OK, so he had a certain animal charm. She was a realist. She couldn’t deny that. He was square-jawed, dark-eyed, and well-built. He had a smattering of hair on his chest, and he was tall and imposing. And he carried himself with total confidence.
She also knew firsthand how intelligent he was. But that was OK. She wanted a worthy adversary.
It would make retribution all the sweeter.
There was a lot wrong with Jake Rothstein. She hated how he treated women. Like toys, playthings. Girls around campus cooed in the bathrooms about his stamina in bed. But so what? Rose was still a virgin, not that she admitted it to anyone. Wasn’t sex just friction? It couldn’t matter that much.
And he had the best rooms, drove a Ferrari to school, and pretty much paid his exes off. A pair of diamond earrings, or a Mikomoto pearl necklace. Not uncommon for Jake’s ex-girlfriends who didn’t make a fuss.
The dreadful thing was that women seemed to love this!
Rose despised Jake, and she despised the girls that idolized him. He was nothing but a playboy with brains. And the heir to Rothstein Realty.
They were coming up to the end of their time at college. Rose was beginning to worry. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to make friends with Rothstein, and she needed him. He was her entrée to Rothstein Realty.
He was the key to her revenge.
“Doesn’t matter.” She smiled softly at him now. “Let’s just get on with it, OK?”
Twenty-Four
“Impressive.”
Jake looked at the paper she had presented to him, the neat system for revision, the work on their two theses. Her arguments had been so interesting he had briefly forgotten how much he wanted her.
But now it was done with. Their term papers were due next week.
Rothstein pushed the paper back and regarded Rose Fiorello. For once, she was sitting there awkwardly, her fingers twisting in her lap, as though she didn’t know what to do with herself.
“Your work, too,” she said.
“Thanks.” He knew it had been.
“So, I guess this is it for us,” Rose said.
“Not necessarily.” Jake grinned. “This is it for college. I like that suit, by the way.”
She smoothed down her skirt. “It’s new.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, it looks expensive. Very expensive.” He waited for the rebuke for getting too personal, but she didn’t say anything. “Did you get a job, or win the lottery, or something?”
“Other people in this world are allowed to have money,” Rose snapped. Then she bit her lip and looked away, flushing. “I—I’m sorry. Yes, I’ve made some money.”
“You don’t have to tell me how, if you don’t want to.”
“No! I want to.” She was suddenly eager. He was surprised at how she blew hot and cold. “I actually bought some property. I own a couple of rental houses.”
“You?”
He regretted it as soon as he’d said it. His expression was one of disbelief. Everyone knew she’d come here without a cent to her name.
“Yes, me,” Rose said, a touch of steel underneath her polite smile.
“You own rental houses. Well, that’s the American dream.”
“You’re Jake Rothstein of Rothstein Realty, aren’t you?” Rose asked.
Jake laid back in his chair and looked her over, slowly.
“So,” he said. “You did notice me.”
“Hard not to,” Rose almost whispered.
Jake felt a sense of power flood him. Now he knew how his father felt, sometimes. He was more than just another student to Fiorello; he was a player. Instantly his focus shifted, away from history and into the real world. Where he was about to become a senior, stock-holding vice president in a billion-dollar company that would one day be all his.
Most girls knew about his wealth and his reach by reading the society pages. Rose Fiorello had not come by it that way, he thought. She’d gotten into property, in a tiny way. Maybe she owned a couple of condos, rented them out.
He was impressed. Jake didn’t really rate women when it came to business. He instantly saw that Rose must be savvy; she had managed to get financing somehow when she’d been dirt poor. FHA loans, maybe. And she’d made enough to afford a Chanel suit and a gold watch.
That was very nice, he thought. But hardly important.
In his pond, she wasn’t even a minnow.
Rothstein knew Rose Fiorello. She was a queen of research, very thorough. He pulled the picture together. She’d made a deal here and there, gotten a taste for it, and started reading up.
And, of course, found out about Rothstein Realty.
“Guilty as charged,” he said.
Ironic answer.
“I wondered if … if I could ask you for a favor,” Rose said.
It almost came out as a mumble.
Jake grinned.
“You want a job?”
“No.” The wolf-gray eyes regarded him coolly. “Just some information. To learn, that kind of thing. Maybe study what you do. That is, assuming you actually work there.”
“I’ve run projects every summer.”
“What kind of projects?”
He shrugged. “Luxury condos in Westchester, a high-rise in Soho … about eighty units in that one.”
“What was your budget?”
What could that possibly matter? This was out of her league. Rothstein was enjoying himself now. Flexing his muscles.
“Over a hundred million. They had a project manager, but he reported to me.”
Rose was quiet for a few seconds. She hated herself for this, but she was getting turned on. Jake Rothstein was handsome, in an obvious sort of way. And he was looking at her like he was a pasha, and she was the latest addition to his harem.
“You were in charge of a nine-figure budget?”
Her hostility tickled him. “Sugar, I’ve been running projects since I was sixteen. I supervise architects and contractors. I deal with the unions. I pay off the Mafia.”
“And how do your projects come out?”
