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“I’M TELLING YOU—THE world of finance isn’t going to know what hit them.”
I twisted around in front of my mirror, examining the new dress from every angle. Rose had decided that a new look required new clothes, so we’d taken off ridiculously early for work and stopped by Bloomingdales on the way. Fortunately, around this time of year—when transfers, interviews, and internships were right around the corner—they opened early for us working girls to get a jump start on the day, and we were able to find what we needed in no time at all. I just wasn’t sure...it was entirely work appropriate.
It was a tiny designer dress—the kind that wrapped around me like a second skin, the kind that Rose and her kind wore every day to work, but you rarely saw in a division like finance. The silk material was a studding shade of deep green—the kind of color that made my new hair look even more vibrant. It twisted up around the bodice in a series of little straps that implied a great deal of sex appeal without actually crossing the line to something unseemly.
I had to give it to the designers here—they certainly knew their audience.
“Oh come on, you have to wear it,” she insisted. “I know that look—that’s the ‘you’re about to take it off’ look.”
I smoothed down the fabric one more time and looked up at my reflection with a little smile. “Actually...no. I think I’ll wear it. It’s the new me, right?”
She clapped her hands excitedly. “It totally is! So listen, when you get back tonight, I’ve already queued up a whole line of movies on Netflix. We’re going to have a popcorn fest and watch them all.”
I slipped my purse over my shoulders and put on my nicest, walkable shoes. “There’s no romance, right?”
She shook her head firmly. “Most of them involve pirates. One of them is that new prequel to Planet of the Apes.”
I cocked my head. Interesting choice. Must be Michael’s influence rubbing off on her.
Deciding not to comment, I lifted my fist into the air. “Lead the way!”
We decided to see my new look in action once we got to the street. Rose took a huge step back, hiding behind her trench coat while I lifted my hand tentatively to call for a cab. Before it was even halfway in the air, three of them raced over to the cement. I bit back a gloating grin and turned excitedly to Rose.
“Well...take your pick.”
We arrived at the office in fine spirits—spirits that were only heightened as half the people in the lobby couldn’t help but stare, and the other half didn’t seem to realize who I was.
I honestly couldn’t tell you which I preferred more.
Up on the seventieth floor—our home away from home—the reactions were much more pronounced.
“Calling all X-men, calling all X-men,” Jamie said solemnly the moment he saw me. “Oh good, Mystique, you’re here. I’d like to go over some—”
He broke off when we both started laughing and pulled me closer so he could get a better look. His hand flipped one of the waves tentatively and he raised his eyebrows in approval.
“So,” I asked with nervous excitement, “what do you think?”
“Wow...I’m definitely for it. Very Rita Hayworth.” But his smile suddenly faded into a concerned frown. “Wait, actually, Stacy did something like this one time when I wouldn’t let her get a dog... This isn’t some dog rebellion, is it?”
“No,” I chuckled, “it’s a new and improved me.”
“The kind that’s going to watch Planet of the Apes with me later,” Rose reminded as she disappeared down the hall to her office.
Jamie watched her go with that same frown. “That...seems unlikely.”
I chuckled again and waved goodbye as I headed to my own office to take stock of my day. The early morning New York sun shone in through the windows and made everything feel even lighter than it already was. I’d gotten not one—but three taxis, my new haircut was going over well, even the shriveled plant in the corner of my office was staging some sort of comeback. I was so far ahead of the game with all the projects I’d been assigned; I was thinking of setting some kind of a Bejeweled record when Patti Macer suddenly walked in.
“Jenna, oh—I’m sorry,” she backed away quickly, not quite recognizing the woman behind the desk. “Wait...Jenna?”
“Well,” I tossed my hair smugly, “what do you think?”
“Is that...” she leaned closer, her eyes wide, “is your plant coming back to life?!”
I dropped my head to the desk and rolled my eyes. Macer’s priorities had always been a little different than all the rest of ours.
“Yep—I’ve been giving it vitamins,” I lied.
She looked impressed. “That’s very determined of you. Good. Your hair looks beautiful. Well, listen, I was stopping by to remind you that we’re getting that new transfer in from PR today, so make sure at some point you venture down and meet him.”
“Venture down?” I frowned. “And where might I be going?”
She answered by dropping a thick manila folder onto my desk. “The Shanghai memo for the merger. You’re set to brief Thomas Larchwood today—did you forget?”
Forget? No. Completely repress it? Yes.
My heart seized up in my chest, and I looked at her entreatingly. “Patti, do you think there’s any way someone else can go up there today? Like Jamie? He’s been dying to talk about Shanghai.”
If given more time, I might have been able to come up with a better story than ‘he’s dying to talk about Shanghai,’ but I was in full-out panic mode. What was more, Macer wouldn’t ever question that someone might be as bent over backward about this stuff as she was.
