Ignite Me (The Annihilate Me Series) (17 page)

“Did you ask where
he got it from?”

“We’d only just
met.
 
I didn’t want to pry.”

“Well, then it’s
already clear—he received it from a state university.
 
Otherwise, he would have crowed about
where he went to school, as I hope you did.
 
Still, depending on which state
university he went to, it could actually be fine.
 
There is Penn State, after all.
 
Berkeley.
 
Purdue.
 
So all is not lost yet.
 
Go on.”

“I sensed in
him someone who also wanted to succeed, just as I do.
 
I liked that about him.
 
And he was witty.
 
And handsome.
 
And he didn’t come on too strong, which
was the biggest plus in my book.”
 
I
shook my head at her.
 
“Anyway, I
honestly don’t expect much to come of it, but it was nice to meet someone who
didn’t try to put the moves on me right away, because that’s how it is for us
women right now, Ms. Blackwell.
 
Even for Daniella.
 
Most men
these days want to get personal way too quickly.
 
But that’s just not me.”

“If that’s even
true, which I certainly hope it is, Madison, then I applaud you for your
restraint,” she said.
 
“My two
daughters aren’t much younger than you, and the horror stories I’ve heard from
them are trying, to say the least.
 
They are facing an entirely different world from the one I knew when I
first came to Manhattan as a young woman fresh out of college.”

“And they’re
right.
 
It’s terrible out
there.
 
Trying to meet a decent
person is next to impossible, which is why I gave up looking for a relationship
when I started working for my M.B.A. at Harvard.
 
My grades were more important to me than
any man.
 
But that was two years ago;
I’m now at Wenn, I’m enjoying my job, and I have to say that it would be nice
if someone special came along.
 
I’m
ready for that.
 
Yesterday’s
experience suggested that there are options out there.
 
It also confirmed that not all men are
creeps.”

“Well, good for
you,” she said.
 
“But if you do find
yourself a gentleman, I expect you to keep any feelings you develop for him
outside of Wenn.
 
Understood?”

That might be
impossible.

“Understood.”

“It’s nearly
seven,” she said.
 
“And after that
conversation with my daughter?
 
I
already need to crack down on a few cubes of ice.
 
Would you mind?”

“I’ll be back
with a glass in a moment.”

 
*
 
*
 
*

Since I’d
promised Brock that coffee would be waiting for him when he arrived, I quickly
put on a pot, grabbed a glass of ice for Blackwell, took it to her, and then
went to my desk, relieved that she’d had nothing negative to say about the
outfit I’d chosen to wear.

“I’m afraid
that today is going to be rather robust, Madison,” she said from her office.
 
“Lots of little things to do, but lots
of little things that also need to get done.
 
Today, I’m taking you to Bergdorf with
me.
 
Jennifer and Alex are going to
one of Peachy Van Prout’s big parties in a couple of days, and I need to go and
scout out a new dress for her.”

“I thought you
were trying to get her some dress that was on the cover of Vogue?”

“When I saw the
dress in person, I knew that it wouldn’t work.
 
So, since Jennifer is unavailable to me
today, I thought that it would be good to take you along with me, if only so
you can meet the staff at Bergdorf—and so that they can come to know
you.
 
Because going forward, they
need to know that you are an extension of me.
 
We’ll be leaving at nine.”

“I’ll be
ready,” I said.

And then Brock
stepped into the office.

“Good morning,”
he said as he walked past Blackwell and me.

“Brock,”
Blackwell said.

“Good morning,”
I said in return.

Aware that
Blackwell was watching me, I walked casually over to my computer, turned it on,
and checked for any emails that Blackwell might have sent.
 
But already my heart had begun to
quicken in my chest as I did so, because as fleetingly as I’d looked at Brock,
it was like feeling his lips on mine again—the memory of yesterday was
that bright.
 
He was wearing a
fitted, light-gray pinstriped business suit that did little to hide the width
of his shoulders and his narrow waist.
 

God, help me
, I thought.

