Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (28 page)

Well, I
was
the one, but let’s say I wasn’t the one who was surprised by it. Hemi hadn’t said anything, just paused a second and kept going into the kitchen, doing his best walking totem pole impression, but I’d said, “Karen, come on. Mess. Keep your stuff in your room, OK?”

She’d said, “What? I can’t eat in here? I can’t take my socks off? Geez. Life, you know?”

Charles was downstairs already when Hemi and I got there, sitting in the car in a loading zone as if he’d never heard of parking tickets. He was reading a fly fishing magazine, I noticed when he closed it hastily, tossed it aside, and hopped out to open the car door.

“Morning, Charles,” I said.
You are confident,
I told myself.
You are poised. You are pretending to be a rich person.
“I didn’t realize you were a fly fisherman.”

“I’m not,” he said, and I slid into the car and thought,
You are shot down.

Hemi opened his laptop beside me during the fifteen-minute rush-hour drive to his building and was instantly engrossed. Another new normal
.
I would have guessed he was unaware of me or our location, except that when we were a block from the office, he snapped his laptop shut and said, “Charles will be waiting at five to take you home. I probably won’t be back until eight or so. You and Karen should go on and eat without me. Your swim lessons start tomorrow at five-thirty.”

Once again, here I went. “How do I know I’ll be done at five?”

“Because you will be,” he said calmly.

“Uh…Hemi. I’m going to be a marketing assistant, remember? Unless marketing runs a whole lot different from publicity, I probably won’t be done at five. And I guess I should talk to Josh about the lessons? Maybe six-thirty would be better. I’ll get home fine. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worrying,” he said. “I’m telling you.”

“So am I. I’m fine, and I’m going to stay fine.” I wasn’t actually fine—I still felt like somebody’d beaten me with a hammer—but close enough. “You aren’t a Saudi Arabian sheikh, I’m not a princess, and I’m not going to be kidnapped.”

Charles was holding the door open now, but Hemi didn’t move. “No,” he said.

I sighed. “We could do this all morning. This is my first day on the job. I have to start right, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t mean bolting for the door at five like a horse who smells his oats.”

I didn’t have a happy camper walking beside me into the building, nodding at the greeting from the security guys and punching the button for the elevator. He didn’t look all that thrilled, either, to see the sleeve of a white button-down shirt shove its way into the closing doors and wave around until the brushed-steel doors opened again with a protesting
ding.
He looked even less so when Nathan, my former fellow publicity assistant, stepped inside followed by a young redhead I didn’t know.

“Whoops,” Nathan said, his dark eyes moving from me to Hemi with an irrepressible smile working its way out as if he’d never heard the word ‘fired.’ Not to mention the word ‘jealous.’ “Morning.”

“Morning,” I said as Hemi stepped to the back of the elevator and Nathan pushed the button for 43.

“This is Heather,” Nathan said. “Your replacement. Heather, this is Hope, obviously.” He glanced at Hemi, but not even Nathan’s self-confidence was a match for the forbidding figure staring back at him.

“Hi,” I said. I longed to ask how it was going up there, especially with the new publicity director, Jennifer Flores, but how could I ask with Hemi standing there like a very scary boulder? Or a CEO. Either one. “And this is Hemi.”

“Hemi Te Mana,” he said with a brief glance at the redhead. “Welcome.”

She made a noise that sounded exactly like, “Gulp.” I knew how she felt. “Hello,” she finally said, then looked worried that it was the wrong answer.

Silence reigned until Hemi got off at 26 for reasons unknown to me. He held the door a second, looked hard at me, said, “I’ll text you,” and stalked off.

The moment the doors closed again, Nathan was talking, of course. “I see you’re trying to be inconspicuous. It’s totally working, too. Nothing like climbing out of the limo with the CEO at eight in the morning.”

“It’s not a limo,” I said. “It’s just a car.”

“Right.” He eyed the world’s prettiest rose-printed pencil skirt, which I was wearing with a cropped, structured white top and nude heels. “We do a little shopping on our vacation? Somewhere other than Target? You know what we’re all dying to hear. How in the world do you do it? That is one seriously scary man, and you’re not exactly the toughest nail in the box.”

I glanced at Heather, and Nathan said, “What, you think I haven’t already told her? This is gossip gold. So how was New Zealand? Does he get any less terrifying amongst his own kind?”

“Wow,” was all Heather said. “He’s really—” And then she blushed worse than I ever had. “Hot,” she whispered. “Sorry.”

“That’s OK,” I said. “He is.” And then I jumped, because Nathan was grabbing my hand.

“Holy shit,” he said, lifting it in the air and inspecting Hemi’s ring. “One word. Email. It’s a concept. Why did I not know this? I’m surprised you can even lift your hand. The fire…it burns, and I’m not sure if it’s the glare of that rock or jealousy. The Woman Who Need Never Work Again. So tell me…why are we here, exactly?”

“Uh…because it’s too many floors to walk?” I knew I shouldn’t have worn the ring to the office. Not that Hemi would have let me leave it off. He liked seeing it on my finger, and I knew he was still edgy about Anika, even though he hadn’t said anything.
Especially
since he hadn’t said anything. Another week, and I’d ask. No matter what.

Heather was edging away as if I might have a communicable disease. Power-itis, or something. Nathan, naturally, was unfazed. “Hey,” he said. “Do you imagine that you aren’t a hot topic, or that anybody here doesn’t know where you went on vacation and who you went with?”

“Oh, boy,” I said, “that is
bad
news. How would they know, though?”

“Well, if you mean, ‘Did that evil Nathan tell everybody?’ the answer would sort of be ‘Yes.’ Not that they wouldn’t have found out anyway. Our lives are little. We must gossip.”

