“I don’t care if you sleep with men, women, or two or three of both. The only thing I’m worried about is you. This woman is a predator, Chloé. She has a reputation. I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s all. Would you think about it before you decide to do anything? Please?”
I nodded. “I will.”
“Now how about I get a shirt on and we get the hell out of this place? I could use a drink.”
I wrinkled my nose again. “Take a shower first, would you? You smell like shit.”
Chapter Ten
On the following Wednesday, Amelia decided to take me along to Brent Cameron’s home visit to show me the ropes. Brent, the rich real-estate developer I’d suggested approaching at the ball the other night, had been thrilled to have us over and “Get some shit on my walls,” as he put it. He planned to have us over for some “Fancy chow,” for dinner, made, he told us, by his gourmet chef. Amelia and I had been in near-hysterics of laughter after she phoned him and told me about their conversation. I could tell she expected to take him to the cleaners.
All day Tuesday, I spent time researching him, his family, and his interests, hoping to have fodder for flattery for a two- to three-hour consultation. Except for the fact that he was ridiculously rich, I’d known men like Brent all my life, and I felt fairly confident I wouldn’t make an ass out of myself. That didn’t, however, negate the fact that this could potentially become my first sale. I also helped Amelia create a binder of potential artwork in a variety of styles for him to look at, all of which carefully avoided describing cost. We would make suggestions, but ultimately, she reminded me, he would choose what “shit” he wanted.
As we rode over to his house that evening, both of us dressed to the nines, Amelia exuded her usual calm confidence. “You’re going to be great,” she told me, patting my knee and sending tingles running up and down my spine.
“I hope so,” I said, my mouth dry.
“Remember—these first few outings are practice runs. If we can sell even one thing, you’ll be doing incredibly well. Most of my previous assistants have taken longer just to get the first potential client lined up.”
I was at this point dying of curiosity about her past assistants. I’d wanted to bring them up for a while now, but it seemed, somehow, intrusive and unprofessional. What could possibly motivate me, her new assistant, to ask about the old ones? I didn’t have any excuse except curiosity. Still, I decided to take a chance. “Oh?” I asked. “How long did it usually take them to make a sale?”
She didn’t take the bait and said only, “Much longer.”
Brent’s house was as ostentatious and ridiculous on the outside as I expected. Squatting like a toad among swans, its hyper-modern architecture stood out among the delicate Victorians in his neighborhood. All glass, angles, and stucco, it screamed new money and poor taste.
Ignoring his doorman, Brent pushed past him to open our car door for us, helping us both climb out of the Rolls. Once we were standing beside him, he whistled, long and low. “My goodness! Aren’t you two the prettiest things I ever saw?”
Amelia gave him a phony smile. “Thank you, Mister Cameron.”
“Call me Brent,” he said, turning to me. He took my hand and kissed the back of it, his eyes alive with mischief. “It’s an honor.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.
Taking my cue from Amelia, I took his behavior in stride. “You flatter me, Mister Cameron.”
“It’s Brent, really. I hate that formal ‘Mister’ crap.” He gestured toward the door. “Shall we, ladies?”
We followed him into a large, cathedral-like entry room. Light from the setting sun filtered in through the many windows, and the effect made the inside of his home far nicer than I’d expected from its ugly outer shell. The room, however, was nearly empty except for some incredibly uncomfortable-looking furniture scattered in strange arrangements around the room. He didn’t have a single picture or decoration anywhere. Even the floor was a solid, cold marble without a carpet to be seen. The whole place had the feel of an empty, clean warehouse.
“As you can see, I need some help,” Brent said, chuckling slightly. “I used to have a bunch of crap for the walls and the tables, but my ex-wife took it all. Luckily that’s all her blood-sucking lawyer got out of me, which means I can buy some new stuff. Stuff I like. She always liked all that modern shit. You know, like a big canvas with squares on it, crap like that. That’s just not my thing.”
