by Virna DePaul
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “Cara, thanks so much. I appreciate you taking the time to chat and I do apologize for interrupting you this morning.”
“It’s your prerogative,” she said. “Stop by whenever you like.”
“I will.” His voice was a dark promise, one that made her shiver.
They went out, Branden holding the door open for Deena, even though it was obvious that it would have stayed open on its own.
Cara waited until they were well away before she got up and closed the door with a quiet click. Down the hall, by the watercooler, she could hear the excited chatter of her colleagues. The purchase of D&M was big news—and understandably, people wanted to discuss the changes. But not her. Not now. Too much closeness at the workplace made her nervous.
Making out with the sexy boss made her ultra nervous.
She went back to her desk and tried to get to work for real. It took longer than she would have liked for her to calm her racing heart.
She began breaking down data input for a new report, a process she found calming. Numbers did what was expected of them, unlike people. She concentrated on the latest predictions for obscure commodities that might be worth much more by the end of the day.
It couldn’t come soon enough for her.
At lunch, both Gail and Tammie stopped by. “Sushi?” Gail asked brightly. “We can talk about the sale and make bets on who gets fired first.”
“And bet on who will get into the new boss’s bed first,” Tammie added, a naughty smile on her face. Younger than Cara by two years, the girl had asked Cara to go clubbing with her several times, but Cara had always passed. Tammie was too aggressive, too intent on finding a man to marry. She probably had every intention of being the girl who got into Branden Duke’s bed first.
Cara had to wonder if she’d done things differently the night before, maybe she would have ended up winning Tammie’s bet. She also had to wonder why the thought of Tammie pursuing Branden and being the one to warm his bed instead made her want to scratch her friend’s eyes out. It wasn’t a feeling she liked. Not in the slightest.
“Sorry, I need to get going on this new project,” she said. “And let’s hope none of us get fired—I need this job.”
The women excused themselves, and later a delivery boy brought up a sandwich and soda she’d ordered earlier, which Cara ate at her desk.
By the time the office emptied of employees, she was barely aware of the diminishing light outside her window.
Cara wrapped up her self-imposed assignment and left. Bundled in her scarf and parka, she went down a crooked old street that led to the waterfront park at the very end of Manhattan. This time of day, without the pressing need to get in early to work, she liked taking the alternate route home.
Even from where she was, she could see waves smashing against unseen pilings in the near distance, throwing sparkling spray up in the air under park lamps that had just come on. The wind was coming straight off the ocean, chopping the gray-green water of New York’s harbor into a million whitecaps.
Elsewhere in the city, you could forget Manhattan was an island. Not down here.
She walked along the waterfront, headed home, loving the smell of the ocean and the cries of the wheeling seagulls, slashes of white against the darkening sky. At the corner, a block away from the office, she noticed a low-slung car crawling through traffic—an Italian model, she figured. Probably worth a cool hundred grand. The color, a deep navy with thin rally stripes highlighting its aerodynamic lines, was relatively subdued, but the overall effect was intentionally flashy. Both she and the car came to a stop at one of the streetlights. When the window rolled down and the man in the driver’s seat gave her a nod, she caught her breath in the back of her throat.
Branden Duke.
“Don’t worry—I’m not stalking you or anything,” he said, giving her that crooked grin she was growing familiar with. “Seems we left work at the same time. Need a lift?” The question was casual, like he was in an ordinary car in some little town.
She swallowed, working to gain her composure. “No thanks. I live two blocks away.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. “I can walk faster than you can drive around here.”
“We could meet down here sometime, you know. Outside the office.”
“Why would we do that?” she asked, trying to look innocent.
He smiled at her, a real smile. “Because we have that conversation to finish. Among other things.”
She should have corrected him. Told him they’d never be finishing that conversation. But then she remembered the gleam in Tammie’s eyes when she’d suggested making a bet about which woman was going to bed Branden first. And for some reason, instead of blowing Branden off, she said, “Um…maybe. I guess.”
His smile broadened, but his attention was jerked away by a change in the streetlight. “Until then, take care, Cara.”
With that, he drove off, negotiating slowly over potholes and around construction barriers. The car was built for speed but down here, five miles an hour was about as fast as anyone could go.
For the second time that day, despite reassuring her nothing personal could happen between them, he’d made it patently clear that he was interested in her.
He stopped at a red light up ahead. His flashing right blinker hypnotized her for a few seconds.
Cara seriously hoped he wasn’t watching her in his rearview mirror, staring after him like an idiot. She snapped out of it and looked into a shop window instead, but the reflection showed the car well enough.
She knew the street he was about to turn into had no outlet. It ended at a new residential tower, the kind that had separate elevators for luxury cars so residents could actually park right on their very own floor.
Unless he was visiting or picking up a friend to go somewhere else, it was possible that he lived in the tower. If he did, in addition to the mansion on Long Island Sound, he most likely ruled his world from one of the penthouses, complete with wraparound terrace and sweeping views. Too close for comfort.
The light where he was waiting went to green. Despite herself, Cara looked away from the window at the fabulous car, which gleamed midnight blue as it made the turn. It was gone in a moment.
