King of Wall Street: a sexy, standalone, contemporary romance (2 page)

“Yeah. Pastrami today.”

Donna pulled on her jacket. “I’ll walk with you. I need a break.” She grabbed her wallet and we made our way out into downtown New York. Of course, Max didn’t like any of the sandwich shops near the office. Instead we had to head five blocks northeast to Joey’s Café. At least it was sunny, and too early in the year for the humidity to make a trip to the deli feel like a midday hike along the streets of Calcutta.

“Hey, Donna. Hey, Harper,” Joey, the owner, called as we entered through the glass door. The deli was exactly the opposite of the type of place where I’d expect Max to order his lunch. It was very clearly a family-owned place that hadn’t seen a remodeling since the Beatles were together. In here there was nothing of the slick, modern, ruthless persona that made up Max King.

“How’s the bossman?” Joey asked.

“Oh, you know,” Donna said. “Working too hard, as usual. What was his order, Harper?”

“Pastrami on rye. Extra pickle.” Nothing like passive-aggressive revenge.

Joey raised his eyebrows. “Extra pickle?” Jesus, of course Joey knew Max’s preferences.

“Okay.” I winced. “No pickle.”

Donna elbowed me. “And I’ll have a turkey salad on sourdough,” she said, then turned to me. “Let’s eat in and we can talk.”

“Make that two,” I said to Joey.

The deli had a few tables, all with mismatched chairs. Most customers took their orders to go, but today I was grateful for a few extra minutes out of the office. I followed Donna as she led us to one of the back tables.

“Extra pickle?” she asked, grinning.

“I know.” I sighed. “That was childish. I’m sorry. I just wish he wasn’t such a . . . ”

“Tell me what happened.”

I gave her the rundown on our meeting—his irritation that I hadn’t spoken to his contact at the WTO, the lecture about typos, his lack of appreciation for any of my hard work.

“Tell Max the Yankees deserved all they got this weekend,” Joey said as he placed our order in front of us, sliding two cans of soda onto the melamine surface, even though we’d not ordered any drinks. Did Joey talk baseball with Max? Had they even met?

“I’ll tell him,” Donna said, smiling, “but he might move his business elsewhere if I do. You know how touchy he is when the Mets do well.”

“He’s going to have to get used to it this season. And I’m not worried about losing him. He’s been coming here for over a decade.”

Over a decade?

“You know what he’d say to that?” Donna asked, unwrapping the waxed-paper parcel in front of her.

“Yeah, yeah, never take your customers for granted.” Joey headed back behind the counter. “You know what always shuts him up?” he asked over his shoulder.

Donna laughed. “When you tell him to come back after his business has lasted three generations and is still going?”

Joey pointed at Donna. “You got it.”

“So Max has been coming here a long time, huh?” I asked as Joey turned back to the counter to tend to the line of people that had built up since we’d arrived.

“Since I’ve been working for him. And that’s nearly seven years.”

“A creature of habit. I get that.” There wasn’t much spontaneous about Max from what I’d seen.

Donna cocked her head. “More a huge sense of loyalty. As this area built up and lunch places opened up on every corner, Joey’s business took a bit of a hit. Max has never gone anywhere else. He’s even brought clients here.”

Donna’s description jarred with the cold egomaniac I encountered in the office. I bit into my sandwich.

“He can be challenging and demanding and a pain in the ass, but that’s a big part of what’s made him successful.”

I wanted to be successful but still a decent human being. Was I naïve to think that was possible on Wall Street?

Donna pressed the top layer of bread down onto the turkey with her fingertips, pushing the layers together. “He’s not as bad as you think he is. I mean, if he’d said your report was good to go, what would you have learned?” She picked up her sandwich. “You can’t expect to get it all right your first time. And the stuff about the typos—was he wrong?” She took a bite, and waited for me to answer.

