Chapter 3
Zach
I wave, watching Marina walk to her friend’s car like I’m one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and she needs to get as far away from me as possible. She’s absolutely swimming in my clothes, which, combined with her bedazzled shoes, looks absolutely ridiculous. Yet she walks to the car with the confidence of a model wearing haute couture. I’m grinning so hard my face literally hurts. Who is this woman, and why do I suddenly need to know everything about her? She leans into the convertible and taps the horn, impatiently signaling her friends with the most adorable frown. I’m in big, big trouble. Huge.
“Hey, smitten kitten,” Jimmy chuckles, his expression smug.
I think about denying it, but there’s no point. Even if it wasn’t written all over my face, Jimmy knows me too well. I smile at him and nod, smacking my hand over my heart for emphasis.
“I think I’m in trouble, mate,” I confess, watching the car disappear down the tunnel.
He bobs his chin at me with a knowing look. “You coming up with a plan? ”
“Absolutely,” I say without hesitation.
He laughs out loud, then slaps me on the back and moves over to a small group of stadium crew that have gathered, yelling back, “Better be a good one!”
Rick and Sam join him. I wave to the group and turn back toward the bus. I need a minute. I need time to figure out a way through this. I step inside the bus, a plan already forming in my head. Thankfully, I’m not starting from scratch. While Marina was occupied with the guys, I took the opportunity to go talk to her friend Merry. Once I introduced myself, I tried my usual tactics to get information and failed miserably. Marina’s inner circle is strong. After watching me make some of my best detective moves, she calmly looked down her nose at me and proclaimed that she knew exactly what I was trying to do.
I was then put through a vetting session where she threw rapid-fire questions at me to see whether I measured up. I’m not sure which answer did it, but I eventually passed her test.
At that point, Merry noticed Marina looking our way, so she turned to me and said, “I like you, Zach, but she’d kill me if I told you anything. But I also love that you give so much back to the communities you play in, and you seem like a good guy. That deserves something. So if you happen to show up at the Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library on Tuesday at 5:30 pm for song night in the children’s wing…you better not tell her where you heard about it.”
With that, she bounded off toward her friends without another look at me, a mischievous smile on her face. Marina is beautiful, talented, and she sings to children? I am in such big trouble.
I reflect back to that first moment on the bridge, when the last bit of the crowd parted, and I saw her sitting on the hood of that car. The costume was a surprise, yes, but it was her voice that lured me out of the bus. And when I saw her, when I saw the pure joy on her face as she sang to the crowd…I was a thousand percent hooked. Reel me in, I’m done. I didn’t care about the crowd, the traffic, or anything else. I just wanted to bask for a minute in that green-eyed sunshine and never think about another thing again.
A knock on the door pulls me from my thoughts.
“Zach!” Rick calls through the door. “You okay with a quick meeting with some stadium guy at five? I don’t know what he wants, but he’s wearing a suit.”
I laugh. Rick doesn’t pay attention to titles or status, which is just one of the things I love about my friend. I stand and stretch, calling back, “That’s perfect.”
Work. Good. I’m grateful for the chance of any distraction. When it comes to music, I fly by the seat of my pants. My creativity has its own mind. All I have to do is let it go, and it does its own thing. But in all other areas of my life, I’m a planner. I think, I plan, I execute. Right now, I’m fuzzy on the whole thing…so a creative distraction is welcome. Then, I’ll get back to planning.
I just need to be sure about the plan. I need to work out every detail because something tells me I only have one shot to catch this mermaid.
***
Marina
“No means no,” I tell Ashley for the umpteenth time as I pour coffee into my drink tumbler on this gloomy Monday morning.
She scowls at me. I pull three packets of sweetener from the box, shut the drawer with my hip, open them, pour their contents into the tumbler, and then toss the empty packets in the trash. I reach into the fridge for the creamer, and she’s still scowling at me.
