Money Shot (89 page)

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Oliver had caught Alice’s eye from the first morning of her internship. That wasn’t unusual, and nor was it unexpected. He was an attractive man, which was all that Alice knew at first. She hadn’t realized that he was the Oliver Porter who owned the company; he just seemed like a nice guy who worked hard.

Whenever Alice thought about him, she thought about his eyes first. Ocean-blue and framed with the kind of lashes that any girl would be envious of. The first time she’d looked right into them, she knew that she was determined to have him alone. To get to know him better. To find out the secrets that made them glint with unmistakable hints of naughtiness.

Over four-hundred women worked in the office building that she later found out belonged to him. Anyone’s guess would say that at least three hundred of them had fantasized about having Oliver to themselves, if only for just one night.

The second thing Alice thought about was his height. At six two, he was almost a foot taller than she was herself, and he carried himself with seemingly effortless presence. Always perfectly turned out, it was hard to imagine him not having a wife at home who took care of his appearance and always made sure that his shirts were pressed and his suits dry cleaned.

Most of the women who worked for Oliver had been there since right after college. Some had started as interns and been offered employment once they’d proved themselves. But for all the women around him who spent their days working for him and their nights dreaming of being his, no-one had ever known him have a relationship or even a date.

Thirdly, Alice thought about his money. She’d been ashamed of that at first. No-one liked to think of themselves as a gold digger, and Alice told herself that she wasn’t that type at all. But there was something about knowing that money wasn’t an issue. That money would never be an issue.

Alice imagined gifts, jewelry, the finest underwear and meals in exclusive restaurants on the top floor of city skyscrapers. The kind of meals that would end with him sweeping her into his arms and taking her someplace private to have his way. The kind of restaurants where the staff would eventually all come to know her by name.

Sometimes, Alice imagined putting up a little resistance. Having Oliver command her to please him. Sometimes, she imagined melting into his arms and asking him to take her however he wanted.

In her most private moments, Alice imagined that she could please Oliver in a way that no-one else ever had or could. She imagined being connected to him, knowing him intimately, giving up her self to make him happy and sharing his life with him. She imagined them enjoying each other intimately. Exciting each other. In bed, alone, she would often let her mind wander into those imaginings and she would always find herself playing quietly as she let scenarios run around in her mind.

Alice was kind of dowdy. An English major in a world full of arts graduates casting around looking for work. There was nothing at all remarkable about her. She studied hard, earned decent grades and left college without any real plan about what she might do next.

Young enough to still believe in big breaks and happy coincidences, she heard about the internship from a friend of her aunt’s. Sure, it was short term, but it would give her an opportunity to have something on her CV other than temporary bar jobs and promotions work.

On her first day, Alice had turned in wearing jeans and sneakers, expecting that being in an anonymous office somewhere on the seventh floor would mean that presentation wasn’t important. Her supervisor put her straight and gave her the following morning off to take a trip into town and give her wardrobe a boost of professionalism.

She bought two navy suits, each of them with skirts a little higher than she was used to, mid-height heels that seemed part of the uniformity of the office and a handful of blouses that just about used the last of her savings. Her mother had glowed with pride at seeing her daughter dressed up like she meant business, and she’d agreed to extend Alice’s allowance for another six months. Time enough for her to get on her feet and start to make her way in the world.

Her mother had also agreed to take Alice on a trip to the hair salon that weekend, which had led to Oliver actually acknowledging her a week after she’d started.

“Great hair,” he’d told her. “It suits you.”

Alice had felt herself blush with nerves. He had that kind of charm that made anyone feel like the center of his universe whenever he spoke to them.

“I hope we’re treating you well.”

All that Alice could do was to nod and smile and burble something about being made to feel very welcome and finding the work more fulfilling than she’d expected. And then that she hadn’t expected it to be dull or anything. And then that she was grateful for the opportunity. All the time wishing that the ground would open up and stop her from letting her mouth run away with her when it had nothing of interest to say.

