I’d been busy making connections the last few years, but my goal was to have a team of my own very soon, and someday maybe my own agency. My ultimate goal was to become the number-one realtor in the entire city. Last I checked, Kyle and I both teetered back and forth between the seventh and eight spots.
“Morning.” I smoothed my pencil skirt under my thighs and took a seat across from them. They both stopped talking and stared at me as I sat down, as if I’d just interrupted a very important conversation. “What’s this about?”
Brenda’s thin red lips danced into an excited grin as her gaze alternated between us. Kyle’s smirk and too-close proximity to Brenda instantly made my skin crawl. He was constantly pouring the charm on her, and I’d have killed to know if she saw through him. Part of me figured she lapped it up because she was a desperate woman who craved that sort of attention.
“We are courting a very high profile client,” she said. She smelled of excitement, money, unbridled ambition, and greed. She’d get to sit back and steal the glory while we did all the hustling. “I can’t tell you who it is, but he is wanting to interview two members of my team. My best. You two.”
She placed one manicured hand over mine and the other over Kyle’s. She was old enough to be our mother, and if she were, she’d have been the passive-aggressive, guilt-trip-inducing kind. Thank God she never had kids of her own.
“The meeting will be in two weeks,” she said. “You’re lunching at Butter. You’ll each sell yourselves and he’ll pick the person he feels will suit his needs best. I want you on your best behavior. Best clothing. Best presentation. A-game all the way.”
“Always,” Kyle said. I wanted to tell him to wipe the shit off his nose. Instead, I smiled.
“Do we know anything about him?” I asked.
“We know he’s a major, up-and-coming Manhattan real estate investor,” she said. “He has a lot of cash to spend and he wants to spend it quickly.”
“Do we have a name?” Kyle asked.
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “His assistant kept referring to him as Mr. Van Cleef of Van Cleef Investments. I tried looking up his company. They have a website, but I didn’t see anything about staff or an owner or anything. It’s a new company, though, and if we can make him happy, we’ll have a client for life. That’s my motto, guys—you know that.”
“Client for life!” Kyle jabbed his fist into the air triumphantly and Brenda smiled, only I knew he was half-mocking her.
He used to mock her all the time back when we were together, but I had enough wits about me not to badmouth my boss to the man I was sleeping with. He may have been ridiculously good-looking, like a walking talking J. Crew advertisement complete with a New England pedigree, but no one ever accused Kyle Maxwell of having common sense.
He raked his hand through his sandy blond hair and flashed his million-dollar smile at Brenda. His eyes, green and hazel like a fresh caramel apple, flashed with the kind of confidence he’d honed with years of practice. “Don’t worry, Bren, we got this.”
I cringed, remembering how charming I used to find him. Years ago, I was just a junior agent barely making a livable wage. Brenda took a chance on me and brought me on her team while Kyle took me under his wing. At first he treated me like a kid sister and called me “Addi.” I’d always hated that nickname, but it was different when he said it.
“What would we do without our Kyle?” I said with an undercurrent of facetiousness as I folded my hands in my lap and sat up straight. I plastered the fakest smile I could muster across my face as Brenda giggled like a schoolgirl as if being in Kyle’s mere presence was hilarious.
“Better bring it, Addi.” Kyle spoke to me, but his eyes never left Brenda’s. His left hand rested on the table, his titanium wedding band catching the glint of the late afternoon sun. I still couldn’t believe he was married.
My mentorship with Kyle years back had evolved into a relationship lasting just under two years. Our splendor in the grass had come to a screeching halt when I discovered he was sleeping with a select handful of his client; one of which he eventually married. From what I heard, she was old enough to be his mother.
Kyle was a shameless cougar hunter, and I was nothing more than his beard. And to think, all those times he’d held me late at night and told me he loved me and called me “Addi,” I’d thought I was in love.
Now he made me want to throw up a little in my mouth.
All I knew was that I never wanted to feel that way ever again, so I made a commitment to myself and to my job.
“All right, let’s get to work, you two,” Brenda said, winking at Kyle.
I hurried back to my office and fired up my computer. My cell phone buzzed in my pocket with a vaguely familiar looking number.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Addison.”
Oh, God, it was him. The voice that made me cream. I flew to my office door and practically slammed it shut. My heart raced and my face flushed as if the whole world knew what I’d done the night before.
“Why are you calling me, Wilder?” I whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” he whispered back, mocking me.
“I’m at work right now.”
“So am I.”
“Shouldn’t you be working?”
“Don’t you want to know why I’m calling?”
I did and I didn’t. In my heart of hearts, I knew what he wanted. “I told you, I can’t do whatever it is you want to do with me. It was a one-time thing.”