“I don’t have time for complications,” I say emphatically .
I finish mixing my coffee, add ice, throw the plastic straw in, and screw the top on.
“He’s not a complication,” Ashley argues, her crystal blue eyes looking right through all my excuses. “He’s a man. A gorgeous, famous, rich man who couldn’t take his eyes off of you!”
I tilt my head to the side and squint at her. “The very definition of ‘complication’. No, thank you.”
I grab an elastic band from my purse and twist my hair up into a knot on top of my head, then take a sip of my coffee. Mmmm . Perfection. See? Coffee never lets you down. Men, not so much.
I shrug into the coat I left hanging on a nearby bar stool and pop a baseball cap on that says “Alcatraz Swim Club”. It’s a snug fit, thanks to the bun, but it works. I sling on my laptop bag, grab my purse and coffee, and offer Ashley a smile on my way to the door.
“You guys should go to both concerts if you want,” I say with a sigh. “You’ll have an amazing time. I want you to go. But I am not getting anywhere near Zach Adams again. Final answer.”
With a firm nod, I step out of the apartment and leave Ashley with a bewildered look on her face. My heart sinks a little as I descend the stairs to the lobby of our apartment building, partially because a big part of me already wants to be around Zach more. He’s handsome and charming, and he was very kind on the bus. In a way, it’s reassuring that there’s a little struggle going on in my heart between shutting him out and letting him in. The girls like to give me a hard time for the fierce boundaries I keep up when it comes to men. I struggled so much as a teenager, often making things worse for myself because I overreacted and lashed out at everything. I’m no longer in the business of causing myself drama, and inviting the attention of one of the biggest rock stars in the world would definitely bring drama. I wish the girls understood just a little of that, but all I’ve heard since we left the stadium yesterday is how Zach couldn’t stop staring at me and how amazing it would be if we started dating.
Dating?
The idea is ridiculous on multiple levels. First, rock stars don’t date penniless executive assistants. I’ve seen the kind of women usually on Zach’s arm. He’s always in the media. Second, my friends (whom I love dearly) are all being over dramatic. Yes, there were a few times I think I saw Zach looking at me with a glint of attraction in those gorgeous brown eyes. No, nothing is going to come from it. For two reasons: because I’m sure he looks at a lot of women like that and because I have no time in my life for anything that threatens my normal.
Remembering what Zach and the guys told me about making myself scarce in the eyes of any media snoops, I wait in the lobby of my building and watch out the glass door until I see my bus coming up the street. Just as it pulls up to the curb, I step outside and right onto the bus. I tap the payment pad with my card and take a seat on the aisle, turning away from the window.
The bus pulls onto the street as I reflect on my second near-panic attack while watching the news last night with Ashley after we dropped Merry and Scarlet off. Just as I feared, our impromptu concert was all over the news. Ashley barely kept me calm by pointing out that most of the content was focused on Zach because he’s such a celebrity. But there was one gossip show that made a point to ask who the mermaid was. They zoomed in on my face, which was terrifying to see on the five o’clock news. Ashley, working hard to talk me off the proverbial ledge, pointed out that my hair was elaborately curled and pinned up with jeweled combs and that I was “in full glam” having come from a performance. I don’t look like that every day. Maybe it would be enough.
In all likelihood, they’ll be so focused on Zach that they won’t give me another thought—but I’m determined to take all the precautions I can to ensure I’m never found. I pull the baseball cap off my head and reach into my work bag, pulling out a beige cloche hat I found at a secondhand store when I went for a walk after my near meltdown yesterday. I slip the ball cap into the bag and put the cloche on, then shrug out of my reversible trench coat to flip the navy side to the beige and slip it on again. Boom. Better than the CIA.
Nearly a half hour later, the bus pulls to a stop at Trans United Tower. Home of several huge corporations, it’s a massive building that lends a signature element to the San Francisco skyline. The top five floors are all for the highly conservative law firm of Taft & Kennedy, where I work as the executive assistant and designated whipping post for the infamous Alexis Taft. Yes, that Taft. The one whose name is on the door.