“Be that as it may, I need Jamie on the phones today. And you’re the one who knows this stuff like the back of your hand now, Jenna. With all the work you’ve been doing. I read the report you sent over yesterday afternoon about silver holdings in Bangkok—it was brilliant!”
“Well, then you should present it,” I said encouragingly. “You are my supervisor, after all. Any ideas I have still go to your credit—”
“No,” she said shortly. “Get up there in five, he’s expecting you. You’ll do fine. As long as you know what you’re doing, and come in prepared, it’s a piece of cake. You are prepared, right? Because he sets the bar high. He’ll check your figures twice and look at every single detail. He has high standards, so don’t undercut anything. Did you create a report in Excel?”
“Yes, it’s on my laptop.”
Jaime chuckled as he stuck his head in. “And you’ve been stuck on projects with Tom before. You know he’s doesn’t like to delegate, he can second-guess decisions, and micromanages every step of the way.”
“I remember,” I said with a smile.
“The man is internally driven and his motivation to succeed surpasses anything else.”
“Yes, Jaime, I know that firsthand.”
I knew that only far too well.
“But it’s all good,” Jaime said. “Because everything Tom touches is magic.”
When he touched me it was magic.
“You got this,” Patti said.
I smiled. “Of course I do.”
“I knew you could handle this. Now go knock his socks off.”
As she swept out of the room and shut the door behind her, I looked down at myself in blind hysteria. Why the HECK was I wearing this stupid dress?!
I buzzed Rose on the intercom immediately. “Miss Bell, could you come to my office, please. I’m having a...merger emergency...”
She appeared a few minutes later, still chuckling to herself. “A merger emergency—how long did it take you to come up with that one? Oh, wait no—what’s wrong?” She saw the look in my eyes and sat down immediately, leaning across the desk in concern.
“I’m supposed to spend the entire day up with Tom in his office—debriefing him. In this!” I gestured to myself miserably. “Why did I buy this?! I’m going to look like an idiot up there! He’s going to think I dressed up like this on purpose. For him! And I didn’t.”
“No,” she said firmly, “you’re going to look hot. Jen—this is ‘starting your life over without him’ dress. There’s nothing you can’t do in this dress.”
I nodded slowly, starting to catch on.
“Except Tom Larchwood,” she added sternly. “You can’t do him.”
“Very funny.” I glared.
She flashed me a grin. “Seriously—this is the best possible thing that could have happened today for so many reasons. You can show him that you’re over him.”
I shook my head despairingly. “I don’t want to see him. What the heck am I supposed to do?”
She considered for a moment before her face lit up and she leaned conspiratorially across the desk. “Okay...here’s the plan...”
Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the conference room on the second floor. It wasn’t where we were scheduled to meet, but it was a huge room, with a huge table, and glass walls and windows all around. In short—there could be absolutely no intimacy, no awkward conversations.
And no privacy.
From where I sat, I had a clear view of Tom and Michael’s secretary, Bonnie’s desk. This gave me a first class seat when Tom came storming from his office and bore down upon her.
“Where is she?” he growled. “I thought we were supposed to meet in my office over five minutes ago.”
After all these years, Bonnie was fully immune to Tom’s moods and Michael’s antics. She’d been part-mother, part-secretary, part-babysitter since they were both moved to this floor on their eighteenth birthdays. A little temper tantrum now didn’t scare her.
“She requested you move the meeting to the conference room,” she said blandly. “I didn’t see why not, so I allowed it. And I sent you an email ten minutes ago. She arrived right on time.”
She nodded her head in my direction and I smiled sweetly back.
“She’s been waiting,” she said.
The second he saw me, Tom’s face softened immediately. His eyes swept over mine with the same pain and nostalgia that ‘sad girl’ had on lock just twenty-four hours before.
Then he did an incredulous double-take when he saw my hair.
“That’s...that’s fine, Bonnie,” he said quickly “I apologize. Hold all my calls for the rest of the morning, will you, please?”
“Of course, sir.”
When he turned on his heel and started walking my way, I looked down quickly and readjusted my briefing papers. There was a lot of ground to cover, that was for certain, but like Macer said—I knew it like the back of my hand. If I could just make it through in a single morning, I’d have the rest of the afternoon to either gloat or recover—depending on how it went.
“Miss Harks,” he said courteously as he walked inside. He shut the door behind him, but it didn’t much matter. Everything we did in this room was on public display. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I wasn’t aware that you had this meeting moved.”
He took a step to automatically sit beside me, but looked down and saw that I had his papers and water bottle set up on the opposite side of the table. His face clouded for a moment, but he slowly lowered himself down into the chair.
