Lucy
PRESENT DAY
Balancing on a footstool while trying to pin a note on my apartment’s bulletin board is a feat I’m not capable of achieving this sunny Tuesday, it seems.
Two years have passed since I started working as an assistant property manager at Six Oaks.
Yet the contents of the bulletin board in the apartment’s lobby never seem to change.
On a typical day, this bulletin board is littered with roughly ten ads for discount coupons to the nearest date-night events or pictures of shirtless, tall, broad-shouldered men inviting you to New York’s singles parties.
Today there’s a minimum of thirty such ads.
It’s like the universe is laughing at my expense.
I run my gaze over a bright red ad at the center of the board.
Ignite the flames of passion with your favorite person at our neighborhood barbeque!
I close my eyes at that and pray for some strength. When I open them, my gaze strays to the firm biceps on one of the images of a shirtless guy for a second longer than is appropriate.
My prayers have not been answered.
I swallow and finally pin my note on top of the shirtless guy. It’s May, not February, yet the quest for love is evident at every corner. Time to start a community of people with interest in something other than finding love.
I step down from the footstool to get a better view of my note, and a smile takes over my face as I reread it.
Art Talk by Lucy Barr, reads the note I just pinned to the Six Oaks community bulletin board.
I’m leading another talk, the third one in my art history series. I’m passionate about art being something for everyone, so I organize these talks to bring art to the community.
“Another one?” says a gruff voice next to me as the owner of said voice looks at my notice. He does not sound pleased.
Seventy-two-year-old Franklin, who has a hearing aid that he refuses to turn on, tilts his head as he looks at the sign and then back at me. He has never shown up at any of my art talks.
“Well, the last one was about paintings from the Renaissance era,” I say.
The last one also ended with the residents asking follow-up questions that somehow deviated into an angry conversation about the New York mayor and his policies.
It led to a kerfuffle among four of the residents, and someone called the police while I was hyperventilating next to a full-sized slide show of an impossibly serene Mona Lisa.
It was not one of my best moments. But I’m determined it will not happen this time.
“Aren’t you our property manager?” Franklin muses out loud. “Why are you leading art talks? Is this part of your job duties?”
I squirm. “Assistant property manager,” I correct. His eyebrow remains raised, so I proceed with my next explanation. “Leading art talks is an unofficial official duty,” I admit in a smaller voice.
I’ve been putting a lot of time into planning and researching these art talks. Anything to fill a large gap in my evenings and nights that has suddenly popped up, thanks to an insufferable ex-fiancé.
Franklin makes a snort and walks away. I watch him go and then turn back to the bulletin board in our building’s entryway.
The overlap between my job—Six Oaks assistant property manager—and my passion—art—is abominably low.
Some days, I can convince myself that a property manager is just a few steps away from being an official career path for someone with an art history major.
Other days, I sob in my bathroom while getting ready for work.
Six Oaks is an old art deco building, where I’ve rented an apartment for the past two years.
I moved in here with Hunter as soon as I got my job as assistant property manager.
For the past six weeks though, I’ve lived alone, and I plan to keep it that way.
I, Lucy Barr, am finally on an independent streak at twenty-five.
All thanks to the blue-eyed jackass whose spare toothbrush is still by my sink, even though the rest of his stuff isn’t. Busy, cheating Hunter.
The breeze blows in as another resident walks in, and an ad from a condom company rotates in place on the bulletin board, obscuring my notice. Frowning, I yank the offending ad off and walk back into my office down the hallway.
The Belgavi Property Trust is the sixth-largest owner of apartments in the US, and they own Six Oaks along with other buildings across the country.
I’ve been with them for two years, and I still have no idea where I’m going with this job.
Abby Hardin, my childhood friend who grew up with me in Boulder, helped me get this job when I moved to New York two and a half years ago.
While she was able to snag her dream job as a public relations manager for a media company, I’m still waiting for my golden opportunity.
Sunlight filters in through the two large windows at the end of the room, lighting up my table for precisely forty minutes every day.
My desk has a brightly colored picture frame on one side, which is currently bereft of any picture because I tore up the one in it six weeks ago, and a stack of some of my most read college textbooks, including Janson’s History of Art, which I like to read when work is slow.
I sit down at my desk with a smile at Kate Hilset, who is at her desk five feet away.
She’s the property manager of two buildings in a two-mile radius and the most well-groomed manager I’ve ever worked with.
Every day, she takes two restroom breaks, where she touches up her face and emerges, looking even more beautiful than before.
When I mentioned it to her, she offered to help me up my makeup game when I was ready to get back into the dating scene. I have yet to take her up on it.
Kate looks up, her long blue fingernails pausing over her keyboard.
When I meet her gaze, there is jittery fear on her flawless, spotless face, and I briefly wonder if I have mismatched eye shadow before I realize, no, it’s been a while since I touched a makeup brush and I also don’t own an eye shadow palette.
That’s for people who have more discipline in their lives.
The kind who don’t wake up at seven thirty a.m. and rush out the door after a coffee and a comb through their hair.
“Jay Belgavi,” she whispers with a trembling voice.
At the mention of the guy whose name is on her lips ten times every morning and who is our CEO, I sigh quietly.
After our very first encounter two years ago, when I almost interviewed to be his secretary, I never ran into the man again.
