Penthouse Prince: A new York City Romance

by Tara Leigh

  After my mother left, my father accepted a job teaching English at a posh New England prep school. I was a constant reminder of the woman who left him, a jagged shard that drew blood with every glance. There, I lived in a dorm and he only had to see me from across the quad or during an occasional weekend lunch.

  Tristan nods. “That accounts for one year.”

  “I also deferred my acceptance to Columbia.”

  “Deferred,” he repeats. “That’s an unusual choice. What was your rationale?”

  I fumble with the cap, struggling with my answer. My years at boarding school were an education well beyond what I learned in the classroom. I may have gotten in as a faculty member’s daughter, but I became more than that. I was friendly to everyone and steered clear of mean girl drama. Without any family obligations of my own, I was invited on Aspen ski trips in winter, and Mediterranean sailing trips in summer. I’ve eaten sushi in Tokyo, crepes in Paris, oysters in Nantucket, and caviar in Moscow.

  I became the perfect chameleon—so good at blending into other people’s lives, it was impossible to determine where theirs ended and mine began.

  Out of necessity, I learned how to fit in anywhere, become indispensable to anyone. With everyone but my own parents, of course. I hadn’t planned to delay college, but when my dad died suddenly of an aneurism just a few months before I graduated from high school, it hit me unexpectedly hard. And his loss was compounded when I realized that nothing had changed.

  My mother didn’t come to my rescue. Van Horne didn’t welcome me into his family. Both my biological parents were alive and well . . . but I was an orphan. Limping through the remainder of my coursework, I mourned the loss of not just one parent, but three. Smiles were pretty hard to come by, back then. Columbia would have been a disaster.

  “I sailed around the world with a friend. She hadn’t quite figured out her path yet, and her father suggested a gap year abroad. I thought I’d take the opportunity to see the world before coming back to New York City for what I intend to be a long career on Wall Street.”

  I don’t disclose that my cruise only lasted until my friend’s father made a pass at me. After I turned him down, apparently not as gently as I should have, I found myself stranded in Algeria. Without my passport.

  It was an important lesson. There’s often an inverse relationship between the size of a man’s wallet and the fragility of his ego. Powerful men must be handled with extreme care.

  Beneath Tristan’s observant gaze, my walk down memory lane has me feeling uncoordinated and clumsy. I don’t have enough strength in my fingers to untwist the cap.

  Of course, he notices that, too.

  Tristan holds his hand out and I gratefully turn over the bottle. With a small movement, he opens it and hands it back to me. “Thanks.” Taking a sip, I collect my thoughts, seeing myself through Tristan’s eyes. Reina St. James: tease, liar, klutz.

  Pull yourself together. At the very least, I need to appear poised and professional to have a shot in hell of making Tristan forget that I am the same woman he backed up against his door, mewling in ecstasy. The same woman who ran away, leaving him high and dry, just minutes later.

  The water is a welcome relief for the scratchiness at the back of my throat, and I swallow. “So you’re interested in my past performance?” I want to smack my own forehead. Shot in hell? More like misfire.

  “Actually yes, I am very interested in your past performance.”

  Cheeks burning, I ignore the double entendre and plow ahead, rattling off a string of technical jargon. Price-to-earning ratios, market share, foreign currency impacts. My recent presentation to the investment contest judges falls from my lips with no thought whatsoever. Which is fortunate, because I’m not capable of rational thought at the moment. My returns were nearly double those of my closest competitor, and it’s probably why I’ve been offered a place in this year’s training program at Bettencourt. “So I think you can see that my interest in investing runs deep and I’d really like the opportunity to work under you.” Under you? “Um, I mean with you. For you.”

  Not even the slightest crinkling at the corner of Tristan’s eyes hints that he finds merit in my appeal. “I seem to recall that the last place you wanted to be was beneath me.”

  He’s going there. He’s really going there.

