Fierce (3 page)

“I’ll do whatever it takes.” If that sounded eager-beaver, too bad. I needed this job. Even without the career prospects, I’d take it for the benefits alone. “And whatever I said on that resume,” I added, trying out a rueful, we’re-all-girls-here smile, “the job I have now is the last thing from glamorous. You can’t be asking me to do anything worse than what I’ve been doing.”

Her gaze sharpened. Oh, dear. Too honest. “But of course,” I went on hurriedly, “I’ve had all that coursework in business as well, and I’m a whiz at picking up software.” 

Another minute of this, and I was going to be jumping up and down, screaming, “Pick
me!
Pick
me!
”

That was when Mr. Te Mana showed up again. The man really had a knack for catching me at my best. 

I only knew he was there because of the way Ms. Devereaux—Martine—reacted. Her posture was erect anyway, but now she stood as if she were being lifted by a string and said, “Good afternoon.”

I turned in my chair, and then I was standing up, too. He cast a look my way that didn’t tell me anything at all, and then his gaze was back on Martine. 

“Ah,” he said. “I see I’ve come at an inconvenient time. A few things I’d like to run through with you about Paris, when you have a moment.” 

“Of course it isn’t inconvenient,” she said with a little laugh. “I’m done here. Thank you, Grace. Human Resources will be in touch.”

“Hope.” I could feel my cheeks burning as the humiliation rose. “Thank you for seeing me.” 

She held out her hand in dismissal, and I took it and willed the hot tears back.
Crying’s for the subway.

Hemi was speaking now, though. “Hope from the photo shoot last week, eh. You were quite impressive. Nice to see you here.”

Quite
impressive?
Not hardly.

“I don’t need to introduce you, clearly,” Martine said. “As you already know Mr. Te Mana.”

“Hemi,” he said.

I held out my hand uncertainly. Was I supposed to pretend I hadn’t seen him in the elevator? He took my hand in his much larger one, and something shot through me, sharp and electric. I remembered the way he’d touched my face and licked his fingers, and I had a crazy feeling, looking into his eyes, that he remembered it, too.

“Hope.” His voice was quiet, his mouth firm. His eyes held mine, and my knees were all but knocking together as he let my hand go.

Martine cleared her throat in the most ladylike way, and I tore my eyes from Hemi and stared at her, sure that I looked like a deer in the headlights.  

“Thank you again for coming in,” she said. “Let me see you to the elevator.” She looked at Hemi. “I’ll be right back.”

“No worries,” he said. I sneaked a peek, and he was still looking at me. “I’ll wait.”

Martine walked around the desk and inclined her head a little toward the door. I stood up, grabbing my purse and the folder that held the extra copies of my resume that nobody had asked me for, and followed her out. I had to walk straight past Hemi to do it, nearly brushing his side. And I could feel him watching me leave. 

I was at work when I got the call. Or rather, when I got the voicemail, because I couldn’t take calls at work.

I listened to it in the bathroom, while Vincent was on his lunch break. And I called back from there, too. Standing next to the paper-towel holder, absently noting that I needed to refill it. Models, for some reason, were murder on paper towels. 

As the phone rang, I was chanting in my head.
Please. Please. Please.
And it didn’t matter that Martine hadn’t exactly seemed like the easiest person to work for. “Better the devil you know,” they say, but I
knew
my devil, and anything else had to be better. 

Surely asking me to call back was a good sign. They wouldn’t have asked me to call just to tell me no.

“April Winehouse,” Ms. Scary-Thin said. 

I introduced myself, and she said, “Ah, yes. We’d like to offer you the Publicity Assistant job.” She named a salary that topped Vincent’s by a fair margin. Plus those wonderful benefits. 

“Yes,” I said the moment she was done. I’ve read that you should negotiate, but negotiation is for people who hold some cards. “Yes. Please.”

“When can you start?” she asked. 

“How does today sound?” 

She laughed, sounding human for once. “How about Monday?”

“Monday’s good.”

We talked a little more, and I hung up. And then I walked out of the bathroom and quit. 

Did it occur to me to wonder why Martine had chosen me, when she’d so clearly been dismissing me before Hemi had shown up? Sure it did. Especially when I was lying awake beside Karen at four the next morning, in that witching hour when the dark thoughts come. But, I told myself, it was always that way. It was who you knew, right? If the CEO had been impressed with me somehow, and they’d had an opening, and he’d mentioned me to Martine—well, lucky me. 

It couldn’t have been anything else. Whatever kind of over-the-top reaction the man aroused in me, imagining that he’d felt anything similar would be ridiculous. Besides, if he’d liked me, he wouldn’t have had to rescue me from my horrible job and set me up in a new one like some kind of hot Fairy Godfather. He could’ve just asked me out for a drink like a normal guy. 

And I could’ve screamed and run ten miles in the opposite direction, like a normal girl who knew she was way, way out of her league.  

I jumped a mile when I heard the voice at my elbow. 

“I’m off,” Martine said. “See that that schedule is in my inbox first thing in the morning. And I mean
first
thing.”

“Of course,” I said, biting my tongue. Good thing I’d had practice. 

It was four long—and I mean
long
—days into my new job. Martine had given me the scrawled notes and hasty instructions for the Paris show’s publicity schedule at four-thirty—at least two hours of work. And I was also supposed to have her wildly disorganized expense report in her inbox “first thing.” That one had seemed possible. In fact, I’d already finished it. And then she’d given me the schedule.

