by Lucy Smith
“That’s where you come in, my dear. I have the utmost trust that you will figure out how to sell this in a way that makes everyone happy. I have also brought in your brother to build the casino, to bring its architecture into the new millennium. It will be at least a three-year project, but I’m sure you’re both up for the job.”
I perked up. If Toby had agreed to this project, maybe there was hope for it after all. My brother didn’t come on board with Hart Corp for just any ol’ project. It was only for the chance to design something truly worthwhile, or on rarer occasions, when he desperately needed the money.
“What about all the projects I’ve been working on the past few weeks? I can’t do them and this. I’m swamped as it is.” I slowly rolled my neck to one shoulder and then the other, suddenly remembering that massage I needed.
“You can and you will. Right now, I want you to focus on the real work we have here. Project ideas are one thing, actual projects are another. I’m sorry, but your other undertakings are just going to have to wait. This is our new priority.”
My hands clenched into fists, and I had to bite my tongue. He had completely disregarded all my work as if it were mere child’s play. I stood from the chair with a heavy sigh. “I hope your intuition on this is right, Mr. Hart. It could make or break us.”
“My gut has gotten me through fifty years of life, Lauren. I don’t think it will fail me now.” He slowly stood from his chair to walk me to the door. “And last time I checked, it’s Dad.”
I swiftly left his office and made my way back down to my dreary floor. I really hoped my father was right. Working with Pierce could be a nightmare. There was too much family history there. And I refused to hold his hand through this whole project. I had worked too hard for too long to start babysitting now. I felt my face flush as I remembered the sensational heat I felt when our palms briefly touched. Maybe holding his hand wouldn’t be so bad.
Shaking my head, I forced myself to focus as the elevator doors closed. This was so unlike Dad. How did he think a casino was going to move Hart Corp from the shifting sands of its productivity? And why in God’s name did he suddenly feel the need to make peace with his lifelong nemesis? Something just wasn’t adding up. One thing was clear, however—Dad assigned me to this casino fiasco for two reasons: fix any and all of Pierce’s rookie mistakes and make sure he doesn’t pull anything shady over the company. Selling it to investors, my ass. Dad said that merely to make me feel needed. There was no way he would agree to a multi-million-dollar project if he didn’t already know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it would pay off royally. No, he didn’t really need my expertise. He needed my babysitting skills.
The elevator doors opened with a ding and a smiling Monica greeted me.
Normally if she had something important to tell me, she waited until I got back into my office. I looked at her uneasily. “What is it?”
She handed me a piece of folded paper. “The young Mr. Maverick left this for you,” she whispered. “He’s super cute, isn’t he?”
I rolled my eyes before I took the note from her. “What are we, in junior high? Has he never heard of e-mail?” I turned curtly on my heel.
“What do you think it says?” Monica asked, following closely behind me.
I was in no mood to appease my nosey assistant. “Don’t know. Don’t really care.”
“Well, I thought it was sweet. He obviously likes you.”
I quickly spun around. Monica’s brown, beady eyes looked up at me in surprise. “Monica, this is business. Pure and simple.” I shoved the paper into my dress pocket as if to accentuate my complete disregard for Pierce’s boyish move. “Speaking of business, I think you have some to do?” I pointed to her desk.
“Yes, Ms. Hart. Sorry, Ms. Hart.”
I cringed at the timidity I heard in her voice. How long had I been working on her communication skills and fear of authority only to ruin it with a thirty-second conversation? I didn’t want my employees to feel about me like they did about my father. “Monica, I’m sorry. I can feel a headache coming on, and I didn’t mean to snap.”
She gave a weak smile. “That’s okay, Ms. Hart. I was prying.” She turned to head back to her small cubicle. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said over her shoulder.
Once inside my office, I quickly unfolded the mysterious note. What could he possibly want?
Ms. Hart,
Meet me by the park across the way tomorrow morning.
I’m looking forward to our business relationship.
