Always His: (Second Chances #3)

by Amelia Wilde

  As I head for my phone, perched on the top of my gym bag, Carl lets out a little sigh, almost too soft for me to hear it.

  In the ten steps to my bag I slip off my sparring gloves and headgear, dropping them to the floor as I scoop up the phone, swiping once across the screen to silence the alarm. Quick scan for emails or texts from Sandra. It would be rare for five in the morning on a Monday but not out of the question.

  There are none.

  My heart rate slows.

  Carl drops his own equipment into a chair next to my bag and reaches for the bottle of water he put there earlier, drinking from it deeply. After he swallows, he gives me a brotherly pat on the shoulder.

  “You’re something else, Cate. That was pretty kickass.”

  “You think?” I pull the elastic from my hair and smooth my hair away from my face, tying it up again in a neat bun on the top of my head. I’ve been training with Carl for almost a year, paying him well for opening his studio before dawn so I can fit in private sessions.

  “Yeah. I wasn’t going easy on you.”

  “Good.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Me too. I’m not interested in being coddled.”

  He laughs, his voice warm in the white room with a floor covered entirely in black mats. “I got you, Cate. I do.”

  While I pack my gear into my bag, he disappears behind the counter at the front of the studio and comes out with his own bag. I straighten up, giving him a look. He usually doesn’t leave with gear. As far as I know, he comes straight from home to work out with me and goes home after.

  “Where are you headed, Carl?”

  He gives me a sly smile. “What’s it to you?”

  I shrug, a tiny blush spreading across my cheeks. “You never bring a bag.”

  “Correction: I never brought a bag.” He flips the light switch, plunging the studio into darkness, and we walk to the door of the studio together. Carl holds it open so I can step out first into the hallway. It’s a second-floor walkup. One half of the building is Carl’s boxing studio, and the other half is a yoga studio. The word “studio” is about all they have in common. About a year and a half ago, I spent three months taking classes there before all the chanting and peaceful energy started to grate on my nerves. Something drew me to the other side, literally and figuratively, so one day after an endless forty-five minute vinyasa class I slung my mat in its matching bag over my shoulder and went across the hall, slipping in as silently as I could.

  Carl had been with another client then. It took two minutes of watching them go at it before I wanted in.

  “Turns out,” Carl says, turning the key in the lock, then dropping his key ring into his bag, “you’re not the only one who likes to be up early.”

  “But you hate getting up early.” Carl told me that during one of my first few sessions with him. He normally doesn’t open the studio until 2:00. Getting him here at 4:30 isn’t cheap.

  “You know what I love?” he elbows me lightly in the ribs, and I shove his hand away with a laugh. “Money.”

  “So you’re cheating on me, is that it?”

  He throws up his hands. “Hey, hey, I showed up. I didn’t even make some bullshit excuse about working late.” Our feet are thunderous in the empty stairwell. “No, I told Money Bags the earliest I could be there was 6:30, so he settled.” Carl flashes me a winning smile. “I’d never do anything to lose what we have going on.”

  “You’re the worst, Carl,” I say, shaking my head but smiling too. “So, who’s the lucky guy?”

  He purses his lips, pretends to lock them and throw away the key, a dainty gesture for a muscled boxer with more tattoos than a t-shirt could hope to hide. “Not supposed to tell. Let’s just say…he’s rich as sin and can pay my outrageous early morning rates.”

  We stop outside the black town car idling by the curb. After my first year working for Sandra, she called me into her main office and gave me a laundry list of criticisms, followed by a clipped, “You’ll have a car now. Twenty-four hours. Be available.”

  “Need a lift?”

  Carl shakes his head, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “I’m good. You really woke me up in there, Cate!” He cups his hands around his mouth and lets out a whoop.

  I laugh, but standing near the car has hit the kill switch on my workout buzz. I trace the outline of my phone in the outer pocket of my gear bag. The list tumbles into my mind, beginning with the four meetings before lunch that need to be confirmed.

