Sheikh's Hired Mistress (12 page)

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning!”

“No you will not!” Aziz shouted.

“Do you plan to keep me here in chains?” Laine demanded. “Do you plan to slap me around like you do your brother?”

“I—” Aziz sputtered. “Of course not! I would never, Laine. I lo— But you mustn’t go. Not
yet
. I can arrange—”

“This isn’t about making
arrangements
anymore. It’s about taking risks and making choices.” Laine sighed. “I’ll make sure that your renovations progress at a good pace. I’ll keep this professional, if you promise to do the same.”

Aziz stared at her for a moment, his usually affable expression growing harsher and colder by the second.

“Go then. Go wallow in obscurity. Go back to your lonesome life,” he hissed.

Laine took a breath and leveled her gaze at him. “I’ll get a cat.”

Chapter Thirteen

Though it had never bothered her before, two days back in New York and Laine realized that the city was a cold, small place. The shops were cramped and the doorways low. At five-nine, she felt towering and gawky again, and felt her hair brushing the top of the doorway into her apartment building. Having been so consumed by work, Laine had never considered that part of the reason she didn’t want to go out every weekend was that she didn’t
fit
very well.

Laine couldn’t regret choosing to come back, though. Although she missed him already, she couldn’t force Aziz to want something more with her, and the leniency that Mr. Brandt had extended to her was stretched to the breaking point. He hadn’t seemed all that pleased when she’d returned to her office, either, even though his portion of Aziz’s account could probably put his degenerate son through college.

But she’d given up on expecting anything that resembled gratitude or loyalty from him. She’d also given up on seeming anything other than coldly professional in the office. The tension was not something she was wild about, but it was inevitable for the moment. Half of her coworkers thought she should’ve been fired, and half seemed to be in awe of the work she’d been doing on the palace—and the money that had come flooding in as a result. Rumors about how she had been luring in clients had been floating around the office like a malignancy; the results of this were also mixed. She’d expected that video of her dancing with Aziz would be nothing but trouble, but apparently it had raised some people’s estimation of her.

Her first weekend back, after a long week of fighting to get things done in the office, Laine decided to drive upstate to see her father rather than wither in her apartment, missing the warm sun and Aziz’s warm arms.

“Well, babydoll, you look great!” Greg set a cup of tea in front of his eldest daughter and sat down across the little table from her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen ya this tan! Emma, maybe, but she sprays that on, right?”

“She does. She wants to protect her skin from aging.” Laine wrapped her fingers around the mug of tea and remembered Hadiya’s delectable coffee. She wondered if the young woman would mind a call from one of her brother’s exes. Hadiya had seemed upset when she’d learned Laine was leaving. “I did wear sunscreen when we were out, but it only helped so much.”

“I’m not criticizing. It looks great.” Greg patted her leg. “But you don’t look too happy to be here.”

“I
am
, Dad! I missed you! I know, I didn’t get to call you as often when I was in Bahrain—”

“Nah, I don’t mean here with me. You’ve just looked and sounded kinda down since you’ve been back.” He shrugged and sipped his tea. “Must’ve been that buzz you get when you’ve got a really meaty thing to dig your teeth into at work, huh?”

“Meaty thing.” Laine bobbed her head in agreement.

“Well, that job’s not totally finished, is it? You’ll be back to check on the work?”

“I will…if Aziz asks. But I’ll be doing a lot from New York for the time being.” Laine ran the tip of her finger over the lip of the mug. “I
will
miss it, though.”

“You didn’t burn the place down. You could go back sometime. Even not for work.” He laughed. “Not that it’s your style, or mine, but I hear you can just go out sometimes. Just to enjoy yourself.”

“I can’t help if I’m driven.” Laine tried to relax her shoulders and sit back. “I don’t know. It’s just been different since I’ve been back. Before, I’d jump at any chance Mr. Brandt gave me. I’d take on so many accounts that I could barely breathe. Now, I’m not that motivated to line his pockets. I want something that
excites
me.”