He leaned across toward her, so Rose could feel the warmth of his body, see the muscles under his shirt. A pulse of animal lust flooded her belly. She looked down, but she could still sense him in her space, breathe in the masculine tang of him.
“On time. Under budget. And making money,” he said.
Her head was down. Her lips were parted. He thought he could feel the desire rising up out of her skin.
Another guy would have grabbed her head, kissed her.
Jake moved his mouth closer to hers, half an inch, so their lips were almost touching. But not quite.
Her mouth widened just a fraction more.
He had her. He pulled back.
“If you’re interested in learning the business, I can get you an internship.”
Rose sat up, confused and embarrassed. Had he been going to kiss her? God, she’d nearly kissed him.
Her body was a traitor. Little tendrils of desire crawled over her skin, hooking into her belly and breasts.
Jake was still talking. “To be honest, though, I don’t know that you’d want it. We get hundreds of applicants. I wouldn’t apply that standard to you. But once you were in, you’d have to behave like all the other interns. Otherwise it really wouldn’t be fair to them. At work, I have to be professional.”
“I can be professional,” Rose said shortly.
“You’d have to report to my department. You’d work for somebody that works for me.”
“Fine by me,” Rose insisted.
Jacob said, “You’d have to call me ‘sir.’”
He thought he saw a muscle twitch in her face. Yeah, she wouldn’t like that. Arrogant, stuck-up beauty that she was. But he’d enjoy it.
Jake made plans to have Rose work near him. He wanted her to see his power, the extent of his slice of the empire. He wanted to make her pant for him.
“I can do that.” Rose dropped her head. “I—I really would like t
o learn the business. I’d appreciate it.”
It cost her to have to ask him.
“No problem,” Jake said. “Give me a number where you can be reached.”
She wrote it down and handed it to him. “Thank you, Jake.”
“No problem, honey,” he said.
*
Rose seethed all the way back to Tribeca.
She had bought herself a great apartment. A foreclosure in an old industrial building, it wasn’t considered the best area. Rose had picked it up for a mere hundred and fifty.
Her place had everything. First, she liked the location. Manhattan prices were rising everywhere. In a few years, she was confident there would be nowhere on the island that was “unfashionable.” Give it a decade, and even Harlem would be through the roof. Restaurants and diners had started to open up down here, and there were filmmakers and models moving into nearby places. This was going nowhere but up.
Second, the old warehouse had space. Lots of it, in a town where a broom cupboard could be let for more than most people could afford. Rose had a loft, with huge industrial windows. The place had an elevator; old and creaky, but it worked. She was on the second-to-top floor, with great views of the Financial District.
Clusters of skyscrapers. She loved it. It made her want to own them all.
Rose had hired the contractors that worked on her house. There was no mystery about renovations, and nobody ever ripped her off. She had sanded the old floors, painted the walls a soft cream, dismantled the fluorescent lights and put in sconces, and added an upper level, where she kept her queen-size bed and Moroccan rug. The kitchen she spent money on, but a good kitchen and bathroom added value to a place. The look of the place was sleek, modern, very luxurious. Rose decorated everything in soft shades of white, with just a few splashes of color to break things up: a crystal vase of yellow roses, the red tones of her rug, a candy-striped cushion in royal blue.
It was her haven.
Like everything else, it was an investment too. If she sold it today, she’d clear at least double what she paid for it. Rose had got over the need to nickel-and-dime herself.
She was going to be a real estate mogul. It was time she started treating herself like one.
Twenty-Five
“Wanna room? We’re all-suite here.”
Rose looked at the receptionist. The girl was about her age. Young, cracking bubble gum as she talked. She had too much makeup on and smoker’s fingernails.
At least she was wearing a uniform. It was an ugly green-striped vest over an olive-colored shirt. Rose noticed wrinkles and smudges.
She felt contemptuous. Being poor was no excuse for being a slob. Rose had been poor, her mother had been poor. But they had both dressed neatly at all times.
“How much?” she said.
Today she was wearing a pair of old jeans and a clean white Gap T-shirt. No need to call attention to herself. The pearls and the gold watch were in her minisafe in the apartment.
“Forty dollars. If you’d waited till tomorrow, you could have gotten the weekend special.”
“How much is that?”
“Thirty-five.” The girl blew a pink bubble and popped it.
“Yeah, well. I need a place to stay tonight.”
“Smoking or nonsmoking?”
“Non,” said Rose.
“How you gonna pay? If it’s cash you can’t have a key to the minibar or connect the phone. For that we need a card, OK?”
“Sure,” said Rose. She handed one over.
“Awright,” said the girl. “Here’s the minibar key, sign here.” She pushed over two keys. “This one is for your room, number sixty-eight on the sixth floor, elevators is over there. Need help with your bags?”
Rose glanced at the leering doorman. “Um, no thanks.”
“Enjoy your stay,” the girl said automatically, turning back to her magazine.
“Oh,” said Rose, “I will.”
She took her overnight case to the elevators. There were three of them. The lobby was quite small and somewhat gloomy; it had a bad case of Seventies carpeting. Why had people ever thought orange and brown was a good color combination? Rose wondered. The walls were white, but covered with that ugly textured paint. Very depressing.
