by Claire Adams
“Me? At a roller derby bout?”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t picture it.”
She laughed. “Well, you’ll have to lose the three-piece suit. I’d suggest jeans and a t-shirt.”
“Hmm, I guess I could do it for Kimber. Hey, why don’t you go with us?”
“Me? Oh no, I think your niece would enjoy it more if it were just you and her.”
“I don’t know a thing about roller derby. You can talk us through it. Kimber won’t mind you being there, at all. I think she’d really like you.” Her face flushed red and she looked like she was trying to think of a way out of it. At last she said,
“I guess I could go.”
“Good,” I said with a smile. I took the tablet out of her hands and bought three tickets before she changed her mind. When that was finished, I wiped my brow and said, “Whew, that’s a load off my mind, believe it or not. I had no idea what to get her. Thank you, Chloe.”
“You’re welcome. Maybe we should get back to work now?”
“You’re a workaholic,” I told her with a wink.
“I thought that’s what CEOs of investment corporations wanted from their financial analysts — all work and no play.”
I laughed. “It is, unless I happen to be the one who wants to play.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHLOE
“Do you know anything about the Downtown Marriott?” I was once again sitting in the kitchen with Lilliana at five a.m. She had another photo shoot and was once again grumbling about the ungodly hour. I was up early because I wanted to do some more research on Abbott Cosmetics before going into that lunch meeting with Abbott and Logan.
Lilliana looked up from the piece of toast she’d been staring at and said, “Is that where you and the boss are meeting for sex?”
I rolled my eyes and stood up. “Never mind.”
“Oh, don’t pop a vein,” she said with a laugh. “Listen, Minnesota, do you know what the tabloids have coined your boss?”
“I really don’t care what the tabloids say about him. That’s about his personal life. I work for him; his personal life doesn’t affect me.”
She went on as if I hadn’t said anything, “They call him the Long Island Lothario.”
I hadn’t meant to get sucked into the conversation, but before I could catch myself, I asked, “Why Long Island?”
She smiled wickedly and leaned in like she was telling me a secret. “I knew you were interested.”
“I’m not interested; never mind.”
She giggled. “Well, let me tell you why. About ten years ago, he bought this huge estate in Nassau County on nineteen acres. He built a house for each one of his family members on it.”
“Well, that sounds nice,” I said. She rolled her eyes and shushed me.
“His family belongs to the country club there. I guess his father and brother play a lot of golf, and-”
“I need to get in the shower.”
“He was divorced already by then and living out there with his family. He was playing the club, too, but not golf. He played so much that eventually he was asked to leave the club because his philandering was causing problems with other people’s marriages.”
“Divorced? He was married?” That rushed out before I had a chance to stop it. I didn’t want her thinking that I really cared. Because I didn’t…did I?
She smiled. “Yes. It was one of those passionate relationships. Word was they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, even in public. But they also fought passionately. They were only married a couple of years, I think.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
She shrugged. “My parents and their people run in the same circles as his. He rarely stays in Long Island any longer because there are so many boyfriends and husbands who want a piece of him.” I put my cup and plate in the sink and began to rinse them off. “He has a penthouse here in the city, but no one has seen the inside, they say. He takes his women to hotels and back to their place, if they’re single.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the dramatic tone she had adopted. “Okay, Lilliana. I’m getting in the shower,” I said as I dried off my hands.
“Listen,” she said as if talking to someone simple-minded. “He’s going to hit on you whether you want him to or not. He’s buying you clothes.”
“It’s an expense account.”
She scoffed at that and said, “He’s taking you with him to private meetings in hotels.”
“That’s business.”
She leaned back in her chair with a wicked smile and flipped all that dark hair over her shoulder. “Sure, honey, you just keep believing that.”
I walked out of the kitchen, and I’d be damned if she didn’t follow me. I had to wonder why this gorgeous woman didn’t have more of a life of her own to worry about that she had so much time and energy to devote to worrying about mine.
“Hey, Minnesota, calm down. I’m just trying to help you.” I took a deep breath and turned to look at her.
“If you want to help me, stop telling me that my boss wants to sleep with me and help me pick out what to wear to a business meeting with a very important client at which my boss will be present.”
She smirked and said, “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s five-fifteen. You’ve wasted half the morning.” I’ve wasted half the morning. She is something else. “If you want me to work my magic, you better come now. I need to be in the shower by six.”
I was a little frightened at this point, but desperate. This was my first meeting with a huge client. I had to show up looking like I belonged there, and I had more confidence in her pulling that off than I did myself.
An hour later, Lilliana had “worked her magic” to the point that I almost didn’t recognize myself. She had done my make-up so that it was both subtle and dramatic at the same time. I had no idea how she did it, but between the new suit, the French twist she did to my hair, and the make-up, I almost looked ready to be on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.
“Wow, thank you, Lilliana.”
She gave me another once over and then, looking pleased with herself, she said, “Don’t forget who helped you out when the Lothario starts showering you with expensive gifts.”
