Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
Soren
The large rectangular plastic container dropped down on the desk in front of me.
“What the hell is this?”
“Naked pictures of me making pierogi,” Teresa said, deadpan. “It’s a salad; what does it look like?”
“It could feed a family of seven.”
“Yeah, well, me and Marty had a little Sunday afternoon date. Emptied out the trunk of the car and went to Costco.”
“You went to Costco on a date?”
“Hey, don’t knock it. Three blissful hours all alone, stocking up on essentials, then getting some cheap hot dogs at the food court? Bliss. Anyway, eat your salad. You don’t eat enough green.”
“I do when I cook.”
“What’s that, once a month? You’re never home.”
She wasn’t exactly wrong about that. I made it home just to sleep and shower most days. It just seemed pointless to be there when I could be at the office getting something accomplished.
“Get anything else good?” I asked, breaking off the plastic seal, then splitting half of the salad onto the inverted top to give to Teresa.
“A slice of meat as thick as my thigh,” she declared. “Marty’s gonna cook it off tonight. Which is why I’m glad to hear I’m getting outta work early for a change.”
She said it a bit pointedly. In a very ‘You better not back out on me’ kind of way.
“No, you’re free to go home and enjoy the steak as big as your thigh as soon as you’re done with whatever you’re doing.”
Teresa was always fiddling around in my office. Going through drawers, putting shit in the supply cabinet. This was no exception. She’d pulled a box out of the supply closet.
“Here it is,” she said, putting the white box down a few inches from my hand. “Came in this morning. I still think you’re an idiot for spending that much money to get it shipped here so fast, considering you’re going to be seeing this woman for months while you work on this project.”
“When do you not think I’m an idiot with my money?” I asked.
“That’s true. What can I say? I’m a mom with three kids—God willing—going to college in the next few years. Money is always on the mind.”
Teresa’s three boys had college funds in their names that I’d set up after her eagle-eyed attention to detail caught something in a piece of paperwork that would have cost me millions in losses had it gone through. A damn comma in the wrong place. But once it was signed, it would have been legally binding.
She saved me millions.
I saved her from having to worry about funding her kids’ schooling. But I was saving that little tidbit until Mother’s Day.
“But I have to say—my feelings about your coffee, mugs, and shipping aside—I’m pretty proud of your general restraint. Usually, men like you, with all that money, have eight penis-shaped cars and are snorting lines off their desks.”
“What would I need more than one car for?”
“Exactly!” she said, throwing up a hand like the thought of men who had multiple cars kept her up at night. “Anyways, I’m proud of how far you’ve come in the past few years. That’s all I’m saying. Even if this so-called ‘business gift’ is stupid.”
Teresa had no way of knowing how much those words meant to me. I didn’t have a family of my own, hadn’t my entire life. And while Teresa wasn’t exactly old enough to be my mother, she certainly liked to play that role at times. No one nagged at me like she did, forced me to eat my greens, checked in on me when I was sick, or—yeah—ever told me they were proud of me.
“Don’t think I didn’t see the way you were looking at her,” Teresa went on, snapping me out of my familial thoughts.
“What? Who?”
“Right, who ?” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “You were looking at her like a nice, juicy slice of meat when you’ve been fasting for a month.”
“That’s… descriptive.”
“Listen, it’s not my place to say that it’s a really bad idea to start mixing business with pleasure. Especially when that business could be making you tens of millions of dollars over the next few years. So I’m not saying that.
“But the mother in me who doesn’t want to become a grandma before she hits fifty is gonna say to you what she says to all her boys: make sure if things are looking wet out, you wear a raincoat . And that’s all I’m gonna say about it!” With that, she held up her hands, palms out, then took her salad and went back out to her desk.
I leaned back in my chair, a laugh caught in my throat.
Had I just gotten a condom lecture from my secretary?
I sighed, smiling at my ceiling at the absurdity of that. As if I was some starry-eyed virgin who didn’t know the consequences of not wrapping it up. Hell, I was pretty sure Teresa was the one who’d stocked the condoms at my place when she dropped off my dry cleaning the one time, since I hadn’t been the one to buy the last box.
Not that I needed the lecture.
Did I want to screw Saff Amato up and down the building and through the floor? Yeah.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Teresa was right; this job was too important.
I mean, did I need the money? No. But when you grew up with nothing, when you were intimately acquainted with the way an empty stomach would claw at you from the inside when you were trying to go to sleep at night, when you had to beg and steal to get basic necessities, you never lost that need to keep acquiring more, keep stockpiling resources for the next famine.
That hunger made me so good at what I do. It gave me the drive to push a project to the end, but also the prudence not to move too fast, risk too much, or make a decision that I would regret.
I ate my salad while lost in my thoughts. About all the other clubs, the business in general.
Until one startling thought burst out of nowhere, knocking the wind out of me.
I’d risk it all for her .
What the hell was that?
I didn’t even know the woman.
I wasn’t willing to risk the one club, let alone the whole business. For what? A tour of her sheets and a couple of orgasms?