“Well, I’m pleased we have you here. I hope it’s going to be rewarding for you.” And then he turned to someone else to talk about things that actually mattered and Alice ran off to the bathroom to breathe and to tell herself that she needed to stop imagining him in any way other than someone at work.

In truth, though, she couldn’t help herself. She’d noticed him a couple of times over her first week, mostly from across the office when he’d called up to deal with something. She found herself daydreaming about him at work and letting her thoughts run away with her at home.

When she finally plucked up the courage to casually ask someone who he was, they’d laughed at her. “We should have told you, but I kind of thought everyone knew,” they’d said. “That’s Oliver Porter. He owns the company.”

If Alice had been any kind of professional, she’d have known that before she even stepped into the building. An hour on the internet at home that evening had given her everything she ought to have known about him already. Excerpts from Sunday papers offering a glimpse into his life, financial reports showing how he’d grown the company from nothing to a huge multi-national. Pictures of him at swanky events with actors and musicians crowding in on photographs just to be seen with him.

Oliver Porter was really something, and yet there was a huge mystery about who he really was. Alice wanted to know beyond the public image and to see what the rest of the world didn’t.

But there was no way that he’d ever be interested in a girl like her. She knew that, and she resolved to do something about it. To make sure that he noticed her somehow. Somehow, she would create a version of herself that he couldn’t resist.

Alice was a whole mess of contradictions. In her fantasies, she was poised and elegant. Able to hold the attention of the most discerning of men.

In reality, she was geeky and a little inept. The few boyfriends she’d had had been friends of friends who’d been as shy as she was herself. She’d grown up around the same crowd and lived in the same street the whole of her life. But working in the city brought with it a set of expectations that Alice had to rise to. She had to fall in with the image there, and she had to learn to set herself apart and above that.

The opportunity for falling in love with a man like Oliver Porter gave her the momentum that she needed to really show the world a different side of herself. If she could let herself believe that the opportunity really did exist, she told herself that she could rise to the challenge and experience the kind of intensity she’d only ever dreamed of.

When Alice had slipped on her suit and pulled on her heels for her third morning at OP Publications, she’d felt transformed. She felt like a woman rather than a girl, and she felt like she really did mean business.

Her supervisor had remarked on her new clothes as soon as she’d arrived at work. “You look great,” she’d told Alice. “What a difference.”

Her first month had flown by, and by the end of it Alice felt like a regular part of the team.

She mostly worked with six other women, and had taken on the social media streams for the website they worked on together. She also dealt with some of the customer issues for the forum that they operated, and she found that the others were constantly surprised that she worked so naturally online. They were mostly older, of course, and although they’d transitioned happily from print magazines to operating their little corner of the world wide web, there were some parts of the work that they still found pretty baffling. She loved the fact that they quickly made her feel indispensable.

There were two other brands operating from their open plan floor. One was a home making title with a much bigger team of women—and two other interns helping them with the more cutting-edge stuff. The other was a men’s’ title; a website and forum about high-end cars. It was pretty well known that the car one was Oliver Porter’s baby. His first title, and the one that he’d started as a hobby when the internet was still emerging.

That team was still led by an old friend of Oliver’s. They’d met at college, and Oliver had asked him to take it on when he’d started expanding into other titles. It was clear that Oliver ranked trust amongst the highest of his criteria when appointing anyone to take care of something for him, and his friendship with Jake had cemented the importance of that early in both of their careers.

Jake was the opposite of Oliver in many ways. Sure, it was clear that he loved the work, but it was a means to an end rather than something that he poured his whole life into. He had a beautiful wife and a gorgeous home. Three kids whose pictures had pride of place on the wall right next to his desk.

Oliver craved that for himself sometimes. The comfort and strength of having a family behind him. He craved having a wife to come home to. But having money young had its drawbacks. He’d always been conscious of wanting someone who wanted him rather than his wealth. Trust, for Oliver, was every bit as important in life as it was in business.