We both agreed, but I felt a little overwhelmed. Given the modern layout and setup of the house and furniture, it would be difficult to find a style of artwork to suit his house that wasn’t modern. Amelia, however, seemed once again to take all of this in stride.
“I’m certain we can accommodate whatever style you favor, Brent. From the looks of it, we do, as you say, have a lot to work with. But before we get down to business, I think you promised us dinner?”
“Of course!” he said. “How rude of me, ladies. I always say pleasure before business, myself.”
Dinner was, as expected, over the top. The chef had prepared a feast that, if not exactly “gourmet,” was sumptuous and rich. It clearly catered to Brent’s tastes, which ran toward heavy meats and creamy sauces. I attempted to eat as much as I could, but it was tough going. I prefer light and simple food most of the time. Amelia, however, made enjoying the meal look effortless, polishing off plate after plate of the decadent dishes.
When the dessert trays were finally removed, Brent sat back in his chair, gazing at her with obvious pleasure. “I always love to see a woman enjoy a good meal. Judging by your size, you don’t even look like you could eat a salad.” Amelia continued sipping her cocktail and didn’t reply. “This one on the other hand,” he waved at me, “ate like a bird. Big surprise.”
Before I could apologize, he held up his hands. “I’m only joking, Chloé. I don’t take offense. I know you ladies like to keep your figures.”
I nodded dumbly, feeling like I’d let Amelia down, but she winked at me from across the table. Seeing the look between us, Brent laughed. “Hey, that reminds me. I saw the two of y’all dancing the other night. Does that mean you’re like together-together?”
I flushed and Amelia laughed. “I don’t know if that’s a topic for a business dinner, Brent,” she said.
Brent held up his hands, “Hey, don’t worry about me. I know I seem like a redneck, but I thought it was sexy as hell. After you two left, the whole place was talking about you. I think most of the men, and a lot of the women, were more than a little turned on by the show. I don’t mind saying that not a few of us were pretty disappointed when you left, either. The two prettiest women went home together. Now if that doesn’t say something about the state of the world, I don’t know what does.”
Seeing my face he laughed again. “Hell, I got a brother who’s a cocksucker back in Raleigh, where I grew up. I get it. And like I said, you two are fucking hot together.”
Luckily, after that, he dropped the subject, but I struggled the rest of the cocktail round to get my blood pressure back under control. As we toured the large, empty rooms of his house, he and Amelia chatting about politics, sports, and occasionally art, I forced myself not to run screaming from the house. Amelia, obviously sensing my turmoil, took command, making sure that Brent didn’t see how upset I was. My mind was in complete tumult. His insinuation hadn’t insulted me—after all, given Amelia’s apparent past, everyone apparently assumed we were together. What bothered me more was the idea that we were somehow together for his pleasure, not our own. My recognition of this fact, and what it suggested about my feelings for Amelia, bothered me. Not able to quite understand entirely what this realization meant, I felt my stomach lurching from the rich food and my escalating distress. Once or twice, I almost had to excuse myself to the bathroom to be sick, but managed to avoid doing that, just barely.
After what seemed like an endless tour (a tour, I might add, that included his massive car collection), the three of us finally sat down to cof
fee in his empty living room. I was relieved to get off my shaking legs.
“What are your first thoughts, Doctor?” Amelia suddenly asked, turning to me.
Taken aback, I looked at her in surprise and she laughed. “We’ve seen the whole place now,” she prompted me, “and Brent has told us about his tastes. What do you think we can offer him?”
Remarkably, I barely hesitated. While I’d been scarcely listening the entire time we’d walked around his place, something had apparently sunk in. Opening up the leather folder I’d prepared, I began to show him several options for the various rooms we’d seen, suggesting that each have a unified scheme either in color or style. I explained that while the folder was understandably limited in scope, each of the pieces I was showing him represented what I meant. He would, of course, have the final say in all the pieces before installation, but we could create a room centered around the painting or sculpture that I showed him from the folder. In addition, I suggested several rugs and tapestries that would help warm up some of the coldness in his house, each of which would correspond to the room in which it was placed.