That wasn’t worth everything I’d busted my ass building over the years.
No matter how gorgeous she was.
With that fresh in my mind, I checked my watch, then tossed the rest of the salad, grabbed my phone and the box on the table, and headed out.
“Enjoy your meat,” I called to Teresa as I passed.
“Yeah, if those vacuum cleaners I call sons save me any,” she said, starting to gather her things as well. “Go get that deal worked out. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Didn’t you once flash everyone down at Mardi Gras?” I asked as I stepped into the elevator.
“That’s not all I did,” she said with a wicked little gleam in her eyes that hinted at the mischievous young adult she had once been. “What I’m saying is—”
“Do what you say, not what you do?”
“Exactly,” she agreed as the doors slid closed.
I slid into the back of my waiting car, ready to spend the next half an hour—if traffic was light, and let’s face it, this was New York; it never was—catching up on emails, reading club reviews, looking for ways to improve customer satisfaction and still keep overhead on the low end.
But as soon as we pulled off into traffic, I found my mind slipping away, slipping back.
To my office.
To a pretty face and a perfect body and that damn strawberry sweet cream scent I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about all weekend.
“Sir?” Calvin, my driver, called from the front seat, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Yes?”
“We’re here,” he said, nodding toward the sidewalk where we were parked.
So we were.
I’d zoned out the whole drive.
That was… incredibly unlike me.
“Thanks, Calvin,” I said, reaching for my door, but he was somehow faster, rushing out and around the hood to pull it open.
“Told you that you don’t need to do that.”
“It’s the job. I like my job,” he said, reaching up to adjust his black tie against his pristine white shirt under his black suit jacket.
I’d never demanded he wear an actual chauffeur uniform when I’d hired him. But, I guess, like he said, he liked his job. And I liked his willingness to be on call literally anytime I might need him.
“Thanks. I don’t know how long I’m going to be.”
“I’ll be right here,” he said, waving toward the sleek black sedan. “Chilling.”
Calvin was another of those random hires—like Teresa—that could make you start to believe in shit like serendipity and fate.
He’d been a delivery driver for one of those meal apps when I’d still been operating out of a much smaller office in a building full of others.
I’d been surviving mostly on coffee those days, so I’d never had reason to actually do more than exchange the occasional head nod with him.
Then one day, right after I got my first really big check and was thinking about new offices, a new condo, new clothes—all the shit that came with big success—I had been standing in front of the building on the sidewalk.
Then out of nowhere, Calvin flew out of his car and fucking tackled me.
Not two seconds later, a runaway window cleaning scaffold came crashing to the ground just where I’d been standing.
He’d saved my life.
I saved him from endless deliveries and shitty tips.
He liked air conditioning, fancy suits, and sitting around listening to his music in the car while I went to meetings.
It was funny how life worked out sometimes.
I walked down half a block before ducking into the alley between buildings that I’d explained to Saff I wanted to use as an exit route for celebrities.
She was right.
It was long, narrow, and dirty.
But, as weird as it sounds, I’d found that celebrities liked to pretend to slum it here and there. They’d probably like the claustrophobic secret passageway.
Though, if I wanted to ensure their safety, I’d have to either talk to the owners of the buildings at the other end of the alley to install a security gate or commit to hiring someone as security to stand in the alley at all times.
Either way, it was a little problem with an easy answer.
As I got closer to the through-street where the building was located, I heard the rumble of conversation. A man and a woman, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Another few steps forward, and I saw that it was coming from Saff herself—this time wearing black slacks and a white silk top that she kept shimmying her shoulders in and fidgeting with, like she didn’t feel comfortable wearing it.
The man she was talking to was her assistant. Bastian, I think his name was.
The thing that gave me pause was how they were speaking.
A bit heatedly.
She threw out her hands.
He leaned down to whisper-yell at her.
That was strange behavior for a subordinate.
I felt a strange prickle on the back of my neck, a telltale sign that something was off. And I’d always been someone who trusted that gut instinct.
It was just then, though, that Saff’s head turned in my direction and landed on me.
“Oh, hey…” Bastian cleared his throat. “Mr. Vale,” she added, slickly slipping behind a mask that hid away all that passion I’d seen on her face a moment before.
Had I interrupted a lovers’ quarrel?
Was she involved with her assistant?
She certainly wouldn’t be the first boss who screwed around with someone working directly beneath them. Though that cliché was typically reserved for male bosses with female subordinates.
“Miss Amato,” I said, moving closer.
“Are you ready to take the tour?” she asked, waving toward the front of the building. “Don’t mind the… vaginal graffiti,” she said, making a snorting laugh escape me. “I’m actually kind of a fan of it,” she added, going to the door and unlocking it. “That will be all, Bass,” she said, not even giving the man a second look.
“Trouble with your… assistant?”
“He has a lot of opinions. And sometimes forgets I’m in charge.”
Everything about that rang true to me.
Maybe I was just seeing things that weren’t there.
Still, maybe it would be wise to learn more about the woman I was getting into bed with.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.