Yeah. It’s a lot different than Washington.
“Sorry,” I say quickly as I step farther aside.
The speaker is obscured by a tower of boxes stacked on a creaky dolly, which he’s trying to maneuver through the crowded sidewalk.
“No problem, sweetie,” he says, and pushes past me, giving me an excellent view of a set of wide shoulders and a prize-worthy ass in tight blue cargo pants. Seriously, the way some men’s butts look in uniforms should be illegal. I sometimes wish that catcalling were normal for women to do, not just men. It would level the playing field a bit, plus it would be really satisfying to whistle after someone who looks like this guy.
Curious to see if his face is as good-looking as the rest of him, I watch to see if the hot delivery guy will turn around. But he just continues moving through the crowd, going doggedly about his business like everyone else. I shrug and check my watch again. Time to go. A small deli on the corner catches my eye. It’s not exactly espresso, but it will do the trick. My stomach will just have to deal.
“Fox, Lager, and Associates, how may I help you?”
The receptionist’s voice rings out loud and clear while I wait in the small conference room behind the donut-shaped desk facing the elevator door entrance in the lobby. The office is cool and modern, with blonde wood floors and furnishings throughout, capped with brushed metal fixtures. The name partners, Steven Fox and Gerald Lager, pose with boy bands and pop singers in the dozens of photos that line the walls along with gold records from said artists.
I sit alone at the long, oval table in the conference room, peering at the pictures and trying to distract myself from first-day nerves. Unfortunately, the perfect, white-toothed celebrity faces only make me feel that much more self-conscious. This is an entertainment law firm, where everyone works for perfect-looking people and looks like they could be one of them. April, the current receptionist, could be doing spreads at Vogue. I, on the other hand, with my petite, curvy stature and thick wavy hair, don’t look anything close to a fashion model. Anything but, really.
I was hired as a receptionist/intern last week to take the place of the normal night receptionist, who’s out on maternity leave for the next three months. It’s the kind of job I hope will look good on law school applications in a few more years. I’m the perfect candidate for a low-level internship: nineteen, in my second year at NYU. Major...yeah. That’s a different story. I’m supposed to be an attorney one day––my promise to become pre-law was the entire reason they agreed to send me to a school like NYU instead of keeping me home to go to a state school in Washington. But pre-law is a track, not a major. And I’m still figuring out just what I want to study while I’m getting ready for this big career my dad has planned for me.
“Layla?”
I look up to where Karen, the office manager and my new boss, stands in the doorway between the office and the conference room. Even at first glance, you know Karen is the kind of woman you don’t want to mess with. A thirty-something woman with a business degree and a penchant for very high-heeled shoes, Karen was born and raised in the Bronx and is the third child out of five from a family of Puerto Ricans who operate a lot of the hot dog carts in Central Park. She was the first of her family to go to college, and she didn’t mess around, graduating summa cum laude from NYU’s school of business. These are all such critical elements of her personality that she divulged them to me during my interview last week. It’s a scare tactic, I guess—she thinks I’m just a rich kid from the suburbs, and she wants me to be afraid of my boss.
She got what she wished for. Karen scares the hell out of me. But we’re more alike than she realizes. Like my dad, a native of Brazil, Karen takes major pains to erase any implications of her less than affluent upbringing. She wears shoes that no office manager in Manhattan has any business buying, and the waterfall of straight, caramel-colored hair is most likely a very sleek and expensive way of taming hair that probably looks naturally a lot like mine––wavy and unruly.
She obviously works really hard to fit in here, this stylish office where most of the attorneys probably make well over six figures, some of them maybe even seven. It reminds me of my dad’s insistence on trading in his BMW every year whether we need to or not, or the way he refuses to let anyone call me anything other than American. I’m not Latina, I’m American. I’m not Brazilian, I’m American. He’s terrified of anyone thinking of me or us as something different.
I pull at the hem of my H&M skirt as I stand up, suddenly conscious of my less-than immaculate appearance. I don’t look terrible, but my skin is slightly wrinkled after I sat in class all morning, and my gray sweater is pilling everywhere. My parents might have money, but they don’t share it with me. My dad, for all his pretentions, is also a big fan of the “bootstraps” mentality. They pay for my tuition, but beyond that, I’m on my own.
“Are you ready?” Karen asks.