  I can hardly let the thought all the way to the surface of my mind, but now that I’m changing to work mode, the fatigue is starting to set in. It’s hard to keep up this breakneck pace.

  But I have to.

  I can’t fail.

  Can’t end up like Dad.

  Mark, my driver, hustles around to my side of the car and opens the door, and I slide in.

  “See you on Wednesday?”

  Carl puts a hand on the door, freeing Mark up to come back around to his side. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Neither would I.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it then.”

  My hand is already on my phone. I have no idea what he’s talking about, and it must show in my face.

  “The new client who wants your slot,” says Carl, giving me an incredulous look. “Don’t you want to know who the other woman is?”

  “Thought you said it was a man,” I tease.

  “That’s right,” says Carl, dragging out the word, eyes shining. “And not that it matters to me, but he’s hot. Even you wouldn’t be able to help yourself.”

  I step out of the town car at 7:30 sharp, a full hour before the rest of the office generally arrives. At Basiqué, regular hours aren't a thing. I never know when I'll be leaving for the night. Depending on when mockups come in, it could be 10:30. But that's only if Sandra's done for the day. She has an eight-year-old son and his schedule has as much sway over my life as hers does. But that’s irrelevant now—now is when I set up for the day. And my setup needs to be perfect, and perfectly on time.

  “Thanks, Mark," I call back into the interior of the car and a wild urge bubbles up in my chest. I could get back into the car right now and tell Mark to drive me all the way back to the Midwest, back to the sleepy little town I grew up in, back to the second bedroom on the right on the upper floor of my parents’ house. The room's not quite the same. My mom gave it a fresh coat of paint and a new bed and packed all my things into the basement. But if I went there she wouldn't care if I slept for two days straight. Maybe three.

  I shake my head and press the car door shut, straightening my spine. The last thing I need to do is take a vacation. I haven't taken a vacation in a year. With every day that goes by, it seems less and less likely that I'll have the time. This just isn't that kind of job.

  The empty elevator whisks me up to the sixth floor, where Basiqué has its headquarters. The building takes up most of the block, so it's a labyrinth. Now, at 7:30, most of the lights are still off, but as I stride down the center aisle of the cubicles in the bullpen, the sharp points of my high heels muffled by the carpet, it's clear that I'm not the only one taking advantage of the only slow period of the morning. I can't see who's here—probably at least two people from editorial, they're always up against deadlines—but their fingers whirr against keyboards, making changes, coming up with new copy, all with the goal of pleasing Sandra.

  I miss working in Editorial. The deadlines were tough, but this job…

  Sandra rules Basiqué with an iron fist, and I am her right hand. Sounds like some shit out of Game of Thrones, doesn't it? What they don't tell you is that fashion is cutthroat in a way that that show doesn't touch. Someday, when I’m in charge of my own offices—a publishing company, if my wildest dreams are going to come true—it won’t be like that.

  Sandra's office suite is at the far end of the building. I hang a right around the meeting rooms. My heart beats harder as I approach the double glass doors that
lead into her office. It hasn't happened recently, but when I was first starting out at Basiqué, there were a couple of occasions where she got here before me.

  Disaster.

  I pull open the door and the quality of the air, the silence of it, tells me she's not here.

  Relief trickles down my spine, but the feeling only lasts a hot second before it's replaced by an adrenaline-fueled focus. I do this job at a high goddamn level, so high that I've outlasted ten other assistants over the past year. Sandra usually has two, but the last girls have been so ineffective—so easily broken by the job—that right now there's just me.

  I prefer it that way. The more control I have over Sandra's schedule and everything else that comes across my desk, the less chance of error. She hates errors, so I hate errors.

  Stowing my bag in the closet behind my desk, I turn to survey the office. Sandra's desk is beyond another set of doors, usually left open. The morning light coming through the picture window behind her desk bathes everything in a warm summer glow.

