Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire)

by Rosalind James

  Was I more upset about the job, or about Hemi? It should’ve been the job. The job mattered, or I’d thought it had. It had been my future, whereas Hemi—Hemi was nothing more than another bad date.

  But all the same, when I was standing on one leg in the rust-stained bathtub in the corner of the kitchen, scrubbing at my dirtied, bruised foot with the washcloth, the tears I cried weren’t for my career.

  But tears and regret weren’t something people like me could afford to wallow in, and my job was what was keeping a roof over Karen’s and my head. So I got out of bed on Monday morning with my eyes and my stomach like lead, dressed in a twist-front blue sheath, white jacket, and sandals because they were easy, swallowed some breakfast, and got straight back on the subway again.

  Nathan’s hiss roused me from my struggle with the guest list for the Paris press conference.

  “Witch on a broom!”

  I sighed and kept typing. I would’ve known anyway. When Martine walked in, heads dropped down behind cubicle walls, fingers got busy, and conversation stopped. She sent a tsunami of silence before her every time she arrived. But then, bosses tended to do that.

  This time, the cone of silence stopped outside my cubicle, and I saw her Manolo Blahnik tapping out of the corner of my eye. I turned and took in the Stella McCartney print skirt—too busy, I couldn’t help thinking—and asymmetrical white top.

  “What happened to your shoes?” she asked.

  I looked down, horrified. But no, I hadn’t forgotten myself and taken my sandals off. I always waited until she’d left for the evening. “Excuse me?”

  “I know you don’t quite know the ropes yet, but—a little word, Hope. Those don’t quite work, do they? The ones you were wearing on Friday afternoon were much better.”

  If I hadn’t felt so fragile, it wouldn’t have been so bad. As it was, her words called up a mental picture of my beautiful Jimmy Choos, abandoned on the floor of the restaurant. Just before I’d run out on Hemi.

  “Thank you,” I said, meeting her eyes with an effort.

  She nodded and headed into her office, and I turned back to my work. Another day, another dollar. And appropriate or not, Jimmy Choos don’t grow on trees. Not on twenty-nine bucks an hour in New York City.

  Did it get better? Well, yes and no. The work didn’t, because I was soon buried again. But three hours later, a deliveryman was standing at my cube, hidden behind one of the biggest displays of flowers I’d ever seen outside a funeral parlor.

  White roses and purple stock. No tightly folded, scentless, soulless greenhouse varieties, but huge blooms that wafted their fragrance through the air like the very scent of summer. There must have been two dozen roses in there.

  It was over the top. It was glorious. And it was impossible for me to accept.

  “No.” I was standing, blocking the entrance. “No.”

  “Hey.” The deliveryman stepped back in alarm. “What?”

  “Take them away. Give them to somebody else."

  “Lady, I do that, and my boss finds out I did? He’ll fire me. This is a big account. Please.”

  The one argument I couldn’t resist. I was still hesitating, the deliveryman was still in the corridor, and Nathan was out of his cube and watching with interest when Martine came out of her office.

  “For me, I assume,” she said. “Bring them on in.”

  “No,” I found myself saying. “Actually, they’re for me.” They weren’t hers. They were mine. I stepped back and let the man set them on my desk, then reached in the drawer for my purse.

  “Nope,” he said when I pulled out a five. And when I continued to hold it out, he leaned closer and told me, his voice low, “Fifty bucks extra for me, my boss said, if I tell you we don’t accept tips. But I don’t want to say it out loud. I make a lot of deliveries to this building, and I don’t want to give anyone any ideas, you know?”

  Fifty bucks? For not taking a tip? My head was full of fragrance, my heart full of confusion.

  “Oh. Almost forgot.” He handed me the plastic bag he was carrying. “This.”

  I opened the bag and pulled out the container. Lunch?

  It was salmon. Salmon, and potatoes, and green beans. And it was warm.

  “What…” I tried to ask him.

  “Don’t ask me, lady. I just work there. They say deliver flowers, I deliver flowers. They say pick up lunch, I pick up lunch.”

  “Well…thank you.”

