by Celia Aaron
He tipped his head. “I’ll get it taken care of.”
“Tell them they’re lucky I don’t sue.”
Fairfax chuckled. “They’ll feel lucky enough already that I called instead of you. You scare them to death over there.”
“They’re lucky I don’t take this ruined shoe and shove it up their backsides.”
“I’ll tell them that for you, too.”
“Good.”
“Well, I’ll let you two get to know each other. Holler if you have any issues.” Fairfax left, still laughing at my pronouncements of lawsuits and shoe violence.
Jack didn’t acknowledge my threats. He was a man of few words and even fewer tells. What was he thinking? That I was a bitch, like all the rest of them thought? I could generally get a decent idea from most people, but he was a puzzle. His face, calm and angular, gave nothing away. His eyes followed my movements, though. He seemed to take in details. That was a good thing. Details were everything in my business.
“Why did Fairfax hire you? What sort of training do you have? Degrees?” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my hurt ankle over my knee to inspect it more closely.
He looked away, out the window that gave a broad view of the few skyscrapers in downtown Birmingham.
“I graduated from Alabama this summer with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in finance. I also—”
“How were your grades?”
“Summa cum laude.” He didn’t say it with pride. There was no chest puffing or faux self-effacing commentary. Just a simple fact. He’d gotten out with the highest honors.
Maybe Fairfax hadn’t totally screwed up this hire. Jack might be useful for the month he lasted. He was young, and green as a spring bud, but his grades said he was smart. Smart could get you a long way. Clever or cunning? Even further. A few years back I was just like him, before I’d worked and schemed my way to the top ranks of a multi-million dollar company. It helped that nobody had been minding the store.
The Thornfield CEO, Mr. Hurst, hadn’t darkened the office’s door for almost two years now. He’d retired in some sunny island nation and let the vice presidents and other agents do all the work, sell all the real estate, and keep him fully stocked in piña coladas. I envied the bastard something fierce. But his absence helped me work my magic on his clients, getting their business and making money off every high dollar enterprise I could. Making money was the name of the game, and I had debts that couldn’t be ignored.
“Why come to work for me?” I rubbed the skin along my ankle; it was starting to swell and would be black and blue by the end of the day. I would have Pilot’s ass for this.
“Thornfield is one of the biggest real estate brokers in the Southeast. I figured it would be in my best interest to learn the business.” There was something in his voice. It wasn’t quite eagerness, more of a scientific curiosity.
“You don’t have any problems being an assistant to a woman only a few years older than you?” The question came out cold, like most of my words. I wanted to test him, needed to know if he could take it.
He seemed laid back to the point of almost having no reaction. Cool, thoughtful. But I sensed something, something under the surface, hidden. Or maybe I only wanted there to be something more to get a rise out of him. I tended to be like that. Poking, prodding, and pushing to the hard limits. Hence the month-long tenure of most assistants.
“None.” He met my eyes, no fear or apprehension there. He was steady, at ease. I hadn’t shaken him one bit.
I frowned. “How old are you, anyway?” My curiosity won out over the employee handbook restrictions on asking about age, gender, or any other no-nos.
“Twenty-five. How old are you?”
I wanted to smile at his boldness. He’d already shown more backbone than my prior two assistants combined.
“Twenty-eight. Why such a late bloomer? Shouldn’t you have graduated a few years ago?”
His gaze strayed back out the window. Though his face was expressionless, I felt like I’d gotten to him, if only a little, with the question.
“I wasn’t able to go straight to college after high school.”
“Why not?”
“Family issues.” His voice softened, making him seem even younger.
Lord, I knew all about those. I’d had enough experience with “family issues” to last a lifetime. He didn’t offer any more insight.
“And where are you from originally?”
He turned his head, looking out toward the crisscrossing railroad tracks and industrial buildings, toward the poorest areas of town. “Lowood.”
Surprising. Few had the ability to make it out of such humble beginnings. Maybe he was a person of pure will, one who was always meant to rise. I never had to worry about whether I had what it took to make it. I came from a prestigious family. If Jack had looked through the window behind me, he could see my family manse perched high atop Red Mountain, looking down at the city with an arrogant, if beautiful, façade.
“Do you still have family in Lowood?”
“No.”
“Your parents?”
“They don’t live there.”
“Where do they live?”
He shrugged.
I should have stopped prying, but his quick answers made me want to know more. “No aunts or uncles?”
“Several, I’ve been told, but I don’t know where they are.”
“Brothers or sisters?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Maybe? He was definitely a hard case of some sort. I was intrigued.
“So, no family connections. How did you get recommended for this position?”
He turned back to me, stoicism still threading through his expression. “Mr. Fairfax knows my godmother, Ms. Temple. She recommended me.”
“So you do have family, then?”
“She lives in Homewood, not Lowood. And she’s not blood.”
I let the silence return, giving him a reprieve. I’d done enough prying…for now, anyway.
I let my ankle go and leaned back in my chair. I could swear when I crossed my legs at the knee, his nostrils flared the tiniest bit. It was the most reaction I’d seen yet. Interesting.
