“It’s okay,” he intoned overly slowly, and I found myself rolling my eyes at his playful tone before I could help myself.
“Sorry,” I said again, but clearly the babbling stage was over.
“Your name?” he prompted again, releasing my shoulders and standing back up.
When I forced myself to look up again, I realized again just how very tall he was. A frame that must have been close to six-four filled out a charcoal-gray suit in a way that made me wonder just how much time he spent wearing a suit and how much time he spent at the gym.
“Yum,” I whispered before I could stop to think.
“Your name is Yum?”
“Oh, no,” I said, flushing an even deeper red. “Christ. Sorry. It’s Skylar.”
“Skylar Crosby?” he asked quickly.
I frowned at him, suddenly suspicious. I wasn’t cold like Bostonians, but as a New Yorker, I had a strong sense of self-protection and suspicion. A stranger knowing my name definitely qualified for both.
“Yes…” I said, taking a few steps backward. “How did you know that?”
“I make it a point to know all of my employees’ names,” he said with a brief, white smile. “Even the interns. Skylar is a memorable one.”
Even though it was snowing outside, that was when I truly froze. The dots connected, and I suddenly realized who this was: Brandon Sterling, the elusive, youngest partner at the firm who also happened to be its founder and majority shareholder. He was a legend in the office, but hadn’t been seen once by any intern. That in and of itself wasn’t unusual—we were disposable labor, so most of the partners were unlikely to take much interest in us. But even most of the junior associates who oversaw our work had never met him personally. He was a phantom.
“Oh, Jesus,” I breathed as the realization kicked in. “Jesus Christ.”
“No, just me, I’m afraid,” he replied with another bright smile. “Although it’s a nice comparison.”
“I’m so sorry, sir,” I spluttered. “Oh my god, oh god, I was intruding on your home, and I really shouldn’t have. A friend of a friend invited me in to wait for a car inside because of the weather, but it was completely inappropriate. I only went upstairs to find cell reception, and then you walked in…”
Shut up, shut up, he already knows this, shut up! My inner dialogue went crazy trying to censor the constant blather once again pouring out of my mouth. When I looked up at Sterling’s face again, I was mortified to see him trying unsuccessfully not to laugh.
“Ms. Crosby,” he interrupted gently with another smile. “Really. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m just…very sorry for intruding,” I said lamely. “And for babbling. It’s something I do when I’m…”
“When you’re what?”
“Ah, nervous,” I admitted.
“You’ll have to fix that if you want to be a litigator,” he joked, causing me to turn bright red all over again. Fuck, could things get any worse? Although I wasn’t sure I wanted a job offer from Sterling Grove, it would have given me a springboard to any other job I wanted. I could as good as kiss that good bye now.
“It’s all right,” Sterling said yet again, patting me gently on the arm. In the cold, his touch seared through the heavy wool. He shivered, and for the first time, I realized he had chased me into the snow in only his gray suit and very expensive-looking leather shoes, which were already getting obvious watermarks from the snow around the tips. I looked down at my feet. My Manolos were also as good as ruined.
“I’m going to head back inside,” he said, tossing his head in the direction of his house. “Care to join me?”
“Oh no, sir, I’m really fine,” I said. “The T is just down this path, and it goes right back to Cambridge.”
Sterling glanced at his watch, which also looked very shiny and very expensive, but not flashy like that fool’s from the bar. Subtle. Tasteful.
“It’s almost one,” he said. “You probably already missed the last train, if you don’t get robbed in the park on your way there. Come on. My driver’s out of town, but I’ll call you a car while you wait.”
When I hesitated, he reached out and squeezed my hand before letting it go, an intimate gesture that seemed to alarm him a bit too.
“What kind of boss would I be if I made my interns stay until after midnight but didn’t give them a ride home?”
“Ah…” For some reason I couldn’t quite tell him that his office wasn’t the reason I was out so late.
“Let’s go,” he said again in a tone that brooked no argument, and started to make his way through the snowdrifts back across the street.
~
Someone (most like Ana) had wised up to Sterling’s presence while he was chasing after me, and a large fire was alive in the fireplace when we entered the house again, this time through the grand double-door entrance. There was no sign of his three companions—the house appeared to be empty but for him and me. Sterling slipped off his shoes and carried them over to the fireplace, setting them down on the hearth while I loitered awkwardly by the doors.
“Have a seat,” he said, nodding at one of the overstuffed couches I had been dying to fall into only minutes before. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He disappeared up the large set of stairs that rose from the foyer while cautiously I followed his instructions. When he returned, he was carrying a rolled up newspaper and a small box covered in scratches and various paint splotches. He had removed his jacket, vest, and tie, and was decidedly more informal with his shirt unbuttoned at the throat and rolled up at the arms. Though it was practically identical to the outfits of just about every other young professional in the bar that evening, there was something about the way the tendons in his forearms tested the limits of his rolled-up sleeves that made my mouth water, as if his casual regalia were trying to tame an animalism that was literally splitting seams to escape. Padding silently across the thick carpet in his socked feet, he looked reminded me of lion tracking its prey.