  Outside the doors is a pair of desks facing one another. I have the larger one, and though the smaller one sits empty, I dust it off every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Sandra never notices. If she did, there would be a problem.

  First things first. I gather Sandra's daily magazines and stack them on her desk in her preferred order, and then I call down to the coffee shop on the ground floor. She likes her coffee black and at a drinkable temperature, which I've found is best achieved by adding exactly one ice cube to a fresh cup. Manuel, the guy who works the morning shift, is one of my favorite people. He knows this shit is no laughing matter and never lets me down.

  "Hey, Cate," he says, the noise of the espresso grinder loud behind him. "The usual?"

  I drink skinny lattes, extra hot. I used to get them flavored, but about four months ago I woke up one morning completely unable to stand the sickly aftertaste of the vanilla flavoring. Same goes for chocolate. I've always loved sweets, but who has time to dwell on that kind of thing? Tastes change. The most important part is the caffeine. Obviously.

  Since it's Monday, I pull out the feather duster and run it over Sandra's modern glass desk and computer screen, paying special attention to the keyboard, and then I do the same for my desk and the empty one. Manuel will be up shortly with the coffees, which leaves me forty minutes to start working through my email and confirming appointments for the day. It doesn't matter that Sandra might cancel them all the moment she walks through the door. God help me if they're not confirmed, double-checked, in advance.

  My computer starts up with the softest whisper. It's sleek, top-of-the-line, and syncing capabilities that keep everything—my phone, the tablet I carry when I accompany Sandra to shoots and other events, and all the information stored on the computer—in line.

  Email is light for a Monday, so it only takes a few minutes to fire off replies. I decline two interviews on Sandra's behalf—they're from publications she's explicitly told me she will never entertain—and answer three queries from editorial and a couple more from different photographers on Basiqué’s staff.

  I'm just setting down the phone from the final confirmation call when an alert pops up on my desktop. Manuel is here with the coffee, waiting outside the double doors.

  I take the drink carrier from him and hand over five dollars for a tip.

  "You got any plans for tomorrow?" he asks.

  I look at him, my forehead wrinkling. "Is there something special about tomorrow?"

  His eyes go wide. "The Fourth of July! Only the biggest party holiday of the month. Don't tell me you're spending it in the office!”

  I hadn't thought about it.

  I open my mouth to answer but from the corner of my eye I see a flurry down the hall, people rushing to get to their desks.

  Sandra is here.

  Chapter Two

  Cate

  "Thanks so much, Manuel!" I say, my heart already thrumming in my chest. I only just catch the look he gives me as I spin around and head back into the office. It's a look that wonders why I care so much that my boss is in the building. But I have no time for Manuel and his looks now. The coffee has to go on Sandra’s desk and I need to be at the door in thirty seconds at the most.

  In three strides I'm at my desk, putting my coffee back behind my computer monitor, and it's another step to the closet, where I tuck the drink carrier into a recycling bin that looks like a high-end laundry hamper. Sandra didn't want a plastic bin in the closet, even though she has a separate one behind the second desk for her coats, so I spent a Saturday finding the perfect alternative.

  There's a full-length mirror on the wall next to the double doors, and I take a moment to make sure that my appearance is on the sharpest point imaginable. My ensemble today is Chanel. I picked it up from the dry cleaner on Friday, along with the other pieces that will hopefully get me though this week, as long as I don't have any food catastrophes. That should be easily avoidable. Lunch breaks are an unnecessary distraction.

  My hair is piled on top of my head, impeccably dried and arranged in the messy, carefree look that actually takes an hour to achieve. The only thing I need to touch up is my lipstick. It's my signature shade—Rouge D’Armani, No. 103—and I keep a tube of it in my desk at all times. I swipe it on, the movement expert.