Pierce Maverick
He couldn’t even say please? I crumpled the paper up in my hand and tossed it into the trash bin. Served me right for getting excited like I actually was in junior high. My annoyance for the man reached a new level. This project was going to take three years at least, and almost all of that time was going to be spent with this pompous ass who already had the nerve to start barking orders via snail mail. Pierce Maverick was going to have to work a hell of a lot harder if he wanted my respect.
I swung my office door open. “Phone Pierce Maverick, and tell him I have a meeting in the morning,” I practically yelled at Monica. So much for not snapping at her. “Tell him that if he wants to see me, he’ll have to meet me in my office around noon. Or make an appointment like everybody else.”
Monica’s smile quickly fell from her face. “Yes, Ms. Hart. I’ll do that right away.”
I slammed my office door closed. Professional, Lauren. Real professional.
The blueprints I had worked so tirelessly on that morning stared at me. They beckoned me to continue with them and abandon all of my new commitments. Dad wanted me to just give all that up. And for what? To build a stupid casino? I don’t think so. I couldn’t have something so completely unoriginal on my record, not when I was trying to make CEO and save my father’s company.
Chapter Two
I took a deep breath. Sitting in the limo outside my apartment seemed to be the only safe place. Outside was mayhem. A group of photographers huddled just outside the car like a school of piranhas waiting to strike. Faces pressed against the glass. Their cameras flashed like lightning crackling in the night sky. They were urging me to open the door. I gripped my black Prada bag tightly, steadying myself.
“Ms. Hart? I can help you get out of the car if you need my assistance,” my driver piped up.
“Thanks, Rob. I think . . . I think I’ll be okay. How bad can they be, right?” I said, attempting to lighten the tension that now gripped my chest.
“If you say so, Ms. Hart.”
“Just let me gather myself for a minute.”
The last time I was involved in a paparazzi explosion was in college, a little more than five years ago, though it seemed as recent as my last breath. As I closed my eyes, the sweet scent of Cuban cigars and the musk of my old professor’s two-bedroom Manhattan apartment came hauntingly back to mind. His study was my favorite room. I could still picture the green velvet chaise and the endless stacks of colorful books in the small office. Often, while he was meticulously grading papers at his desk, I would run a finger down the spine of each of his aged novels on the shelves. The worn leather felt familiar somehow. I’d imagine the setting where he had read each book, the emotion that each word evoked from the man now stroking his imaginary beard. I’d wonder what pages were dog-eared, which words were circled for their particular significance or uniqueness. The inner workings of his intelligence and how he viewed the written language had fascinated me. His eyes saw what mine could not after hundreds of careful readings.
“Darling, you know there’s nothing I love more than to watch you finger my collection,” he would say, teasingly. His hazelnut eyes stared at me over his wire-rimmed glasses. His simple, crooked smile intoxicated me. He looked so regal, so wise. The ebony marble pipe in his hand somehow beckoned me toward him.
Of course I did know how much he enjoyed watching me fiddle with his books, which was mostly why I performed our nightly ritual. It was my s
ubtle hint to Professor Tilton that I had had enough of his grading for one night. After all, I had already seen the grade he’d given my paper, which analyzed the critical moment in the demise of Anna Karenina’s sanity before her fatal night at the railroad tracks. His comment in the left-hand corner, “Exquisite!” had warmed my heart. It made me long for him that night more than any other evening we had spent together in our short, budding romance.
At that moment, like Anna Karenina, I had wanted to take my sexual prowess into my own hands. I gracefully moved toward his desk, hoping he found my girlish appeal as sexy as I viewed his regal age. Loosening the belt around my silk robe, I licked my lips. “Come, Professor. It’s time for bed now.”
The nature of our relationship, though sincere, was profoundly misplaced. Our evening rendezvous had to be kept secret. Since then, I often wondered if this was the very reason Tilton had titillated me in the first place.