  I square my shoulders. Fine. I can too. “Only after I saw that logo, crest, whatever, hanging above your bed. After you told me your full name and I realized the implications. That, ultimately, we’d be right here, having this exact conversation.”

  What woman wouldn’t want to be with Tristan? Based on his looks alone, he could bring home a different woman every night of the week. Factor in his bank account and the Bettencourt name and—

  I stop. He is just as much to blame for this mess as I am.

  “Why didn’t you tell me your name, by the way? I said mine, my full name, and you countered with TJ. Not even a name, just two initials.” Something else occurs to me, something much worse. “Did you know who I was, that I would be working for you in two days?”

  “No,” he replies sharply. “Of course, not.”

  A lock of his hair falls forward and for a moment, my resolve softens. But I tuck my hand beneath my thigh to keep from brushing it back and continue. “Then why? Why would you lie to me?”

  Chapter 5

  @BettencourtBets: Guess who scored the pick of the litter?

  Tristan

  “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell—”

  “A lie of omission, then.”

  “Which isn’t a lie,” I insist stubbornly. I am not a liar. It’s a source of pride with me. “Growing up, everyone called me TJ.”

  “Well, you’re all grown up now, and I’ll bet no one calls you that anymore.” Her voice is indignant, maybe even a little smug. “Face it, we both lied.”

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree. Satisfied?”

  Reina crosses her arms over her chest. “Not really. Whatever you want to call it—what you did was worse. I rounded up. Twenty-five rather than twenty-three and three-quarters. You shielded your entire identity. Why?”

  The Bettencourt lineage can be traced back centuries to Northern France. If I thought the truth wouldn’t change anything, I’d share my entire family tree at every opportunity. I’m proud of what my ancestors have achieved. My great-grandfather started a small moneylending operation in Paris, and stamped all of his correspondence with the family crest. Fast forward a hundred years and that same crest is now the internationally recognized symbol of the Bettencourt financial empire.

  When your name represents money, generations of it, that name attracts women rather than repels them. I’ve had more than my share of faux friends just looking for a handout, or an introduction, or a job offer.

  Women tend to set their sights higher. They want my name for themselves. And I almost fell for it. Once.

  “Because the odds of meeting someone I didn’t know at a fundraiser filled with half of Wall Street are slim to none. But it happened. We were just two strangers with no baggage, no history. What’s wrong with wanting to start on an even playing field?”

  “Nothing.” She shakes her head, a piece of hair coming loose from her bun and curling around her ear. “Except that it was never really even between us, was it?”

  I sigh. “We’ve made quite a mess of things.”

  She bites down on her lower lip, brow furrowing. “I know we can’t go back and fix things, but can we at least try to start over? Establish a professional working relationship?”

  “So, no more talk about picking pockets and hucking corn— Why are you laughing?”

  “Shucking corn, not hucking.”

  “Shucking, fucking, whatever.” I pause, holding Reina’s gaze. The tension tugging her shoulders up toward her ears has eased, and she’s wearing a more relaxed expression. “I had a great time with you on Friday. Before things went sideways, anyway.”

  “I did, too,” she admits. “But you
’re my boss now, and there’s no changing that.”

  “Actually, there is. I can get you a job anywhere you want. I don’t have to be your boss. We can—”

  “Don’t, Tristan. I mean it. I worked my ass off for this opportunity, and you’re not going to rip it away from me because of what happened before I knew who you were.” She swallows, her eyes glassy. “Before you played me for a fool.”

  I wish I could erase the anger in her voice, the wounded look on her face. I may not have lied directly but I’d been dishonest, nonetheless. And I don’t like the way it makes me feel. “It was never my intention to hurt you, Reina.”

  A few beats pass. “What were your intentions?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I hadn’t noticed that crest, if we spent the night together . . . would you have sent me home with a fake name, a fake number? Was I just some naive girl to you, a disposable—”

  “Hey,” I cut her off, sinking into the seat beside her and placing my hand on her forearm. “I don’t know what would have happened— I never had the chance to find out. But you’re not disposable, Reina, and I wouldn’t have treated you that way. I was living in the moment, having fun. I think you were, too.”