Alexis, or Ms. Taft as we peons are required to call her, is a five-foot three-inch tornado in Louboutins. She never has a hair out of place and is always clad in designer suits. Ms. Taft only accepts perfection. She’s the youngest partner at the firm, the only child of the great Leopold Taft, our founder and former mayor of San Francisco, and she holds my entire future in her hands. She likes to dangle it in front of me like a child playing with a new kitten.
I step off the bus and head straight to the ladies restroom in the lobby, removing the cloche and putting it in my work bag. I take my hair down completely, run a brush through it a few times, then set to work winding it up in the tight chignon that is the standard hairstyle of all women at the firm. I give it a quick spritz with some setting spray I keep in my bag and eye my reflection in the mirror. There. Not a hair out of place.
On any normal day, I opt for very little makeup. A little mascara and a little lipstick. I let the spray of freckles show across my nose and cheeks, a by-product of my natural red hair. I’ll never have flawless skin, and I’m okay with that. I grab my bags and head for the door .
Covered in gray marble, the huge lobby is overwhelming. And I do mean covered. The floors are dark gray marble. The security and reception desks are a lighter gray marble. The walls…gray marble. Chrome trim and fixtures provide some contrast, as do the lush cream rugs and cream leather couches in the waiting area. A few fake spiky-looking plants in giant gray pots fill the corners of the lobby. It’s cold and a little ominous, but it’s all by design.
It actually helps me get into work mode. As soon as I step inside these doors, I’m all business. I make an effort not to forge friendships at work. I’m polite. Respectful. Hard-working. Dependable. That’s all they need to know about me. This firm pays their executive assistants a significantly higher wage than other firms, and I’m barely making it as it is in a city that’s notoriously expensive to live in. I need every penny I can get, especially since Ashley’s boyfriend Greg recently became her fiancé. As happy as I am for her, I’ll be without a roommate within a year, and I can’t afford to stay in my apartment unless I get a promotion or a pay raise. A new roommate is not something I’m prepared to think about. It’s hard enough for me to let people in, and the idea of letting someone move in with me that I only know through a few interviews…well, no thanks.
The firm, rhythmic click of my heels on the marble floors echoes in the vast space as I make my way to the bank of elevators. The security guard nods at me in greeting, and I give him half a smile before I disappear into an elevator and push the button for the 48th floor.
Within minutes, I’m at my desk. Ms. Taft is already in her office, of course. When I first got this job, I wondered if she had a button under her desk she pushed so a bed appeared, allowing her to just sleep here. Once she trusted me enough to run personal errands for her, which is both a blessing and a curse, I was given access to her twelve-million-dollar apartment in Nob Hill. You know, so I can stop by Hermes and pick up her $30,000 special edition Birkin bag and drop it off with her dry cleaning.
“Don’t even sit,” she calls from her office in a tone I’ve learned to dread.
I mentally run through a list of possible crimes and come up empty. Unless, of course, she happened to see the news. She doesn’t care about the entertainment world, though. Even I would be surprised if she looked up at the TV because of a story about a rock star and a mermaid. It can’t be that.
Can it?
Right. I grab my notebook and a pen and rush to her office.
She’s frowning slightly at her laptop when I walk in, gesturing at one of the plush chairs in front of her desk with a perfectly manicured finger. I sit, trying to ignore the morning news playing on the large flat screen mounted on the wall. The two anchors are discussing a police chase that happened late last night.
Ms. Taft looks up, her gaze raking over me from head to toe. I can feel her going through the checklist she gave me on my first day at work: hair, face, suit, shoes. I try not to feel self-conscious. I know how to “groom myself for success”, as she calls it. All perfect.
