Chapter 7
Emma
“Emma. Emma.”
I looked up from my laptop, bringing my assistant, Natalie, into focus. “Um? What?”
Natalie’s gaze was fixed on me like a laser. She held up a piece of paper in her hand. “The agenda for the meeting, remember? The one that you asked me to come in here and go over with you.”
“Right,” I said, keeping my gaze away from the photo I’d clicked while she was talking. “We’re going over it.”
“I’m going over it,” Natalie corrected me, “by myself. And since I typed it up and had all the copies made, I may as well just go to the meeting, too.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. Executive Ranks was in the business of training executive assistants, which meant that being my executive assistant—the one good enough to be hired by the Boss Bitch—was the top spot. Natalie was that good, and unfortunately she knew it. “It’s just a meeting agenda. Not a quadratic equation. Get over yourself.”
She closed her mouth, but she still raised her eyebrows at me. At twenty-six, Natalie wore her hair cropped close to her head and large gold earrings. Her mother was one of the few black women working the cutthroat trading floor on Wall Street. Assistant or not, she was ambitious, and it took a lot to intimidate her.
Not that I was all that intimidating lately. Ever since I’d come back from L.A., my bark was much worse than my bite. Even I knew that. I was losing focus, getting distracted. Like now, when I was supposed to go to a meeting with a longtime client, and instead of going over the agenda I was Googling Noah Pearson on my laptop for the dozenth time, like a fourteen-year-old girl.
I glanced at the screen again. Googling Noah, I had learned over the past two weeks, was a frustrating and dangerous thing to do. There wasn’t all that much about him on the Internet, but there was just enough to drive me crazy. A brief interview from three years ago with Forbes magazine. (“Money is nice, but I don’t live for it,” he told the journalist. “I’m not the expert you’re looking for.”) A couple of mentions of deals with production companies, some of them the biggest in Hollywood.
And then there were the pictures.
There weren’t a lot of them; Noah obviously wasn’t out for fame. But there were photos from movie premieres, and in each one Noah accompanied a different woman, each one more astonishing-looking than the last. The captions had lines like Instagram sensation and lingerie model Viska Sonalya and her date, venture capitalist Noah Pearson. The woman would have what amounted to a few scarves draped over her amazing body as she posed for the camera; Noah would be wearing a simple black tux, his hands in his pockets as he stood a few feet back from his date, letting everyone admire her, a smile on the corner of his mouth.
And something about it drove me legitimately crazy. Just absolutely nuts.
It was the contradiction of it. Noah, in a flashy, fake setting like that. He was the unpretentious, easygoing man I’d met, the kind who would put his hands in the pockets of his tux pants, but he was still there. Standing on a red carpet at a premiere with a woman who had won the genetic lottery, who left the rest of us merely human women in the dust.
I’d look at the woman, whoever she was, and then I’d look at Noah. And I’d hear his low, whiskey voice say: You need it often, and you need it good. I can tell.
I shivered whenever I thought about that. My pulse would race and my body would go hot with excitement, then cold with embarrassment. Because I’d run away from him like his house was on fire.
“What’s the update on Tricia and Helena?” I asked Natalie, so I wouldn’t think about my pure, abject humiliation with Noah Pearson for the millionth time.
“They’re both off the roster,” Natalie said. She cleared her throat, the only indication Natalie ever gave that she was uncomfortable. “By the way, Helena is pregnant.”
My hands went cold. Silence hung in the room for a moment, awkward and ominous. I dropped my eyes from Natalie’s and looked at the photo of Noah again. I remembered what his hands had felt like, unpinning my hair, his fingers strong and sure. “I’m happy for her,” I said. “We should send her flowers as congratulations. That is, if the information is public.”
Natalie blinked at me. “Congratulations? I thought you’d burst into flames.”
For some reason, those words almost made me flinch, though I fought it off. “Despite the rumors, I’m not a completely unfeeling bitch. A baby is a nice thing.”
“Yes.” Natalie’s voice was softer. “It is.”
“Is there anything from Catharine Knowles?”
“She wants an update on Monday. A narrowed-down list of potential candidates.”
