Chapter 4 #2
He nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Don’t worry about the rooftop closing. I own the building. I’ll let the guard know you can stay up here as long as you’d like, and I’ll tell him to make sure no one else comes up, especially a douche in a tuxedo.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
I stayed for another fifteen minutes, enjoying the sights and fresh air.
It didn’t actually clear my head, but at least when I went back downstairs, there was a little less time to go at this awful wedding reception.
My mother spotted me almost as soon as I returned to my table.
She latched onto the arm of some guy I didn’t recognize and began to steer him to where I was seated. Ugh.
“Sutton, darling, I’ve been looking all over for you.” She batted her eyelashes at the man she’d dragged with her, and a feeling of dread washed over me. “This is Jack Gallo. He’s an attorney at Edmund’s company. Edmund was actually Jack’s mentor when he first started at Apex.”
The guy was handsome. Two days ago I might’ve even said he was my type—tall, lean, and clean-cut.
But suddenly he seemed ordinary, like I’d lose him in a crowd of a thousand other handsome men.
I really wanted to kill my mother, but for now, I had no choice other than forcing a smile. “Hello. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Jack started as an intern at Apex, too,” she said. “But now he has a herd of attorneys working for him.”
Jack smiled, yet I sensed he was uncomfortable. “It’s not quite a herd, more like a small band of nerds. I have three staff attorneys and a paralegal who’s way smarter than me.”
His honesty brought out a genuine smile. “My mother likes to exaggerate.”
“I didn’t when I told him how beautiful you are,” she said. “Right, Jack?”
“Mother, must you keep going until you make everyone uncomfortable?”
She pointed across the ballroom. “Oh, look… There’s Mary Harper. I haven’t had the chance to speak with her yet. You two, excuse me, please.”
My mother floated away, leaving me standing alone with Jack. I sighed. “I’m sorry about that. She isn’t the most subtle person. I’m pretty sure Mary Harper wasn’t even invited to the wedding.”
Jack laughed. “It’s fine. She’s very sweet. And for the record, she didn’t exaggerate when she told me how beautiful you are.”
The compliment was nice, though it didn’t make my belly flutter like when a certain CEO gave one. “Thank you.”
He lifted his chin toward the middle of the room. “Would you like to dance?”
“Um…” I looked around for Miles, for someone or something to use as an excuse. Finding nothing, I forced another smile. “Sure.”
Jack led me to a corner of the dance floor while a full twelve-piece band played “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran. He held me in his arms but kept a respectable distance between us. He was graceful on his feet, and unlike most men under fifty, he knew how to lead.
“So your mom told me you just moved back to New York to start an internship at Apex.”
I shook my head. “My mother has a habit of saying things that she wants to happen as if they’re true. I didn’t actually move back. I’m only in New York temporarily, for the summer. I live in San Francisco.”
“Oh. Is that where you’re from?”
“No, I was born here in the City. I went to college in California and decided to stay out there after I graduated.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“Stanford.”
“Impressive. So it’s probably not just my paralegal who’s smarter than me…”
I chuckled. “How about you? Are you from here?”
“Born and raised out in Amagansett—on the east end of Long Island. I moved into the City to go to college, and like you, I never left.”
“How do you like working at Apex?”
“I love it. I work a lot of hours, but it’s been a great experience so far.
Usually the first few years out of law school, new attorneys do a lot of monotonous grunt work to put in their time.
But Apex has so many holdings and has grown so fast that I’ve been involved in dozens of different lines of business and transactions.
You really get to dig in and get your hands dirty from the beginning.
What about you? What department are you doing your internship in? ”
“My MBA is in quantitative analysis, so I’m interning in the data-science department.”
“Nice. I work with them a lot. Maybe we’ll get a chance to work on a project together.”
Our conversation came to a natural lull, and I found myself looking around the room over Jack’s shoulder.
Guests seemed to be enjoying themselves, smiling and laughing, eating and drinking.
I scanned through the happy crowd until I found a set of eyes that were definitely not smiling.
I swallowed a surprise gasp. Jagger Langston was staring right at me.
His face was completely unreadable, and he made no attempt to hide what he was doing, even when I stared back.
He lifted a glass to his mouth and drank as he watched, never taking his eyes off of me.
The man had an unmistakable quiet intensity about him, one that unnerved me yet also sent a shiver of excitement down my spine.
My dance partner said something, which I had to ask him to repeat, and then we turned and Jagger was no longer in my line of sight.
Though ten seconds later, when the view came back, he was waiting—as he was after every turn for the rest of the song.
When the song ended, I took a step back, thanked Jack for the dance, and told him to have a good night.
I was happy to find Miles in his seat as I made my way back to the table. “You disappeared for a while,” I said.
“I got stuck talking to your cousin Rachael.”
“With the eight cats? Better you than me.”
Miles shook his head. “She has ten now. Where were you?”
“My mother tried to fix me up with some guy who works at Apex.”
“Was he cute?”
I shrugged. “He wasn’t bad.”
“Nice guy?”
“Seemed like it.”
Miles sipped his wine. “Perfect. Bang him.”
I laughed. “What? No!”
“Why not? You were desperate enough to use some random app to meet a guy to get one under your belt. Someone who works with your stepfather is probably safer. I’m sure they vet people, and you know he has a job. He’s already got more going for him than the last guy I hooked up with.”
My friend had a point, but my mind was stuck on a different man who worked with Edmund. My eyes made their way back to where Jagger had been standing while I was on the dance floor. He was gone now. I scanned the surrounding area, but he was nowhere to be found. A bereft feeling came over me.
“Safe doesn’t sound like very much fun anymore.”