  “Nope. Thank whoever’s giving me my fifty bucks.” And he was gone.

  Martine wasn’t, though. “Very nice,” she said. “But again, we really don’t need this kind of disruption in our workday. Please tell your…friends to send their gifts to your home from now on.”

  My friends? What was I, a hooker? I opened my mouth, but what came out was, “Of course.”

  “Our personal lives don’t really belong in the office, do they?” she said with a little smile. “And—” She looked at her watch. “I’m afraid I’m still waiting for that report.”

  “Oh,” Nathan said the moment she’d disappeared into her office, “our personal lives totally belong in the office. Come on, let’s have it. I take it this is why I don’t get benefits. You could’ve told me before I bought you that glass of wine. That thing cost eight bucks.”

  “Wow,” I rallied enough to say. “You really know how to keep a woman brimming with uncontrollable passion. One glass of wine, and I’m supposed to take you home and screw you like a mink?”

  “Ingratitude, that’s what I call that,” he said with a sigh.

  “Oh, I can be ungrateful for so much more than that. Go away. I’m very busy.”

  “Yeah. That’s what they all say.”

  The smile died when I was sitting down again. I should’ve told the guy to take them away, and I knew it. Or I should’ve let Martine take them, except that I hadn’t been able to stand it.

  If they hadn’t been so perfect, it would’ve been so much easier not to react. If he hadn’t sent me the dinner I’d missed. If I’d been able to let go of the idea that he cared.

  A half-hour later, I heard the faint ding and picked up my phone to see a text.

  Thanks for taking them. What made you do it?

  I hesitated, set the phone down, and went back to work. Ten minutes, fifteen, and I was picking it up again, my fingers clicking despite themselves. The guy’s job.

  What guy’s job?

  He said he’d get fired if I didn’t.

  I could almost see that bare hint of a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth as he typed out his reply. I should have known.

  I knew it was wrong of me not to thank him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I typed, Who chose the flowers?

  No wait at all for the reply. Me.

  Is that normal? I knew it was weak to ask. I asked anyway.

  No. That’s never. Will you meet me on the roof?

  I stared at the tiny screen. The roof?

  Public space, he typed when I didn’t answer.

  For what? I typed.

  Lunch. I don’t know. It was all I could come up with.

  That one made me blink. Now?

  Yes.

  A long pause, and then,

  Please.

  I shouldn’t. I couldn’t. No, I really couldn’t.

  I can’t take lunch until one-thirty, I typed. Nathan and I switched off on our lunch breaks, and anyway, I had a report to finish.

  One-thirty works. Bring the salmon.

  Staying on Track. Or Not.

  I was late to meet Hemi. It had taken me a while to find the right elevator to go to the roof, and I hadn’t wanted to ask Nathan. I didn’t need to answer any more questions today.

  I looked around uncertainly, holding my box of lunch. It was high up here, which wasn’t my favorite thing, but surprisingly lush. Potted trees cast dappled pools of shade over long wooden benches that curved in sinuous shapes, offering a welcome respite from the warmth and humidity that still lingered in
September. Other planters held flowers and greenery, and a chest-high balustrade ran around the entire area, to my relief.

  A few late lunchers were scattered around, some of them glancing up at my approach. Was it all right for me to be up here? I looked around for Hemi, but couldn’t see him. But I did see one person I recognized.

  Hemi’s assistant Josh was heading over from a seat on one of the benches. To tell me Hemi wasn’t coming, probably. Or that I was in trouble again for being late.

  Note One: Maintain dignity.

  “Hi,” he said. “This way.”

  Oh. Maybe not.

  He led me around the high central structure through which I’d entered, and I realized that the garden extended farther than I’d thought. All the way around the roof, in fact. One entire section in a back corner was set up as a sort of grotto, with a fountain bordered by palm trees providing delicate water-music, containers of ferns resting in the trees’ shade, all managing to look surprisingly natural, like a piece of tropical paradise transplanted into midtown Manhattan. Flat rocks provided resting places by the edge of the pool, and it was on one of those that a man was seated.

  Hemi. Of course.