When I left his apartment that night, it was nearly two in the morning. I hadn’t wanted to leave the warm bed or his strong arms, but propriety demanded it. We had to be careful, so very, very careful. As I quietly shut the door behind me, I was ambushed. Flashes of light peppered me, snapping photo after photo of me leaving my professor’s house in nothing but a silk robe. My euphoria from the loving night with my wise man had come to a screeching halt. The reporters swarmed me like bees around a hive, robbing me of the precious nectar I had stored within me. Personal space, personal feelings, were as distant a concept to them as compassion and mercy.
The articles the following weeks were brutal: Millionaire’s daughter sleeping her way to the top? Hart’s daughter shares more than her heart with 62-year-old professor. Yale English professor hands out more than good grades, and so on. The hateful words nearly killed me; they were all so unfounded. So mean. So ungracious. No one cared about our feelings. They cared only about the scandal and the hundreds of newspapers they would surely sell.
My father had been furious about the onslaught of bad publicity the company received. He forced me to drop out of Yale and spend a few months in London with my mother in the hopes that the whole thing would eventually blow over. Tilton never contacted me, but I heard the tenured professor was suddenly under a microscope—his class stripped out from under him—in light of all the humiliation and the obtrusive loss of privacy.
I hadn’t given those crazy journalists fishing for a bit of gossip any real reasons to put my face on the front of the top gossip rags since then. But here they were again, ready to pounce. Though I had nothing to hide this time, I didn’t feel ready to face the all-too-eager cameras. They were so unforgiving, so merciless in their quests for indecency. Dad was right when he insisted that Rob drive me home; the muckrakers must have seen Pierce and Peter Maverick at the office earlier in the day. I could see the headline now: Millionaire Mavericks and Harts make nice?
Suddenly, a gutsy photographer started banging on my window. “Come on, Ms. Hart. Tell us about the new deal you’re cooking up!”
Panic flooded me. I exhaled crisply like a woman in Lamaze class. Keep it together. Don’t panic.
“Tell us why you’re suddenly friends with the Mavericks!” another voice shouted.
My door quickly opened, and someone pulled me out of the limo with a strong tug of the arm. Dear Kat, bless you, I thought as my best friend led me forward. Immediately the flashes flickered, temporarily blinding me. God, you’d think I was freaking Jennifer Aniston.
“Tell us about the Mavericks!” someone shouted. “What were they doing at Hart Corp today?”
“Are you and Pierce a couple now?” another yelled.
Their raised voices bombarded me with other ridiculous questions. I kept my head down and forced my way through the crowd, all the while praying Kat and I would make it to the apartment unscathed. “Lauren, keys!” I heard my friend yell.
Quickly, I fumbled in the pocket of my red pea coat for the keys. By some miracle, I unlocked the large oak door, and soon we managed to stumble inside and away from the flicker of the paparazzi’s lights.
I placed a hand over my chest and took a moment to catch my breath.
“Holy shit, Lo!” Kat said with her hands on her bony knees. “I feel like I just ran a goddamn marathon.”
Despite the anxiety whirling inside me, I couldn’t help but smile at her. Outside, I knew it was Kat the second she took hold of my hand. I knew her touch. I had known her long enough that I could be blindfolded and shake people’s hands and still know which one was her. This wasn’t the first time she’d saved me from the paparazzi, and I doubted it would be the last.
“Thanks for rescuing me out there. That was crazy.”
“You know I’d do anything for you. Though I think you need to grow some balls and face those bitches. Give them the finger or flash them, ya know? Something that’ll really fluff their feathers.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, because that is exactly what I want.”
“You’d think you were actually famous by all the people out there! I mean, what the hell happened today?”
I dropped my bag, kicked off my heels, and walked into my small living room. “The Mavericks came to Hart Corp today. Although with the amount of publicity we’re getting for one lousy meeting, you’d think some freakin’ strippers were involved.” I plopped down on my red, comfy sectional and patted the seat next to me for her to join.
“The Mavericks? As in your family’s mortal enemies? Those Mavericks?”