For a while I worried that I’d run into him at work, but discovered thankfully that he worked out of Seattle.
He visits New York very infrequently, much to my delight.
So far, the only thing I’ve had to put up with is listening to Kate talk about him.
Every day, it’s Jay this and Jay that. He’s in the news a lot—our belligerent, rich brat from Seattle.
Usually for the names of the women he’s been seen with.
Socialites, models, and actresses. And every woman at our company, including Kate, seems to be awed by him—and unfortunately all caught up with his dating life.
When I first heard that the twenty-nine-year-old son of our company’s founder was made CEO, I only stopped to wonder what life lessons this guy must have lost by having things handed to him on a silver platter.
And wondered how much longer I had at my job before this rich kid drove our company to the ground.
Though, if you asked me at midnight with a gun to my head, I’d grudgingly admit that he hadn’t done that in the past two years and that our shareholder value was strangely increasing.
“Who’s he dating now?” I ask, shuffling through my paperwork.
Jay Belgavi’s dating life is about as wild as you’d expect it to be for a man in his late twenties, who is also blessed with billions of dollars and good looks.
Excessive good looks, as I’ve heard Kate say.
The only thing I remember from our meeting long ago was his thick black locks that he tied up into a short ponytail and a full, trimmed beard.
Apparently, he hasn’t changed his style in years.
Kate is silent, and when I look up, she stands up and walks over to my desk.
This is a big deal for Kate. Usually, she summons me over to her.
To walk the five steps between the two of us and have me lean down, so she can whisper orders and tasks for me to do even though it’s only the two of us in this dungeon-like office in the basement of Six Oaks.
Well, three, if you count the fly that’s been trapped in here for two weeks now.
“I have it on good authority that Jay Belgavi is in town today,” she whispers.
I straighten up and nod. “That’s great. Hey, did you see the email I se—”
“Not just for today,” she continues, cutting me off. “For the entire week. No one knows what he’s up to. But it’s very strange that he’ll be here for a week.”
I give her what she’s angling for. “Perhaps you’ll get a chance to meet him.”
She scoffs. “Are you crazy?” She twirls a long auburn strand around her finger. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know I exist.”
But she grabs my wrist as I attempt to tap on my keyboard and leans forward on my desk. “Why did you say that? Did you hear something? Anything at all from the Brentwood office?”
The Brentwood office is the only other branch of our company in New York, and it’s ten miles away.
We hardly meet them, but we have a one-sided enmity with them because they get a lot of important buildings and expensive clients assigned to their roster.
The only fancy resident we have is NBA player Alec Burks’s plumber. Yes, plumber. Hence the enmity.
I shake my head in answer to Kate’s question. “I wouldn’t hear anything,” I add as she finally goes back to her desk. “You know you’re the one who gets all the important emails.”
It’s something that’s bothered me for a while now. Our boss, Manav Ahuja—who works out of the Brentwood office and emails tasks to us—only emails Kate. Even if it’s work that I should be tasked with, he emails Kate, who, an hour or so later, will forward his time-sensitive emails to me.
Kate told me that during our company’s annual conference last year, Manav was offended by something I said to him.
There were three thousand employees at that conference, but I certainly didn’t speak to him then.
Except for a virtual zoom call ages ago—which included five other people—I’ve never even seen the man, so I’m furious at how he’s gone out of his way to make my life miserable based on a mistaken identity.
“Anyway, this is the fifth time I’ve had to remove this condom ad from our bulletin board,” I say when I see Kate’s eyes, which have been roving around her computer screen, halt.
She is frozen. Turned to ice like Elsa in a friendly sister fight.
“It’s just a condom ad, not an actual condom.” I hasten to calm her, but her eyes are fixed on the computer screen.
I wait for a moment before speaking. “Is everything okay?”
But she no more looks at me than she does the buzzing fly by the window.
Then, she stands up and shuts her computer off. She grabs her phone from her bag and pushes her chair back with a small screech. Picking up her coat, she walks out with long strides.
I stare at the doorway and then back at the fly.
“Was it something I said?” I ask the fly.
It buzzes back, which is more helpful than Kate.
I look at the door she just walked out of.
I bet she is late for a company event that only she was invited to.
Maybe Manav Ahuja has decided to exclude me from all company events henceforth.
If it’s a company event, I hope Kate at least gets to see Jay Belgavi.
If she does, I’ll have to listen to her talk endlessly about him for the next month, but it’ll make her happy.
I sigh.
I get a text from Kate, and I open it, looking for answers for her hurried departure.
KATE
I got a message for you from Manav at the Brentwood office. Get to his office in ten minutes. And take bagels. Ess-a-Bagels. And have a cab waiting to take Manav to the Port Authority Bus Terminal after.
I stare at it. As far as text messages from Kate go, this one is pretty normal. But it’s out of the blue.
I sigh as I place a call to have the bagels ready for pickup and grab my bag.
Before I leave, I pull open the drawer of my desk and look at the framed copy of my master’s degree in art history.
Two years—that’s how long this certificate’s been sitting here.
I have been hoping to put it to good use.
Perhaps get a job at a museum that deals with restoration of historical artifacts or buildings.
But right now, assistant property manager of a 1930s Sicilian-American art deco apartment building is the best I can do.
And make things pleasant with Manav is the next on my list.
Read on in The Billionaire’s Proposal