The only solace in her unfortunate scenario, as I leaned against my desk, watching her pull herself up on unsteady feet, was that I didn’t laugh.
Then again, I didn’t spare her the humiliation because I liked her. I hadn’t moved to help her up for a different reason.
I was hard as a stone, and moving would have given that away.
“You failed your first lesson at balance. Big surprise.”
“You’re failing at life, Rexroth!” She galloped out of my office, her face red with humiliation.
I rearranged my package as soon as she left and shot a text message to Sonya.
Edie Van Der Zee had started to feel like an itch. Luckily, I was going to scratch her out of my life first thing tomorrow morning.
And then the morning arrived. It was the kind that reminded me why I fucking hated talking to people. One where everything was chaotic, everybody was loud, and everyone was on my ass, firing questions, begging for attention, and asking for shit.
“Mr. Rexroth, you have the Duran-Dexter file on your desk. Can you sign it for me?”
“Trent, you have a conference call at three.”
“Can you go to a charity event in Palo Alto next week? Someone needs to, and Jaime is too busy with Mel and the new baby.”
“Trent—why is Luna here?”
“Rexroth—are we still on for drinks on Saturday?”
“Rexroth.”
“Hey, T-Rex!”
“Trent, darling…”
I came to a stop in the middle of the hallway, ignoring the throng of colleagues, and squatted down to Luna’s eye-level, my voice rusty from lack of talking. She was clutching Camila’s hand, a faraway look in her eyes. Dragging her into the office with me every Tuesday was a terrible idea, but Sonya seemed hell-bent on it and I wasn’t the fucking expert.
“How about tacos for lunch?” I brushed my thumb on her cheek and handed Camila some cash. “Take Luna to pick up some bagels and meet me in my office.”
“Why? Where are you going now?” Camila’s thick, Spanish accent made a cameo, which meant she wasn’t pleased with me.
I’m going to get an eighteen-year-old kid fired because I’m too selfish to trust myself not to fuck her raw in her father’s office if she gets anywhere near me.
“Board meeting. Should be quick. Just voting on something and then I’ll be out.” I patted Luna’s head and pressed a kiss to her forehead before rising up and gently squeezing Camila’s shoulder.
Turning on my heel toward my office, I saw Jordan Van Der Zee appearing from the sliding residential glass elevator doors, his daughter shadowing his steps. He was holding her like she was a convicted criminal again, and I tried not to lose my shit over it—again. Today, Edie was wearing a navy sailor dress a size larger than her tiny frame. At knee-length, it was conservative, but still highlighted her killer calves. A little gymnast that could bend to a man’s every need.
Whoa. Backtrack this shit, fast, Sir Perv-a-Lot.
She seemed to be a completely different person around her father. Away from him, she was confident, feisty, and a fucking headache. But now? Her eyes were on the floor, and her two nose rings were the only faint glimmer of her black, rebellious heart.
Badass, my ass.
Jordan nodded me a hello, and I returned the gesture. We met at the custom designed gold doors leading to the boardroom. I saw my three friends behind the fishbowl walls, hunched over the long, bronze table, discussing something among themselves.
“Reconsider.” Jordan smoothed his Armani tie. A statement, not a request. Not a fucking chance. I didn’t trust this man with a plastic spoon, let alone my company. In the six months since we’d been in business together, he’d killed four out of the five big deals I’d brought to Fiscal Heights Holdings. He’d slacked off on all of my big accounts—purposely—and blatantly tried to designate the greenest, least-experienced brokers for my clients. A week into our work together, I’d had my first unfortunate encounter with him. I’d overheard him talking on the phone on my way out from the office.
“No, not Rexroth. Let’s send someone else to try to save the Drescher and Ferstein account,” he’d said. An account I’d brought in, thank-you-very-fucking-much. I waited, loitering behind his office door like a General Hospital character and hating it. “He’s too…you know what. Too hood. Too angry. Not very talkative. I don’t want him anywhere near this account. Ask Dean to talk to them. He’s the kind of pretty boy charmer their CEO, Helena, would appreciate.”
And that was it. That’s when I knew Jordan Van Der Zee wasn’t only a racist, but that he wanted to push me out of the company. He had another thing coming, and it was going to boomerang straight into his face.
Vicious, Dean, and Jaime were already halfway out the corporate door, showing up to work three or four times a week and spending most of their time with their families. But me, I only had Luna. Though to be completely honest, even she seemed to prefer spending time with the nanny.
“This is where you part ways with Daughter Dearest.” I tugged at my collar, because Edie motherfucking Van Der Zee made the temperature in the room rise by at least ten degrees.