When I’d finished, Brent laughed, shaking his head as if dazed. “You amaze me, Miss Chloé. All along, I was thinking Amelia would be the one to do the hard sell, but you come in here at the end like a falcon and sweep me away.” He laughed again, looking back and forth between the two of us. “I love it. I love every single thing you just showed me.” He nodded once, almost to himself. “Let’s do it.”
We all stood up and shook hands, the tension leaving my body almost as if it had never existed. My jubilance at the sale was something I’d rarely felt before. I was surprised by how happy it made me. When Brent turned to the bar to grab a bottle of champagne to celebrate, Amelia gave me a happy wink behind his back. I winked back, my happiness making me bolder than normal, and saw her eyebrows lift slightly in surprise.
“Now let’s pop this bitch and toast our resident falcon here,” Brent said, popping the cork. He poured three glasses and handed them around.
“To falcons!” he shouted happily.
“To falcons!” Amelia and I responded.
Chapter Eleven
The following weeks passed in a blur of activity. The New York trip was fast approaching, which meant preparing dossiers and art folders for past and potential clients, supervising the collection of artwork for transfer to Brent Cameron’s house, monitoring its installation room by room, and schmoozing with him day after day. This last part, I found, was much easier without Amelia around. He rarely mentioned Amelia most of the time, and though he flirted with me constantly, I found I didn’t mind, despite my complete disinterest in him. I find it easy to flirt with men I’m not interested in, especially when they’re basically paying for my company. He, however, didn’t seem to mind the farce—which even he must have recognized as one—and it didn’t taint our business association, either. This was, perhaps, how he was used to treating women. At least he was courteous, if a tiny bit sleazy.
I also did my first solo house visit to the older couple I’d met at the charity dinner, complimenting, once again, the wife’s family heirlooms and flattering her otherwise as much as possible on her taste and decorations. The flattery worked not only on her, but also on her husband, and, after another ridiculously rich dinner, I managed to sell far more artwork to them than I’d anticipated.
Returning to the Winterses’ warehouse quite late that evening to start putting in their order, I was surprised to see that Amelia and her secretary Janet were still there. Janet looked haggard and worn. We’d all been putting in extra hours lately in preparation for New York as well as the massive installation at Brent’s house. Still, keeping the poor woman at the office this late seemed cruel.
“You’re still here?” I asked.
She sighed. “Yes. And it doesn’t look like I’ll get out of here anytime soon. Miss Winters is in conniptions over New York. She doesn’t think we’re ready. I keep telling her that she always thinks that before a big trip, but she doesn’t believe me. She has to make everyone else as miserable as she is, or she thinks we’re not working hard enough.” Janet sighed again. “Luckily we won’t have another trip like this until Paris.” She rolled her eyes. “You think this is bad, just wait until she gears up for a Paris trip.”
I clucked my tongue and shook my head, trying to look as sympathetic as I could, but I was nervous about New York too. Up until now, except for some of my supervisory work in the warehouse, I had focused mostly on clients and clients alone, but in New York it would be clients and artwork. I would be responsible for helping to find new artists to promote, and the thought had terrified me from the moment Amelia asked me to start researching them.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it—”
Amelia suddenly came out of her office. “Oh, thank God you’re here, Doctor,” she told me. “Would you mind coming in for a little while?” She turned to her secretary. “Janet, I’m so sorry. It’s almost midnight. Go home and don’t come in until ten tomorrow morning. I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch. You know how I am when I have a trip coming up.”
Janet didn’t disagree. “Thank you, Miss Winters. Until then.” She grabbed her purse and nearly ran for the door, obviously afraid of being called back.
I followed Amelia into her office, and she closed the door behind us. Her hair was mussed, her clothes were wrinkled, and her makeup was in desperate need of being either taken off or reapplied. She looked so entirely unlike her usual put-together self I was taken aback. In fact, her resemblance to my dream version of her made me flush with embarrassment at the memory, and I quickly turned away to hide my rising color. She closed her eyes and sighed, resting heavily against the door. After a moment she seemed to shake herself loose and made her way around to sit at the chair behind her desk. I sat down, still shaken.
