His face softened automatically as he followed my gaze. “Stacy. She’s a middle school teacher—we’ve been together six years.” The smile lingered as he pushed up his glasses and settled behind his chair. “Now, do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
I sank into a chair across from him, stiff with guilt. Where did I begin? Was that to be my first and last meeting at Larchwood? Had I blown it already? Maybe I should have taken Michael up on that wink.
“Katie’s not coming,” I began quietly. Despite his kind demeanor, I was having trouble meeting his eyes.
“Uh-huh, yeah, I guessed that.” He was trying not to laugh. “Want to tell me why?”
Just relax, Jen. You deserve this. No matter how you did it, you deserve to be here.
I lifted my chin and tried for that blast of confidence that had gotten me in the door. “She couldn’t take the pressure. Said she hated finance. Her fiancé left her and she was headed back to California.” I paused, editing, and wondering how much to admit. Jamie seemed like a good guy, but he was established here while I…was an imposter by every definition of the word. “I met her in the bathroom on her way out. I was on my way in.”
He studied me over the tops of his glasses and my heart froze in my chest. He may have a fresh, youthful air about him, but he was a shark just like the rest. You had to be if you worked in a place like this.
“You were on your way in to do what?”
I gulped. “To interview for an assistant’s position with Patti Macer. She asked if I was her help from California and I…”
“…you just did what any of the rest of us would do.”
My head snapped up, and I saw his eyes were sparkling. “Jenna, right?” I nodded. “Jenna, I’m the inter-office liaison—you know what that means?”
I nodded again. It meant that he had risen impossibly fast to a position of great importance considering his age. It also meant he had the power to fire me.
“Where did you go to school?”
The question surprised me, and my resume—which I’d been chanting to myself for the last four weeks—rose to the surface of my brain.
“Princeton, then Harvard Business School. Followed by an eighteen-month internship with Goldman Sachs.”
“You left Goldman Sachs,” he looked surprised, “why?”
I looked him evenly in the eyes. “Because I want to work here.”
Even though it was clear my feminine charms wouldn’t work on a guy so happily taken; I could tell my soft-spoken honesty moved him. He studied me another moment before suddenly asking,
“How did China open in the market today?”
“Hong Kong or Shanghai?”
His mouth twitched. “Both.”
“Up eight and up seven, respectively.”
“What was Larchwood’s total net gain last quarter?”
“Four point seven. Best in nine years.”
“And the Central American dropout?”
“Due mostly to experimental weather patterns and some bad Shakira concerts, nothing worth noting.”
His eyes sparkled again. “And why do you want to work here?”
“Because this is as big as it gets.” It was impossible to keep the hunger from my voice. “I want this, I’m qualified, and I know I can handle it.”
There was a brief pause at the end of this statement. He regarded me quietly for a moment before logging into his computer. I leaned forward slightly in my chair even though the screen was pointed away from me. Was he alerting security? Throwing me from the building?
“Katie McGill no longer exists in our records. As far as myself, and the rest of the company is concerned, you are exactly where you’re supposed to be.”