“Well, Jack, this is a beginning. I don’t want any dead weight on my team.” I pinned him with a stare. “Piss me off, I’ll cut you. Fuck something up, I’ll cut you. You already have one strike against you for that shit at the front door.”
“That wasn’t my fault.” He shook his head.
“You were holding the door for me at a ridiculously awkward distance. That’s what made me trip. I was trying to get to you, and then I actually looked at you…” My cheeks heated. Jesus, Rochester, get your shit together.
His smirk returned. Cocky bastard.
I waved my hand at him. “We’re done here. Get with Fairfax if you haven’t already. He’ll give you pointers on how I like my day run.”
“He gave me a crash course last week, so I intend to hit the ground running.” He gave another perfunctory nod before turning to leave. He was a good dresser, his medium gray suit hitting him in all the right places. It helped that he had a stunning body; broad back, narrow waist, and long legs.
The only thing that gave away his humble beginnings was his accent. It was faint, barely noticeable. Still, I could detect a certain local dialect—one frowned upon in the Rochester family social circles. He must have taken pains to erase it, to make himself sound as if he came from one of the more affluent suburbs, like Homewood where his godmother lived. Little things like that would be of no moment to the average ear, but a born-and-raised snob like myself could hear it right off, even if I didn’t ascribe any import to it. That was more of an old guard issue; one that I hoped would die off.
Still, he was definitely different. Not in the color of his skin or his accent, but in his bearing, his confidence. He was not what I expected to find in my newest assistant. I stared at the frosted glass doors long after he was out of view. This was going to be a
n interesting month.
CHAPTER TWO
JACK
I SAT DOWN AT my desk in the wide-open area that took up the center of the Thornfield floor. The support staff worked in this area, each assigned to different ‘pods’ of business. My pod consisted solely of Ms. Rochester and myself as far as I knew.
I kept glancing back to the glass leading to her bright office. All-in-all, our first meeting had been nothing short of a clusterfuck. I’d heard she was a ball-busting bitch, and I realized the rumors were true during my first ten seconds with her. Even so, she was toying with me a bit, looking me over too closely and blushing. I wanted to tap into those feelings, to get a better feel for the woman beneath the hard exterior. It didn’t hurt that she was hot as hell. The idea of bending her over her desk flitted through my mind.
Settle down, Jack.
Her harsh demeanor did nothing to rid me of the feeling that I didn’t fit here, like any minute someone would come along and inform me that I was mistaken and escort me from the building. Then again, she hadn’t treated me as less than her equal, which was nice.
Assistant to Ms. Rochester wasn’t exactly a glamorous position, but given my background, I’d already reached higher than anyone else from my past.
The people here all seemed to ignore the fact that I wasn’t like them, and I didn’t mean color. My mixed race was obvious, but it wasn’t the point of difference that struck me. It was a completely different mentality; one that seemed ingrained in the people who flitted about this office. Things like having a computer that wasn’t pay-as-you-go for Internet, free coffee, even pens that weren’t attached to the desks with those beaded metal strands—they took it all for granted, as if it was the natural state of things. It wasn’t. The natural state of things was far more selfish and close-fisted.
Only a few miles from this office, in Lowood where I’d grown up, what was seen as normal here would have been thought of as impossible. The freeness was so uncommon there, lack of choice was so instilled in me, that it still struck me as foreign. It would probably always strike me that way. The people in this office were so far removed from that other world as to be on completely different planets. I felt stretched thin, bridging the gap between them.
Helen had told me things could be like this—easy, clean, open. I didn’t believe her back then. She was wise beyond her years, but I was too busy digging my own grave in Lowood to realize it. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the dark memories from taking hold. I needed to focus on this job. Keeping it was imperative. It was a means to an end, a way up and out.
My gaze strayed back to the glass doors. Fairfax had been right. Ms. Rochester—who I’d noticed never directed me to call her the more casual Eden—was difficult to read.
I’d wanted to lift her into my arms to save her the pain of the ankle, but going Tarzan and Jane in the Galway building was probably frowned upon. Still, she fit so easily against me as I carried her. I enjoyed the feeling. She was confident and attractive, tough enough to get my interest, but when I realized she was my employer, everything changed.
I’d interviewed the prior week while she was on a trip to Atlanta. I received the lowdown from Fairfax on how the office ran and which projects Ms. Rochester handled. I managed to keep up—for the most part. Fairfax ran a tight ship. He even quizzed me on Ms. Rochester’s appointments for the week, making sure I would be on the ball when she returned.
Getting the hang of Eden Rochester was already proving a puzzle, one I was more than a little interested in solving, and not solely on the professional level.
“How’d it go?” Fairfax walked up behind me and startled me from my thoughts.
I wasn’t sure how to answer.
He laughed conspiratorially, his eyes twinkling to the point where I wondered if he didn’t have a bottle of Jack stashed in his desk. “Moody? Sharp? She give you an inquisition?”
“You could say that.”