“I wanted to take a moment before the whole New York thing to check in with you. You’ve been here for almost a month now.”
“Really?” I was surprised. Somehow it seemed shorter.
“Really. It’s amazing how quickly you’ve caught on. Every task I’ve given you, you’ve attacked it head-on and completed it with ease. You had some nervous moments at the beginning, but that’s, of course, expected. You’ve done far better than I could have dreamed.”
I felt awkward, unsure how to react to such praise. “Thank you.”
“I should be thanking you,” she said seriously. “I don’t know how I would have gotten through the last month without you. As you can see I’m still overwhelmed even with you here.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“The Cameron sale is proceeding nicely. You did an amazing job not only in selecting Brent as a potential client, but in selling to him so magnificently. I genuinely believe you could get that man to buy anything at this point. How’s the installation going?”
“Slowly, but well,” I said. I explained the two rooms that we were working on.
“So that’s what, two rooms out of how many so far?”
“Twenty,” I said, laughing. “He’s doing the whole place. He even asked me yesterday to help him pick out new furniture to match the artwork. I said I’d look into it.”
Amelia sat up, eyes blazing. “One of my brothers is in the furniture business. I’ll arrange a meeting with him after New York. You really are amazing.”
I didn’t respond.
“And how did tonight go?”
“Very well,” I said, detailing the sales.
She seemed to take the news as my due. “As I said when I hired you, we need to start thinking about your commission now that you’re making so many sales.”
I laughed. “I don’t think we’re at that point yet, are we?”
“Do you have any idea how much money Brent Cameron is giving us right now, Doctor? Or how much more money he’ll give us in the future? Not to mention this new sale of yours? Don’t sell yourself short. You deserve every penny coming to you. I’ll have Janet draw up a new co
ntract to give you a general sales commission tomorrow—I think it’s five percent—for everything you’ve been involved in, with a one-percent increase, let’s say, every other month for the first year. You can also expect your sales to be reflected in your Christmas bonus.”
My heart raced happily. Having received a couple of paychecks now, I already felt amply compensated for my hard work, but I certainly didn’t intend to turn down a little extra money. Soon I’d be able to get my own place, which was all I’d wanted the job for anyway. In addition to wanting to be out on my own again, Aunt Kate and her boyfriend had begun to drop hints about moving in together, and I wanted to get out of there before that happened. Much as I liked the guy, it was too small a house for three of us.
Amelia was still looking at me, and I blushed again under her unwavering gaze. “What’s that you’re wearing?” she said suddenly.
I was so taken aback by the change in topic that I had to look down at myself to see what she was talking about. “Oh. Some of the clothes Tiffany made arrived yesterday. I was going to tell you about them, but we’ve been so busy.”
“Stand up and let me look at you.” Her expression was unreadable.
Obeying without thought, I stood up, turning around for her once, slowly. My face was red when I turned back to her. “What do you think?”
“It’s marvelous,” she said. “Now you see why I get almost everything tailored.”
I nodded. I’d never had clothes that fit me so well. While the nice things we’d bought ready-made last month were flattering and stylish, it was remarkable having something that fit me and only me. The difference was apples and oranges.
“I’ll send over some luggage for you for New York tomorrow,” Amelia said after a moment. She looked down at her desk and started shuffling papers, her body language suggesting that she was anxious for some reason. “You have the schedule for New York, so you should have a good idea what you need to bring with us. I want you to take tomorrow off so you’ll be packed before the flight Thursday. I don’t want you to pack at the last minute. Remember to include two gowns for both of the dinners—Janet has rented them for you. The paparazzi are even more ridiculous in New York than they are here, so people will notice what we look like.” She glanced back up at me, but her face appeared tense and drawn.
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