As other people
started to arrive for work, I knew that Blackwell was likely checking her watch
to see who was prompt and who wasn’t, which gave me a window of opportunity to
look across the room at him.
 
When I
did, I saw that he was leaning back in his chair and waiting for me to
acknowledge him.
 
When our eyes met,
he gave me a warm, impossibly sexy smile, put a finger to his lips, and then
slowly mouthed the words “I want to kiss you.
 
Break room?
 
In five?”

You’ll get
caught if you do this
, I thought.

But if we could
be quick and careful about it, I could have a brief, intimate moment alone with
him before the day began.
 

At this point,
I knew the rhythms of the office well enough to feel that it would be
reasonably safe if we were swift.
 
So, with a knot of anticipation in my gut, I swung around in my chair,
turned to Blackwell, saw that she was reading something on her computer screen,
and stood.
 
“I’m going to get a cup
of coffee,” I said to her.
 
“Would
you like one?”

“No,
no—I’m fine with the ice.
 
But
thank you for asking.”

“I also need to
use the restroom, but I’ll be back in just a moment.”

She dismissed
that with a wave of her hand.
 
“Did
I really need to hear
that
, Madison.
 
Please!”

“Sorry,” I
said.
 
And then, with my body
nothing short of a heated vessel of lust, I went into the break room, removed a
white cup with the Wenn logo on it from one of the cupboards, and nervously
made myself a cup of coffee while I waited for Brock to join me.
 

As I poured
cream and two packets of sweetener into the cup, I heard people talking up and
down the hallway.
 
Some of it was
small talk, most of it was business- related, but immediately I sensed that all
of it sounded too nearby for either of us to take such a risk.
 

I was about to
pour my coffee, ditch this foolish plan of ours, and walk back to my desk when
Brock stepped with meaning into the recessed room.
 
He took me in his arms, he looked at me
for a long, heated moment, held me against him, told me that I looked
beautiful, and then kissed me with a passion that was somehow deeper than it
had been when we’d kissed yesterday.

“We’re going to
get caught,” I whispered to him when I nervously broke away from his
embrace.
 
“I don’t know what’s come
over me.
 
She’ll have my ass if she
finds out.”

“I know what’s come
over you,” he said in my ear.
 
“It’s
the same thing that’s come over me.
 
I can’t go the entire day without at least having one moment alone with
you, Madison.
 
So stop talking,
because we’re losing time.”

And with that,
I was in his arms again, his tongue met mine, and as he moved closer to me, he
pressed his body fully against me, because I knew that he wanted me to feel the
length of his excitement against my thigh.
 
It was enough to make me nearly delirious with desire.
 
What would having sex with him be like?
 
I didn’t even want to imagine that now,
because if I did, I’d be riding in on a hot train from messville by the time
time I returned to my desk.

“I’m crazy
about you,” he said.
 
“I couldn’t
sleep last night because of you.
 
Do
you even know what I’m feeling?”

I’m feeling a
whole lot of you against me right now, Brock.
 
And it’s pulsing.

“I do,” I
whispered.
 
“I’m also feeling
it.
 
I can’t explain it, but I also
can’t deny it.”
 

And that was
the truth.

With a sense of
urgency, he took my face in his hands, and he looked at me in such a way that
suggested he wanted to memorize my face so that it would remain with him for
the rest of the day—if not for a lifetime.
 
Then he gave me a searing kiss before
his hands dipped down to my breasts and cupped them gently in a way that was
impossibly sensuous.
 
After a
moment, his hands fell away, but not before he’d rubbed his thumbs against my
nipples before he crushed me again with a smoldering kiss that nearly destroyed
me.

Before anyone
could catch us, he stepped away from me, grabbed a mug from the cupboard, and
poured himself a cup of coffee as if nothing had happened.

“It’s Friday
night,” he asked in a voice that only I could hear.
 
“And the weekend is upon us.
 
Are you free after work?”

“How can you
recover from that so quickly?” I said.

“My crotch is
facing the counter for a reason, Madison.”

I had to smile
at that.

“So are you
free?”

“I am.”

“What about
this weekend?”

“I haven’t even
thought about this weekend.”

