Entry-Level Mistress (13 page)

“I’d like to be,” I said quietly. I hadn’t been as vocal during the morning meetings since the day Jillian had put me in my place. I knew this wasn’t my career but it was Jillian’s.

“You started off well here,” Lance continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “And then your personal life became a distraction. Even though interoffice dating is against the rules, because it’s Hartmann you’re seeing— No please, it’s obvious to everyone.” I pressed my lips together, forced myself to just listen. “I don’t really know what he’s thinking but this is a new department and this sort of behavior ruins cohesiveness, teamwork and morale.”

It was like I was eight again, being chastised. Even though I was embarrassed, even though the whole situation was awful, Lance had a point. To me it had all been a game. Although I did my best to complete the tasks given, work wasn’t serious to me at all.

“If you quit, I can guarantee an excellent referral. I can call a few friends.”

“Does Hartmann know we’re having this conversation?”

“Are you playing that card, Emily?”

“No!” I said quickly, appalled. “I just wanted to know. I understand. I never intended, imagined even—”

“I did discuss this with Hartmann and I’m sure the two of you will make some decision. But think about it. You might need to make a choice here about what you want in your life, from your career. Take it from an old man who’s been here for a while. Daniel Hartmann, the man, is not a retirement fund.”

Daniel was a serial dater; I knew this. From
Vogue
,
Page Six
,
Cosmopolitan
,
The Wall Street Journal
even. The night Angelika threw her glass of water on him in the Lilliputian Room in Manhattan everyone had heard her yell that he’d die alone. Yet women still seemed to think they could be the one to make him settle down. But Lance couldn’t know he had nothing to worry about where I was concerned. I wasn’t in this for the ring and the generous pre-nup. In fact, I came from a line of women who knew how to walk away from rich men. At best, I was in this for six more weeks of pleasure. At worst, if I found it in myself to drag up the old resentment, I was dating Daniel for the sole purpose of learning his weaknesses and bringing him down.

But to the rest of the world, that looked different. I’d been acting as if I were in love.

“Thank you for your concern,” I said simply, trying desperately to blink away the sting of embarrassed tears. Of tears from some other emotion I didn’t even know how to name. A sense of loss, maybe? Desperation? Whatever it was, I needed to escape from it.

I left Lance’s office and went straight to the elevator bank. Pressed the up button. Waited, blinking. Lance was right.

I heard Janine’s voice before the elevator doors even fully opened. Confident, strident, high-powered even though she was an executive assistant—a position I would never before this summer have imagined as being a position of power. I watched the woman hang up the phone as she looked up at me.

“He’s in a meeting.”

“I need to speak with him. I’ll wait.”

Janine looked as if she wanted to say something and then shrugged. We’d never become “friendly” but today she looked almost sympathetic toward me. I took a seat on one of the cream leather chairs, all too aware of that something that the woman hadn’t said.

But I was going to quit. I was going to quit him and this whole mess too. I knew plenty about Daniel Hartmann, CEO of Hartmann Enterprises. Enough to do at least some damage to his plans if I were wily enough. But as I also knew about the man, I was never going to do anything with any of this information; I was lying to myself if I pretended otherwise. In the meantime, I was letting my real life pass me by. Perhaps even irrevocably.

The glass doors opened, on a cloud of genial laughter, the sound of a meeting ending. Two men in suits walked out and behind them Daniel stood, holding the door, smiling. So handsome it made my chest ache. So familiar now. Mine to touch but not mine. A stranger still.

He glanced my way. The smile flickered. Then his attention was back on the men and he was wishing them a good day, holding up his right hand for one last salutation before they boarded the elevator.

I stood, smoothed my skirt down.

“A nice surprise,” he said, gesturing for me to enter. I slid by him. When he followed me, I felt the caress of his hand on my hip as a yearning desire. Nostalgia, already, for something passed.

“Is it a surprise, really?” I managed over the choking sadness. How, in four weeks, had I gotten so involved in this? With him? His hand on my lower back, he directed me to the sofa. That touch grew in my mind until it was all I could think about. I savored the feeling and when I sat, his hand was gone. He sat down next to me.

“No, I suppose not. I met with Lance this morning.” His expression turned serious. “I am sorry, Emily, but he’s right. We’ll pay a month’s severance.” His hand was on my knee now. “Listen, I’ll call some friends. You tell me where you want to work. Marketing again? Maybe something a bit more artistic?”

“I don’t need you to find me work. It’s fine. I understand. In reality, I should never have taken this job in the first place. I’m an artist not a corporate hack. No offense.”

He laughed, looking a little relieved, but also confused. This was the moment he should ask me why I had taken the job in the first place. Instead he said, “I’ll make it up to you, though. Even better. Come with me this weekend. I have a business meeting out in the Hamptons.”

He wanted to spend the weekend with me. In the Hamptons. I could almost smell the salt air and feel the sand under my toes.

He stood, walked back to his desk, as if I were ready to make plans, everything was settled, taken care of.

I could let it be. Or I could take a deep breath and—

“I think we should stop seeing each other.”

There, I’d done it. Been brave, said the right thing.

Silence. I averted my gaze, terrified that he’d refuse, terrified that he’d agree and let me go that easily.

“You’d rather keep working here,” he said flatly. “I was under the impression that … ”

“No, I mean, I can’t keep working here, clearly. No one respects me.” He looked startled at that. “Oh, c’mon. Don’t act so surprised. But beyond that, really, it’s not what I should be doing. It would be … a different life. Safer than I want. No, I think when I leave, I should really leave.”

“Because you’ve satisfied your curiosity?” he asked quietly, but there was something dangerous about the intensity of his voice.

I looked at him helplessly. Honesty now.

