Finding Herself (Surrender) (3 page)

But then she blinked, and that look was gone, and Isabel was hugging her tight. “I knew you’d do it!” she squealed. “
You’ve really got it all figured out.”

Once their work was over, Isabel convinced
Shirley and Serena to come along to celebrate, and soon the four of sitting around a table in a dimly lit “Dessert Bar”, a place with a small dance floor that served amazing desserts. They shared two gigantic slices of black forest cake and had a glass of champagne each, and Shirley, Serena and Isabel seemed genuinely thrilled for her.

After her second glass of champagne,
Emily said, “This is the best day of my New York life so far.”

“It only gets better,”
Shirley replied.

Emily
hoped she was right.

Chapter Three

On Monday morning, Emily discovered that she had butterflies in her stomach. She woke before it was light outside, and after tossing and turning for a bit, she decided to go and get to the office early.

Knowing that she’d be working at
Alpha Investments, and the reality of actually going to work there, were two different things. She’d prepared as best she could – the Prada suit fit her perfectly, and Shirley had shown her how to apply makeup properly so that her freckles were hidden, her cheekbones looked higher, and her eyes looked larger and brighter. It took half an hour to get her makeup perfect, but Emily figured it was worth it. The staff at the diner and Su-Jin had chipped in to get her a “farewell” present – a pair of gorgeous, cubic zirconia stud earnings that looked just like real diamonds. Isabel told Emily that she was welcome to borrow her GHD hair iron whenever she wanted, so now her usually-unruly curls looked sleek and straight instead.

By the time she got to the office, it was just after seven o’clock
, and she looked like a completely different person. Emily decided that it was far too early to head upstairs, so she lingered in the ground floor public atrium, and took in her surroundings. Alpha Investments occupied several top floors at 590 Madison Avenue, but when Emily came for her interviews, she’d always rushed through the building and hadn’t noticed her surroundings.

Today, she sat
quietly in one corner of atrium and watched a ballet troupe practice their routine on the other side. The dancers’ movements were fluid and graceful, and Emily soon found herself engrossed in their dance.

Just when she was starting to relax, she noticed a familiar figure heading towards one of
the elevators. Emily grabbed her bag without thinking, and walked quickly towards him.

Nate was dressed in a dark grey suit, and even from a distance,
Emily couldn’t help but feel his magnetic presence. He reminded her of a quiet, powerful predator who relied purely on instinct.

In the past few days,
Emily had gone through article after article about Nate Steele. After all, she needed to know about the man she worked for. What she’d found out surprised her – Nate Steele was a man of many contradictions. He ran his business with ruthless efficiency, but he donated generously to various charities. His net worth was extremely high, but he once said in an interview that he didn’t care about luxuries. He was frequently seen partying with celebrities and travelling around the world, but few people claimed to know him very well. 

In business, Nate often
took on contrary positions in his investments, betting against the common sentiment and often winning. Nate liked to know the companies he held positions in, inside and out, and he had made quite a few enemies along the way.

There were numerous articles about Nate’s personal life. There were quite a few photos of him on the red carpet, escorting some starlet or the
other. Gossip magazines speculated about his relationships, or lack thereof – apparently, he was never seen with the same girl on his arm more than a few times. Reading those articles had made Emily feel depressed and relieved at the same time: clearly Nate only dated red-hot airheads, so she would never get to enact her fantasies about him. Which was a good thing, she told herself: she needed a job more than she needed wild sex.

Nate
turned around just before pressing the elevator button, and as their eyes met, Emily felt a shiver run through her veins. His eyes: she would never get used to them. They were so dark and penetrating, and they took in everything about her.

In an instant,
Emily regretted trying to catch the same elevator as Nate. What had she been thinking? She’d just thought it was a good idea to get some face time with her new boss. It had nothing to do with the fact that she found him ridiculously attractive – she remembered the fantasy of him kissing her, and stroking her, and forcefully pushed those images out of her mind.

“You made it,” Nate said drily, as they waited for the elevator to arrive.

Why did he sound so amused?
Nate glanced back at her, and Emily regretted looking so dressed up and different. She felt like a schoolgirl chasing her crush, even though she was only dressed up for work.

“Thank you for hiring me,” she said awkwardly.

“Thank HR. They convinced me. And if it doesn’t work, there’s always Brandon.”

“Oh.” So he still wasn’t sure if she fit in there.
She didn’t know what he meant by “Brandon”.

Emily
’s mind went blank. She wanted to say something charming, something witty and intelligent and insightful, something that would miraculously turn her internship into a full-time job. But instead, she felt confused and tongue-tied. So much for impressing the boss, she thought bitterly, as they stepped into the elevator and Nate pressed “41”.

There was no-one else in the elevator at this hour. Nate leaned against one of the steel walls, and
Emily stood as close as possible to the opposite wall. The shiny box was as large as an elevator could be, but even then, she felt like she was standing too close to him, and the air between them felt hot and intoxicating.

As t
he elevator inched its way up, Emily could feel Nate’s eyes on her.

Finally, he said softly, “You didn’t need to get all Prada-
ed and plastic-ed up just to work here.”

“I wanted to fit in.” The words were out before she could stop herself, and
Emily wanted to kick herself – she sounded like a nerdy girl wanting to hang out with the cool kids.

The
corners of Nate’s lips went up. “You didn’t have to get into debt to buy a suit.” The elevator reached his floor and he stepped out, and then turned to look at her. “You look great either way.”

And then he turned and walked away, and the elevator doors closed behind him.

For a very long time, Emily was aware only of the loud thumping of her heart. Nate Steele had said she looked great! Was that a compliment, or did he just say that to all new recruits? The elevator still smelled slightly of his cologne, and Emily recalled the way his eyes twinkled darkly when he smiled.