  He rose at my approach, and I found, when I turned my head to say goodbye to Josh, that he’d already melted discreetly away.

  “Thanks for coming.” Hemi gestured me to a shady spot on the rocks beside him. “Please. Sit.”

  “I didn’t know this was here,” I said, more to make conversation than anything else, because the sight of him, as usual, took my breath away. He could rock a white dress shirt and dark slacks like no man I’d ever seen. And his sleeves were rolled up again.

  I sat, tucking my dress under me, then took off my jacket and set it on the rocks beside me, trying not to notice the way his gaze lingered on my bare shoulders. “Is it for anybody?” I asked. “I mean, anybody to use? Am I allowed?”

  “Yeh. You’re allowed.” He gave me a faint smile that was really just a softening of the eyes. “I’d like to say it’s because you’re with me, but I have to admit that you’re allowed anyway. Although some of my team say it should be strictly an executive perk. What d’you reckon?”

  “I reckon they’ve got some perks already, and maybe the rank-and-file need it more. I also reckon that somebody at the top agrees with me.” I glanced at him from beneath my lashes, smiled just a little, and saw the instant response. I felt rather than saw his indrawn breath, the tightening of his muscles, and just like that, my heart had begun to pound even harder.

  All he said, though, was, “Not polite to mock my Kiwi ways.”

  “No? How about if I say that I kind of like your Kiwi ways, if one of them’s about treating people the same, even if they don’t have a lot of money or a private office?”

  “Then you can mock a bit after all, because that’s pretty much the definition of a Kiwi. You brought your lunch, I see.” He reached for a deli container of his own and pulled out a sandwich. “How’m I going so far? Any better?”

  “Very nearly human,” I conceded, and this time, he actually grinned before he took a bite of sandwich, showing off some very, very white teeth.

  But this time, it didn’t make me feel quite so nervous. It was hard to stay anxious with the sound of water purling gently down the rocks, the sight of silver streams cascading over greenery.

  There were even a few carp in the pool, and I nodded at the fish as I opened my box. “I feel a little guilty eating this here. Like a cannibal.”

  “They eat their young. Just making them feel at home, aren’t you.”

  That made me laugh, and at last, I tasted my salmon. It was as good as I’d imagined, even reheated. I may have had to close my eyes again, too.

  “Extra points for me,” I heard Hemi murmur.

  I opened my eyes again to find him watching me. “Pardon?”

  “Not making any moves, even with you showing off your pretty legs again, not to mention showing me how much you enjoy…new experiences. Yeh, I’d call those major points.”

  “Especially now that I’ve let you know about the experiences I haven’t had,” I said, choosing a few green beans and popping them into my mouth.

  “Unfair,” he complained.

  I smiled, and not just from the taste of the fire-roasted green beans. I wasn’t a butterfly anymore, or a deer, either. I was in the power seat today, and he was letting me know it.

  “What, like you’d forgotten?” I treated myself to another delectable bite of salmon. “Why do men take that as such an irresistible challenge? Why should it matter?”

  “You don’t understand why it matters,” he said slowly.

  “Let me put it this way. Every reason I can think of is pretty reprehensible.”

  “Oh, no doubt. No doubt at all.” His voice was silky-soft. “But then, I may have mentioned that I’m a pretty reprehensible fella. And, yeh. For the record? I love that idea.”

  “Whoops,” I muttered. “Butterfly time.” I had to force myself to keep working on my lunch, even though all I wanted was to keep looking at him. At his muscular forearms, and the start of that tattoo. At the thighs that stretched the fabric of his trousers. At the chest and shoulders and face and…never mind.

  “Pardon?” He looked startled.

  “I keep doing these dumb animal metaphors,” I tried to explain. “About you.”

  “Oh, bugger. I’m a butterfly.” He shook his head and took another bite of sandwich, and, all right, I may have giggled.

  “Of course you aren’t a butterfly.” And, to my horror, I’d reached out and swatted him on the arm as if he’d been Nathan.

  “Sorry.” I tried to scoot back, but he put a hand out and caught mine. And then he turned it and…kissed it.