I nod, holding up my pad of paper and pen. “Absolutely.”
The only thing Karen can’t mask is her speech. A thick Bronx accent curves over every word. People in Washington mostly know New York only from the movies. They think everyone here talks like Robert De Niro or Jay-Z and are as tough as any character in a Scorsese film. I thought that, too, until I got here and learned about all the other dialects and inflections that you hear on the average New York City block. And Karen doesn’t know that accents don’t bother me. I’ve been deciphering my dad’s Portuguese-laced English my entire life.
As she leads me through the halls of the small firm, she and her accent lecture me on my duties as an intern. I listen and take notes on the legal pad. Meanwhile, I look curiously around the office, nodding at the groups of assistants, most of them chattering on their headsets, and waving hello to the few attorneys whose doors are open.
Every so often on our tour Karen stops and looks at me sharply, squinting her eyeliner-laden lids as if examining me for character defects or an inability to understand the basic tasks of answering phones and keeping things stocked. I just nod, jot a few more details on my legal pad, and we continue with the training.
The office is constructed like a horse shoe, with Karen’s and the partners’ offices lining the exterior arc. Inside the shoe, junior associates, assistant, and one intern all sit around small wooden desks, which are blocked off from the front lobby and reception area by the conference room in the middle of everything.
Karen takes me on a brief tour to meet all of the lawyers, and then we circle back to the lobby, where April is answering phones.
“April will continue training you through your first shift,” Karen informs me, tapping her long, manicured nails on the lacquered wood bar rimming the reception desk. “After that, you’re on your own. Think you can handle it?”
I blink and smile. “Got it.”
I don’t love the condescension in Karen’s voice, but I’m not about to tell her that. She seems like the type who, when it really comes down to it, wouldn’t mind breaking a few of those pretty nails on someone’s face if they cross her the wrong way. I doubt I’m going to love this job, but I definitely don’t plan for that person to be me.
The job is cake. If I have nothing to do in between phone calls, I’m allowed to study or read. No problem here; what college student doesn’t want to get paid to study?
Sometime around six o’clock, April’s giving me the low-down on office gossip when the elevator doors open. Although several clients and couriers have already arrived during my shift, some of them even recognizably famous, this is the only person who causes April to tense. I watch curiously as her pale porcelain face flushes a girlish pink.
Immediately, at least three instant message windows appear on her computer from some of the assistants in the back:
Jenny: Is he here?
Marie: It’s six––who just arrived?
Paula: Damn, I’m on a call!
I look at April. “What’s going on?”
She shakes her head and swallows audibly, like s
omething is caught in her throat. Before I can ask again what the big deal is, April pushes her blonde hair behind her ears and somehow finds a way to speak to the person walking into the lobby.
“Oh, ah, hi, Nico,” she stammers almost a little too loudly.
I suppress a chuckle and shuffle my training notes instead of greeting this Nico person, whoever he is. Give me a break. I’ve met at least four genuinely famous people today––one of them a Top-Forty popstar––and I didn’t flinch. What’s this guy got that he makes a bunch of hotshot lawyers act like clucking hens?
But when I do look up, it’s like the air basically evaporated from my lungs, like I’ve been hit hard by a sack of bricks. As if someone has slapped me hard across the face. Or submerged my body in a bucket of numbing ice water. My vision actually blurs, and I can’t feel my legs.
It’s a really, really good thing I’m sitting down right now.
He is so unbelievably beautiful. I say that instead of sexy or handsome or good-looking because these words don’t cover it. They’re too external, too superficial for the charisma that radiates from the man in front of me. His appeal could obviously make a nun toss out her habit, and I’m no nun. Neither, from the way she’s squirming uncomfortably in her seat, is April.
On paper, he would probably come across as average. Obviously no big success career-wise—just a twenty-something FedEx courier, dressed in the same dark blue and purple uniform as the rest of them. He’s not terribly tall, maybe five-ten or eleven in boots, if that. I estimate that in heels I’d probably be eye-to-eye with him, maybe an inch or two shorter.
But his lack of height is tempered by a pair of broad, toss-a-girl-over-them shoulders and biceps that ripple clearly, even under the thick fabric of his uniform. His FedEx shirtsleeves are rolled up over a set of muscular forearms, and his skin is tanned and smooth, the color of coffee and rich cream. It’s complemented by a fringe of short black hair that just sticks out from the edges of his FedEx cap, the bill of which is curled heavily over a pair of black eyes that twinkle mischievously beneath thick lashes.
