“Wait a minute,” she said as she scribbled her name under the card, “which son? The older or the younger?”
“Younger,” I answered between bites. “Michael.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “Isn’t he the one who got banned from the Brakener’s Club after falling into the fountain with a host of Victoria’s Secret models?”
“He’s the one.”
She considered this for a moment. “On second thought—probably best you skipped the lunch. In fact, make it a point to skip all lunches.”
I grinned but shook my head. “And what if he keeps asking me? You should have seen him at the meeting and then in the lobby—he was so obvious. What if he keeps hounding me until the wrong people notice, and then I’m standing on the sidewalk, holding the contents of my desk in a little carton, thinking, ‘Actually, lunch wouldn’t have been so bad...?’”
She slipped her credit card back into her purse and looked at me calmly. “If he does anything to endanger your job, just let me know, and I’ll pay him a little visit.”
Somehow, despite the Larchwood name and the towering inferno in which they resided, I believed in her threat whole-heartedly. She may not have Michael Larchwood’s billions, but she was an equal force in her own right.
“In the meantime,” she poured me a cup of sake to match her own, “you have a job to do Miss Seventieth Floor.”
I clinked my cup against hers and braced myself for what was to come. “Once more into the brink...”
Chapter 3
Either the clock on my desk had been tampered with as a prank, or time itself had slowed down as karmic punishment for my little identity theft. My ‘first day at the office welcome wagon’ had been postponed in light of the new scramble regarding the merger, and I spent the remaining afternoon hours locked in my office, pouring over the same stack of papers Patti Macer had given me that morning. When I had finished with that, she came in with an even bigger stack and the news that I’d be giving an early morning presentation on it the following day. It was then that my afternoon hours began stretching into evening hours as well. When at last I could no longer ignore the looks from the irritable late-night janitor, I packed up my briefcase with whatever was left to read and shuffled down the darkened halls to the elevator.
How different it was coming in than going out, I thought as I watched the numbers descending with a feeling of hollow relief. Don’t get me wrong—I had signed up for this. I had signed up for endless hours with an impossible amount of work. I’d signed up for unprecedented stress and Machiavellian supervisors to spring last minute presentations. I’d even signed up for the new wrist groove I feared was permanently indented into my arm from typing all day.
I just hadn’t expected it all to happen at once...
“Heading home?” The night receptionist asked as I passed the front desk in the lobby.
I nodded mutely as I signed out below where I’d signed in that morning. Seven twenty to one forty-five. Not bad for a first day’s work.
“You won’t have to do this tomorrow,” the receptionist assured me.
I looked up with heavy eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“Sign in,” she explained. “Just pick up your name badge on the way inside and you should be good to go. Oh—” she rummaged around in her desk, “and that reminds me...”
Something metallic whipped out between us, and for a split second of sleep deprivation madness, I thought I was being mugged.
“Say cheese!”
I blinked sleepily as a flashbulb went off in front of my eyes. She glanced once between me and the finished product before pursing her lips and slipping the camera discreetly back in her desk.
“We’ll just try that again tomorrow, shall we?”
I nodded gratefully and waved my hand in a half-hearted goodbye before trudging out the thick-paned doors to the sidewalk. The frigid New York air bit into my skin like a million little knives and I yanked my coat tighter around me, dancing in place to keep warm as I waved my hand for a cab. Fifteen minutes and thirty dollars later, I was pushing open the door to my Upper East Side apartment.