It excited Rose. The windows were large. She imagined the place repainted, smooth-white, with a plain beige carpet, some plants and statuary. Maybe a water feature. They were cheap to run, easy to maintain, and looked fantastic. She glanced at the elevator when it arrived. It was brass.
The sixth floor was more of the same. Hallways were a little narrow; well, you couldn’t have everything. She walked to the end of hers and looked out of the grimy window. Residential area, lots of traffic. Not a problem for what she wanted to do. There was a parking lot, that was very important, and some browning grass at the front. It was never going to be Park Avenue.
The key was figuring out what people needed in the price bracket. Clean and safe would sell here. It wouldn’t cost a lot to fence the place in with ten-foot-high industrial fencing, and put a guardhouse at the gate.
New York was a dangerous city. Security would sell.
Rose opened up her room and shut the door behind her. The doors were heavy, with double locks, chains, and fish-eye peepholes. They could stay.
Breathless with anticipation, she glanced around.
Oh, man. This was perfect.
A queen-size bed was perched on a raised area, about two feet up from the living room. There was a large living area with a kitchenette. Of course, it was filthy; peeling paint, debris in the kitchen, probably infested with roaches. A bluebottle fly was buzzing lazily and hopelessly around the windows, and the bedside table was dusty.
But the fundamentals were there. Seven-fifty in the square footage. A decent-sized bathroom. Big built-in closets, and light from large windows.
Rose picked up the phone by her bed and punched zero.
“Yeah?”
“This room is kind of dusty,” Rose said. “Got any other ones?”
She heard the receptionist bristle. “It was cleaned this morning.”
“I think I’d like another room,” Rose said.
“I don’t know if I got any.” The girl was hostile now.
“You didn’t look all that busy to me. Plus I’d like something bigger.”
“All the rooms are exactly the same size. Exactly,” the receptionist snapped. “Except on the top floor, they’re bigger, but they’re the honeymoon suites and they cost, like, hundreds of dollars. You can have one if you want. Do you want one for hundreds of dollars?”
“No, that’s OK,” said Rose.
“Thank you,” said the girl, with a long-suffering air.
Rose checked the place out. She ran the shower, noted the water pressure. There wasn’t much to do.
She had an instinct about property. This was the one. This would make her.
Five minutes later, Rose picked up her overnight case and rode the elevator back downstairs.
“Here.” She handed both keys to the receptionist.
“You can’t just change your mind,” the girl said defensively. She glanced at the doorman to see if he was blaming her for this.
“Your service is dire, your rooms are filthy,” Rose told her. She looked at her nametag. “Tracy. Nobody cleaned the kitchen or changed the sheets on my bed. Do you want to be a receptionist forever?”
Tracy stared at her. “Excuse me?”
“Because if you don’t, you could always go to your boss with some ideas. You know, like cleaning the place up. Or wearing a fresh uniform. That way you might not be going out of business. And you could get a promotion.”
“I’m gonna charge your credit card. You didn’t give me any notice.”
“That’s fine with me.” Rose gave her a wink. “It was worth it.”
She turned and walked out, and the receptionist stared after her.
“Weirdo,” she called.
Rose grinned.
*
Rose called George Benham the next day.
“Have you thought more about the hotel? The hospitality industry is up and coming—”
“I’m not interested in the hospitality industry. Can you set up a meeting with the owners?”
There was silence at the end of the phone.
“Maybe you should just make an offer.”
Rose blinked. Since when did George Benham go against anything she said?
“I want to do it in person, George.”
“But … but, Miss Fiorello…”
She got annoyed. “I don’t pay you to ask questions, George. Just set it up.”
He called back fifteen minutes later. “You got an appointment in Park Slope in Brooklyn in half an hour.”
“Half an hour! I can’t get myself together that fast. It will have to be—”
“That’s the only time he has to see you. If I were you, I’d take it. And Miss Fiorello, make sure to be very, very polite.”
*
She pulled up outside a nondescript brownstone with barely two minutes to spare. The neighborhood was rough; broken windowpanes in some of the houses, trash littering the gutters. The address Benham had given her was an island in the street. Its windows were intact, its step was swept clean, and the car parked right in front was a gleaming Cadillac.
There was a restaurant on the lower level, a trattoria. Rose looked around for the door that led up to the rest of the building, but couldn’t see it.
Benham had been so mysterious; she didn’t want to be late.
Rose pushed open the door to the restaurant. A little bell rang. The place was very clean, but somewhat gloomy; all dark wood paneling. It had tables with red checkerboard cloths and candles in empty Chianti bottles shrouded in straw.
It was half-past four. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner. But there were a few men sitting at some of the tables, drinking wine and coffee.
She felt conspicuous.
“Excuse me.” Rose walked up to the bartender. “I’m meant to meet someone in this building, but I can’t find the way upstairs…”
He didn’t look up from the glass he was polishing. “Who you meeting?”
“Vincent Salerni,” Rose said.
The man’s head snapped up. He looked her over, curiously.
“Wait there a second,” he said.
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