And then it
hit her – she was stuck in the elevator. She didn’t have an ID card yet, so she couldn’t activate the buttons. She pressed them anyway, mortified by her lack of foresight, and hoped that Nate wouldn’t come back to the elevator for some reason, and find her standing there.

Emily
felt panicked for a few long moments, and then the elevator began to descend downwards. She breathed a sigh of relief – someone must have pressed the button from the ground floor.

As soon as the elevator reached the atrium level,
Emily stepped out and walked past the small group of waiting people. She went to the tiny reception area, and spoke to the woman working there, explaining that she was a new intern at Alpha Investments.

The woman glanced at her through half-rim frames, and found her name on a list.

“Here you go,” she said, handing Emily a plain ID card. “It’s a guest pass to use for the day. You and the other intern, plus the three new recruits get one of these each. HR should give you a proper card by the end of the day.”

Emily
nodded, and headed over to the 32
nd
floor, where she was meant to meet Jim, the head of HR. It worried her that they’d hired two interns – as if they expected one of them to fail. She also didn’t like the idea of three people being hired directly as employees. Maybe her mother was right, maybe being an intern was just about working for free. When they hired employees, they hired them directly.

***

Just before 8:30, the three new recruits showed up. Emily felt relieved to learn that Jessie, Michael and Aaron were network security experts and were being brought on the help increase server security at Alpha.

A few minutes later, the other intern showed up. He seemed friendly, smart and hard-working, and Emily had no doubt that he’d be a great employee. Unfortunately, his name was
Brandon, and Emily understood what Nate had meant by his off-hand comment in the elevator. Brandon and Emily were both liberal arts majors, and would work in the investment analysis department.

Jim arrived just before nine. “You
guys’re making me look bad,” he joked, and ushered them all into a small conference room. He introduced them to a junior HR executive, Stacey, who’d be in charge of their orientation.

A few hours later,
the five new recruits had sat through a brief presentation on Alpha, and a presentation on client profiles. They’d had their photos taken for ID cards, and then they’d been given a tour of the office. Alpha Investments occupied six floors of the building, and Stacey introduced them to a bunch of people whose names Emily promptly forgot.

After lunch, they were given folders to read, and Stacey left them alone in the tiny conference room. The five of them chatted about their lives instead of reading the boring material in the folders, and just after four o’clock, Stacey reappeared with their brand new ID cards.

“You may as well go home,” Stacey said, “It’s probably the only day as an Alpha employee that you’ll get to leave early. Emily, Brandon, go meet John Byrne on the 35
th
floor tomorrow morning – you’ll report to him for the next couple of months. Jessie, Michael, Aaron, you’ll be reporting to Vikrant Patel tomorrow morning, and he’ll show you over our existing server situation. Ok then, guys – see ya.”

***

The next day, Emily and Brandon met John Byrne, who was an Investment Analyst. John explained to them that this year, Alpha Investments had decided to recruit intern analysts from non-quantitative backgrounds, to get a different approach to investment decisions. He then gave them about five years’ worth of investment reports and analysis to read through over the next couple of days, and went back to his own work.

Emily
found the reports incredibly boring and quite dependent on accounting spreadsheets. But she slogged through them anyway. Most nights, she would take the files home and stay up to finish going through them.

Despite the fact that she was staying up late to finish her reading,
Emily found herself heading off to work early. She always tried to get to the atrium by seven, and sat there for a while, reading through the reports, and waiting.

She tried not to wonder why she was waiting for Nate. She was scared of the answer, and didn’t want to think
about it. Nate walked through her floor once or twice a day to meet other employees and go to meetings, and it always gave her a thrill to see him from the distance. He never looked at her or walked directly past her cubicle, but Emily hoped he knew she was there.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Nate must have arrived late to work.
Emily didn’t see him, and headed up to her floor by 8:30. On Friday morning, Emily’s heart leapt as she saw Nate heading towards the elevator at 7:15. But she stayed rooted to her seat, too nervous to go to the elevator. Her eyes caught Nate’s as the doors closed, and she thought he looked pleased to see her.

The next
Monday morning, Emily saw Nate heading towards the elevators at 7:30. She walked quickly and joined him, but two other people stepped on at the same time. Nate stood against the wall opposite her, and when their eyes met, Emily blushed, and glanced down at the floor. The other people who’d gotten on with them stepped off on the 11
th
floor, and Nate and Emily were silent as the elevator rode up to the 41
st
floor. When the doors opened, Nate stepped out wordlessly, and Emily headed down to her cubicle on the 35
th
floor.

***

Another week passed by.

Emily
and Brandon were given the “responsibility” of critiquing new investment decision reports. Emily thought it was a bit of a difficult position – the investment decision had already been made, and she was just being asked to make some intelligent comments without offending anybody. John told her and Brandon to email him the critiques, and to cc Nate on the emails.

Emily
had made some changes to her office routine. She’d stopped coming in to work so early; she decided that it was strange to try to run into her boss in the elevator. That last “chance” encounter had felt strangely awkward and electric at the same time. She admitted to herself that she had a crush on Nate, and decided to be professional about it – by ignoring it.

She’d also started having lunch with Jessie and two other girls from the IT department. They’d all meet up in the 39
th
floor canteen, and the lunch hour went by quickly. Alpha Investments turned out to be a fairly gossipy place – there were numerous employees and numerous departments, and office affairs and jealousies seemed to be quite common. The girls gossiped about the other employees, and Emily complained about how boring her job was.

“At least it’s not like my internship at
C4 Software,” said Simone, one of the IT girls. “I was basically a glorified secretary and spent all day on coffee runs and photocopying. No-one knew I code!”