*****
I made it to the morning meeting with Josiah five minutes late. I opened my mouth to apologize, but before I got the words out, he let out a low whistle between his teeth and said, “Damn, Jamie’s not going to know what hit him.”
“Excuse me?”
“You look good.”
Somehow, it didn’t seem like a compliment – especially since his eyes were on my chest and not my face. “Thanks, but my brain is up here and I plan on using it today.”
He looked up at my face with a grin. “I’m sorry. I know you have a brain since I’m the one who recommended you for this assignment. You just look amazing, and Jamie Abbott fancies himself quite the Casanova, so it’s good that Logan is going with you to keep him on track.”
Logan the Lothario is going with me to fend off Jamie the Casanova… The more I learn about this city, the more I miss Minnesota, where business is business and sex is something you did and talked about behind closed doors.
“Thank you,” I said. “I think. I’d like to do some more research on Jamie before we meet with him, if you don’t mind.” He gave me another slow once over. I felt naked. “Josiah, please don’t do that.”
“What? Look at you?”
“Look at me like you’re the Big Bad Wolf and I’m Granny.”
He laughed and shook his head as he said, “The day Granny looks like that-”
“Josiah!”
He laughed again. “I’m sorry, Chloe. I like to see you blush. Go, research Jamie.”
I didn’t tell him again that I didn’t give a whit about Jamie and his reputation. People here in New York seemed to put a lot of stock in reputations and private lives that persona
lly, I didn’t think should come into play at all where business was concerned.
I sat down at my desk and looked up Abbott Cosmetics. I found their financial reports from the past ten years and started going through the most recent ones. At first glance, things looked great. The company boasted twenty-five brands over twenty-thousand employees, they serviced over a hundred countries and territories, and last year’s net income was over ten billion dollars.
I read further and saw that stock prices were $1.94 a share in the year 2000 and had gone up to $10.78 a share by 2014 – and that’s where things seemed to go wrong. The ten billion the company was taking in didn’t seem to be enough to cover what was going out.
I clicked on Jamie’s bio. I told myself that it wasn’t about him or his reputation; it was about trying to figure out what was going on with the company. A photo of a man with sandy-blond hair and aquamarine eyes came up on the screen. He wasn’t quite as gorgeous as Logan, but pretty damned close.
I stared at his photo for way too long before I forced myself to move on. I scrolled through the news reports referenced in the footnotes of the bio and that’s where I found what I was looking for.
It seemed that most of the major stockholders had hung on for almost a year after the old man passed away, but within a year after Jamie taking over, something must have happened because they’d started to bail and the company’s stock had gone down to $2.82 a share.
I read on and discovered that in early 2015, Jamie had collaborated on a beauty product collection with a company based in South Africa. An astute reporter looked into the other company and found out they had been testing products on animals in laboratories for years, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they were receiving funds directly from an organization well-known for being recently sued for violations of women’s rights.
Jamie had pulled the line, but by that time, he was so deep into the collaboration that it cost the company billions in legal wrangling to get out of it. Since then, he’d recovered a lot more quickly than I would have imagined, but when I traced the cash that had come into the company in early 2016, it looked like he had invested his own, personal fortune — which in business was never a wise move. This guy needed a lot of help.
“Hey, Chloe!” I looked up and saw Logan. My mouth was instantly dry and my body temperature rose just at the sight of him. I told myself it was just because of all the stuff Lilliana had put in my head this morning, but damn, he was gorgeous.
“Hi, is it time already?” I looked at the time at the bottom of my computer screen. It was already eleven forty-five; I couldn’t believe it. “Wow, I guess the morning got away from me.” Logan wasn’t saying anything; he was just looking at me…strangely. I couldn’t read the look in his eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“What?”
I smiled. “Are you okay? Blood sugar low again?”
His grin looked a little bit like Josiah’s did earlier as he said, “Oh yeah, every thing’s fine. I’m sorry. You look really nice today.”
I wasn’t used to so much attention, especially from men. Seriously hot men. No matter how much I protested out loud that he was my boss and I didn’t see him that way, the idea that he found me attractive sent a thrill through every part of my body.
“Thank you. I’m ready when you are.” I grabbed my phone and my purse, trying not to notice all the jealous stares from the other women as I walked out the door with the luscious CEO.
*****
As we approached the hotel, I could see there was construction going on at every corner. The front where the valets would normally be was blocked off with caution tape. I thought it odd that Jamie or Logan would pick this place for a business meeting.
Logan had his driver drop us off across the street and as we were crossing, I noticed a huge cluster of trees off to my right and right in the middle of them was the largest building I’d ever seen. It almost hurt my neck to tip it back and look up at it. It had some kind of silver spire on the top of it that made it even taller.
“That’s the World Trade Center,” Logan said. He was looking up at it, too, and I thought I saw something sad in his eyes.
“Oh my goodness. That’s Ground Zero?”