Then he smiles. I’m seriously not sure why the building didn’t blow a fuse––that grin adds about ten thousand watts to this room alone. It’s the most thoroughly panty-dropping smile I have ever seen. And Holy Mary Mother of God, it’s not even pointed at me yet.
Like I said: a sack of bricks.
“How you doin’, April?”
If his smile causes all the blood to drain out of my head, his voice makes it all flood back in again. I’ve heard that voice before, and now that I think about it, I recognize the shape of those big shoulders too. It’s the guy from the street, Mr. Ass of the Year. And his front side definitely matches the promise of the back.
His voice holds traces of the same New York accent that Karen has, but his is softer somehow, muted in the velvety texture of his baritone. It’s a gorgeous, deep voice, the kind you want whispering in your ear in some dark alley while he’s got you pressed against a brick wall, hands up your skirt, hot mouth against your ear while he—
Whoa. Steady, girl. You’re at work.
I know I’m staring, but it takes me a few seconds to shut my mouth and make sure I can actually move my legs. April has obviously learned to recover faster. Even though she’s barely said anything, she’s already standing up. My feet are still numb.
“Not bad, Nico.” April giggles at him. “Today’s my last day on the night shift. Will you miss me when I’m gone?”
“Of course I will, hon, of course I will,” Nico croons. “Is this the new girl?”
His jet-black gaze briefly sweeps over me from my head down to my waist, which is likely all that’s visible from where he stands. He gives me an inquisitive half-smile. I open my mouth to reply, but nothing comes out.
“Yeah,” April’s saying, but I can barely hear her. “This is Layla.”
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Acknowledgments
First up: Family. Always family. Family, in its various, sometimes fractured forms, is a major theme in all of my work, and that because my beautiful, mixed, devoted, and utterly interesting family is the best one of them all. My husband, who gives me ample time and has never been anything but tirelessly supportive of all my projects. I love you. All three of our kids, who are only just starting to understand who “Nicole French” is and what role she has in their lives. Just today, my youngest said, “I want to be a bookmaker like you.” Oh, my heart. I love you, little bear. My aunt, Trish, who thanked me for her cameo before she knew who Tricia Owen-Baker really was. Sorry, by the way. When the characters speak, I listen. The REAL Trish is like a second mom to me—there is no mistaking them for each other. My mom, who always asks about my books, and who gave me the drive and confidence to pursue this dream in the first place. Thank you, all.
Secondly, to my wonderful editorial support team. My amazing alpha readers, Patricia and Danielle, whose arguments about Will and constant cheerleading made this book happen much faster than it would have otherwise. You ladies are the best, both as friends and as readers. This book series is yours. Thank you to Shauna, Erika, and Dee who offered extremely helpful beta notes on the second manuscript. So much gratitude is due to my editor, the eagle-eyed Emily Hainsworth, whose expertise and tongue-in-cheek comments are utterly indispensable. Last (but not least), to Judy Zweifel, who polishes everything into the form you read today. Thank you.
Thirdly, thank you to the author support network that alternately distracts and motivates. To Harloe, Jane, ad Ava, who keep me company, day in and day out. To the wonderful ladies of the DND Book Club and the In the Loop Group, thanks for letting me in the clubs! I am so fortunate to have gained such an incredible group of peers. Other friends whose message and support constantly brighten my days: Maya, Jessica, Laura, Kim, Sierra, and others. I LOVE all your voices in my life.
Most of all, THANK YOU to my other ARC reviewers, reader group members, newsletter subscribers, and basically EVERY READER who read this story from beginning to end: Thank you. I would have quit this job long ago without you. Your excitement feeds my stories, and there are so many more on the way. I would not be able to do this at all if it were not for you. All my gratitude, always.
About the Author
Nicole French is a hopeless romantic, unabashed Springsteen fanatic, and complete and total bookworm. When not writing fiction or teaching composition classes, she is hanging out with her family, playing soccer with the rest of the thirty-plus crowd in Seattle, or going on dates with her husband. In her spare time, she likes to go running with her dog, Greta, or practice the piano, but never seems to do either one of these things as much as she should.
You can find me on all of the following social media and communication platforms:
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nicolefrenchromance.com/
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