Chapter 19
“Look at your face,” Viv squealed when I updated her on Monday morning. “You are crushing on him!”
“Will you shut up?” I pleaded, checking around for eavesdroppers. “I meant he wasn’t as bad as I thought.”
She spun herself around in the chair, hands high in the air. “Scarlett’s in loveeeee.”
Therein lay the reason I didn’t open up to people. They became idiots with romanticized notions. “Jack helping me at the apartment was nothing more than him being a decent human being. Also he has fifty percent of the responsibility. Don’t make a thing of it.”
Viv grabbed my desk to stop herself from spinning. “It’s already a thing. Your whole face glowed when you told me. Like Fourth of July fireworks going off under your skin.”
“I got a facial yesterday,” I lied.
She tutted. “No you didn’t. I handle your schedule, and you’re not booked in for another two weeks.”
Crap. “I just walked in.”
“Liar. Why can’t you admit that he’s a Golden Delicious and you wouldn’t mind biting into him?”
Because if I ignore it long enough, the thought might go away. “Because I’m a professional.” I’m also supposed to be making him look bad to David, which he kind of did himself today without me trying.
Viv twirled her hair. “Yeah, but you’re also human. The guy helped you out—you owe him something.”
I turned back to my laptop. “What, like my virginity? Sorry, that’s long gone.”
“Oh, honey, we all know that,” she joked, and I swatted her with a manila folder from the pile on my desk. “But you should bring him lunch or something.”
“Is this the 1950s?” I opened up a contract. “Should I bring a pie?”
“Yeah, apple pie.” Her phone beeped with a text.
“Looks like you’ve gotten a ‘facial’ there,” I commented. “Are you going to tell me who this special person is? Has Connor met him?”
“Her.” Viv looked down at the floor.
My fingers paused over the keyboard. “Her?”
“Sí.” She cast her eyes up to me.
“I didn’t realize you were…” My brain fumbled for the right word.
“Bisexual?” Viv suggested. “Neither did I. Till I met her.”
“They do say love has no gender.” I minimized the contract window on the screen. “So has Connor met her yet?”
“Not yet. Connor doesn’t do well with change. The last time he found out I was on a date, he locked himself in the bathroom for an hour. The babysitter called before I could even finish my entrée.”
“Maybe it being a woman will be different. Boys have that bond with their moms, right? You’ll be doubling it,” I reasoned.
Viv looked uneasy. “I dunno. A mom of Connor’s classmate came out last year, and she dropped out of the PTA because of how some people reacted. Couldn’t take the whispering at meetings.”
My hand hit the keyboard, and a bunch of Gs rolled across the open contract. “Jesus, what year are people in?”
“I love being in the PTA. What if the same thing happens?” she cried.
I leaned over the desk and grabbed her shoulders. “No matter what happens, you stay. Fuck them. Fuck anyone who doesn’t accept your life choices.”
“This may be the closest you’ve ever got to giving me a hug.” Viv put her hands on top of mine. “I was worried you’d have something to… say… about it.”
“Why? Because you think I’m homophobic?”
“No, because you always have something to say. About everything.” She giggled.
“I do. And if any of those bigoted bitches at the PTA have something to say, you give them my number.” I sat back down. “So when can I meet her?”
“Soon,” Viv promised. “When I know that it’s for real.”
“May your love life turn out better than mine.” I edged back to my computer.
“Do not act as if you don’t have an amazing prospect in front of you,” Viv admonished. “Jack Shane was made in a lab somewhere, just for you.”
“You’re telling me someone grew him in a petri dish to come and annoy me? I could believe that,” I said.
Viv popped a finger in the air. “He’s ambitious.”
“Ruthless.”
A second finger joined the first. “Gorgeous.”
“If you find grey hair and cheekbones attractive.”
The third finger popped up. “He loves real estate as much as you do.”
“I’ll give you that.”
Viv’s fourth finger sprang up. “Lives in Brooklyn.”
“Geographical probability.”
The fifth and final finger completed her list. “He makes you smile.”
“The word is grimace.”
“Stop being stubborn.”
“Stop playing matchmaker. Not. Going. To. Happen.”
My phone beeped.
I have time to help you paint this week, if you still need it. I can bring dinner? Jack.
Jeez, he meant it. But my schedule for the next week was hectic. Back-to-back showings at The Crystal were interspersed with regular listing appointments.
But when I wanted something done, I did it right away. And every time I walked by the white walls I’d marked after rearranging my bedroom, my brain got an itch that I couldn’t scratch.
Sounds good. I’ll text you the address.
“I’d ask who you’re texting, but I already know from the goofy smile on your face,” Viv said.
I stuck out my tongue. “Your girlfriend says hi.”
* * *
“Aria, what’s going on with the Brooklyn Heights condo?” Lacey demanded, notepad and Swarovski pen poised.
Everyone’s focus shifted to Aria, who tried to shrink into her stool. “Uh, well, there’s been a ton of showings. I’m doing another open house this Sunday.”
“Any offers?” Lacey’s tone had a way of changing from soft and dripping like the icing on a cake, to hardening over time.
Aria shook her head. “Not yet.”
Lacey’s words carried a sharp chill. “You’ve spoken to the other girls about getting their clients in?”
“I don’t have anyone,” Clarissa said, wrapping her lips around a Starbucks straw.
“Me either,” said Juliet, a pixie-like blonde whose appearance didn’t match her tough Harlem accent.
“Nope,” Leanne said from the opposite end of the table.