“May I?” he asked, kneeling in front of me and taking the heel of my shoe in his hand. Wordlessly, I watched as he slid my pumps off each foot, carefully setting my stockinged feet back down onto the sheepskin. When he looked up, our eyes caught once more, as they had when I had first seen him. The moment quickly passed as he cleared his throat and stood up.
“Manolos,” he said, holding up one of my prized pumps. “The lady has expensive taste.”
“The lady has only one pair,” I responded sadly. “So I hope you’re not going to throw them in the fire.”
“Hardly,” he said, the r of the word flattening with a surprisingly thick Boston accent. He set my shoes down on the mantle next to his own and proceeded to stuff all of them with crumpled newspaper.
“They’re not too wet,” he said. “So I don’t think the fire will damage them at all, just help them dry. I’ll put some oil on them, though, if you’re all right with that.”
He opened up the box, which contained a rudimentary shoe shining kit that looked like it had been used extensively by multiple generations of people. The top of it, I realized, had wooden brace for a shoe to fit, so that you could prop your foot up for someone else to polish it.
“Where did you get that?” I asked. “It looks like an antique.”
“It was my father’s,” Sterling replied absently as he rummaged around and finally located a container of clear balm. He proceeded to dip a stained brush into the jar and rub it onto his shoes, one at a time.
“Oh, are you close?”
The question came out before I thought about the possibility of being inappropriate. Sterling glanced up sharply for a half second before returning to his work, brushing the polish into my shoes with vigor.
“He’s not around anymore,” he said carefully.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m so sorry to hear that. And I shouldn’t intrude. Again.”
He looked up again, this time kindly.
“Skylar,” he said, and it was then I reali
zed how much more I liked hearing my given name rolling off his tongue instead of the more appropriate “Ms. Crosby.” Much like before, the ‘r’ at the end wasn’t quite pronounced, rolling open with a subtle New England cadence that betrayed a working class accent he hadn’t quite eradicated.
“Yes?”
“You apologize too much,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“I’m so—” I started before catching myself. He gave me a cheeky half-smile, and I couldn’t help but grin back. “Right,” I amended. “Okay.”
“Exactly,” he said with a wink before turning back to finish polishing our shoes.
Ana entered the room with a tray bearing a teapot, a cup, and a selection of teabags. Upon noticing my presence on the couch, her expression briefly morphed into surprise before sliding back into easy affability when Sterling turned around to thank her.
“I believe you know Ms. Crosby, Ana,” he said from his seat by the fire.
“Ah, yes, sir, a bit. I, um…”
“It’s all right, Ana,” Sterling said, echoing his words from a moment before. I wondered if he tired of constantly having to reassure all the women in his life of that fact. Clearly he was disruptive to many of them. “You’re done for the night.”
“Yes, sir,” she said before leaving. “Good night.” With a quick, unreadable glance at me, she was gone, no doubt to gossip with Eric, if he was even still here, about what I was doing upstairs.
“Please,” Sterling said, indicating the tea. “You look frozen, so help yourself. I’ll call for a car and get another cup.”
He lifted himself easily from the hearth, and I couldn’t help but watch his finely shaped form as he strode out of the room. No wonder he kept himself such a secret at the office. With an ass like that, he’d have interns camped outside his door from morning until night.
He returned shortly with his cell phone held to his ear and a cup, which he set down on the tray. A woman’s voice told him clearly that she would call him back shortly with the information regarding the car order.
“Cab companies call you back now?” I asked after he hung up.
“No, but personal assistants do,” he said with another impish half-smile My gut clenched. “How’s the tea?”
I took another sip. It was delicious, a sweet jasmine that I’d never had before. “Wonderful.”
He nodded. “It’s a blend I picked up the last time I was in Beijing. I’m no aficionado, thought it was pretty good.” His phone buzzed in his hand. “Sterling.”
The woman’s voice was more muffled this time, so I couldn’t understand what she was saying. “Really?” Sterling asked at one point. “All right. No, no, that’s fine, Margie, I’ll take care of it. You have a good night.”
He ended the call and slid back down to his seat on the hearth, his elbows perched easily across his knees.
“Well, here’s the deal, Ms. Crosby,” he said.
“Skylar,” I said. I didn’t want him to stop saying it now that he’d started.
He rewarded me with another slow, soft smile that made my stomach flip. “Skylar. Well. It’s past one. The subways and busses are most likely done. Margie tells me she called four different car companies, but it appears that everyone in Boston is trying to get someone to drive them home in this weather. I’d drive you myself, but my car is being detailed while my driver’s on vacation. So, you’ve got a choice. You can wait here until about four A.M. for the next available car, which will make me fairly grumpy since I’ll have to stay up with you, and I’m dog-tired. You can take your chance with the T, in which case I’m happy to walk you to the station. But I seriously doubt you’ll do anything but spend the night there. Or you can take advantage of my hospitality and stay the night here in one of my guest rooms.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” I started to say, but received the same insistent flick of the hand that Ana had gotten.
“Stop,” Sterling ordered. “Really. This place is practically a hotel anyway. It’s no trouble, I promise.”
He lifted his eyebrow again in that way that dared me to argue otherwise, and I bit my lip as a snarky comment rose up my throat. His eyes zoomed straight to my mouth, and I quickly released my lip from my teeth.
