Chapter 5 Penny
Penny
The pockets in Rhys’s clothes were enormous.
It wasn’t a discovery that Penny ever expected to make.
She sat down on the edge of the similarly enormous bed, the luxurious mattress far better than her own.
Her hair, still damp from the bath, draped around her shoulders, clumped together in locks.
Rhys’s shirt swamped her, and she needed to tie the drawstring of the trousers absurdly tight to keep them up, but at least she was clothed.
Her eyes began to burn as she stared at the wall in Rhys’s spare bedroom, tears clouding her vision.
She cradled her work phone in her hands, paralysed by indecision.
She needed to speak to someone—someone that cared.
A friend. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a single person to call.
Her only friends were work friends, not friend friends.
It wasn’t like she had a family to lean on either.
Her mother was dead. Her father wouldn’t care. Her stepbrother was a sociopath.
Now she understood why people drank.
Penny slid her phone into the enormous pocket of her borrowed trousers, realising that the closest person she had to a friend right now was Rhys fucking Stone.
Eight years ago
Penny flicked through the heavy folder. It was the culmination of six months of hard work, but they’d finally got here.
The excitement in her body fought to escape, and she settled for wiggling from side to side in her chair.
The walls of her—temporary—office at McKenzie Investment Management were glass, after all.
A floor of employees could see her, and she didn’t want to look demented.
But aah did she want to scream!
The deal—her very first deal—was hours from going through.
Up until this point, she’d felt like a fraud, advertising her services as a business broker without actually ever having brokered a deal.
She looked the part; she had the suits, the business cards, the qualifications, even the website. Everything except the experience.
Or, more pressingly, the salary. The savings she’d accumulated during her studies were almost depleted, and her rent was due at the end of the month. Her fee from this deal would set her in good stead for the next year; more than enough time to start working on her next deal.
Penny stood, tucking her folder into her dark leather satchel and hoisting it over her shoulder.
The satchel had been a charity shop find, but it looked the part.
With an eye on her watch, she left her office.
She had one final meeting with the firm that wanted to buy McKenzie’s—a Swiss investment conglomerate—before the deal went through.
Her excitement dulled slightly as she travelled down in the elevator.
The enclosed space set her heart pounding, and exiting out into the underground car park only exacerbated things.
She hated that every office building in London seemed to have moved its car park below the surface, but that was the nature of Canary Wharf; the space aboveground was far too valuable to waste it on parking.
The car park itself was heaving. She criss-crossed the lanes of parked cars.
Not far from her little Fiat, a steady flow of traffic had her waiting to cross.
She was almost blinded by the outrageous green paint job on an equally outrageous Lamborghini, but when the driver—a surprisingly attractive man around her age—stopped to let her cross, Penny felt guilty about her judgemental thoughts.
Until she looked back and saw the personalised number plate. ST0 N3. It must have cost an absolute fortune, and for what? To look as ostentatious as possible? There was a flicker in the back of her mind. Hadn’t she heard that name somewhere?
Penny didn’t linger on it. She had more important things to focus on—like her meeting with the chief of the Swiss investment firm.
She was just getting into her car when the phone rang. The caller ID told her it was Henry McKenzie, the managing director of McKenzie Investment Management.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hi Penny.” It wasn’t Henry who answered, but Alicia, his personal assistant. She and Penny had worked closely together over the last few months. “I’m glad to catch you. I’ve had a message through from Henry. It’s about the deal.”
“Oh?”
There was a deep inhale through the phone—one that sent a tremor through her chest. “Unfortunately, Henry’s decided to go in another direction. He’s appreciative of the work you’ve done, and of course apologises for the late notice, but he’s had another offer that better suits his needs.”
Time was suspended as Penny digested Alicia’s words, or at least tried to. “Excuse me?”
“Henry, of course, sends his apologies. We’re aware of the cancella—”
Penny felt sick. “But we’ve worked on this deal for months.” She was about to go and meet with the fucking buyers for Christ’s sake.
“Like I said, Henry sends his apologies.”
Henry could shove his apologies up his arse for all Penny cared.
This was supposed to be the moment she went from an imposter to a proper broker.
It couldn’t all collapse now. She swallowed down the lump in her throat.
“Who made the better offer?” she said, trying to hide the whirlwind of anger and disappointment in her chest. There was no point in their hiding it. The news would be public soon anyway.
Even so, Alicia paused. “I believe it was Rhys Stone over at Stone Holdings.”
In an instant, her earlier flicker of recognition connected with its target.
The green supercar. Her disappointment turned into a tidal wave of righteous fury.
She knew exactly who the Stones were and what they’d done.
Murderers playing at being businessmen, and Rhys Stone thought he could just waltz in and poach her deal?
Penny spun around in the direction of the green Lamborghini nonetheless. Where was that motherfucker? Her feet were moving before she’d made a conscious decision. She cut the call off abruptly; it wasn’t like her and Alicia had anything else to talk about.
The bright green supercar, unsurprisingly, wasn’t difficult to find. She dashed back the way she’d come, towards the almost luminous glow coming from the car’s bodywork. It was sitting in the middle of a section of yellow hatched markings—where it was forbidden to park.
At a distance, Penny had thought the driver was surprisingly attractive, but seeing him up close stopped her in her tracks.
He was tall, a good head taller than her, his piercing amber eyes alight with mischief.
“Well, hello again.” He grinned, a little dimple springing from his cheek as he shut the driver’s door.
His handsomeness only made her angrier. “It’s illegal to park there,” she all but snarled.
“Is it?” Rhys glanced down at the car in mock surprise. “Well, that explains all the parking fines.”
“Do you not care that it’s illegal?”
He gave a lazy shrug. “Not particularly. I like to think of the fines simply as the cost of parking.”
It took all her might to stop her eyes from rolling. “Of course you do. You just throw your money around and get whatever you want, right?”
“Not whatever I want. If I did, then we’d be having a much nicer conversation in a much nicer location.” Rhys sent her a wink, although she couldn’t work out if it was flirtatious or simply antagonistic. He held out a hand. “Rhys Stone. I don’t think we’ve met.”
She came close enough to shake his hand, but chose to ignore it. “Penny Isaac. I’m the woman whose deal you just stole. The one I’ve worked on for the last six months.”
“Ah.” He sucked his breath in through his teeth. “In my defence, it was a really good deal.”
Penny almost combusted into a flaming ball of rage.
“Really. Credit where credit is due.” Rhys pulled a leather wallet from his pocket. “What was your sourcing fee? Let me make it up to you—perhaps over dinner.” He offered her a black business card.
“I didn’t come over here for a business card. I came over to tell you to stay away from my fucking deals.” She took the card, holding his gaze as she ripped it into tiny pieces before throwing them in his face. “And you can shove your dinner up your arse.”
Without waiting for an answer, Penny turned on her heel and stormed back in the direction of her car, her dignity—and her rage—firmly intact.