“Nothing wrong with that. It’s good to be fulfilled by your work. I loved being a teacher. They had to practically take me out of the school building in a wheelbarrow.”

“Fulfilling doesn’t pay the bills.”

Greg waved his hand. “You girls are both so damn self-sufficient. You’ve got two retirement accounts. I trust you’ll figure it out. You’ve juggled everything else. You can juggle a career with being happy.”

Laine thought about that as her dad got up and went into the kitchen to check on the cookies he’d insisted on baking (after exclaiming as he always did that she looked thin, which she never believed). It felt so bizarre. After having tasted something different, her old life now seemed sour to her. Being home with her dad felt right. But nothing else did.

***

The next day, Laine went out to the Museum of Modern Art and took in the general collections, as well as a local exhibition from an ongoing program for New York teenagers interested in art. Before, she’d avoided going out and doing things in the city, simply because of having no one to go with and too much work to do.

After her weekend, Laine came into the office feeling refreshed and inspired. She’d filled her calendar with events in New York, as well as a few day trips to the surrounding area, which she had taken some time to scout out and research online. It was a skill she’d honed for her clients but never used for herself. She needed something to look forward to. She needed a fuller life.

From that point, Laine went easy on the newest temps, kept her replies to Richard and Joel curt—the younger man always looked vaguely like he was about to wet himself when she was around—and did her work to her peak ability. Then she went home and focused on other things.

Mr. Brandt called her into his office two weeks after her return to New York. He raked his eyes over her outfit, a blend of her former office glory with a scarf selected by Hadiya, and gestured for her to take a seat.

Laine sat and followed him with her eyes as he strolled around his desk, not sitting himself. It was such an obnoxious power move, to have her sit while he stood. She kept her back straight and folded her hands casually in her lap.

“Laine, we need to talk about your recent work,” he said finally.

Laine raised a brow. “Is there a problem? My work hasn’t declined in quality.”

“Of course not,” Mr. Brandt said, a bit unsettled by her confidence.

Laine stroked her index finger over the back of her left hand and tilted her head back, examining him. Mr. Brandt ran his hands over the front of his suit and sat at his desk.

“It’s the
quantity
, my dear. It’s the diminishing vigor with which you are taking on new accounts, and how many you have
not
taken on.”

“I have a reasonable workload,” Laine said, keeping her tone even. “I have as many clients right now as Adrien or Joel. More than Joel, actually. He’s gotten fired from two accounts. If I understand correctly, Richards had to take the Madison account from him. We almost lost it.”

Mr. Brandt made a noise in his throat. “You used to take on a lot more. You seem to be slowing down, dear.”

“I believe my clients would say that the work I’m doing for them is both timely and excellent.” Laine squared her shoulders. “I might not be taking as many clients as I did before, but I’ve brought in
so many
accounts to this firm, and ones with such deep pockets, I think that it’s time for someone else to step up. It isn’t as though you really want my hands on your best accounts anyway.”

“You are taking things very personally,” he said with a shake of his head. “This is business, Laine, pure and simple.”

Laine felt her face growing warm and remembered something Aziz had once told her.

“Everything is personal, Mr. Brandt. Americans love to cut our lives into pieces and pretend that we are impartial and infallible, but it’s just a lie that makes it easier to do want we wanted to do in the first place.” She shrugged. “It’s
intensely
personal that you don’t give me credit for the work I’ve done, and it is
incredibly
irrational
of you to turn down the amount of money I could bring you if I had proper support.”

Mr. Brandt started to turn red. “Miss McConnell—”

“I’m not a little girl. I’m a woman who graduated at the top of her class at Parsons and was hand-selected by a sheikh of Bahrain to decorate his palatial home.”

“Yes, and I have heard of how you were ‘hand-selected,’” Mr. Brandt said, almost pleased at the turn of phrase.

Laine paused. She pursed her lips, giving him a long stare, and his amusement turned to discomfort.

