Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (80 page)

“I was doing creative work with Remi, and
I really enjoyed that.”

He smiled.
 
“I understand you enjoyed it, Nicole,
but unfortunately she didn’t enjoy it quite as much as you did.”

***

Red asked Nicole to meet him for lunch in
the cafeteria, which she did, even though she knew all eyes would be on them.

When she first saw her fiancé standing
and waiting for her at the entrance to the lunchroom, she wanted to throw
herself into his arms and cry.
 
She
felt like a little kid who’s had a terrible day at school.

“Hi,” he said, smiling at her as she
walked toward him.

“Hi.”
 
She tried to put her best, most
convincing smile on in return.

“That bad?” he asked, reaching out and
lightly touching her arm.
 
Of course
he could see right through her act.

She nodded but kept smiling.
 
“Shall we?”

“But of course.”
 

They walked together.
 
Luckily, it was early for lunch, so
there weren’t all that many people eating yet.
 
Still, even with the few employees in
the cafeteria, there were plenty of eyes following them.
 

Nicole could feel it sometimes,
especially as they walked past.
 
People pretended not to notice, and then as soon as her back was to
them, she felt them staring.
 
Occasionally she turned and caught someone in the act.

It was almost humorous, except it
wasn’t.
 
Not really.

Red got them both special meals from the
Italian kitchen.
 
Chicken Marsala
for him, Chicken Cacciatore for her.
 
“You won’t be disappointed,” he told her, as they took a window seat in
a somewhat secluded area of the cafeteria.

He unfolded his napkin and laid it across
his lap, then dug into his meal with gusto.

Nicole hardly had an appetite, but she
picked at her food so as not to upset him.

“How do you feel about seeing your new
home tonight?” he asked, looking up briefly from his food.

“Nervous.
 
But mostly excited.”
 
It was true, she was excited.
 
Unfortunately, she’d barely thought
about the good things happening since that disappointing meeting with Edward.

Red sensed her uneasiness and put his
knife and fork down.
 
“Okay.
 
What now?”

“Don’t be annoyed with me,” she said
softly.

“I’m not annoyed, I’m concerned.
 
What’s going on?”

She told him about the meeting with
Edward and he leaned back in his chair, shaking his head when she
finished.
 
“I’m sorry that the
creative team is choosing to handle things this way.”

“Please don’t intervene on my behalf,”
she told him.

Red grinned.
 
“How did you know I would?”

“I know you.
 
Or, I know how you behave when you’re
challenged.”

“I won’t stand for ill treatment of the
woman I love.”

Nicole smiled despite herself.
 
“I can take care of myself.
 
I need to prove to them that I can
handle whatever they throw at me.”

“I like your attitude.”
 
He started eating again.

“They want to run me out of the group,”
she said.
 
“Don’t they?”

“Yes.”
 

“But they know they can’t fire me or
overtly sabotage me, so they’re going to try and freeze me out and make things
miserable enough that I quit.”

Red, nodded, dabbing his mouth with his
napkin.
 
His dark eyes met hers and
for a moment she didn’t care about any of the workplace drama.
 
She only cared about him, about pleasing
him, making him happy in every way.
 

“You’re getting some hard lessons,
Nicole,” he said.
 
“And it hurts me
that I’m the cause of it.”

“You’re not doing anything wrong.”
 
She speared a piece of chicken and thought
about eating it.
 
“I need to toughen
up.
 
And I will toughen up.”

“You’re plenty tough,” Red said.
 
He reached across the little table and
covered her hand with his.

She looked up into his eyes.
 
“People are going to regret messing with
me.”

He smiled.
 
“That’s the spirit.”

***

The rest of the day, Nicole worked at a
furious pace.
 
Edward was throwing
all kinds of things at her.
 
He had
incredibly complicated project timelines that he needed to have mapped out with
Jameson International’s timeline software.
 
She’d never used any of it before, and it was complicated and not very
intuitive.

So she sat at her desk with the software
manual open next to her and spent hours reading it, then trying to work on
little pieces of Edward’s timelines he’d given her to update and reorganize.

He’d also tasked her with completely
reorganizing their file structure on the network.
 
The creative group had a large set of
folders on the company’s intranet, and these folders had been set up years ago
when the company was much smaller.
 
As a result, it had grown cumbersome to navigate and find things.
 

Nothing was in order.

Remi’s folders, in particular, were
disastrous.
 
She was a virtual pack
rat.
 
There were files from five
years ago full of old ad campaign material: pictures, ad copy, contracts, all
sorts of things.
 

Nicole got a bit of a start on
reorganizing the file structure, but she needed to map it out first.
 
If she wasn’t careful, she could make
things worse and lose valuable material.
 

Near the end of the day, Edward had three
long meetings in a row, and he brought Nicole with him to each one.
 
She had to take in depth notes on
subjects and topics that were very unfamiliar to her.
 

