Allure: Mike

by Sarah Monte

  “No thanks,” said Jennifer. “I should get back to my team.”

  “At least do me the courtesy of talking to me while you are waiting for your drinks,” said the guy. “For someone that is very particular about politeness in others you don’t seem to show much of that yourself!”

  “Fine,” said Jennifer. She extended her hand and told him her name. The guy shook it and said, “My name is Mike. It’s lovely to meet you, Jennifer.”

  Jennifer wanted him to go away, but at the same time she wanted to stay here and talk to him as well. There was something so… interesting about this guy. Something that drew her to him and made her want to talk to him as much as possible. It annoyed her because this was not the kind of guy she usually went for. She went for nice, polite men, men that had basic manners and were decent. This guy looked like nothing but bad news!

  “What?” asked Mike. “Are you thinking that I’m not the kind of guy that you usually go for, and that I’m bad news?”

  Jennifer was taken aback. “How did you…”

  “I just know these things,” said Mike. “I’m very good at reading people, you see. It’s kind of part of the job that I have.”

  “And what kind of job do you have?” asked Jennifer, her interest certainly peaked by this bad boy and his mysterious, dark ways.

  “I help people make money,” said Mike. “I guess that’s the best way to tell you what I do in a nutshell. If you want me to elaborate even more I would be happy to.”

  “Well,” said Jennifer, “I suppose that’s enough. If you want to know what I do it’s pretty simple. It’s a lot like what you do, in fact. I help people earn money as well. I work at a hedge fund. Michael Sinclair Capital Investments, to be specific. The fund located in the very building where we bumped into each other.”

  “I am familiar with that company,” said Mike, a glint in his eyes as he spoke. It was almost like he knew a joke that Jennifer was not in on and this annoyed her to no end. She hated how smug this guy was, how he felt like he knew everything there was to know, but at the same time she had to admit that his confidence was pretty sexy as well.

  “Do you work there by any chance?” asked Jennifer. “Well, I doubt that. You don’t really have the look of a person that that company would hire. An outside contractor, perhaps? Someone that comes in and helps out with a few funds here and there?”

  Mike had the same glint in his eye as he said, “Oh no, I’m not a contractor. I don’t work there either, that’s true. But I am part of the company, of this much I can assure you.”

  “That’s nice,” said Jennifer. “Well, I’d better be going now.”

  She picked up the tray with hers and her teammate’s drinks in it and started to head back but Mike gently grabbed her arm. “How about you give me your number before you go?”

  “Seriously?” said Jennifer. “No, that’s not going to happen. You wanted to talk so I talked while my drinks were being prepared, now if you don’t mind I am going to head back to my friends. They are waiting for their drinks.”

  “Alright,” said Mike, “fair enough. If you are not comfortable giving me your number I am not going to force you or pressure you in any way, but you need to realize that you are going to be seeing a lot of me whether you like it or not. I am going to be in that building a lot, and we are going to bump into each other eventually. What you need to decide right now is how we are going to handle it when we eventually do see each other. Should I ignore you? Should I come and say hi? What should I do?”

  “Do whatever you want,” said Jennifer, “just be polite about it, alright?”

  Jennifer hurried away from Mike and got back to her team. She couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated by the guy and she hated feeling this way. It made her feel weak, as if she could not handle everything that was coming her way. Jennifer had always prided herself in being the sort of person that could handle anything and everything and she did not like anyone that took that power away from her. And yet at the same time…

  Jennifer was always the person in charge. Even in her team, she was the person that handled everything while Morgan was not there. She was the one that delegated assignments and made sure that everything happened on time. In just a week she had become second in command of a team in which she was the newest and junior member. She did not relish this level of control, it was just the sort of thing that happened whenever she joined a new operation. She was always the most competent person in the room and so often had to end up handling things because her teammates were usually not as good as her at their jobs. While her teammates at Michael Sinclair were extremely competent, she was still the most competent person there and so had to take charge as this was the responsible thing to do.

  Hence, whenever she met someone that could handle things, someone that was dominant and confident and wouldn’t need her to handle every single thing for them and treat them like a baby, she inevitably ended up being attracted to that person. It made her feel like she could do anything and everything she wanted while being relaxed, knowing that if something went wrong her partner would be able to handle it with ease.

  She sighed. If she was going to be seeing Mike again she felt like that was not the worst thing in the world. In fact, it might just end up being the thing she looked forward to from time to time.

  Across the room, Mike looked at Jennifer with no small amount of interest. Even though his trademark poker face betrayed not a shred of actual emotion, within his feelings were tempestuous and almost out of his control. He wondered who this girl was and what she was doing at the company. He wanted to know everything about her. She was nothing like the girls he had met over the course of his life at all. No, this girl was competent and effective and seemed like she could handle anything and everything that was thrown her way, and this was the sort of thing that he loved in a woman.