“You have known me long enough to know that a dance and a few rumors have little to do with how I conduct myself professionally.” Laine clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Even now, I expected better of you than to participate in petty gossip. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded so much that you disregarded me if I hadn’t had so much
faith
in you as a businessman. I truly expected, for longer than I should have, that working hard here would get me somewhere. It hasn’t. So I have chosen to do good work
and
to have a life.”

“If you want to continue to do any work here, you can’t expect to shirk your duties!” Mr. Brandt slapped the table angrily.

“You expect me to do ten times the work of everyone else, with none of the credit and half of the pay! And you expect me to do it with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, or I have somehow failed.” Laine stood and put her hands on her hips. “I once saw working here as a stepping stone, but now I see that you have simply caught my ankle in a trap, and you expect me to be grateful for it!”

“You cannot speak to your boss like that!”

“I’m not. I quit.”

Walking out of his office wasn’t quite as satisfying as nearly breaking Amin’s arm, but it was up there in her top life experiences. Especially since her coworkers had apparently been listening, and a few of the temps were trying to hold back scandalized laughter.

“Tamara, could you get me a box, please? I need to pack up my office,” Laine asked one of them pleasantly.

Maybe being a free agent was too much of a risk. There was a chance she wouldn’t be able to get enough clients on her own to make it work or that the rumors spreading about her had spread too far already. But Laine decided, as she carefully set her pictures into the box, that this was the only reasonable way to end her time here. She’d paid her dues and then some, and she had simply outgrown this place. She wasn’t going to win back her reputation with the measly support she received here.

On her way out, Mr. Brandt had a security guard follow her. She rolled her eyes so hard that she might have sprained them. The guard helped her by carrying an extra box and left her once she was at her car in the parking garage below the building. She packed her things into the back as she hatched her plans for the next few days.

“Hey, Lainey.”

She looked up to see Adrian Ramos waving a thick, leather-bound contact book in front of her face.

“What is that?” she asked. “And what are you doing with the black sheep of the interior decorating world?”

“If you’re looking for company, it’s a list of potential leads that aren’t signed with Brandt Interiors yet.” Ramos flicked his shoulder-length hair back. “If you’re not, I’m out for a smoke.”

Laine crossed her arms and leaned back against her car as she looked at the contact book.

“How do you have that ready? I didn’t even know I was going to quit until today.”

Ramos shrugged. “I think about quitting every time I’m in the room with that fossil of sexism and idiocy. And I can’t say I wouldn’t jump at the chance to have
your
creative brain on board when I get my own company rolling.”

Laine reached for the book and flipped through it. Of all the people at Brandt Interiors, she had hated working with Ramos the least. Probably because he was so damn meticulous that he actually liked doing the paperwork, and while he had a lot of ideas himself, he was quite good at collaborating and listening to the ideas of others.

“Not that you need it, but juggling a new start up is infinitely easier with help, a place to meet, and clients to start from,” Ramos said, ticking each item off on well-manicured fingers. “Not to mention that my record in client relations is utterly impeccable.”

Laine narrowed her eyes at him and dissected him visually for any sign of derision or judgment. Ramos quirked his mouth to the side and shrugged. He knew what others were saying. And he was only mentioning it now, clearly, because he wanted a yes out of her. He wanted an out from this company too.

“Go,” she ordered. “Make it official. We don’t want any bleed between working for him and official meetings for whatever this will be. We can talk over lunch.” Laine fanned herself with the contact book. “And probably a margarita.”

Ramos chuckled. “You and me both. I know just the place.”

Chapter Fourteen

Of all the things Laine had expected for her life, being technically unemployed and working out of an arthouse/coffee shop owned by the boyfriend of her bisexual business partner had not been one of them. Actually, she’d always expected to be promoted within Brandt Interiors or scouted by a larger company eventually, and for her life to be essentially the same as always, only with better perks.

Now she was listening to some indie song she’d never heard while Ramos flirted with his silver fox of a boyfriend at the register. He returned with a couple of free refills on their lattes, and the two of them got down to work.