He kind of tugged me the rest of the way across. I’d forgotten that we were standing in the middle of the street. Thankfully, the construction kept the traffic to a minimum. When we were standing on the sidewalk, he looked over toward the trees and building again and said, “Yeah, that’s it. Do you remember that day, or were you too young?”
“Sometimes I think I have memories of it, but maybe it’s just hearing people talk about it over the years because it’s like a dream I had or something. What about you?”
His eyes kind of seemed to glaze over. “I was in my advanced calculus class at Columbia. I had just snuck in the door at the last possible minute, hoping the instructor wouldn’t catch me. I realized something was wrong as soon as I walked in. The television that the instructor kept at the front of the class was on and there wasn’t another sound in the room.
“When I looked at the screen, at first I thought it was some kind of documentary he was showing us, you know, a social experiment or something. I could see people jumping out of that huge building and I thought, ‘this can’t be real.’ Then suddenly, a second plane was hitting, and the reporter was screaming, and the chaos was apparent.
“People in my class were holding hands and crying and praying. I couldn’t bear it. I turned and walked out, and I went home to be with my family. I was twenty-four and still self-absorbed. It didn’t dawn on me until I got out to Long Island where I lived at the time that both of my brothers were at the World Trade Center.
“My brothers were both firefighters. They both left before I got back home that morning; only one of them ever came back.” He had tears in his eyes, and my heart felt like it was breaking.
“Oh my God, Logan,” I put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry for your loss! I’m sorry I brought it up. Seeing it from thousands of miles away when you’re a kid is nothing like being here in the city as an adult and then losing one brother and worrying about the other… I can’t even imagine. I’m so sorry for bringing it up.” I felt horrible.
He did something then that took me by surprise, but I didn’t fight it. I was the one who had upset him after all. He put an arm around me and pulled me into a hug against his big chest.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I still get so emotional talking about it. It was a long time ago, but it’s not something that ever really leaves you.”
“Of course not. Oh, Logan, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s really okay, Chloe. This time of year, reminders are everywhere. He’s always on my mind. Please don’t feel bad.”
He was still holding me, and I was shamelessly still enjoying it. When he did let go, we shared an awkward smile. I started to apologize again, but he put his finger over my lips to stop me. The touch of his finger to my lips affected me even more profoundly than the hug. I shivered and hoped if he noticed, he thought I was cold.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LOGAN
I kind of lost my mind when I pulled Chloe into my arms on the street. Talking about my brother and 9/11 still had a profound effect on me, even all those years later. This time of year most especially since the anniversary just passed.
I had been twenty-four and had only been in New York for two years when it happened. My older brother and sister-in-law had come first, both on work visas. My brother was a firefighter, but he possessed a specialty in fighting jet fuel fires, so he’d been granted a fairly easy visa thanks to a job offer he received from JFK airport.
My sister-in-law was a nurse, so her visa was easy, as well. My sister, who was an M.D., had come over after they’d been here a year and got a job with a prestigious medical group with an office in Chelsea that she took over to run.
I graduated from my business program in Vancouver three years after they had all immigrated to the States, and I
got accepted to Columbia University on a student visa. That was when my younger brother and my parents came over. He had just turned twenty-one and once he got here, my older brother Frank got him into the fire academy.
The younger one, Jeffrey, had only been working as a firefighter for six months before 9/11. He had loved it and saved at least a dozen people before he died. Knowing those two things was how my family got through it.
Frank still carried a lot of guilt about getting him the job, but we all knew it wasn’t his fault. Jeffrey was born to be a hero and there would have been no keeping him away from it.
Growing up, he’d been my best friend and sometimes, my conscience. What I was lacking in integrity, he possessed tenfold, and when he died, I’d always felt like part of myself had died with him. I was already married by then, but when I’d expected Lisa to be there for me emotionally, I’d made a grave mistake. It was the first time I realized that part of her was all but missing.
When I pulled Chloe in for that hug, Jeffrey was what had been on my mind. I’d just suddenly been overcome with grief again. That happened sometimes just out of the blue. But, the second that I got a feel of her soft, curvy body and a whiff of how fresh she smelled, the rest of my body took notice and I almost had to hold her at arm’s length to keep her from feeling it.
“Sorry about that. I guess it still affects me a lot more than I thought it did.”
Chloe smiled sweetly and said, “Don’t be sorry; it’s fine.” She looked absolutely fuckable today and at the same time, she exuded a sense of innocence and gullibility. Maybe it was good that I planned on getting her to fall in love with me. Maybe it would save her from the likes of someone like Jamie Abbott, whom I suddenly remembered was waiting for us.
“I guess we better go see Jamie.”
She nodded, still looking at me like I was fragile and she wanted to hug me again. We could explore that later. For now, I held out my arm, and she took it. Jamie was already waiting for us inside and one glance at the way he looked at Chloe convinced me without a doubt that I needed to put my plan into action sooner rather than later before another one of the Wolves of Manhattan did it first. I put my grief for Jeffrey back in the box in my heart I carry it in and put my game face on.