  He, much like Jennifer, was annoyed by how he was feeling in this moment. He was always detached, always removed, as this was necessary for him to do his job and be the sort of leader that everyone needed him to be. However, with Jennifer he couldn’t seem to disconnect or remove himself from the emotional resonance of the situation. Instead he found himself inextricably drawn to this girl, and he was a little concerned. He had a lot of things to deal with in his life, and a girl like this felt like the sort of thing that he should ideally be avoiding.

  Both Jennifer and Mike were careening towards a collision that was inevitable and would have a terrible and vast impact on everyone around them. Such was the way of fated relationships, people whose stars were bound to cross. Whatever was about to happen, it was about to happen soon, and neither of them would have any control over it at all.

  Chapter Three

  The beauty of the company garden always took Jennifer’s breath away. She worked in a towering commercial high rise but somehow the people in charge here were able to create such a breathtaking garden on every single floor in the open space they had set aside towards the balcony sections.

  She enjoyed having a cigarette here from time to time. She knew that this was a bad habit that she was going to have to get rid of eventually but for the moment she enjoyed the feeling of smoke in her lungs leaving no room for anything else at all. She loved the feeling of having a few minutes to herself in her highly stressful job.

  It had been over a week since she had met Mike at that club and she had not seen him at the company since then. She was a little disappointed by this. She had been looking forward to meeting him, as she had been craving the irresistible attraction she felt towards him.

  She exhaled the last puff of smoke from her cigarette and exited the garden area, casually snuffing her cigarette butt out in the trash can and throwing it away. When she got back to her cubicle she saw that Morgan had left a note for her. It said that he wanted to see her in the conference room as soon as possible.

  She wondered what was happening. In her over two weeks at the company she had not yet been invited to the conference room. When
ever the team had a meeting they always met in Morgan’s office because it was spacious enough to accommodate all of them and helped them have much more intimate meetings than the conference room would allow.

  She made her way to the conference room and saw that the blinds were drawn. Finding this decidedly odd, she knocked on the door wondering what was going on here. Morgan opened the door and smiled.

  “There she is!” he said, “come in, Jenny, there are some people I would like you to meet.”

  Jennifer entered the conference room with her confident game face on. When she entered she saw three people in suits and one man in a black t-shirt and black jeans. To her utter surprise, she saw that this man was none other than Mike.

  “Jennifer,” said Morgan, “over the last two weeks you have proven yourself to be my most valuable team member. Hence, I would like to introduce you to some of the most important people at the company. This is Norman Mire, the CEO of the company, Lionel Percy, the CFO, Hernandez Garcia, the COO, and of course none other than Mike Sinclair himself, owner of the company and chairman of the board.”

  Mike waved at her lazily, his face betraying no sign of recognition whatsoever. This irked Jennifer to no end. This man had been flirting with her at a bar not all that long ago and now here he was pretending not to know here at all! The nerve of this guy! Jennifer wondered if she should talk about it right then and there but then stopped herself. Doing so would be a highly unprofessional thing to do and would only make her look back. She bit her tongue and smiled at all of the people present.

  “Hello,” said Jennifer, “I am very honored to meet all of you. I have been working here a little over two weeks and I am already meeting upper management, I am very pleased indeed!”

  “Well we are very pleased to meet you as well, Jennifer,” said Norman, the CEO. “We had asked Morgan how his new team was doing and he had only the best things to say about you. You see, Morgan has been with the company for sixteen years, ever since he graduated from business school. He worked his way up the ranks and eventually became one of our most valuable employees, and we asked him to tell us who he thought was likely to follow in his footsteps and he said that you were the one he had his eyes on the most. What do you say to that?”

  “Well I try my best,” said Jennifer, carefully avoiding all eye contact with Mike. “I have a job to do and I am honored to be a part of this prestigious company. I take my job very seriously indeed and I am over the moon to know that I am actually doing a satisfactory job.”

  “Very good, very good,” said Norman. Morgan was looking at Jennifer with pride, and the other two top executives also looked quite impressed with her. Only Mike seemed to be neutral in his expression. Jennifer was starting to realize that he was not at all the kind of person that would betray what he was feeling in any way. His expression always remained inscrutable, and Jennifer kind of liked that even though it annoyed her to no end right now. It made her feel like she was special for making him feel anything at all!

  “So,” said Morgan, “I would like you to sit down, Jenny, and listen to us for a little bit. We have a lot of plans about where we want the fund you are managing to go, and since you are quickly becoming the most important member in my time I felt like it was very important that you sat in as well and heard what we had to say.”

  Jennifer sat down. Coffee was brought in and for a moment she was in on one of the most important discussions happening in the world of finance. Her, a fresh graduate and a new employee at this company, was being involved in such an important discussion. She felt like she was in a dream, and during this moment she forgot to be annoyed at Mike completely!