“Yeah, they’re the ones.”
She grabbed a throw pillow and sat down next to me. “Then I’m confused.”
“Join the club. Apparently, Dad now thinks it’ll be a good idea to partner with them on an upcoming project.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“You haven’t even heard the best part. Guess who he wants to run it?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
I pulled my legs toward me to hug my knees. “You’re looking at her. My new title will now be Pierce Maverick’s Official Babysitter.”
Kat threw the red-and-white floral pillow that she’d been holding to the other side of the sectional. “I think I need a beer.” She quickly got up from the sofa and walked across the dark hardwood floor to my kitchen, a scant twenty feet away.
“I don’t often drink beer after work, but when I do . . . I drink Dos Equis,” she quipped, mimicking the bearded man behind the cheesy beer commercials.
“Kat, you always drink beer after work.”
She made her way back to me, beers in hand. “Ah shit, you’re right.”
I grabbed the bottle from her and twisted the top off. I took a long pull from the cold beer. Nothing was more refreshing.
With her one free hand, Kat ran her fingers through her short, blond pixie cut. “So what exactly are you telling me here, Lo?”
“I’m screwed, basically.” I shook my head, still not believing my dad had the nerve to venture out on this ridiculous project. “It was all Dad’s idea too! That’s what I don’t get.”
Kat’s eyes went big. “What’s he smoking and where can I get some?”
“Right? It’s so unlike him. Our families hate each other. That’s the way it’s always been.”
Kat paused a moment, letting my words hang in the air. “What’s your job going to be?” she finally asked.
“I’ve got to make sure the kid doesn’t mess everything up or pull anything shady over the company, I guess. Though I can guarantee you, if Dad thinks I’m going to be on diaper duty, he doesn’t know me very well.”
“So who is this Pierce kid anyway? Obviously, he’s a Maverick so we hate him, right?”
I willed my face not to turn scarlet. Kat could read through any of my bullshit, and I didn’t need her to know that I thought Pierce was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. “Pierce is eldest. Straight out of college. Thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips.”
“Sounds peachy.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty arrogant. The next few months ar
en’t going to be real pleasant I suspect.”
She took a sip of her beer, her eyes never leaving mine. “So I’m guessing by that forced expression on your face that this guy is hot?”
Damn. How does she always know? “What? What do you mean?”
Kat folded her tattoo-covered arms and gave me a stern look. “How long have we been friends now? Fifteen years? I think that’s long enough for me to know when you’re holding something back.”
“Fine, fine,” I said, throwing my hands up in surrender.
“Oh, is he now?”
I playfully nudged Kat in the arm. “Yes, if you must know. The man is gorgeous. In fact, he may even be enough to tempt the lesbian out of you.”
Kat took another sip of her beer. “Unless he has some breasts to play with, I highly doubt that.”
I laughed until beer fizzled out of my nose. Kat could always make me chuckle. Her charisma and wit captivated me. It didn’t matter what she said or what she did, I wanted to be close to her because I knew we were going to have a hell of a good time. Not only was she a blast, but she also understood me. She was the only person I felt comfortable around, the only person I felt I could be normal with. Around family and the public, I was constantly walking on eggshells. Look pretty. Be smart. Date successful men. Make everyone like you. With Kat, I could wear sweat pants, drink beer, and not worry about whether or not I was wearing the latest Gucci shoes or how I was going to explain to my mother that I was still not dating anyone.
Because of this, I’d always had a small girl crush on her, which really confused me as a teenager. I couldn’t figure out what I liked. The taste of men, their soft tongues on mine, had always aroused me. It left me curious, always wanting more. With women, particularly Kat, I connected on an entirely different level. It was more than the insatiable heat between our bodies. It was understanding, compassion. Eventually I discovered that I wanted to be with men, in spite of the rotten eggs I’d dated the past few years. They all reminded me too much of my father—too prideful and too ambitious to see the importance of being with the loved ones who surrounded them.