Branden Duke had all the toys. Fantasy wheels. Awesome real estate. Limitless money to roll around in. He was a man anyone would envy, incredibly good-looking and exceptionally intelligent.
And now, out of nowhere, he was her boss, give or take a few layers of managers, and he owned the company.
He seemed to be trying to do the right thing—telling her that things would remain professional between them. But even so, he wasn’t denying that he wanted her in his bed.
He was off-limits.
But tempting. So very tempting.
She’d never felt the way she had when they’d kissed. When he’d run his hands over her body, his touch had been both sensually tender and dominating. She wanted to experience it again and could only imagine how intense the feelings would grow if they were naked. If he was inside her…
A seismic shift seemed to grab her, right there on the sidewalk.
He wanted her. Bosses slept with their employees all the time.
There could have been a lit-up billboard above her head, flashing the words why not?
What if you never find another man that makes you feel that way again?
That would probably be a good thing, she told herself. She wanted safety and stability—Branden Duke made her feel the opposite.
Oh, God. The feelings he evoked in her had to be quashed down or the fiery restlessness that had bothered her even before that damned kiss would only grow worse.
Of course, the only way to fight fire was with fire. Branden Duke was her employer and thus had access to her personnel file. It was only fair if she found out a little bit more about him.
It was time to find out about the mysterious Branden Duke.
—
“You se
em to be in a hurry, Miss Michal.”
“Hi, Joe.” Cara gave the stout, brass-buttoned doorman of her apartment complex a frazzled smile and pushed her flyaway hair out of her face. “Yes I am. I, um, have a financial report to finish.”
He tsked. “You shouldn’t work so hard. Don’t forget to have fun once in a while.”
Fun. That’s what Iris had said she needed, too. Fun. And sex. “Oh, that’s part of the plan.” She frowned when she looked across the street. “Where’d all that construction equipment come from?”
The building across the street was surrounded by wooden barriers and warning signs. A scaffold had been erected during the hours she’d been away, rising no higher than the second floor.
“They set it up this morning.”
“Oh no. I hope the building isn’t going to be knocked down. The noise is going to be awful.”
“Don’t let it get in the way,” Joe said.
“Of what?”
“The fun,” he said, laughing, before he went out to whistle up a taxi for a waiting resident, not someone Cara knew. She headed for the elevators.
A half hour later, she had everything she needed at the ready. Laptop. Pen and paper. Novelty pajamas from Victoria’s Secret for comfort. A pint of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream to keep her from getting depressed if she found too many photos of Branden with different women.
She jabbed a spoon in the caramel swirl and left it there.
Let the Googling begin.
The swirl had turned to soup by the time she was interrupted by a text from Iris: Party hard last night? Or hardly party? TXT BK.
She responded: Party OK but boring as hell and Greg a D*CK. Never dating a coworker again. Did NOT get laid, so don’t ask ;-)
She studiously avoided the mention of groping her new boss, then returned to her research. She put the pages she’d pulled at random into categories with taps on the touch pad.
Education. She had never heard of the small Connecticut college he’d attended. He had put in two years and left, then started as a trainee at a boiler room operation, according to various bios she’d come across.
Career. Branden Duke was a self-made man, like so many Wall Street moguls. Insider comments on business blogs tagged him as a street fighter and someone who’d been ruthless throughout his meteoric career.
It all fit.
He got respect, according to what little she could dig up on him. Cara would agree that he’d earned it. She knew how difficult it was to climb high on Wall Street. The media liked to make it seem easy for a chosen few. It never was, not for anyone.
His rise to power had taken place before she even got her start. It could happen that fast, if you were tough and smart and unprincipled. From the boiler room, he’d gone on to routine deals for a tiny trading firm to founding his own investment company only a few years later. He had done it all, starting with municipal-bond funds that penny-pinching grandmas trusted and moving on to billion-dollar deals with shady Russian oligarchs.
A ping from her phone told her Iris had texted back. I want DEETS!
She thumbed a quick response, None to tell—except for how wide I yawned—and drank some of the melted ice cream, coughing from the syrupy sweetness as she set it aside.
Her own highly respectable credentials—she’d gone to the University of Pennsylvania on scholarship for her econ degree and graduated from their Wharton School of Business, then had been hired by D&M right after that—were somewhat suspect in the inner circles of real money men, but only because few women had done what she’d accomplished. Sexism was alive and well, especially among the old guard.
There were still only a handful of women making big money. For a while, Cara had wanted to rise quickly to the executive ranks herself. Then the reality had set in. Great pay didn’t make up for gratingly awful colleagues, mostly male. There were a few exceptions. Cheerful, loudmouthed Max Dubois was one. She knew now that he would have helped her if she’d decided on a different career after her first four grueling years.
And now Max was gone.
Another ping. Did you at least dress sexy?
Iris wasn’t going to leave this alone, was she?
Cara responded. Sexier than what I wear to the office. Not so sexy I’d be mistaken for a prostitute. Not that THAT would ever happen. Then she set the laptop aside, still sitting propped up by pillows, and flexed her calves and wiggled her toes. Nothing like pajama-clad research to make you forget you had legs. She’d been at it for over an hour.
