking one of the lush leather seats next to a window while she took another on the opposite side of the aisle after storing her bag in an upper bin.
“Miss White sent your wallet over as well.” The pilot handed it to him.
“Thanks. I forgot to tell her to.”
“I did,” Camilla said. “When I asked for the picture of your ID.”
He smiled at her slightly and slid the wallet into his back pocket.
After instructing them to buckle up for takeoff and warning they only had five more minutes for cell phones, the pilots disappeared behind the cockpit door.
Her cell rang and she saw her sister Carly’s Westchester number.
“Go ahead, take it.” He got out of his seat. “I want to run something by the pilots.”
“Hi,” she answered when he was gone.
“It’s just your older sister bothering you on your first day.”
“Which one?”
Carly pretended to be insulted. “The only one who was organized enough to have flowers delivered to your new office to celebrate your freedom from that horrible law firm!”
“Carly, you are so sweet.”
“Did you get them before you left? I knew you’d only have them for a little while, since you’re traveling, but I think it’s important to have a special treat on your first day.”
“Absolutely. They were gorgeous.” She’d missed them at the office, but no need to spoil the thoughtful gesture.
“So, how is it?”
All in all, Camilla was feeling pretty good about the whole first day thing. Meeting? Check. Bonding with the boss? Getting there. Jetting off in a private plane? Double check. Who wouldn’t rather take a trip to Europe with the boss instead of the usual first day tedium of learning where the office supplies were and waiting for IT to hook up your computer?
“Great,” she summarized since she had at most five minutes. “But we’re about to take off.”
“Oh, you lucky girl. I was in London around ten years ago, and there was this sheik who was so attentive that—“
“Carly, I have to go, really. You are such a good sister to send me first-day flowers and call me.”
“I know. I am. Be sure to tell Mom that when you talk to her. Tell her your big sis is looking out for you in the devil city until you can make your way home to your solid Midwestern roots. Never mind. I’ll tell her myself.”
She laughed. “I will, too. Now, I love you. Bye.”
“Wait! No hustling me off the phone until you spill how the big boss is. He looked really cute in the profile I saw of him.”
Despite that her boss clearly had a few quirks she could help him with, things were going to be okay between them. She could feel it. Stepping in for him at the meeting when he had shut down had felt natural, good. “I like him,” she decided on.
“Well, I’m glad. But don’t like him too much. He’ll be sitting across from you in his fabulous plane in some perfectly tailored suit and giving you the eye.”
Talbot came back down the aisle and resumed his seat, then kicked his gym shoes off.
“Not exactly. But I have to go. We’re about to take off.”
“Be good. And remember no imbibing to excess. You know that always makes you too flirty, and that is not the first impression you want to be giving.”
“Of course. Don’t be silly.”
“Hey, I remember Reno.”
That was the thing with sisters. They remembered everything, in this instance one wild night when she found out she passed the bar and she and three of her sisters, Brandy, Dee Dee, and Carly, flew to Reno on the spur of the moment. Not a good idea in retrospect. The headache pounding at her temples the next day from the tequila shots could have shaken the scenic mountains outside the window of their hotel. And some guy named Franz who she absolutely didn’t remember kept sending her completely inappropriate emails for weeks thereafter, though thank God her sisters assured her she’d never been alone with him.
Carly added, “Although it’s good to let go sometimes. So don’t be too hard on yourself if you do.”
“There’s a mixed message if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Nuanced, not mixed.”
She smiled. “Okay, I will. I mean I won’t. I promise. Got to go.”
She hung up and glanced at Talbot to see if he had been listening to that last part, but he gave no indication, and in minutes the plane was headed into the clouds, the altitude allowing them to escape the storm. Early afternoon sunlight filtered through the tufts of white dotted here and there outside the window.