“That’s quite alright,” I said briskly. “Shall we begin?”
“Jenna—”
I looked up with fire in my eyes. “Mr. Larchwood, I said, shall we begin?”
His face hardened, and he gave me a curt nod, settling back in his chair as I launched into a good presentation, considering how little time I’d had to put it together.
Not one second, in the entire twenty minutes that I spoke, did his eyes ever leave my face. It didn’t matter whether I was referencing a page or pointing to a specific point on a map. He kept staring at me, those blue eyes drilling holes into mine.
Fortunately, by now, I was almost as immune as Bonnie. At least, I could pretend to be.
I kept my cool the entire time, never faltering even once. When I was finished, I glanced up at him, with a smile.
“So did you have any questions, Mr. Larchwood? Because I have some pressing matters I must attend to.”
It was a bold thing to say—especially considering the entire morning had been blocked off specifically for this presentation. But I didn’t want to stay here a second longer than I had to, and we both knew that Tom didn’t need a presentation to understand the material. As usual, he knew everything going on in this building ten times better than anyone else did.
That’s why he was going to make an excellent CEO.
An excellent, very lonely, CEO.
He let the impertinence slide, and cast a backward glance at Bonnie. She was in the middle of a long-distance phone call, jabbering away, oblivious to what was going on in the conference room.
“I miss you,” he said softly.
“I’m sorry,” my face twisted up in a hard grin, “I should have been more specific. Did you have any questions about the presentation?”
A surge of anger flashed through his eyes, before it completely disappeared, leaving them even softer than they were before. “I like your hair.”
I got to my feet in a quick movement, inadvertently giving him a brilliant view of my tiny dress. “I don’t have time for this,” I murmured. Then a little louder, “If that will be all, Mr. Larchwood, then I’ll be on my way.”
“Jenna,” his hand flashed out and caught mine as I tried to pack up my papers, “why are you doing this?”
I pulled away like he’d burned me, raising my eyebrows dangerously. “Why am I doing this? Why am I scheduling meetings in the conference room like everyone else does? Why am I sticking to the presentation instead of talking about how much you miss me?”
I could have slapped him. This was what he wanted, not me. This was his decision. He didn’t get to punish me now for following the rules. Not when he’d made them.
“Why am I acting like a professional?” I concluded angrily.
“A professional—right!” he lashed out, gesturing angrily at my clothes. “You show up dressed like some James Bond girl shaking your gorgeous red hair everywhere. And I’m the one not being professional?!”
My eyes narrowed, but I smiled as sweetly as I could, keeping a close eye on Bonnie all the while. “Let me make this perfectly clear: I did not ask for this presentation. In fact, I begged to get out of it. I can only assume I’m here as some sort of cosmic punishment because the corporate gods hate me. So if you don’t have any questions, Mr. Larchwood, I’d really like to leave this conference room, so I can go throw up downstairs.”
His mouth fell open, and he stared back at me with eyes so bereaved, I almost felt guilty for my harsh words. But I meant them with all my heart. And it was his fault I had to say them.
“That’s,” he cleared his throat quickly, “that’s fine. I’m sorry again that I kept you waiting.” His hands scrambled around on the table, helping me gather up the scattered maps and memos to stuff back into my bag. “I really am... And I’m very impressed with all the work you presented here.”
“Thank you.”
His eyes flashed up at me at the same moment that Bonnie decided to take a coffee break and left her post un-manned. I glanced nervously toward her desk, before doubling my speed, hoping to get out of here before he noticed.
He noticed immediately, however, and was around the table in one fell swoop.
“Why are you so angry with me?” he demanded, taking me by the shoulders, “I thought you understood—on the beach, you said you understood.”
I yanked myself away, falling back a few steps. “Understood? Of course, I understood. I understood that the second this relationship,” I spat the word out, “or whatever it was got in any way dangerous for you—you dropped it like a bad habit. That’s what I understood.”
“Jenna...” His voice had fallen to almost a whisper. “It’s the whole company. The position of CEO. I can’t take my eyes off the prize right now, not for any—”
“Tom,” I broke my own rule and said his name for the first time, “I promise you, you’ve made your priorities perfectly clear. We don’t need to re-hash them again.”
“My priorities are your priorities!” he thundered. “We’re exactly the same! It’s one of the things we bonded over in the beginning—that we’d sacrifice anything for the job.”