  Outside the glass doors, people are materializing in the hallway. They're slotted for the first meetings of the day. Some of them don't have appointments until 9:30, an hour from now, but they find things to do in the meeting rooms across the hall, poring over mockups, chatting in low voices to each other over presentation boards.

  One meeting room is taken up almost entirely by a group of five of the hottest men you're likely to ever see in your entire goddamn life, and they're dressed in outfits that look like a sexy twist on businesswear. They're here to have Sandra approve the looks for the shoot on Thursday, and two stylists flit around them, adjusting sleeve cuffs again and again, making sure jackets hang just so. One look from Sandra and they'll find themselves making frantic calls to the designers for replacements. The only people who seem entirely at ease are the models. They have the least to lose. Bryce, a blonde, blue-eyed model with All-American looks, catches me looking through the doors and winks.

  I give him a small smile. Bryce likes to stop at my desk after meetings and chat, and if Sandra's tied up with a designer, he likes to bitch about work and boys, tell me who stood him up for a date last weekend, who turned out to be a terrible dancer and worse in bed. Those conversations are like pressure valves for my day. I would have cracked months ago if it weren't for him.

  For just a second my mind wanders. Bryce has a once-in-a-lifetime body. If he weren't gay, I'd like to take him back to my apartment and strip off that shirt, tug down the charcoal pants, and slide my hand...

  Sandra's face on the other side of the glass startles me so much that I jump. I can't believe she caught me off guard like this. I came to the door to watch for the signs of her imminent arrival—the way people's heads turn and then swivel back so they can pretend they weren't watching her like a hawk as she came down the hall.

  When my body leaps Sandra's eyes narrow, and then she pulls the door open with her free hand.

  “Catherine,” she says by way of greeting. “Cancel my appointments.”

  As she says this she tosses the summer-weight coat she had been carrying folded over her arm to me and thrusts her purse into my arms. I catch all of it with practiced ease and slip the coffee cup into her hand.

  Something about her expression seems...off. Sandra isn't one for big smiles and keeps her emotions tightly under wrap, but I've spent the last year studying her. Something's going on. My mind spins into overdrive. It's not about the meetings, or else she would have emailed me at some point this morning or during the night. Some personal issue, maybe? Her husband doesn't like the long hours she puts in. That could be it.

  I swallow. She'll tell me the reason if she thinks I need to know. Still, this isn't
the first time my meeting-confirmation efforts have been completely wasted. The frustration almost doesn’t touch me. “Should I clear your schedule for the entire day, or just for the morning?”

  “Morning," she says, then glides into her office and takes a graceful seat behind her desk.

  It takes me less than five minutes to hang her coat and bag in the closet and step outside to shoo the crowd away from the double doors. Bryce gives me an exaggerated pout—this means he'll have to hang around the office for at least the next couple of hours in case she reschedules—but I just give him a tiny shrug. I'm just the messenger.

  "Catherine." Sandra's summons isn't a question. It comes as soon as the glass doors swish closed behind me. I step over to her desk, picking up a small notepad and pen from my desk on the way. It's extremely rare for Sandra to give me only one instruction at a time.

  “I’ve cancelled the morning appointments. Would you like me to start rescheduling them now?”

  She doesn't acknowledge that I've spoken. Instead, she reaches into a desk drawer and pulls out a pair of reading glasses, which she perches on the edge of her nose. Reads something on her computer screen.

  The silence reigns for several moments.

  Then she shatters it with an announcement that makes my stomach twist with panic.

  Chapter Three

  Jax

  The dumb blonde I brought home last night—it's not a joke, by the way, she's got nothing but static between her ears—pouts at me with puppy-dog eyes. I’ve got to get her out of here.

  “Do I have to go?” She stretches her arms above her head, arching her back over my pillow. Her whine disgusts me. Alisha? Alisa? Her name is useless information to me. She won't be staying long. Her smoking body, topped off with a gorgeous pair of tits, was her ticket in. Unfortunately for her, that ticket expired this morning, right about the time I woke up.