“Then I need
you to think about it now because I want you to spend it with me.”

“You’re in a
persuasive mood.”

“I just told
you that I’m crazy about you.
 
So
let’s spend some time together this weekend.
 
You know—away from here.”

“All right,” I
said.
 
“In fact, I’d like that.”

“I’m turning
around now,” he said in a low voice.

“I’m not
looking down at your pants, Brock.”

He turned around
and leaned against the counter with a smirk on his face.
 
“You know you want to.”

I didn’t only
find him charming and funny, but also wildly sexy.
 
I just shook my head at him, and while
my eyes wanted to drift south, I didn’t allow them to.
 
I wasn’t going to give him that, because
he’d just lord it over me.

“I think you’ll
get eye strain,” he said.
 
“Because
that’s a hell of a lot of willpower you’re showing off right now.”

“You have no
idea the kind of willpower I possess.”

“Actually, I
think I found that out over coffee the other day.”

“Right.”

“Anyway,” he
said.
 
“About tonight.
 
Gordon’s again?”

“I’ll be
there.
 
But I’m not sure when.
 
She could keep me here until seven if
she wants to.
 
Or even later.”

“Then I’ll just
stick around until she decides to let you go.
 
I am writing a report, after all.”

And with that,
he gave me the hardest, most piercing kiss yet
.

“I meant what I
said to you yesterday,” he said when we broke away.
 
“I thought about it all night long.
 
Despite everything, we’re going to fall
in love,” he said.
 
“I know it
sounds crazy—but it’s going to happen.
 
You’ll see.”

When he left
with his coffee in hand and started to walk down the hall to his office, I just
stood there alone, my head whirling in the clouds.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

“Bergdorf,
please, my dear, sweet, darling Cutter,” Blackwell said as we left Wenn
Enterprises and started to walk across the sunny sidewalk toward a huge,
hulking man in a beautifully tailored black business suit.
 
He was impossibly attractive, with dark
hair, bright blue eyes, and a body that looked as if it had never missed a day
at the gym—likely going back to the day when he was in the womb.

“Hello, Ms.
Blackwell,” the man said.

“Really,
Cutter?
 
Ms. Blackwell?
 
Aren’t we beyond that at this
point?”
 
She gave him a kiss on each
cheek.
 
“You know that you are to
call me Barbara.
 
Or even ‘Mother’ if
you’d like, because that’s how deeply I feel about you.”
 

She placed the
palm of her hand against the side his sculpted cheek, and I had to admit that
it was nice seeing this other, softer side of her.
 
I’d spent the past week at Wenn, and
while she’d been nothing short of brutal to me, the people I met who knew her
intimately seemed to adore her for some reason, which suggested to me that this
woman was more far more complex than I imagined.
 

Would I ever
become one of those people?
 
The
jury was so far out on that, I didn’t even want to think about it.

“I’m still so
happy to have you back at Wenn,” she said to Cutter.
 
“I can’t even tell you.
 
For too long, it just wasn’t right
without you here.”

“Happy to be
here myself,” he said.
 

She gestured
toward me almost as if I were a second thought.
 
“This is Madison Wells, my new personal
assistant.”

“Good morning, Ms.
Wells.”

“Please, call
me Madison.”

“And I’m
Cutter.
 
Welcome to Wenn, Madison.”

“Don’t welcome
her so fast,” Blackwell said.
 
“I’m
still in decision mode.
 
She’s only
been here a week, and I’ve decided on nothing quite yet.
 
Who knows?” she said.
 
“By the end of next week, poor Madison
here might be flipping flapjacks at Flo’s Flip-and-Flop.”

“That can’t be
a real restaurant . . . ,” Cutter said.

“It likely is
somewhere in the South, but what do I know?
 
It was all about the alliteration, my
dear.
 
That’s all I was going for.”

And the fear
mongering
, I thought.

“So,” Cutter
said.
 
“Bergdorf’s?”

“Indeed.”

“Then let’s
go.
 
I know you don’t like to waste
time.”

“I loathe
it.
 