It didn’t help that everyone in these
meetings spoke very quickly and used jargon she wasn’t familiar with.
 
They discussed other companies she’d
never heard of.
 
There were people
conferenced in and she didn’t know who they were.
 
Some of them had thick foreign accents
and she could hardly make out a word they said.

It didn’t matter.
 
Edward was throwing her in the deep end
and betting that she’d sink.
 
She
was determined not to, determined to prove to Edward and Remi and anyone else
betting against her that she was much stronger and tougher than they’d given her
credit for.

Finally, mercifully, the last meeting of
the day was over.
  
Edward
turned to her.
 
“You’ll have all of
the meeting minutes to me first thing tomorrow morning?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll look them over and then we need to
send them out to all of the participants, and copy upper management.”

“Absolutely,” she nodded.

He didn’t say anything else, just walked
away from her.
 
No “good job today,”
no “thanks for your effort,” nothing.
 
She’d been busting her ass for him all day and would continue to do so,
and Edward wasn’t going to give her any positive feedback at all.

She closed her laptop and walked back to
her desk, feeling liked she’d already aged ten years.
 
Her hands were sore from so much typing
and her brain was fried from trying to learn and take in so much new
information.
 

 
She called Red from her office phone and
he answered promptly.
 
“Are you
ready to take the next step?”
 

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Good.
 
Let’s meet in the lobby.”

“The lobby?
 
Everyone will be watching us.”

“So?
 
I don’t care what everyone else does.”

Nicole got off the phone and readied
herself for the next chapter of this bizarre journey.
 
Before going down to the lobby, she went
to the bathroom to freshen up, and on the way out, her cell rang.
 

She looked at the number.
 
It was her parents’ home number.

“Shit.”
 
She debated answering or not answering,
finally decided to take the call. She couldn’t hide from them forever.
 

“Nicole?” her mother’s voice piped.

Shit.
 
If it at least could have been her
father who was on the line—Nicole could deal with him.
 

“Hi, mom.
 
What’s up?”

Her mother sounded like she was chewing
something.
 
Probably eating some
healthy snack.
 
“How are you?” she
asked.
 
“How are things?”

“Fine, mom.
 
Busy.”

“I’m sure.
 
Yes.”

Long pause.

“Everything okay?” Nicole said.

“Your father and I have been talking
about everything that’s happened since you moved to New York City.
 
And especially, we talked about the
party on Sunday and Red’s proposing to you.”
 
More chewing, as her mother seemed to
want to make this as drawn out and painful a conversation as possible.
 

“Okay…” Nicole said, waiting for the
inevitable shoe to drop.

“We’re just concerned about how fast this
is all moving.
 
Have the two of you
discussed a wedding date yet?”

“Not just yet, mom.
 
But I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve
settled on something.”

Chew.
 
Chew.
 
Chew.
 
It was maddening.

“Maybe you should make this a long
engagement,” her mother said.
 
“Put
the wedding out two years.”

Nicole laughed softly.
 
“That’s a little too far off, mom.”

“You two are still getting to know each
other.
 
He seems like a very nice
man, but…complicated.
 
Don’t you
think?”

“I love him and he loves me.”

“I’m sure that’s how it feels right
now.
 
As if everything is so simple,
cut and dry.
 
But the fact
is—“

“The fact is, it’s my life and my
decisions.”

“No need to jump down my throat,
Nicky.
 
I’m being supportive.”

“This is not being supportive,” Nicole
said.
 
“You’re trying to undermine
my confidence with your little digs about our relationship.”

“Now wait just a minute,” her mother said
sharply.
 
“I didn’t come on here and
tell you all the comments we got from people around town, about the reporters
who took pictures of our home and made fun of us.
 
It hurt your father deeply to have our
home laughed at and mocked in the news.”

“The Rag is not a news site, mom.
 
It’s tabloid crap.
 
Nobody cares what they say on that
website.
 
It’s all vicious gossip.”

“Maybe you don’t care.
 
Maybe Red Jameson doesn’t care, because
he courts the attention and publicity.
 
But your father and I don’t want to be ridiculed for living a simple
life.”

“I’m sorry that it happened, mom.
 
If I’d have known, we never would have
come to the house.”

“So now you’re with a man who you can’t
even be seen with in public, without fear of what the news will print about you
the next day.
 
What kind of life is
that, Nicole?
 
Do you think you can
be happy living this way?”

“Mom, I need to go.”

“Think about what I said.
 
I love you, your father loves
you—“

“Love you too.”
 
She hung up and dropped her cell back in
her purse, wishing it would just burst into flames.
 
That phone had caused her more than
enough grief to last a lifetime already.

As she made her way to the elevator and
then the lobby, Nicole thought how amazing it was that her mom knew just what buttons
to press to make her feel diminished and hopeless.