“Ah,” he said, somewhat huskily this time. “So. Sleep on thousand-thread-count sheets in a warm bedroom. Or on a concrete bench with a bunch of homeless guys who probably haven’t showered since August. Tough decision, I know.”
I looked at him for a moment, trying to gauge if he was really as altruistic as he seemed. Or as confident. He was nice, for sure, but how many men invited a young woman to stay the night without having ulterior motives? In my (admittedly limited) experience, approximately none.
“Do you, um, live here by yourself?” The question seemed fairly obvious; the place was silent as a tomb other than the sounds of crackling fire and our voices.
Sterling smirked.
“Yes,” he said. “Is that a problem?”
“Well, you’re not going to try anything, are you?” The question flew out before I could stop it.
“I’m pretty sure welcoming yourself into my house and wandering my halls removes any liability on my part of sexual harassment, Skylar,” he said with a grin. “But I applaud your contempt nonetheless. First I’ve seen that you could be as cutthroat as my associates tell me.”
“They talk about me?”
“They talk about everyone,” he said. “But yes, I’ve heard of you.” He looked up at the ceiling as though reciting the conversation from a file. “Quick with words, extremely competent, doesn’t take shit from any of the male interns. Smart. A lot of promise.” He looked sharply back to me. “Colletti said she wanted to recommend you for a junior associate position, but you weren’t actually interested in Mergers and Acquisitions. She said you didn’t seem interested in the part of being a lawyer that would allow you to make money. Is that true?”
I felt another flush rising up my neck and willfully blamed it on my tea. “I suppose so. I mean, I’d be happy to make some coin, sir, but that’s not why I’m in law school. I already went down that road once before, and it wasn’t really for me.”
“What road was that?”
“The making money for money’s sake road. Before law school I spent some time working for Goldman Sachs. It was just before they took the big bailout. Seeing all those executives do that, take that money after stealing so much more from their investors and clients, all for the sake of padding their pocket books…it just made me sick. I’d rather be someone who could help people like that get some of it back. Or at least make sure they get what’s theirs in the end.”
Sterling raised a dusky eyebrow. “Almost sounds like you’re interested in family law. Advocacy, things like that. But I’ve seen your transcripts; your grades are too good for that. You should be clerking for the Supreme Court, not mucking around at a litigation firm.”
I shrugged. “I can’t help if that’s what I’m interested in. But I don’t just want to do divorce work. Estate and trust work is interesting to me too—helping families and people decide what happens to their worth later on. But yes, I’d like to help some of the families who normally fall through the cracks get representation. Orphans or kids whose parents are incarcerated, for instance.”
He tensed visibly. “Foster kids?”
I nodded. “For sure. Or abused women. Things like that.”
“And why is that?”
I paused. I didn’t want to tell him that I came close to being one of those orphaned kids myself—he wouldn’t be interested in that sob story, not that I told it much anyway. Finally, I answered him.
“I grew up in the city. I’ve seen enough of those types who need help. I’d like to be one of those people,” I replied shortly.
He didn’t answer me, just gazed thoughtfully from his seat across from me. I dug my toes into the rug and took another long swig of tea. When he stood up, he looked pointedly at my cup, now empty.
“So?” he asked
. “It’s late. What’s it going to be, Skylar? Have a nice long sleep in one of my guestrooms? Or do you need some more tea to help you decide?”
His tone dared me to say no, but his eyes twinkled in a way that told me he was enjoying the give and take. I set my cup down on the tray next to him.
“All right,” I said. “You win.”
“I always do,” he replied with a grin. “Up one flight, second door down the hall on your right.”
“Aren’t you going to sleep too?” I asked, already standing up. I tried to stifle a yawn, but the thought of a warm bed was turning out to be more of a siren’s call than expected.
“I’ve got some more work to do tonight,” he said as he walked to the tea tray to fix himself a cup. “You have a good night, Skylar. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thank you, uh, Mr. Sterling,” I said, already on my way up the stairs. It felt strange to address him by his last name after he had removed my shoes, but he hadn’t instructed me otherwise. “Good night.”
~
Chapter 4
Sterling was gone by the time I made my way downstairs after one of the best nights of sleep I’d had in a while. The bed had lived up to his promise and then some; the featherbed mattress really was cloudlike. The only place I felt more comfortable was in my attic bedroom in Brooklyn.
He (or Ana) had left out for me on the enormous kitchen island a small breakfast, which consisted of a cup of coffee, orange juice, and an unbelievably buttery croissant that was still warm. Next to the breakfast was a business card with the name “Brandon Sterling, CEO Sterling Corp.” printed in bold letters, under which was an office number. On the back was a note in a broad, curt scrawl: “In case you need ride.” I stared at the words for a moment, wishing that perhaps they meant more than their face value. Then I shoved the card into my purse and sat down to eat.
“Good morning, Skylar!”
Ana walked into the room carrying a large laundry basket full of the linens that were previously on my bed. She was dressed down again in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I was somewhat happy to find that just because Sterling could afford to hire help didn’t mean he made them dress like BBC characters.
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 3