“Not me,” Davina mumbled, doodling flowers on her notepad.
Tamica pulled at her earlobe. “Sorry, I have more sellers than buyers right now.”
“Scarlett brought her clients through,” Aria offered up.
Lacey pivoted to me. “And?”
“They liked it. But they couldn’t agree on what they wanted. So they’ve put buying on pause for now,” I explained, clenching my butt cheeks to stave off the numbness.
“Didn’t they go and see another condo with Jack Shane?” Clarissa piped up through her slurps of green juice.
How did she know that? And who went to Starbucks and ordered green goo?
“Yes, but I went with them,” I responded, knowing what she meant.
Clarissa’s eyes glinted under the crystal orb chandelier. “So did they decide not to buy before or after Jack swiped them away from you at Aria’s open house?”
She must have this office bugged.“After, and he didn’t swipe them away,” I corrected her, imagining a red sniper dot in the center of her forehead.
“You two looked pretty cozy.” She eyed Lacey to gauge her reaction. “Maybe you let him take them. Since you’re working together now.”
Lacey’s mouth set. “I hope not. We can’t allow other agents to come in and take our business out from under us. We all”—with a pointed look at me — “need to keep an eye on the ball. Open houses are working engagements.”
Why am I being pulled into this when it’s not my listing?
“Uh, Scarlett, have you seen TheNew Yorker?” Tamica waved her purple bejeweled phone at me from the other side of the table.
Note to self: Ask Tamica where she got her phone case.
“No, why?”
All at once, everyone around the table reached for their phones, wondering what world event we’d missed in the last fifteen minutes.
“Oh crap.” Viv handed me her phone, already loaded to the homepage of TheNew Yorker. “Honey, you need to see this.”
The screen blared, “City’s newest building ‘The Crystal’ fails to shine!”
Around me, my colleagues murmured snippets of the story as they read.
“Vastly overpriced.”
“Underwhelming open.”
“Incompetent marketing team.”
“Scarlett Munroe of The Lacey Group, the lead agent in charge of selling out the building, may be out of her depth,” Clarissa read aloud with excitement.
A flash of white-hot rage shot through me at those words in black and white.
Nobody moved until Lacey looked up from her phone. “Okay, everyone, that’s all for now. Scarlett, can I see you in my office?”
* * *
“Close the door,” Lacey demanded as I followed her in from the conference room.
Goosebumps rose on my freckled arms. This must be what it felt like when your dad caught you passed out drunk on the porch at sixteen and wanted an explanation. Not that I’d know.
“What’s up?” I chirped, hoping my tone could lift hers as I took a seat in front of the desk. Just when my ass cheeks had started to recover…
She tapped on her keyboard and swiveled the monitor around to face me. The full New Yorker article filled the screen. “This.”
“It’s nothing. Some journalist is doing a hatchet job. Or has a grudge against David Steel. You don’t become a multi-millionaire without making some enemies.”
Each tap of the pen she bounced off the glass desk felt like a gunshot. “From what I’ve scanned, the article seems to pinpoint you as the issue, not David. And there’s no mention of Jack Shane anywhere.”
“I didn’t notice.” I ran my gaze over the screen. She was right—no connection to Jack or the Levine Group were hidden in the words.
“Why do you think that is?”
“Oversight?” I guessed. “Someone didn’t do their homework.”
“Or someone’s dragging your name through the mud while keeping theirs clean,” she suggested. The tapping became harder, and I feared the glass would crack.
“Are you insinuating Jack’s behind this?”
Her raised eyebrow answered my question. “Did the printers ever give you an explanation as to what happened with those brochures?”
“File error on our end.”
“I’ll say.” Her tapping picked up the pace.
“Listen, Jack wouldn’t do this,” I asserted. “Anything negative about the building affects him. He has to sell it the same way I do. Doing this would make his job a hundred times harder.”
“You think so? Or would slandering you and making you appear incompetent work to his advantage? David starts to doubt you can do the job. Before you know it, he hands the keys to the kingdom to Jack.” The rim of her lips faded to white.
What she said made sense. More sense than I wanted. A few days ago, I would have believed it, stormed right over to his office, and yanked him over the desk by his skinny tie to slap him silly. Maybe I would have stuffed a ridiculous, avocado-patterned sock in his mouth until he choked.
But he’d defended me. Offered to paint my bedroom. Those things didn’t add up to someone willing to slam me to a journalist.
On the other hand, this was Jack Shane. Capable of poaching clients and sabotaging showings. The marketing brochure served as evidence of that.
What to believe.
I cracked my knuckles. “That won’t happen.”
“I hope working with him isn’t beginning to cloud your judgement, Scarlett.” Her tone dropped several decibels.
So do I. “It’s not.”
“Remember your job comes before… feelings.” Her lip curled. “I wouldn’t want you to waste your potential on a man who’d be willing to stab you in the back.”
“I won’t. The promotion is what I’m here for, and if Jack is behind this, it’s not going to change anything,” I assured her, like a dog who’d chewed up her favorite shoe and now wanted a pat on the head.
Being angry at an insignificant writer who’d never met me would only exert energy I could focus elsewhere, such as being the best agent in this fucking town.
“Good.” She swiveled her monitor back around to face her. “Clarissa is on a selling streak at the minute.” She looked down at figures scribbled on her notepad.
“Oh.” A subtle, passive-aggressive “heed my words.”
“Yes, up ten percent on last year already.” She clicked her tongue and gave me a tight smile. “But I wouldn’t worry about that.”
A death knell rang in my ears.