“No.” I bit the inside of my lip. “But you have to admit, his delivery sucks.” I pulled out a piece of my turkey from under the sourdough and put it in my mouth. I’d worked so hard; I’d expected some kind of recognition for that.

“Sometimes. Until you’ve proved yourself. But once you have, he’ll back you completely. He gave me this job knowing I was a single mother, and he’s made sure I’ve never missed a game, event, or PTA meeting.” She cracked open a can of soda. “When my daughter got chicken pox just after I started working here, I came into the office anyway. I’ve never seen him so mad. When he spotted me, he marched me out of the building and sent me home. I mean, my mom was looking after her, she was fine, but he insisted I stay home until she was back in school.”

I swallowed. That didn’t sound like the Max I knew.

“He’s a really good guy. He’s just focused and driven. And he takes his responsibility to his employees seriously—especially if they have potential.”

“I don’t see him taking his responsibility to not be a condescending asshole very seriously.”

Donna chuckled. “You’re there to learn, to get better. And he’s going to teach you, but just saying you did a good job isn’t going to help you.”

I grabbed a napkin from the old-fashioned dispenser at the edge of the table and wiped the corner of my mouth. How had today helped me other than wrecking my confidence completely?

“If you had known how today’s meeting would play out, what would you have done differently?” Donna asked.

I shrugged. I’d done good work, but he’d refused to acknowledge it.

“Come on. You can’t tell me you’d do things exactly the same.”

“Okay, no. I would have printed out the sources and brought them into the meeting.”

Donna nodded. “Good. What else?” She took another bite of her sandwich.

“I would have probably tried Max’s contact at the WTO a few more times—maybe emailed him. I could have tried harder to pin him down. And I could have sent the whole thing to proofreading.” We had an overnight service, but because I’d worked late on it, I’d missed the deadline to send it. I should have made sure it was ready in time.

I glanced up from picking apart my sandwich. “I’m not saying I didn’t learn anything. I just thought he’d be nicer. I’ve wanted to work with him a long time. I just didn’t imagine I’d fantasize about punching him in the face quite so often.”

Donna laughed. “That, Harper, is what having a boss means.”

Okay, I could accept that Max was nice to Donna, and Joey, by the looks of things. But he wasn’t nice to me. Which only made everything worse. What had I ever done to him? Was I being singled out for special treatment? Yes, my report could be improved, but despite what Donna said, I hadn’t deserved the reaction I got. He could have thrown me a bone.

Now that my expectations of working with Max were well and truly shattered, I had to concentrate on getting what I could from the experience and moving on. I’d go through my report and make it perfect. I’d take everything I could from working for King & Associates, make a ton of contacts, and then after two years I’d be well placed to set up on my own, or go and work directly for a bank.

* * * * *

How I’d talked my best friend, Grace, into moving me into my new apartment, I had no idea. Growing up on Park Avenue, she wasn’t raised for manual labor.

“What’s in here, a dead body?” she asked, a sheen of sweat on her forehead catching the light in the elevator.

“Yeah, my last best friend.” I tipped my head toward the old pine blanket box at our feet and the last thing in the truck. “There’s room for another.” I laughed.

“There’d better be wine in the refrigerator.” Grace fanned her face. “I’m not used to being this physical with my clothes on.”

“You see, then you should be grateful. I’m expanding your horizons,” I replied with a grin. “Showing you how us ordinary gals live.”

I’d been staying with Grace since I got to New York from Berkeley almost three months ago. She’d been fantastically understanding when my mother shipped all my things to her apartment in Brooklyn, but now that I was making her help me move everything into my new place, her patience was running out. “And I’m too poor for a refrigerator. And wine.” The rent on my studio was horrific. But it was in Manhattan and that was all I cared about. I wasn’t about to be a New Yorker who lived in Brooklyn. I wanted to milk this experience for everything it was worth, so I’d sacrificed space for location—a small Victorian building on the corner of Rivington and Clinton in Lower Manhattan. The buildings on either side were covered with graffiti, but this place had been recently refurbished and I’d been assured it was full of young professionals, being so close to Wall Street. Professional what? Hitmen?

