“We can find a nice girl—one who you’ll actually enjoy spending time with.” The other sock came flying my way, and I was quick to correct myself. “Okay—fine. That probably means she won’t be that nice of a girl after all. But you know what I mean.”
I tossed the clothes in the general direction of the linen closet, still slipping and skidding across the tile after him all the while. How the hell did the man have such long legs?!
“You can go out with her a couple times, get your picture taken. Keep your father and his company happy. Who knows? It might even turn into the real—”
I lost my balance entirely and went careening forward, my messy curls sailing out behind me like a wilting flag. My eyes snapped shut as I threw out my arms, but a pair of warm hands caught me. When I opened my eyes, I was staring up into an equally warm smile.
Warm, but uncompromising.
“Sorry Abby,” he set me gently back on my feet, “I’m just not going to do it.”
And that was that. He proceeded into the shower without another word. The conversation was over. I held my tongue and bowed my head to my chest?
??plotting quickly.
It was putting me in a tough position—that much was sure. Whenever I ended up caught in between Nick and his father, it was always the same way.
Nick was the client. The prize. The person for whom I was supposed to be willing to move mountains to satisfy his every desire. Lift heaven and earth to protect him at all costs, either from his own mistakes, or from the malicious intentions of others.
When he said no. That meant no. There really was nothing left to say.
And yet...
His father was the one who technically employed me.
Mitchell Hunter was a shrewd man, and my offer of employment had been a prime example of his skills. While I was essentially on ‘permanent loan’ to his son, working exclusively for Nicholas—I was also technically a member of the company. My paychecks were signed by the Hunter Corporation, not by Nick.
That meant that when Mitchell said yes. It meant yes. There was really nothing left to say.
With two completely opposite ultimatums staring me in the face, I decided to say nothing at all. Instead, I headed downstairs and started up a pot of coffee.
There was a process to it. One that I’d picked up my first week on the job.
To say that Nick lived for coffee, was like saying that the French had a mild affinity for fattening pastries. It was his first true love. Truth be told, it was probably his only true love.
He had the beans imported from alternating countries in South America and Africa alike, depending on average rain fall, soil acidity, and a million other things that went completely over my head. They were kept in an airtight jar, and ground fresh every morning. Measured out to precision. Brewed to precisely the right temperature.
The slightest deviation would be fiercely condemned. A recurrent mistake would most likely end in termination. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Mitchell and his beloved scotch.
I pulled down the jar with a soft sigh, and started pouring the beans into the grinder.
There had to be some kind of way to get him on board with this. Some iota of wiggle room in which I could get enough of a hold to shake him loose.
As much as I loved Nick, I would not openly go against his father. And while I had, on occasion, secretly gone against his father, in this particular situation—his father was right.
The lobster debacle was just the tip of the iceberg. In the last month alone, there had been enough work to keep an entire PR team sleepless and jumping for five years.
First there was the morning he tried to repel down the Eiffel Tower on a whim. Then there was the afternoon he was determined to climb the Empire State Building with his bare hands. The only way I talked him out of swimming the English Channel was by showing him enough shark attack videos to make myself afraid to even shower for at least a week.
The worst by far was when he conned the night manager in charge of the ice rink at Rockefeller Center into melting said ice, and letting Nick replace it with frozen champagne. At first, it actually looked like it might have been the social extravaganza of the season. Then some lunatic Grinch accused him of trying to serve alcohol to minors, and we were off to the races.
Point being, Nick was feeling a little more restless than usual this month. And if this coming merger was really as important as his father said, it was time to pull in the reins a bit.
But what could I do? What could I offer the man who had everything to make him see things my way? How could I bend the all-powerful to my own will...?
A scalding drop of coffee sizzled suddenly on my skin, and I pulled back my hand with a gasp. The entire coffee ceremony had been performed by muscle memory, and by the time Nick walked downstairs—wearing nothing but a towel—I was ready with the first cup.
“That’s the problem with these coffee makers,” he gestured to the burn with a teasing grin, raising the rim of the mug to his lips, “you’ve got to watch them every second.”