“I know it feels like a lot,” she said, her elegant features softening. “But you’ll get the hang of it soon, and it’ll go much faster.” 

Was that a compliment, or a slam? Was I really incompetent? Then why had she hired me? I choked back the retort—or the excuse—that rose to my lips and said, “I’m sure you’re right. Have a good evening.”

She sighed. “I hope so. Dinner and the opera. Opera can be so
tedious
, can’t it? Especially Wagner, you know? But my friend loves to be seen there, so—” She shrugged an elegant shoulder. “Needs must.”

No, I didn’t know. Wagner had never come around my way. But whatever. 

The atmosphere settled a little with her departure, as if the very air molecules were calmer once she wasn’t there. Nathan, my fellow Publicity Assistant, popped his razor-cut head of black hair over his cube and made his Prairie Dog face, his front teeth chomping on his lower lip, and I laughed. 

“Ding-dong,” he said softly. “The witch is—well, gone. You can’t have everything.” 

“She’s not that bad,” I said. “You’re spoiled, if you think that’s bad.”

“All I can say is, thank God you’re here.” His head disappeared, and I could hear him scuttling around in there before he appeared at my cube doorway. 

“Better,” I told him. “It’s poor cube etiquette to play Prairie Dog.” 

He laughed. “Aw, you love it.” He bent down and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Flirting, but no more seriously than usual. “Bye, pretty girl. I’m off, and you’re not. Isn’t life grand?” 

I swatted him away. “Go.”

He hesitated a moment. “No, but really. Want me to do some of that?” He nodded at the stack on my desk.

“No, thanks. Not a two-person job.”

“What, you already did the expenses?” He whistled through his perfectly straight white teeth. “You’re faster than me, girl. Anyway, I can’t. Just thought it was polite to make the offer. I’ve got to get myself devastating, though.”

As if he weren’t already. Nathan didn’t have to keep himself looking put together on his assistant’s salary. Only son of a Manhattan ad exec and a former model, he’d gotten the job some months earlier through “connections, baby,” and didn’t seem to care too much about keeping it. Which, ironically, made him terrific at publicity. Instead of scurrying and sweating like I did, he made his calls, chatted and laughed and charmed, knew every assistant from New York to Rome, and made it all look easy.

“Hot date?” I asked. 

“Warmish. Old friend with potential new benefits. The only way to fly.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “So if you’re in the market…”

“Wow. You really know how to turn a girl’s head. That’s so…special. Go away.”

He laughed, not in the least fazed. “See you tomorrow. We’ll go out for a drink after work and celebrate you surviving, how about that?”

“Thanks. Sounds good.” No, it sounded
great.
But first, I had to make it through to tomorrow. 

He took off, and I grabbed my phone and called Karen. One last thing before I got back to the spreadsheet.

“I’ll be late again,” I told her. “Call for takeout.”

“OK.” Her voice was listless. 

“You all right?” I asked. “Something happen?” Oh, no. I
had
to get this done. 

“Just tired.” 

I frowned. Karen could be so withdrawn these days. But fifteen-year-olds
could
be moody. Not that I knew. I hadn’t been able to afford to be moody at fifteen. But her school was tough. Were they putting too much academic pressure on her? It was so much work for a freshman, but we’d both been so excited when she’d been admitted on scholarship to Brooklyn Friends. She’d assured me she could do it, and that she wanted to. She was very bright, but it was a big change from her public school, and a huge leap. 

“Is it school?” I asked. “The work?”

“No. I’m fine.”

A boy? I wondered. The other girls? She
was
a scholarship student, and she didn’t have the right clothes or know the right people. She couldn’t afford to go out for lattes after school like the other kids, and I knew that must sting, even if she didn’t say it.

But I couldn’t worry about that now. I’d talk to her over the weekend. I’d have work to take home, I’d already figured out that much, but I’d steal some time. We’d watch a movie, take a walk. I’d find out what was wrong then, but I couldn’t afford to quiz her now.

“All right,” I said reluctantly, because I really did have to get all this done, or there would be no takeout, and no apartment. “I’ll see you later.”

“’Kay. Bye.”

Two hours later, I was still working. I’d be lucky to be home by nine-thirty. There was nothing so silent, so lonely as an empty cube farm. Fluorescent lights lighting nothing, the doors to the coveted outer offices closed, their windows dark and blank. The janitor had been through already to empty my wastebasket and exchange a word. I was getting to know Clarice pretty well. And I was squinting so hard at a scrawled note that ran up the side of a page, the letters blurred. Or maybe that was just fatigue. 

“How you goin’?”

I leaped again, and—yes. I squeaked. I whirled in my chair, and it was
him.
Hemi. Umm…Mr. Te Mana.

I jumped up with such haste that the chair rolled out from under me and I stumbled over the wheels, and he put a big hand out, caught my upper arm, and steadied me. Except it wasn’t so very steadying, because he was so tall, and his chest was so broad. Way too tall and way too broad for comfort.

 Tall men made me nervous anyway. I always felt so little next to them, and I could feel them enjoying being so big, and…well, it never seemed like a good idea. Just like eating dessert every night isn’t a good idea. Too much of a good thing is the very definition of a bad idea, isn’t it? 

He wasn’t wearing a jacket tonight, just a white shirt that must have been custom-made, the way it stretched across that expanse of chest and still managed to be so form-fitting all the way down to his waist, showing off his absolutely flat abs. Dark trousers covered his powerful thighs—and everything else I was
not
looking at.