Jaimie: Fire and Ice (The Wilde Sisters 2)

She had to think positively. Forget the gaps in what he’d told her. Forget how he’d danced away from all her questions, starting with the big one.

Had the mega-rich, mega-mysterious Zacharias Castelianos actually made a commitment to list his condo with Stafford and Bengs?

Roger had given her the kind of smile a school principal might give a child who’d asked why being quiet in the hall was a good thing.

“Excellent question, Jaimie. The answer is that it’s never a commitment until a client signs on the dotted line.”

And why would Castelianos want to deal with an agent from the firm’s D.C. office when it had branches in Manhattan?

“I have explained that,” Bengs had said, impatiently. “We met at a function here in Washington. We had a chat about New York real estate and he said he’d thought about selling, but finding the right Realtor was never easy.”

“But—”

“But what?” her boss had said, his tone sharpening. “Should I have said, ‘Listen, Mr. Castelianos, you want to sell your condo, I’ll have someone in our New York office contact you?’” He’d looked at her, his expression going from irritated to avuncular. “You’re new to this business, young woman, but surely you know how it works. A client needs to feel comfortable with the person handling the sale of a valuable asset. This man feels comfortable with me. Is that so hard to understand?”

No. It wasn’t. She did understand that. Things always went more smoothly if client and agent got along, which led to the inevitable question about why she was taking this meeting instead of her boss.

So she’d asked.

“If Mr. Castelianos is comfortable with you, why ask me to do this instead of doing it yourself?

That had rated a one-beat pause.

“I don’t know Manhattan as well as you. I’ve lived in the D.C. area most of my life.”

And Jaimie had lived most of hers in Texas.

She’d visited New York a few times. And for a year or so now, her sister Emily had lived there, but that didn’t constitute “knowing” a place.

When she’d pressed Bengs, he’d grown annoyed.

“The Castelianos place will market at fifty, sixty mill, easy. Maybe rich girls can turn their noses up at the possibility of making a commission of twenty, twenty-five thousand bucks, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are agents in this office who’d jump at this kind of opportunity.”

That, of course, had done it.

Jaimie wasn’t rich. Her family was, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. She had moved east in part to get away from the rich kid thing that had followed her all her life. Her sisters had left Texas for similar reasons. They all wanted to make it on their own. She loved her family, loved El Sueño, the enormous ranch that had come down to the Wildes through endless generations, but she wanted to make her own mark on the world, just as her brothers had done and her sisters were now doing.

Her boss had handed her the chance.

Which was why this meeting absolutely had to go well.

Jaimie sighed and smoothed down the skirt of her white silk suit.

She’d dressed carefully. A classic suit. A simple blouse. Medium-height black pumps that she’d exchanged at the last minute for stilettos. She was going to New York, not to Chevy Chase. She wanted the look of urban success, not suburban wealth. Her hair would be the problem. It was long and it had a will of its own, never quite straight, never quite curly, just masses of blond waves that refused to be tamed when the weather was hot and humid.

This morning she’d eyed it with grim purpose, then wound it around her hand and secured it in a businesslike topknot with a dozen bobby pins.

It wasn’t quite so businesslike now. She could feel wispy curls at her temples and neck. Her suit wasn’t holding up too well, either. Silk wrinkled when exposed to damp. How come she hadn’t thought of that?

She looked down, took a couple of useless swipes at the creases in her skirt, tried to tug it down because the slick fabric had ridden up her thighs; the phony leather seat felt clammy straight through her pantyhose.

Dammit.

This had to go well, but she could feel it shaping up to be a disaster. Not just how she looked or that she was running late. The entire thing. There was a bad feel to it.

She should have told Roger what he could do with his offer.

Except, that wouldn’t have been logical. Not when she needed the boost her burgeoning career would get if Zacharias Castelianos signed.