  “Thank you,” she says quietly. “I’m ready to move on now, to put our past behind. Over the weekend, I read up on your work here, and on the Polaris Fund. You’ll be opening up to new investors soon. Can I tell Megan that my first rotation will be with your team?”

  For God’s sake, Reina St. James is a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen and I know it. I look out the window, then back at Reina. Nope. It doesn’t work. I still want to pull her in my arms and kiss her until everything makes sense again. Work together? Bad idea. Terrible idea. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  Pussy-whipped fool. “Yes. I’ll let Megan know you’ll start here.” I try to tell myself having Reina nearby is really just the smartest move—keep your friends close and your enemies closer, after all. Although, as Reina implied earlier, we’re hardly friends. And she’s certainly not my enemy. I’ve never wanted to bend an enemy over my desk and—

  “Thank you.” Reina’s relief is palpable.

  I drag my mind out of the gutter. “Sure. You would have to work on Polaris at some point anyway. And frankly, we could use an extra set of hands, especially someone already aligned with our trading philosophy.”

  My gaze drops to her hands, neatly clasped in her lap, which of course makes me notice her legs. Again.

  What I should be doing is escorting Reina to our legal department and telling them to cut her a huge check in return for walking away from Bettencourt as fast as those gorgeous legs can carry her. I shouldn’t feel this way about one of my employees—certainly not a twenty-three-year-old trainee.

  Except that this particular twenty-three-year-old trainee isn’t just whip-smart, she is bold and confident. Definitely the most interesting, alluring female I can remember spending a night with. I make a mental note to look at Reina’s file. How close is she to twenty-four? It isn’t as good as twenty-five, but it sounds a hell of a lot better than twenty-three.

  “You won’t regret it, I promise.”

  I swallow a grunt of dissent. I already do.

  There is a sensuality in the curves Reina covered up so well today, and I can’t force the memory away. It isn’t right that Reina’s body practically demands to be worshipped. Maybe it’s wrong—but I’ll agree to just about anything Reina wants if it means keeping her close to me.

  “So tell me, why Bettencourt?” I ask, needing to get our conversation back on safe ground if there’s any hope of establishing the professional relationship Reina deserves from me. “Ivy League school, impressive GPA. I’m sure ours wasn’t the only job offer you received.”

  With her qualifications, Reina could have chosen to work for any other financial services firm on Wall Street, and there are hundreds of hedge funds to choose from. But she’d set her sights on Bettencourt. And now, more specifically, the Polaris Fund. My fund.

  “No. But it’s the best one. The one everyone in my graduating class was aiming for.”

  “And that’s important to you?”

  “What?”

  “That you get what everyone else wants.”

  She cocks her head to the side and studies me warily. “Of course.”

  I nod, wondering if I should take her answer as a warning flare. In my experience, beautiful women often hide the ugliest of motivations. But I’m not interviewing her to be my next girlfriend. Reina said herself she isn’t looking for anything serious, that her career is her priority.

  Bettencourt is my priority, too. And Reina is a Bettencourt hire—from what I’ve seen so far, a good one.

  “You have the right mindset,” I acknowledge. “Wall Street is just one big zero-sum game. Everyone in this business owes their success to someone else’s failure. If you make a million dollars, it’s because some stooge just lost a million. And only the most tenacious survive.”

  The truth is, investing is really just legalized gambling, and every worthwhile gambler has just one goal. Winning. All games have a prize, and the most successful are relentless in pursuit of victory. But working at a hedge fund has an important distinction. Our bets are financed with other people’s money.

  Reina leans forward, passion lending a husky timbre to her voice. “To me, investing is like one big treasure hunt. The reward for discovering and correctly interpreting all the clues is absolute, measured in dollars and cents.”

