Jaimie: Fire and Ice (The Wilde Sisters 2)

Zach slowed his speed as he approached the entrance ramp for the Van Wyck. It looked a little better than it had half an hour ago. He merged the Porsche into traffic, then got it all the way to 45 miles per hour.

Pathetic, but an improvement.

With luck, he’d be home in less than half an hour. He’d get that shower, the whisky, the city sprawled beneath him.

He felt the last bit of tension slip away.

It was good to be home.

CHAPTER TWO

Jaimie Wilde wished to heaven she were home instead of here, in New York City, trapped in a taxi halfway between Lexington and Park Avenues.

“Come on,” she said under her breath, “come on. Move!”

God! She was talking to the traffic.

Totally illogical to talk to traffic, but nothing about today was logical, and that was the real problem. Well, that and the fact that her taxi hadn’t moved more than a couple of feet in the last five minutes.

She was going to be late. For a meeting. Or maybe not. Maybe there wasn’t going to be a meeting. She’d left two messages on Zacharias Castelianos’s voice mail over the last week and he hadn’t returned either one. But since her boss had assured her that Castelianos wanted the meeting ASAP, it was only logical to proceed as if there was a meeting.

At least, she kept telling herself it was logical.

Otherwise, Roger’s client—his almost client—would surely have called back and said there’d be no meeting.

Roger insisted that was just the way some clients were, that they had sort of a passive-aggressive attitude toward selling a house or a co-op or, in this case a condo, and who was she to argue with him? She was new to the game; she’d joined Stafford and Bengs only a few months ago.

More to the point, Roger Bengs was her boss. Her mentor. Taking his advice was logical, and Jaimie was nothing if not logical.

Always.

She’d learned the importance of logic in childhood. Be consistent. Be practical. Rely on common sense, not emotion, and avoid disappointment. It was her sisters who used to get upset when their father promised to make it home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or birthdays and didn’t. Not her. By the time Jaimie was six or seven, she knew better.

Logic had become her guiding philosophy.

Not lately, a cool voice inside her whispered, or you wouldn’t still be trying to deal with Steven.

Jaimie blanked out the thought. Forget Steven. Forget everything but now.

Now was more than enough to worry about.

She was in New York for a meeting. An appointment. Jeez, she thought, rolling her eyes, what did it matter what she called it? She was here to meet with someone and she was still blocks away from where she was supposed to be in less than half an hour.

And she could not, must not, would not be late. This was too big a chance to blow.

Make this meeting, convince the owner of a sickeningly expensive condo that only Stafford and Bengs were capable of marketing it properly, and everything would change. She’d go from being just another newbie agent to being the one who’d landed a huge catch.

Sure, she’d land it for Roger Bengs, her boss, not for herself, but that would still be huge.

Better still, she’d pocket a neat sum.

Roger had promised her .01 % of his commission if she landed the listing and he sold the condo.

Jaimie was good at math. She’d majored in accounting, had been an accountant until very recently, but you didn’t need an accountant to tell you that 1/100th percent of Roger’s commission would be a very tidy sum. Technically and legally, she’d probably be entitled to more than that, but she was willing to trade the financial benefit for the experience and for getting into Roger’s good graces.

Assuming any of this happened at all.

Jaimie took a deep breath.