“The Montclair Group is looking for new representation,” she says with a predatory gleam in her eyes. “Taft & Kennedy will get that contract.”
She says it without a hint of doubt in her voice. It’s a done deal to her. The most successful marketing and media firm in the city will be our newest client. I nod silently.
“Ethan Montclair and I went to school together,” she elaborates, smoothing a perfect finger over one of her perfect eyebrows. “In fact, our parents were hoping something might happen between the two of us but…well, we were both very focused on other things.”
I nod again, reserved and obedient, waiting for my orders.
“I’ve reached out,” she says matter-of-factly. “He’s a bit busy this week, meeting with other prospective firms, I’m sure. We’re meeting for drinks next week—and he’s promised to come here to hear our formal proposal on the 28th.”
She pauses for dramatic effect, studying the diamond watch on her wrist. I mentally do the math. Whatever she’s planning, we have about three weeks to get everything in place.
“We will be ready,” she declares with a lift of her chin. “I’ll need you to ensure everything is perfect here. I’ll have everyone else working full time on the proposal. We’ll cater breakfast in the executive conference room, but I think we’ll go out for lunch after the proposal to celebrate closing the deal.”
I nod firmly. “Absolutely, Ms. Taft,” I say eagerly. “I’ll take care of everything.”
She holds my gaze with a slight glare, and I will myself to maintain eye contact. When she’s satisfied that she’s terrified me into submission, she nods. As she turns back to her desk, she glances up at the television.
“Wow,” she says, grabbing the remote for the television and hitting pause.
My heart pounds in my ears as I turn in slow motion to find a frozen image of Zach and me on the bridge. It’s blurry, but my red hair is there. Most of the picture shows Zach, but there’s a slightly obscured view of the side of my face.
Ms. Taft points at me with the remote. “You have a twin out there,” she says with a scoff.
I shake my head, looking at the image as if it’s completely ridiculous.
“She’s wearing way too much makeup,” Ms. Taft deduces, “and her hair is just ridiculous. But she looks a lot like you.”
I’m a riot of emotions on the inside, but I somehow manage to keep my face calm and reserved. Bored, even. I take a good look at the image on the television and roll my eyes .
“I don’t have any family,” I say with a shrug. “No sisters or anything.”
Ms. Taft considers for a moment, pursing her lips in thought. She flicks the television off and drops the remote on her desk. I breathe a very quiet, very slow sigh of relief.
“I don’t understand this hysteria over some rock singer creating a stupid scene on the bridge,” she grumbles. “Who cares?”
I smile and shrug, praying it’s enough of a response to make her drop the subject. She raises her chin at the doorway and excuses me. I stand immediately and hurry to the door.
“Marina,” she calls sternly.
I turn to face her.
“I will not accept anything less than perfection,” she warns ominously. “We must do everything to impress Ethan and his colleagues. If anything goes wrong with this meeting, I will hold you responsible.”
I swallow deeply, my throat bobbing.
“But,” she continues. “With great success comes great rewards. Do your part well, help us get this contract, and I will make sure you’re rewarded well.”
I straighten my spine with determination and square my shoulders. “I won’t let you down, Ms. Taft,” I declare, stepping out of her office and closing the door behind me.
Fear of discovery aside, it’s all I can do not to skip back to my desk. My heart is beating so hard I can almost hear it. She bought the notion that the news footage wasn’t me, so I’m relieved beyond words. But this meeting…this is a huge opportunity. Not only because her favorite way to reward people is to throw money at them, but because it might open the door for me to ask for help with law school. A letter of recommendation from Taft & Kennedy would carry a lot of weight with all the law schools I’m interested in.
I sit at my desk and open a drawer, pulling out my favorite notepad and pen. If there’s one thing I do well, it’s rolling out the red carpet when they need me to. It’s time to do a little research on our guest—because I’m determined to make this meeting the high point of Ethan Montclair’s time here. He’ll be begging to give us the contract by the time I’m done.