“My priorities...” I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a chilling sound, a very ‘not-Jenna’ laugh that I hardly recognized coming out of my own mouth. “Tom, I think I made my priorities very clear, when after three months living under the threat of being fired, I was still kissing you in the supply closet. I mean, come on—” my eyes welled up with angry tears, but I refused to let them fall, “why did you start all of this then in the first place? I was going to let things go after Camden. You were the one who changed the game plan. And then again after New Year’s—you made sure we picked right back up where we left off. You’re the one who put us in this position, Tom, not me.” I turned around as a wave of emotion crashed down over me and smoothed my dress deliberately as I picked up my briefcase. “So I’m not going to apologize for trying to minimize any more emotional fall-out by acting professional, just because I’m the only one who apparently has feelings!”
He looked like I’d slapped him in the face. “You think I didn’t have feelings for you? You think I still don’t?! How can you think—”
“Because you left me.”
I fired out each word and watched with grim satisfaction when they met their mark. There was nothing more therapeutic when you were in the depths of hell than to watch somebody else floundering there with you. I slipped past him and walked around the table. He may have cut me as deep as it could go...but at least, I wasn’t going to let him see me bleed.
“Because I...” he repeated the words in a daze like he was hearing them for the first time. When he noticed that I was almost out the door, he rushed back around the table, grabbing me so fiercely that the briefcase went flying out of my hand. “We need to talk this out—”
“Let go of me!” I cried as papers went flying everywhere.
For a moment, we both froze, just staring at each other in dull horror as we realized the lengths to which we’d fallen. Then, suddenly, there was a third person in the room.
“Tom, let her go.”
It was Michael. His eyes were tense and wary as he put a firm hand on Tom’s arm. The cloud of papers was still settling to the floor around us, and Tom was still latched onto me.
When he finally registered Michael’s presence, he took an immediate step back, staring around like he couldn’t believe his own eyes.
Michael watched him for a moment, before taking a deliberate step in between us, turning to examine me closely. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.
Of course, physically I was fine—Tom and I had always had a passionate sort of dynamic, and he had only grabbed me to stop me—but emotionally, I don’t think I had ever been more shaken. I just shook my head, trembling, as little tears swam in my eyes.
Michael’s face melted, and he lightly squeezed my shoulder. He seemed hesitant to touch me too long, and immediately turned back to Tom with an unspeakable glare.
“We’ll get this cleaned up, Jenna. I’ll have it sent to you downstairs.”
I nodded quickly, backing out of the room as fast as my shoes would let me. It wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t even inside the elevator before I heard them start yelling.
As the doors shut, I made a concerted effort to pull myself together. I pressed the button for every level, giving myself as much time as possible to make my face look relatively normal before I made it back to my own floor.
By the time I got there, I thought that I’d done a pretty good job. At least, no one said anything as I was immediately caught back up in the normal swirl of chatter. Only Rose looked up from behind her desk as I headed down the hall, and made a bee-line for me. Apparently, my normalizing efforts didn’t extend enough to fool best friends. But before she could get to me, a blond Adonis popped up right in front of my face.
I stumbled back a step, wondering where the hell he came from, and two cool hands reached out the catch me.
That’s when I made the connection. It was the guy from the gym.
“What...?” I frowned up at him incredulously, shaking myself loose. “What are you...?”
“Jenna!” Jamie came rushing down the hall, throwing his arm around the guy without a second thought. “This is Eric, the new guy from PR.” He punched him good-naturedly on the shoulder. “He also happens to be my best man.”
My eyebrows shot up, and I quickly pulled myself together. “Oh! Well, that’s...” My lips curled up in a sudden grin. “So when you said a ‘less noble’ profession...”
“PR. It’s the devil’s work.” He grinned back and shook my hand. “Eric Street. You can’t seem to stay on your feet, Miss Harks. I like the hair, by the way,” he added with a wink as Jamie returned to his office to take a call.
I laughed and was about to try to come up with something clever to say in response when the elevator doors opened behind him, and Tom walked out.
It was impossible to say who looked more surprised, him or me. He had obviously escaped Michael’s proverbial chokehold and was coming to set things right—or at least—as right as they could possibly be considering how messed up they were.
Time stalled in that horrible way it did whenever we were around each other, and I realized I had no idea how long we’d been staring. It must have been a long time, because Eric finally did a double take behind him, giving Tom a curious once-over before his eyes returned to me. They swept over my suddenly teary face with concern, before he abruptly leaned down to put himself in my line of sight.
“Hey—” he grinned that infectious, beaming grin of his, “come have a drink with me.”
When he said the words, both Tom and I looked at him for the first time. While Tom was looking like he could easily have hacked this Barbie to pieces with a Christmas ax, I was staring in open amazement.
“Now?” I asked hesitantly. “It’s not even noon. Isn’t it your first day here?”
“I think we could both use it,” he extended his arm with a wink, “what do you say?”
My eyes strayed once more to Tom, locking on his frozen face before ‘sad girl’ hung up her tears once and for all. I shook out my new red hair and took Eric’s arm with a smile.
“Lead the way.”