The one category she’d spent the most time on had been pretty much a wash: early life. She hadn’t found much info on who Branden Duke had been before he’d earned himself the nickname the Duke.
She switched to images for a visual search, scrolling on and on, hunting for a much younger, geekier Branden Duke somewhere in the past. He couldn’t always have been so perfect, physically speaking. There had to have been a time when his nose was bigger than his chin and his dark hair hung halfway over his eyes. Adolescence wasn’t fair to anyone but a chosen few.
So many Brandens and none of them Dukes. Wait. Wait. She scrolled back. Bingo. That had to be him at around seventeen or eighteen.
She rested her hands on the laptop briefly before visiting the page, staying in the image’s black box to study Branden’s senior yearbook picture, wondering who’d posted it on the obscure site. Him? He hadn’t been as good-looking then. Too thin and kinda gawky. But with a killer smile. The big caption over the photo said it all: his classmates had voted him Most Likely to Exceed the Speed Limits of Life.
She squinted at the fine print under the picture, puzzled for a second. “Holy shit,” she whispered. Cara sat bolt upright, dragging the laptop onto a pillow to bring it closer. She enlarged the image just to make sure she’d read it right. She had. It said Davies, not Duke.
The name Davies sent a shiver up her spine, and a memory of her father, shoulders hunched and defeat drawn all over his face, slid unwanted into her mind. She brushed the past away, focusing on the future. On Branden.
Why had Branden changed his name? This was the first page that mentioned a different name for Branden Duke, unlike the others she’d read, which were much more recent.
Granted, Davies was a common name. But she’d love to know why Branden had changed it. She’d changed her name from Finch to Michal, her mother’s maiden name, before leaving for college. As much as she’d loved her father and hated what had so unfairly happened to him, she’d also needed to separate herself from the scandal that had followed his death as much as possible, if only for professional reasons. Perhaps, like her, Branden was running from something scandalous.
She leaned back suddenly, a thought hitting her hard. Branden couldn’t have anything to do with that Davies, now, could he? The man who’d turned her world upside down?
She stared and stared at the photo, trying to find a physical resemblance between Branden and the other Davies, who should rot in hell. No, Branden looked nothing like the man she remembered. Still, it was possible there was a connection, especially with both Branden and Davies being linked to the financial world.
Cara had to find out, even if it meant pulling an all-nighter. She was going to look half dead when she got to work tomorrow, but it would be Friday and she could rest up over the weekend.
But wait. Even though Iris hadn’t responded to Cara’s last text, she should still be up. Cara grabbed her smartphone and skipped texting, going straight to punching the phone icon.
When Iris answered, she immediately asked, “You awake? I need you to help me do research.”
“No.” Iris yawned convincingly. “Numbers don’t love me and I don’t love them.”
“Not for work. This is personal.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Two laptops are better than one.”
Iris laughed. “You seem to be assuming that mine is charged. And is working. Hang on while I go plug it in.” A pause. “Yes. You’re in luck. And now?”
“
I want you to look up someone named Branden Duke.” Cara waited. Several minutes went by.
“Wow,” Iris said, sounding a lot more awake. “Do you actually know this guy?”
Memories of his scent washed over her. Cara bit her lip, breathing through her nose until her heart rate slowed its sudden increase. “Met him last night at the party, and in the office this morning. He’s my brilliant new boss.”
“Ha-ha. Sure he is. Looks to me like he doesn’t do anything but let models and actresses hang all over him.”
“That’s, like, twenty photos in five or six years, all told.”
“You counted,” Iris said dryly. “Does that red carpet follow him everywhere he goes? Do the girls?”
Something stabbed at her gut, and it took a moment for her to realize the emotion was jealousy. Odd. She’d never been jealous about a guy before. “I don’t know. The photos are fairly tame, though. But the articles were all about how ruthless he can be, and, um, dangerous—in the financial world, that is. Kinda made me wonder.”
“Maybe he pays Reputation.com to make the really bad stuff disappear.” Another pause. “Oh. Here’s a hard-news site,” Iris said. “Huh. He did just buy your company. For a zillion smackeroos. And let me guess. That boring party you didn’t want to go to was for him.”
“Yes. But I didn’t know who he was at first. He never introduced himself to me until this morning.”
“Aha. Something happened and you didn’t even know his name,” Iris said gleefully. “I can hear the shame in your voice.”
Oh, God. She hoped not. “Like hell you can.”
“Was it wonderful? Are you going to tell me all about it?”
Iris had a highly developed instinct for bad behavior, a talent that had fueled her brief stint as a gossip blogger. But she’d been downgraded to a mere supplier of bits when her page rankings fell and had quit in a huff.
“That’s not why I called you,” Cara said. She took another swig of melted ice cream. “I found out that he changed his last name. It used to be Davies.”
“So?”
“Iris—” She sucked in a quick breath. “Okay, back when we met in high school, I swore you to secrecy about my sordid past.”