“Gladly.” She plucked her phone from her purse and walked away.
Jordan entered the conference room, and I snapped my fingers, smiling. “I need to sign off on a contract for the D&D account. Be right back, Jordi-boy.”
“I never saw this account.” His brows dove down. He hated when I called him that.
“Exactly,” I said, a bounce in my steps as I went to my office to fetch the contract. After signing it—taking pleasure in the fact I made Jordan wait in the boardroom for me like a little bitch—I walked over to the main reception area of the floor, where it split into two corridors with the huge boardroom in the middle. Deciding to make him wait a little longer, I took a sharp right into the break room to brew myself a coffee with the fancy machine I’d never tried before. Was it petty? Yes. Did inconveniencing Jordan by making him wait on me for an extra few minutes make me smile? Hell yes.
I was about to push the glass door open when I stopped on my heel, watching the girls inside the kitchen.
Luna. Camila. Edie. Standing together. Looking…excited? What the…?
Edie threw her arms around Camila and hugged her, burrowing into her shoulder. Luna was standing beside them, observing the scene, doe-eyed. For the first time in a long time, she was interested in something that wasn’t seahorses. Edie cupped Camila’s cheeks, before wiping her tears with the back of her hand. She wore her emotions like jewelry. Proud and unapologetic. It made me hate her a little less for trying to steal my mother’s handbag a few weeks ago.
Then Edie did the unthinkable, and yet what every girl her age would have done.
She crouched, ran her hand over Luna’s curly piggy tails, and smiled.
Almost in slow motion, she pointed at Luna’s fluffy blue seahorse, her mouth forming an O-shaped wow.
Luna’s face broke into a timid grin. She never smiled at me like that. I blinked away my shock, trying to wrap my head around her reaction. Edie must’ve asked Luna something, because Luna nodded.
Nodded. She never nodded. Nodding was one step away from vocalizing your needs, and Luna was all about keeping me in the dark.
My daughter looked alert and attentive and invested in that moment, which was something I couldn’t say about her ninety percent of the time. And I stood there, rooted to the floor, not wanting to step into the moment and pierce the fog of magic they were cocooned in.
“Yo, assface, is the weed eating at your memory? We’re all waiting for you in the boardroom.” Dean killed my trance by slapping my back from behind, chewing his gum deliberately noisily in my ear. “Come join us before Jordi hangs you by the balls and Vicious skins you and makes a new ottoman out of your flesh.”
Reluctant, I followed his steps, moving toward the boardroom, my eyes still on the break room.
I took a seat at the conference room, sandwiched between Dean and Jaime. Jordan was sitting across from me, looking one argument away from a heart attack.
“Nice veins.” I pointed at his forehead, fishing my cell phone out and dumping it onto the table.
“You’re very funny, Rexroth. Your charm has brought you a long way, to Beverly Hills, to Todos Santos. But I see underneath it, and I’m less than impressed.” A hiss slid between his thin lips.
I shrugged. “Thanks for the analysis, Dr. Strangelove. Now let’s do this as quick and as painless as possible, so that Jordi can go back to admiring the reflection of himself on the four-grand mirror in his office. Shall we?”
“We shall.” Jaime slapped the desk, dark circles framing his eyes. His wife, Mel, had just given birth to their second daughter, Bailey. He looked as happy as a pig in shit and as tired as the person hired to clean up the pigpen.
The poll had started off with Jordan, who obviously voted for keeping his daughter employed. Then came my turn, and I surprised everyone, including myself, with the answer.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” Vicious blinked, giving me his what-the-fuck-is-your-game look. “Yes means you vote for her employment,” he explained slowly, like I was an idiot.
“I know what yes means, dickbag.”
Vicious, Jaime, and Dean exchanged puzzled looks. They were going to go with my plan, but now, I’d changed it. Jordan appeared out of sorts, looking among all of us, searching our faces, trying to make sense of it all.
Jaime was the first to recover, rubbing the dark bags under his eyes. “Whatever. I don’t care.”
Dean’s turn. He tossed his tennis ball onto the table. “If Trent’s fine with it, I don’t give a damn if she works here.”
Then Vicious. He looked up at me, shaking his head slightly in warning.
I don’t want to fuck her, asshole. I mean, I do, but I won’t.
Then again I’d never had a serious girlfriend in my thirty-three years, and the one thing I did have was a runaway ex-stripper whom I’d knocked up in a dirty hookup and who’d left me with our kid. So maybe I did deserve that warning.