“That’s her way. She works hard. She expects everyone else around her to do the same. And she can be mighty temperamental, but she doesn’t mean anything by it.” He took a swig from his coffee cup. “That’s one of the reasons why I hired you, you know. You seem so calm. Like everything just rolls off. She needs that, needs someone to even her out a bit. You’ll do just fine.”
He gave me a reassuring pat on the back before striding down the hallway toward the accounting offices.
I fired up my computer, ready to start ticking off calendar entries for the hectic day ahead. She’d been gone for a week, but her work and appointments had piled up the entire time until it was an avalanche of to-dos. Daunting was an understatement. How could one person be so busy?
As soon as my email was open, a reminder pinged that Ms. Rochester had a meeting with Gray Poole, a developer on several of her projects.
Showtime.
I rose and knocked on her door.
“What?” Her tone was sharp, no-nonsense.
I pushed through the glass and into her office. She had composed herself a bit more. Her light auburn hair was less messy than it had been on her way in. I liked it better before, not that my opinion mattered. She’d added some lipstick, too.
“You have an appointment with Mr. Poole in five minutes. Main conference room.”
“Fine.” She stood. If her ankle pained her, and I was certain it did, she didn’t show it. “Get your notepad and meet me. I’ll be there in a moment. Make sure he has a cup of black coffee ready for him, two packets of sugar on the side.”
I did as she asked, hitting the light switch in the wood-paneled conference room and preparing the coffee. After setting out the cup and sugar as instructed, I settled into one of the leather chairs. I ignored the luxuriousness of everything in the room, pretending it was commonplace so that I could continue to pass as one of them. I arranged my notepad and the spreadsheet of her projects, including Mr. Poole’s expenditures and other data on each one, on the table in front of me.
She walked in, her face pinched. Her injury was taking its toll.
“I could have brought Mr. Poole to your office for you.”
She glared at me, as if I’d crossed some line I didn’t even know was there. “No, I’d rather not have him in my office. We always meet him in here.”
She took the chair at the head of the table. “Mr. Poole is a very important client. His money keeps my projects going, keeps me selling real estate, keeps me—and now you—employed. Just keep that in mind when you speak with him.”
“Got it.” I didn’t intend on speaking at all if I could help it. Being a listener was one of my hardest-won traits, especially because it didn’t come naturally to me. But it always served me well.
There was a brief rap at the door, and then who I assumed was Mr. Poole entered. He looked in his early forties, fit, blond hair and tanned skin, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. Ms. Rochester rose. I did the same. He took her hand in a familiar shake.
“Rochester.”
“Good to see you, Gray. Did you have a smooth trip back from Atlanta?”
He took the seat opposite me, at Ms. Rochester’s right hand. I sat along with them, ignoring him ignoring me.
“I always do. The private jet helps; turns the trip into a taxi ride. I was only sorry that you left too early to share the flight back with me.” His tone was familiar, as if he knew more about her than he should.
He smiled, his teeth white and even, too even to be natural. He turned to me. “And who is this?”
“Jack England. He’s my new assistant.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jack. Don’t let her run you off too quick. She has a habit of doing that.” He had the sort of Southern accent that seemed fake. The one from old movies. Or the one from new movies where the Southerners were played by British people—too strong, too Old South. He winked at me.
I forced a pleasant smile onto my face which he didn’t see because he’d turned back toward Ms. Rochester. I was dismissed. I didn’t mind. His attention wasn’t what I was a
fter.
“So, let’s talk about new business,” he said.
Ms. Rochester clasped her hands in front of her on the table. Then she seemed to spy the coffee stain on her sleeve and thought better of it, placing her hands in her lap. “Belle Mar.”
Mr. Poole shook his head and took a leisurely drink from his coffee cup before pouring in the sugars. “Oh, I don’t know, Rochester. I haven’t decided where I’m going to place that project. I may not use Thornfield at all.”
She leaned forward. “Gray, you know Thornfield is the only company capable of selling such a luxury complex on the coast.” Her voice had grown higher, almost girly.
Mr. Poole smiled a little. She clearly knew how to work him. She continued, “And really, where else could you get a bigger bang for your buck than with us? We have all the best stagers, access to all the high-end clients. No other broker in the Southeast will be able to put together the total package for you like we can.”
Mr. Poole drummed his fingers on the dark wood of the conference table. “All that may be true. And you have always done me right in the past. But even if I do choose Thornfield, there’s no guarantee that I’ll give the project to you. There are several other vice presidents, that new Emily for example, who need to get a taste of what the business is really capable of.”
He smiled again. Like his accent, it seemed fake. Apparently, Ms. Rochester wasn’t the only one who knew how to toy with people.
Ms. Rochester furrowed her delicate brow. “I don’t think that’s what you want, Gray. Inexperience breeds mistakes.”
She ran a hand through her hair, fluffing it along the front of her blouse. I followed her movements. So did Mr. Poole. He licked his lips.
They were speaking English. But they were speaking something else, too. There was a deeper negotiation going on, one it seemed they had done before.
He leaned back, expanding his chest. “Maybe you’re right. But, I’m worried about my profits. I’ve been giving you my projects to sell for years. We’ve had a good run, but I can’t help but wonder if I could do better elsewhere.”