  Mike did not talk at all during this meeting. His eyes remained transfixed on hers but whenever a question was directed at him he either nodded, shook his head or said no more than three words to relay his point. Jennifer felt a little self conscious with him staring at her like that but she was not about to allow something like this to rattle her in any way. She was Jennifer Gellar, she was going to do great things, and there was no one in the whole world who could make her feel any less confident than she was right now.

  Morgan told her about his plans to diversify the Henderson account. Nathaniel Henderson was an old man, his money was ancient with ties that went back far before his family even came to America on the Mayflower. He was the sort of man that wanted his fingers in every single market out there, and Morgan knew that the right step would be to get him into stocks as soon as possible. There was a downward trend currently occurring and what goes down must come back up eventually in the world of business. Hence, he was planning on buying up a bunch of stocks and waiting for the market to become bearish again so that he could increase the capital through dividends. This was a great plan and Jennifer was all for it. She knew just how she could help make this dream a reality.

  After the meeting was over, Jennifer started to head back to her cubicle but to her surprise Mike followed her on her way out.

  “Hey,” he said. “That was pretty impressive in there. I think you gave old Norm a hard on, but based on your business acumen rather than your tits.”

  “You really need to start learning how to talk appropriately to people,” said Jennifer, a deep flush spreading across her cheeks.

  Mike only smiled and said, “You are pretty amazing, you know that? I know people, I can always tell whether someone is special or not, and from the moment I saw you I knew that there was something about you that I was going to love. You know, you’re the kind of person that can go places.”

  “Thank you,” said Jennifer, unsure of how to respond to such an enormous compliment from someone that was normally so guarded with his emotions. She decided to put him on the back foot and gain the upper hand by mentioning something that had been on her mind for quite some time now.

  “You own this company?” she asked. “Don’t you think that this was the sort of thing you should have told me when we talked at the club?”

  “Well I wanted to see how you would react,” said Mike. “I wanted to see how you would handle it. You see, I knew that I would be coming to the company sooner or later and that you would find out that I own the place, and I wanted to know if you were professional enough to keep your feelings to one side and focus on the task at hand. You were able to do that quite easily, which is the first of many things that impressed me about you in there. I think I was right about you. I am always right about people but I am also frequently waiting for myself to be wrong, as nobody is perfect, nobody can be right all the time.”

  “Good for you,” said Jennifer a little coldly. “Now, if you don’t mind I am going to go back to work. I have a lot to do.”

  “Jennifer,” said Mike, “wait.”

  Jennifer was a little surprised by his tone. It was the same confident drawl but there was no condescension in it like there normally was, no arrogance. Instead, Mike sounded quite sincere.

  “I am sorry for being this way,” said Mike. “My professional and personal lives are quite stressful and I often find myself having to be distant or cold in order to make sure that people give me the respect that I need to be effective in my role as owner of this company. But you…”

  Mike opened and closed his mouth a few times but then stopped altogether. The vulnerability that had been coming through disappeared and the mask of disinterest slipped back on. However, what he said next still surprised Jennifer.

  “I would like to have coffee with you,” said Mike. “I am sure that no one is going to mind, I am the owner of the company after all and so if you take an extended break authorized by me no one is going to be able to give you any flak for it. What do you say?”

  For a long moment Jennifer had no idea what she wanted to say to that. Did she want to have coffee with the owner of the company she was working at? Yes, of course she did. It was a great opportunity to make a connection with someone that could advance her career a great deal. But did she want to have coffee with the arrogant man that annoyed her so much
? No, she did not. But on the other hand, she was attracted to Mike and his confidence, his ability to exude a sense of always knowing what he was doing.

  Hence, she said yes to his offer to have coffee with him. She had been a very careful woman all her life, everything she had ever done had been calculated and deliberate. She felt like if she started to be a little selfish now there would no harm in it. Maybe she needed to be a little reckless and throw caution to the wind.

  And so, Jennifer took the first of many steps towards what would eventually be a life changing experience for her. In that moment she had no idea, of course. She was just going out for coffee with a man she was extremely attracted to, a man she wanted to know more about.

  Chapter Four

  Mike took Jennifer to a lovely little coffee shop a little far away from the corporate headquarters and she appreciated this effort to take her out of her work day for a little while. For the longest time she had wanted to start working so that she could start getting her life on track but now that she had started work it was like everything was quite stressful. She could handle this stress, of course, she was an incredibly capable woman after all, but at the end of the day she was only human. Sometimes she needed to unwind and blow off a little steam, get back into the groove of things and relax a little. It was important to wake up and smell the coffee from time to time, and the coffee at this place was clearly very good indeed.

  “I thought that you might enjoy getting away from the office for a little while,” said Mike. “It’s a good place to work, I have made sure of that, but sometimes the people I work with don’t realize that downtime is important in order to help employees work at maximum efficiency.”

  “So is that what this is?” asked Jennifer. “Are you a boss trying to get his employee to work at maximum efficiency?”

  Mike laughed and said, “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well, I’m just trying to figure out what this is,” said Jennifer.