“It’s going to be . . . cozy,” Grace said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to ask about the one bedroom across the hall from me?”

My apartment at Berkeley had been at least twice the size of my new place. Grace’s place in Brooklyn was a palace in comparison, but I was okay with small. “I’m sure. It’s all part of the New York experience, isn’t it?”

“So are roaches, but you don’t have to seek them out. The idea is to avoid them.” Grace was the person who tried to make everyone else’s lives a little bit better, and that was one of the reasons I loved her.

“Yeah, but I want to be in the center of things. Besides, there’s a gym in the basement, so I’m saving money there. And on the commute. I can walk to work from here. Hell, I can practically see the office from my bedroom window.”

“I thought you hated work. Wouldn’t it be better to be further away?” she asked as the elevator pinged open at my floor.

I reached for the bottom of the wooden box. “I don’t hate work. I hate my boss.”

“The hot one?” Grace asked.

“Can you pick up your end?” I asked. I didn’t want to be reminded about my boss’s score on the hot-o-meter. I stuck out my leg to try to stop the closing elevator doors. “Crap. Have you got it?” We lurched forward, turning left toward my apartment door.

“We need a man for this shit,” Grace said as I struggled with my keys.

“We need men for sex and foot rubs,” I replied. “We can carry our own furniture.”

“In the future,
you
can carry
your
furniture. I’ll find a man.”

I opened the door and we slid the box into the living space. “Just leave it here until I decide whether or not it should go at the end of the bed.”

“Where’s that wine you promised me?” Grace pushed past me and collapsed on my small two-seater couch.

Despite my protestations, the only things my refrigerator
did
contain were two bottles of wine and a slab of parmesan cheese.

“What were you saying about your hot boss? I thought you’d changed religion to the Church of King while you were at Berkeley. What’s changed?”

I handed Grace a glass of wine, sat down, and kicked off my sneakers. I didn’t want to think about Max or the way he made me feel so inadequate, so out of place and uncomfortable. “I think I need to update my work wardrobe.” The more I thought about what I’d worn for my meeting with Max, the more I realized I must stick out like a sore thumb against all the Max Mara and Prada of Wall Street.

“You look fine. You’re always super polished. Are you trying to impress your hot boss?”

I rolled my eyes. “That would be impossible. He’s the most arrogant man you’ll ever meet. Nothing’s ever good enough.”

My conversation with Donna at lunch yesterday had temporarily dampened my fury at Max, but it was back in full swing today. He might be the best at what he did and look so hot you’d get a tan if you stood too close, but that didn’t excuse his assholyness. But I wasn’t about to let him beat me. I hated him. Determined to show him he had me wrong, I’d brought home the Bangladesh report to work on over the weekend. A lot of the comments he’d made indicated he knew much more about the textile industry in Bangladesh than I did, even after my research. Had this whole project just been a test? Whether it was or not, I was going to spend the rest of the weekend making my work the best thing he’d ever seen.

“Nothing’s ever good enough?” Grace asked. “Sounds familiar.”

“I might be a bit of a perfectionist, but I’ve got nothing on this guy. Believe me. I worked my heart out on a piece of work he gave me, and then he just ripped it to shreds. He had nothing good to say about it at all.”

“Why are you letting it bother you? Shrug it off.”

Why
wouldn’t
I let it bother me? I wanted to be good at my job. I wanted Max to see I was good at my job.

“But I worked really hard on it and it was a good piece of work. He’s an asshole.”

“So? If he’s a total wanker then why does his opinion count for anything?” Grace had lived in the US since she was five, but she still retained some key Britishisms from her family. Her use of wanker was one of my favorites. Especially as it suited Max King perfectly.

“I’m not saying it matters. Just that I’m pissed about it.” Except that it did matter, however much I denied it.