Just ask Madison.”

Cutter raised
his eyebrows at me.
 
He was standing
beside a chocolate-brown Rolls Royce, and when he opened the rear door for us,
I saw that the interior had only two seats in the back, each of which was lined
with sumptuous-looking dark-brown leather, with twin RRs embroidered on each
headrest in gold stitching.
 
Blackwell
motioned for me to step in first—likely so I would have to be the one to
haul my ass over the dividing console—and then she joined me in the seat
next to me.

“This is
amazing,” I said to her.

“What is?”

“This car.”

“You’re amazed
by a car?”

“I’ve never
been in anything like this.”

“Why would you
have?” she said.
 
“You’re from
Wisconsin.”

I took that one
for the team while she placed her bright red Hermès diamond crocodile Birkin at
her feet, something I knew from reading
Vogue
that went for a cool hundred
grand.
 
Coming from a fairly poor
family, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to adapt to this kind of luxury.
 
Who in the hell spent six figures on a bag?
 
It seemed like such an unnecessary waste
of money to me.
 
And who in the world
considered it nothing to ride in the back of a chauffeured Rolls Royce?
 
Was she serious?

But what is
money to any of these people?
I thought.
 
On
one level, it’s nothing.
 
But on
another, more profound level?
 
It’s
power.
 
She knows perfectly well
that she’s riding in a brand-new Rolls Royce.
 
She also knows what she’s carrying on
her arm.
 
And when it comes to the
Chanel suits she wears day after day?
 
Oh, she knows the power that they wield.

“Well,”
Blackwell said as she settled into her seat and Cutter shut her door.
 
“Now that I’m comfortable, I do have to
say that the car
is
rather something.
 
This is my first time in it.
 
I hear that it’s a Rolls Royce
Ghost—or Goblin.
 
Probably
Ghost, because Goblin likely wouldn’t market well.
 
But it’s something like that.
 
Alex purchased it for me a few days ago
in a way to recognize my small part in reinstating him as CEO and chairman of
the board at Wenn after a horrific period in our lives that you likely know
nothing about.”

In fact, I knew
exactly what she was talking about, though since I felt it was best to keep
that door closed—she’d just accuse me of prying otherwise—I kept it
to myself.

She patted her
bob.
 
“And just so you know,
Madison, one of the perks of being my personal assistant is that sometimes
you’ll get to ride in a car such as this, which just happens to have cost five hundred
thousand dollars.”

“Five hundred thousand
dollars?” I said as Cutter got into the driver’s seat.

“That’s
right.
 
But that’s nothing when it
comes to what Wenn can afford.
 
Believe me.
 
Still, I do
appreciate Alex’s gift.
 
The more I
look around, the more I like the car.
 
The seats are especially comfortable.
 
It is something, I suppose.”

Something?
 
And you only suppose?
 
Lady, I’ve read up on you.
 
I know that you came from a middle-class
family and that you fought your way to the top, so at the very least, you
should be out of your mind right now.
 
If I hadn’t done my research on you, I would have believed that you were
born with a silver spoon in your mouth, because only a fraction of the
population gets to ride in something as ridiculous as this—or carry a bag
like the one you’re carrying with you now.
 
When did you lose touch with reality?
 
When did you start taking any of this
for granted?

I knew that
there had to come a point for anyone who had long enjoyed the spoils of the
rich when they just took it for granted.
 
But that’s something I never could fathom.
 
And frankly, I didn’t want to consider
it, because if I did, if I ever turned out to be as successful as Blackwell was,
it would be a crime if I took any of this for granted.
 
It would change the fabric of the person
I was now—and only for the worse.

*
 
*
 
*

When we arrived
at Bergdorf, Cutter opened Blackwell’s door, she reached for the Birkin bag at
her feet, and then she exited the car without waiting for me to climb over the
console.
 
Instead, she just charged
toward the entrance while I hustled to keep up.

“Do come along,
Madison,” she said.
 
“Time wasted is
time lost.
 
When are you going to
learn that?”

I’m doing my
best, bitch.