“Daniel, I don’t know what I’m doing here, with you of all people.”

He walked back to me, took me in his arms and it was sick how his touch made me melt, made me long for things I shouldn’t want. He knew it too.

“You said you don’t want safe. Well, you and me, we aren’t safe at all.”

I was still thinking about his words when his lips touched my neck, when he stole the breath from my thoughts.

Then when he’d given me the smallest bit of space, I grasped the half-completed idea that the relationship was like quicksand, and every time one of us tried to pull away—

“Come with me this weekend. Forget about everything else.”

What had that thought been? I blinked, staring up at his face, at all its beautiful and familiar parts.

“Hamptons?” I repeated and he nodded.

It was enticing, indulgent. A farewell weekend. Why not, as he said, forget everything else? When else in my life would I be visiting these places in the company of a man who could afford to be there?

In whose arms I couldn’t nearly afford to be.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” I flopped back on the futon in the living room, reaching my hand out to trail my fingers along the wooden coffee table.

As the electric whirl of the blender filled the room, I shifted, sprawling onto my stomach and resting my cheek against the rough canvas.

Finally Leanna came out of the kitchen, holding two full glasses of blended fruit and rum.

“I’m going to posit something a bit controversial here,” she said, placing one glass down on the coffee table before me.

“I’m not sure I want to hear controversial.”

Leanna continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Maybe he’s not as bad as you’ve thought your whole life.”

I groaned into the cushion of the sofa, and then with a deep sigh, sat up and rearranged myself cross-legged. I watched Leanna fold herself up into the papasan chair kitty-corner from me.

“If I didn’t know what I know about him, I would be head-over-heels swept away. Of course, if I didn’t know what I know I also wouldn’t have gone to work for him. Or if I had gone to work for him, my job would have mattered more. And seriously, would he have even looked twice at me, so different from all his models, if I hadn’t been exactly who I am?”

“Slow down, meta girl.”

I sighed again, reached for my glass. Took a drink.

“Emily, listen, in the last four weeks, I’ve heard you gush about him and then feel guilty, and then gush, and then feel guilty. Now he’s asked you to choose him over work. There is something intensely romantic about that.”

“Except I’m the one supposed to make the sacrifice,” I pointed out. “That is far from feminist, I think.”

“Everyone makes sacrifices in relationships.”

“That’s the problem, Leanna! It’s not a relationship. It’s a game!”

“I think you need to get rid of the guilt, Em, and maybe stop playing the game.”

My gaze flew to her.

“Stop?” I blinked. “But he’s playing too.”

“Are you sure?”

I pulled a pillow into my lap, took a sip of my drink. There was only the slightest tang of rum rounding out the sweeter flavors of banana and strawberry. I took another sip.

Thought of the way he trusted me with information, thought of my clothes tucked neatly in their drawer in his apartment. Thought of how he’d told me that what was between us wasn’t safe.

“No, I’m not sure of anything.”

“Well, at the very least, go with him this weekend. Enjoy yourself. Don’t fight it. Let yourself be in love. When it’s over, you’ll have a better idea of how you really feel.”

There was something incredibly beguiling about Leanna’s advice. For one moment, I let myself imagine being in love with Daniel. And then I thought about the consequences.

I pulled my knees to my chest, around the pillow, holding on, the glass sweating in my hand. I didn’t look at Leanna. I pulled words out from the deepest, darkest place inside of me.

“I’m scared, Lee. I’m really freakin’ scared.”

•  •  •

The fear was gone the next morning, replaced by a surreal sense of otherness. I was living a life of high drama and nothing in the outside world mattered or compared. This was a movie, some other girl’s life. Sitting in a private jet, or going for a weekend away in the Hamptons with a handsome billionaire. A billionaire who was paying more attention to a stack of papers than he was to me. This was what it would have been like to be a mistress. Only, rather than being the mistress/muse to another artist, I was lover to a businessman or to, like, Napoleon or something.

But I wasn’t living in the Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec, Zola or Colette, where courtesans and courtesan culture was celebrated. Well, I wasn’t living in France, period. Instead, I was a girl who’d been raised on feminism, riot grrls, third-wave feminism, independence and equality. Drinking a mimosa, flipping through a copy of
Vogue
while my paramour—Lover? Boyfriend?—made million dollar deals as if that were chump change, did not fit in that life.

But Leanna had suggested I give myself up to it, embrace everything, at least for this weekend. And wasn’t that what feminism really was about? About having the choice to do what one wanted? Even if it meant choosing an outdated historical paradigm for one’s life?

All of this was ridiculous anyway because this wasn’t a permanent situation. One weekend. That was all I had agreed to.

A sudden heat seemed to fill the climate-controlled cabin. I looked up, found Daniel watching me. With that look. That subtle look that, now that I knew him better, wasn’t so subtle. I was suddenly uncomfortably aware that the flight attendant was in the galley at the back of the small cabin.

Daniel reached across the aisle, rested his hand on my bare knee.

“I’m so glad you came.” In that moment, with his voice gravelly and aroused and with him looking at me as if I were the most amazing, important thing in the world, and his hand—his hand simply on my skin—every sensation was heightened. This moment, now, not the future or the guilt, the past or the worry about tomorrow, only this moment mattered.

I laid my hand over his, caressed the edges of his fingers, enjoyed the feel of his well-manicured nails against my own sensitive skin. So what if the flight attendant was in the back? I lifted his hand to my mouth, turning it as I did, and kissed the place where his wrist met his hand. I had the pleasure of watching his eyes darken, the intensity of his gaze deepen. That made me shiver, gave me another sort of pleasure. I licked the place where I had kissed. Moved my lips to another small area of skin. Licked.