  He kissed my knuckles, and, all right, I melted. I mean, wouldn’t you, if you’d been sitting beside a pool with Hemi Te Mana, looking into his liquid brown eyes and watching him kiss your hand? And then having him turn it over to caress your palm with one big thumb? Because he did that, too, and who would’ve guessed that a palm could be so sensitive? When he put his lips to it, and my fingers may have stroked his bronzed cheek just a bit while he did…Let’s call it a weak moment and leave it at that.

  I was pulling my hand away, scooting back, and he was sighing.

  “Don’t run,” he said. “Please. I’m stopping. But get me back on track here. Tell me why I’m a butterfly. Make me laugh.”

  I cleared my throat. “I’m not sure I’m going to make you laugh. I think this might fall into the ‘stupid’ category. For me to say, I mean.”

  “Brilliant. I’m not a butterfly after all, eh. Go.”

  “Umm...I might be the…butterfly. And you might be a…spider.”

  “Ah.” His eyes had kindled, and I could tell that he was holding himself back, and that it was an effort. “Got you in my web, do I? You struggling a bit?”

  I couldn’t speak, because he’d reached a hand out as if he couldn’t help himself any more than I could, and was running the backs of his fingers down my jawline. So slowly, and so gently. And then his thumb was tracing my lips, first the upper, then the lower, and, as they parted, running over the sensitive flesh inside. Moving a bit farther, and, yes, he had his thumb in my mouth up to the first knuckle, and my lips…well, they may have closed over that thumb.

  “Yeh,” he said, his voice pure molten chocolate. “Yeh. You’re struggling, but it’s such a delicious struggle, isn’t it? You’re thinking how sweet that sting’s going to feel. You’re scared of it, and you’re waiting for it, and your heart’s beating so hard.”

  Oh, boy. Oh, boy. “See,” I managed to say once I’d managed to turn my head, and he’d removed his hand. “Definitely in the ‘stupid’ category.”

  “Does it help,” he said, his eyes, every bit of his attention so focused on me, “if I tell you that I thought about you all night? That I spent too much time choosing your flowers, and too much energy hoping you’d take them? That I planned what I’d say here
today, and that I haven’t managed to say any of it?”

  “It helps,” I said a little shakily. “Maybe it’d help more if you told me some of those things.”

  “Right.” He ran a hand over the back of his head, looked down at the sandwich in his other hand as if he’d forgotten it was there, then looked back at me. “Please. Eat your lunch. If you don’t, if I’ve made you miss two meals—well, still got some room for guilt in me after all, haven’t I.”

  “Oh?” I took another bite to please him, but it wasn’t easy. “To be fair, I think I started this one.”

  “Yeh.” His eyes were so warm, his sudden smile so sweet. “I’d say you did. And some temptations are just too much to bear.”

  It was close enough to my own thoughts to have me shifting uncomfortably. “Planned speech,” I reminded him. “Because my lunch hour’s about up, you know?”

  “Yeh. Well—I was thinking. You’ve got a sister, eh. Fifteen, you said.”

  “Yes.” My sister? Where was this going?

  “And you live in Brooklyn. And, yeh,” he said before I could say anything. “I looked it up. I’m not going to lie to you, and I’m not going to manipulate you. Not any more than I can help. Whatever we do—whatever we do—is going to be because you want it, too.”

  “And that helps more,” I managed to say. Whatever we do? What did that mean?

  “So,” he continued, determination clear in every line of his hard body, laser-focus back on me. “Brooklyn. Sister. Nervy.”

  “Um…nervy?”

  “Skittish,” he clarified. “Put them all together, and I got—daytime. Botanic Gardens. Chaperone. Me taking you and your sister out for a walk in the rose gardens, getting to know you, while I don’t touch your mouth, and you don’t talk to me about being a butterfly tied to my web.”

  “I didn’t say…tied,” I managed to say.

  “No? Must’ve imagined it,” he said with a look that told me how clearly he’d done just that. “Saturday. Ten-thirty. I’ll collect you both at your apartment this time. Sound like a plan?”

  Toughen up. “You don’t do relationships,” I reminded him.