  I clear my throat, forcing myself to shift away from her. I’ve never had a conversation about investment strategy make me hard. “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”

  “I thought you didn’t like boring questions.”

  “I don’t, but I think that’s all we’re left with.”

  “I have a better idea,” she says. “Everything you’re probably about to ask me is in a file I bet Megan already emailed you. Grades, transcript, relevant test scores, et cetera, et cetera. Now that we’ll be working together, I think I should get to know you.”

  Skepticism tugs at my brows. “You do realize that’s generally not the way an interview works? I’m the one with the job opening, you’re supposed to convince me that you deserve it.”

  “But I already have the job, right?” Reina asks, the impish gleam in her eyes giving her an unfair advantage. “Let’s go off-script.”

  My pulse jumps. How the hell has this woman managed to turn the tables on me? “What would you like to know?” Then again, if it keeps her in my office, I don’t care.

  “That’s easy. Everything you purposely kept from me on Friday.”

  Easy. I stand, walking to my desk and scanning the array of computer screens with flashing numbers preceded by dollar signs, and charts with multicolored jagged lines. These screens are like the instrument panel in a cockpit. A quick glance tells me everything I need to know about Polaris’s flight pattern, and without them I’d be flying blind.

  Not that running a successful fund is a one-man job. I have a team of professionals working with me. Traders, portfolio managers, research analysts with more PhDs than most university professors. There is always work to be done—but right now my screens show blue skies. Storms can come up in the blink of an eye, of course. Usually when they’re least expected. While turbulence can be minimized, avoiding it completely is impossible. Vigilance is required.

  I turn back to Reina, and lean against my desk. “Banking is the family business, but I didn’t coast through school only to be given an inflated title with no expectation of real responsibility. I graduated from Harvard, started working with high net-worth clients overseas. Which meant I spent half my day explaining to derelict brats that I couldn’t just void the terms of their trust fund and give them a blank check.”

  “And the other half?”

  I laugh. “Making sure my eighty- and ninety-year-old account holders didn’t hand over any blank checks. If it wasn’t th
eir grandkid begging for money, it was their buddy from the club or some friend-of-a-friend with a ‘hot tip’.”

  “Sounds like you were a cross between a nanny and a P.I.”

  “Basically. And it wasn’t for me. So I went back to school for my MBA, and shifted to investing here in New York. Eventually found my comfort zone in portfolio management. Started my own fund, Polaris, a year ago.” I extend my hands, palms facing her. “And now you’re all caught up.”

  “Can I ask you another question?”

  “Sure,” I say, bracing myself for something I don’t want to answer.

  “How closely do you work with your father?”

  That damned tweet. “Are you asking whether I’m stuck in his shadow?”

  A blush stains her cheeks. “Absolutely not. Megan spent half an hour telling us all about your family and how they’ve grown the business. I was just wondering what it’s like . . . contributing to a legacy.”

  “Some days it feels like the best job in the world, and others like . . . If I so much as sneeze, I’ll fuck it all up.” I run a tongue over my teeth, thinking. “But it helps that my father had basically the same experience when he was my age. He understands. The pressure I feel is mostly internal.”

  “What about your mother?”

  I don’t like talking about my mother. Scratch that. I don’t talk about my mother. Not to friends, or girlfriends. Not to a therapist. And only in the most vague, skate-around-the-cracked-ice kind of way with my own father.

  I glance back at my cockpit, pretending to notice something urgently requiring my attention. “One second, Reina, just need to check on a trade.” No matter how much time has passed, there is still a part of me that remains a little boy with skinned knees, a bowl haircut, and absolute faith that every hurt can be healed by a hug from his mom.

  And for a few brief moments, I am that little boy again. No longer insulated within the moneyed bubble of my Manhattan office, but standing beside my mother’s hospital bed, her skin so colorless it’s indistinguishable from the white sheets, the walls of her room lined with bulky machines that erupt at odd intervals with frightening sounds.