“Your life is not little. You’re the son of rich, scary people yourself. And you must not.”

“Not as rich as that. And not
nearly
that scary. My dad’s a total goof.” The elevator opened on 43, the Publicity Department, and Nathan held it open as Heather scurried off. “So seriously,” he said. “How did he do it? Was a violinist present? Or—ooh, I’ve got it—did we go on a helicopter ride over the mountains and end up in a vineyard on the Marlborough Sounds with a string quartet playing Pachelbel’s Canon, because the wedding march is so déclassé? Were you led by the hand to a white-clad table in a rose arbor, with champagne chilling in an ice bucket? When’s the wedding, and do I get to come? Come on. Gory details.”

I was so not telling him that Hemi had proposed in bed. Anyway, once I started, I’d be evading like mad, and Nathan would be probing, and…no. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “First day, you know?”

“Hope,” Nathan said, ignoring the protesting screech from an elevator held past its ascend-by date, “do you seriously think you’re going to get fired? Because I’ve got news for you. You’re not going to get fired. Welcome to your new life.”

“Glass of wine?” I asked. “After work? And I’d much rather listen to Publicity Department gossip than have you talk about me. I’m just letting you know in advance, so I don’t have to wave my magic wand and have you killed, or whatever you imagine I could do.”

“Can’t tonight,” he said. “I’ve got somebody new, and she likes me a whole, whole lot. See what you missed? No, you probably don’t. But anyway, I’m torn here. I want to hear the story, and yet I’m strangely terrified. Somehow, I can already feel the Maori war club splitting my skull. My head’s actually itching. Why is that?”

“Because you’re an idiot?” I suggested.

He gave me his cheeky grin and was gone, and I wondered if anybody in the Marketing Department would pop his prairie-dog head over the wall of my cube and complain about the boss. I suspected not.

I was right.

Hope

I should have known the score from my so-called “interview,” which had happened before Hemi and I had left on vacation. Before I’d left the publicity department, clearing out my desk with a pang that was nothing but irrational, considering how mixed my experience had been there.

I’d never been a natural at publicity the way Nathan was. It seemed to me that you had to have an inborn confidence I didn’t possess to do that job, a breezy assurance that everybody in the world would love you. Or at least you had to be able to fake it better than I’d ever been able to manage.

Let’s face it, I was a worker bee. Being the queen was in your DNA, or it wasn’t. I thought it might be in Karen’s, but it certainly wasn’t in mine. I wasn’t a mouse, but it was going to be a long, long time before I was a lion.

Too many animal metaphors. Time to pull it in and get realistic, which, fortunately,
was
my specialty.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t met my boss yet. That interview of mine had been with Henry Delacroix, Hemi’s marketing director, a lean man with a shock of white hair and a penetrating stare to rival Hemi’s own. He’d aimed it at me from across his desk and barked, “So. Copy writing, or what?”

“Uh…” I’d said, feeling horribly self-conscious and trying not to show it, knowing I had “CEO’s Girlfriend” all but stamped on my forehead. “I don’t know much about copy writing, to be honest, though I’d give it my best shot. I’ve been doing administrative work in publicity, and I’d be happy to help out with that to start. It would probably be a good way for me to learn, and for both of us to get a feeling for how I could contribute down the road.”

That sounded good, right? I’d thought it was pretty good for the spur of the moment.

Henry clearly hadn’t. “Nobody wants to do administrative work. Everybody wants to write copy. If they don’t want to decide strategy, that is, after they took that class in college and all.”

I’d done some staring of my own then. That was one advantage of sleeping with Hemi Te Mana—you got a whole lot of opportunity to study the master at work. I might not be able to manage “intimidating,” but I could just about pretend “cool.” I wasn’t desperate, either.
If it doesn’t work out,
I’d promised myself before this meeting,
I can go somewhere else.
Never mind the fight
that
would cause.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” I’d told Henry. “You might feel like you have to hire me, but I’m not taking the job unless it’s something I’m qualified for, and unless you’re going to be honest with me about how I’m doing. Otherwise, I’ll stay where I am, in publicity. I don’t have a bachelor’s degree, so fortunately for you, I
didn’t
learn marketing strategy in college. I’m not here for decoration, and I don’t have an ego. I just want a job.”

He’d looked at me some more, and I’d lifted my chin and concentrated on not flinching until he’d finally said with a sigh, “Why me. Why ever me.”

“Maybe,” I’d said in Hemi’s best silky tones, “because Hemi thought you were an honest man, and that you wouldn’t treat me differently just to suck up to him.”

His face hadn’t changed, and the silence had stretched out some more. “That sounds good,” he’d said at last. “We’ll wait to see if you mean it.”

“Yes,” I’d said. “We will. I’m not the boss’s idiot nephew. If I’m not working out, I expect to hear how I can improve. I can’t fix it if I don’t know. Meanwhile, here I am. Marketing assistant. Helper. Trainee. You can waste your budget, or you can put me to use.”

Ha. I was so not a mouse. Of course, that was easier when you had the shadowy form of the CEO standing behind you, but we’ll just ignore that inconvenient truth.

And that was all very well, except that I wasn’t actually working for Henry. When I showed up at eight at his corner office, I found that everybody else in the department already seemed to be at work, and that my spot was going to be in Digital Marketing. Working for Simon Campbell, to be exact, a somewhat twitchy guy who looked even more nervous at the sight of me. He installed me in a cubicle that was closer to a window than any marketing assistant had any right to expect and said, “We’re mainly working on the launch of the new Colors of the Earth line, but you’ll know all about that.”