I nodded. Today was Wednesday, so I had a few days to get my shit together and try to save my business. “The interviews are lined up for tomorrow?”
“Yes. You have five, back to back. I’ll have the agenda for that ready for you by the time you come out of this meeting.”
Natalie was good. She had a big ego and a desire to take over the world, but she backed it up with skill. “You’re sure you don’t want to go to the top of the list for Catharine? Work in L.A. for at least a few months?” I’d hate to lose her, but she was the only assistant I had who was almost as good as I was. Sending her to Catharine would at least stave off humiliation while I repaired the cracks.
There are no cracks.
Right.
“No way.” Natalie shook her head. “My career is here, my family is here, my life is here. I have no desire to play toady to a bunch of rich Hollywood types. Besides, there’s too much sunshine over there. It creeps me out.”
I shook my head, but there was no arguing with her. I’d dangled this job before her a few times since the meeting with Catharine, and Natalie wouldn’t bite. She was focused on moving up, not sideways. She saw L.A. as a lateral move.
“Fine,” I said, closing the photo of Noah and shutting my laptop. I picked up the meeting agenda. “I’m off to get this done. See you in an hour.”
It was supposedto be a routine meeting, the kind I had twice yearly with my best clients to go over business, but this time I got raked over the coals. The client had heard of Helena’s elopement—thank God, word of Tricia dropping her panties for the CFO hadn’t got out yet—and had questions about it. How was I vetting my recruits? Was I going to be more stringent in my recruiting process going forward?
I wanted to shout: You mean, am I going to examine my recruits’ sex drive before I take them on? Am I going to hand out chastity belts? Would that make you happy? But I didn’t say any of that. I bit back my annoyance and answered the best I could, trying to look like a woman who was steering her ship. Like a woman who had everything under control.
But when the meeting wrapped up, I was so fucking tired.
I saw the clients out, then walked back down the hall toward my office. Executive Ranks had rented offices in one of the older, less prestigious buildings on Madison Avenue—it was very fucking expensive—and Natalie’s office was located next to mine. She had her own office with a door, because she wasn’t a receptionist and she routinely dealt with extremely sensitive information. As I walked toward my own office, her door opened and she popped out, intercepting me.
I blinked at her. Natalie was far too dignified normally to do things like jump out of her office to stop me in the hall. “Yes?” I said.
“Don’t be mad.”
Now I was really intrigued. Or maybe I was alarmed. I was never mad at Natalie. “What’s going on?”
“When you see what’s in your office,” she said. “Don’t be mad.”
Oh, this was definitely something terrible. “Natalie, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I hate surprises.”
“I know. I know.” I tried to edge past her, but she jumped in front of me again. “It just took me by surprise, okay? I thought it would be fine. And Jesus, he’s really, really charming.”
Now I had a bad feeling deep in my gut. Who was charming? Had she let someone into my office? It was unthinkable. My office contained so much confidential information it wasn’t even funny. No wonder Natalie was alarmed. Letting someone in there without my permission was a fireable offense.
“You cannot be serious,” I said, my voice icy as I pushed past her. She let me this time, but she followed me as I walked toward my door.
“He said he knew you,” she argued at my back. “He said you two are friends. And I know who he is, of course I do. I can’t exactly say no to someone like that. Plus, he’s your brother-in-law’s partner. And like I said, he’s charming.”
I had my hand on the doorknob of my office door, and I knew exactly who she was talking about. I knew exactly who was the only man capable of charming Natalie—Natalie—into doing what he wanted. What I didn’t know was what the hell he was doing here, and what he wanted from me.
I swung the door open.
Noah Pearson stood in my office, leaning against my desk, his ankles crossed. He was wearing jeans on his long, lean legs and a dark green sweater that fit his chest and shoulders so perfectly it should be illegal. He was so gorgeous it was like a slap to the face, a punch to the chest that pushed the breath out of me. Shocking and exciting and completely unwelcome.
He was holding a file folder in one hand, reading it casually. When the door opened, he looked up at me and smiled, and I felt everything, the fear and the embarrassment and the thick pulse of desire, all in one overwhelming heartbeat.
“Emma,” he said. “It’s been a while.”