Talbot extracted a magazine from his briefcase and began to read it. Apparently, he’d had enough small talk. She couldn’t blame him. That was probably more than he’d had in the last year. She stood up to get her iPad from the overhead where she had stashed her computer bag, and the plane lurched unexpectedly, forcing her to grab on to his seat back to steady herself. Her fingers brushed his hair, and he looked up at her. She’d been to St. Martin once, and that was what his eyes reminded her of. The cobalt Caribbean sea washing over her. His hair was silky, and she wondered how it would feel to run her hands through it, to feel it against her cheek. She let go of his seat. “Sorry about that.”
After locating the iPad as fast as possible, she sat back down.
For the first time since she’d been introduced to him, his intense stare made her feel self-conscious. Maybe it was the nice eyes comment or that almost-there touch to her pearls in the limo that she was thinking she must have imagined. He watched her steadily. Since they were the only passengers on the six-hour flight, and he was proving to be staring-prone, she supposed she was in for a lot of that.
Camilla tried not to take it personally as her new boss cocked his head and studied her like she was one of the chips in the thing-a-ma-jiggy he’d invented and built his fortune selling. Thing-a-ma-jiggy. With that kind of know-how, little wonder she’d gone to law school. But you didn’t need to know a product to do M&A.
“I might not have said this before, but I’m really excited to be joining your company and to have this opportunity to work for you.”
Now that it was just the two of them, he really should be asking her to call him by his first name. She was about to suggest it, more of that etiquette training, when he said, “Listen, do you think we could, you know, have sex? I could pay you extra of course. I know it’s not part of your job, but I’d love to strip you bare to just those pearls and bury myself in your—”
“What?” Only it came out more like a squeak. Enough to stop him in his tracks, though.
Of all the…! Fury pounded through her veins, shock and embarrassment and white-hot anger coursing through her, all at the same time. As soon as she got over the stun-gun effect of it, she was going to tell him what to do with that question, etiquette be damned.
The little lawyer’s mouth dropped open. That was Mason’s first clue. Her creamy complexion turned bright red. Okay, that was his second. She wasn’t even playing with her pearls anymore, for which he was grateful, since she’d been turning him on with the casual gesture all afternoon. But that shriek. He might have made a mistake.
“I don’t mean anything by that. If you don’t want to, don’t worry about it.
It’s not a big deal.”
For a minute, she appeared speechless. Then she said, “You don’t need a corporate lawyer, you need an employment lawyer.”
“Why? I’m employed.”
“You just propositioned me.”
“Is that illegal or something?”
“Yes. It is.”
“Oh, well, that’s why they invented lawyers, I guess. So you could point that kind of thing out.”
She stood up, looking around as if she needed to find the exit. Good luck with that. They were a mile high. He glanced back down to the trade magazine he had brought along to read, more disappointed than he cared to admit. The suggestion may have been spur of the moment, but he had fiercely wanted her to say yes, a little dazzled by her warmth, drawn to her and hoping she had been attracted to him. “No, really.” Her voice climbed a decibel. “You can’t say that kind of thing.”
He nodded absently, looking up in surprise when she snatched his reading material away and his hands clasped on empty air.
She glared down at him. “Is this what Marcia meant by teaching you social skills?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The Spock thing isn’t cutting it anymore. To think I had just been feeling so warm and fuzzy about my first day.”
“Warm and fuzzy? I’m not sure I—”
She shook a finger at him. “I need this job. So I’m going to ignore what you said, personally speaking, and not slap your face so hard it’ll make your head spin worse than The Exorcist.”
Although he rarely understood pop cultural references, he got that one. But she meant the girl possessed by the devil in the movie, not the exorcist himself. It was the girl who was writhing around, her head spinning and so on. He knew a thing or two about that at this very second.
“Calm down.”
“Don’t you tell me to calm down!” But she took a deep breath and said in a more modulated voice, “I’m advising you, as your lawyer, that you can’t proposition employees.”
He looked at her, tilting his head, wrinkling his brow. “Even for money?”
“Especially for money!”
Tempting the New Boss Page 3