“Chloe is my
go-to at Bergdorf,” she said as she reached inside her bag and removed her
iPhone.
 
“Although our relationship
has been nothing if not turbulent as of late, she does have an eye, and she
does understand criticism, so at the very least, I respect her for that.”

How kind of you.
. . .

With a few
quick clicks, she sent a text, shut down her phone, and dropped it back into
her bag.
 
“Texts,” she said.
 
“How I hate them, but I’ve since had no
choice but to give myself over to them.
 
It’s the culture now.
 
If
Chloe knows better, which she certainly should at this point, she’ll be here
within a matter of seconds to greet us, and to show us what Jennifer might
consider for Peachy’s party.
 
Not
that I haven’t already fed Chloe with a host of dresses I expect her to show
me.
 
And believe me—she’d
better have them at the ready too.”

Because God
know what will happen to her if she doesn’t. . . .

It was only a
moment before a beautiful middle-aged woman with blonde hair and a chic navy-blue
suit greeted us.

“Chloe,”
Blackwell said.
 
“How nice of you to
come so quickly.”

“It’s good to
see you, Ms. Blackwell.”

“Is it?”

“It is.”

“I have to
wonder since we do have a tense and questionable history. . . .”

“I was hoping
that after our last meeting, you were pleased by how things went.
 
That was certainly my impression.”

“Was it?”
Blackwell said.
 
“I wonder why that
is?
 
Never mind, Chloe.
 
This is Madison,” she said with a weak
wave of her hand at me.
 
“Madison
Wells
.
 
She’s my new personal assistant.
 
If things go well for her, she will be
the one picking up all of Jennifer’s tailored clothing for me from now on.
 
If things don’t go well for
her—and I must tell you, Chloe, that a dark cloud hovers over that
one—I’ll be introducing you to another young woman within a few weeks.”

Would she never
let up on me?

“Now,”
Blackwell said, “take me to the dresses I instructed you to have on hand for
Jennifer when I arrived today.
 
Time, as you can imagine, is tight.”

With her blonde
hair wrapped behind her head in a crisp chignon, I thought that Chloe was at
once elegant, beautiful, and somehow unfazed by Blackwell’s haughty
behavior.
 
Perhaps she was just used
to it, if that was even possible.

“If you’ll
follow me, I’ll take you to a private dressing area to show you the dresses you
selected for Jennifer to wear to Peachy’s party.”

“Do you have
all of them?”

“I do.”

“Well,”
Blackwell said.
 
“
Quelle
surprise.
”

“I must say
that this is one popular party,” Chloe said as she moved ahead of us.
 
“So many people are going.”

“Are you
handling any of those people personally?”

“Yes, of
course—it’s my job.
 
But what
you need to know is that I’ve since confirmed that the gowns you’ve chosen for
Jennifer are not yet on the market, and for twenty-four hours, they will only
be made available to Jennifer because of the press she’ll receive if she
chooses to wear one of them.
 
What
you’re about to see will set her apart from the rest for that reason.
 
For instance, the dress you were
especially excited about arrived yesterday from de la Renta.
 
Since I wanted to make certain that you
had a wealth of exclusives to choose from, I took the liberty of calling
several other designers who know for a fact that Jennifer can get them the kind
of press they need to sell their brand.
 
So, armed with that, I took a hard line with them and selected several
others dresses that are only available right now for you to consider.”

“Only for me,
Chloe?”

“Only for you,”
she said.
 

“Well,” she
said.
 
“What can I say?
 
I’m impressed by the effort.
 
Thank you.”

“Just to
reiterate, you have only today to make your decision.
 
If you pass on any dress, I am to
instruct each designer to make it available for sale.
 
Naturally, each designer is hopeful that
you will choose their dress, for obvious reasons.”

“Publicity,”
Blackwell said.
 
“And I have to give
it to you, Chloe—you did this on your own.
 
You’ve gone beyond the call, so I want
to be fair and let you know that you and I are on the upswing, my dear.
 
For me, this is you at your
best—assuming, of course, that the dresses you’ve chosen are worth a
damn.”