Zipper Fall (9 page)

“Yeah.”

His deep, gravelly voice made my heart speed up and I had to press my index finger to my nose to contain a sudden sneeze. I leaned back in my computer chair, my other hand limp over my forehead. “H-how may I h-help you?” I could tell my voice was a bit breathy, and I absolutely hated that stupid stutter.

“I need some help with advertising, and I can’t show my face at your old company anymore. I called my former assistant, hoping she could arrange for the work, but she now has your job, and she says you’re freelancing.” His voice was full of disbelief at his ill fortune. “You owe me, Gaudens. And I want that video back.”

“Mmm,” I hummed, not committing one way or the other. “Do you want me to come to your office?”

“No! Not there. Not ever. Just… meet me at Starbucks, the one off Fifth Avenue.” All of my business seemed to be taking place at Starbucks these days. “Half an hour.”

I grabbed my laptop and some of my new marketing materials, got out of my jeans and T-shirt, and put on a pair of gray tailored slacks with a black leather belt and monogrammed white dress shirt. I slipped into my uncomfortable yet professional leather dress shoes, and spent a good ten minutes brushing my teeth and tousling my hair so it was shiny and spiked in a carefree, sexy mop, hoping it would suggest the richness of a field of ripe wheat. My heart was beating hard.

This is not a date. This is not a date. This is not a date.

I got there first and ordered an iced grande latte with an extra shot of espresso. I was sucking cold coffee through a green straw when I saw a flash of warm, chestnut hair burst through the door, and there he stood in all his glory.

He wore dress slacks and a white linen shirt with a stand-up collar, no tie. His sleeves were rolled halfway up his sinewy forearms, and his sapphire-blue eyes drilled me with a predatory gaze. The straw stayed in my mouth, frozen. I quickly released it, licked my lips, and stood up, extending my hand.

He took a few steps closer and grasped it, giving it a firm squeeze. “You owe me, Gaudens,” he growled, putting on his serious face.

I felt the vibration of his voice all the way down my spine as his powerful hand swallowed my smaller one. His hand was strong and warm, with rough fingertips, the nails too short to dig into my palm. I didn’t miss the way his eyes scanned me up and down on the sly, or the way they lit up. My hand felt warm in his, and I thought my knees would buckle. A treacherous blush made its way up my neck and onto my cheeks, and I could only nod.

We stood there and squeezed for a while, locked in an ancient ritual that must have originated with our caveman ancestors. Neither of us was willing to loosen his grip first, and it would have been awkward had I not enjoyed the waves of heat rolling off his body. He smelled good—an image of a dark closet flashed through my mind, and I bit my lip, struggling not to whimper. Then again, he didn’t have to hold me with such vehement firmness; I had no intention of going anywhere. My eyes sought his shocking pools of blue and saw the lines of his face were hard, but the assessing warmth in his eyes betrayed more than just a glimmer of interest. I couldn’t rip my gaze away.

I tried to find my voice and failed. My knees felt a bit soft, and the distance between us three feet too wide.

“Y
OU
can let go of my hand now,” he said.

I realized he loosened his grip a while ago and I had just been standing there in a public coffee shop, holding a strange man’s hand for the sake of prolonging contact.

“And stop looking at me like that.”

“Like… like what?” I whispered

“Like a kicked puppy. Dammit, I need your help, and this project would have been on track if it weren’t for you. You broke it, you fix it.” All business now, he settled in the solid, wooden chair and pulled out the blue report folder I had assembled for him over two weeks ago.

“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked. I didn’t stutter this time; realizing that, increased my confidence. I even flashed him a little smile.

“No. Last time you got me coffee, it didn’t go so well. I’ll go get my own. Reread what you wrote while I’m gone.” He left, and I hefted the proposal, familiarizing myself with the very real publicity problems of BW&B, LLC.

There was a long line of people cutting out for lunch a bit too early, and while Azurri waited for his dose of caffeine and warm comfort, I rolled his name on my tongue for a while. Good thing he was standing in for Schiffer that day… Azurri and Schiffer.

Azurri and Schiffer.

It rang a bell, somehow.

I woke up my Mac and signed in on the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi. Several keystrokes later, their names were entered in my Google search window. I didn’t have to wait too long before the results began to pour in. The sheer number of them was overwhelming. I raised my eyebrows, seeing my new client’s name mentioned in CNN reports and Wall Street Journal articles.

The derivatives scandal? No way—that just can’t be….

Suddenly, the corporate name of Black, White, and Blue, LLC made a lot of sense. No erudite client worth his or her salt would deal with the former partners of the now-defunct Provoid Brothers, whose Mr. Emil Provoid was currently an honored guest of the state penitentiary and whose Kevin Toussey escaped a jail sentence only due to his sudden disability, which included blindness.

I visited the Secretary of State website and looked up Black, White, and Blue. The corporate shell of my newest client was owned by Louis Schiffer, Rick Blanchard, and Jack Azurri. All three were former high-level employees of the now-defunct Provoid Brothers, a company that had managed to lose billions of dollars and totally annihilate the retirement savings of tens of thousands of their clients, including their own employees.

I detected a heat source near my back before a head dropped next to mine and looked at the screen.

“Spying on me, are you?”

His voice resonated deep in his chest, and I suppressed a shiver, steeling myself to not move and not click my browser window shut. “You know, I’d like to live in a world where nobody questions the chicken’s motive for crossing the road.” I sighed.

He moved across the round table from me and set his coffee down before he settled in his chair. I detected the scent of caramel syrup. “So… now you know why we need help with publicity.”

“Yep.” That was rather obvious. Provoid was screwed, and good riddance, but the others… they’d lost everything. “So you’re starting over?” I asked, tilting my head, flicking the long hair out of my face with a habitual, annoyed toss of my head.

“Yeah.” He looked away from me and into his cup, his voice low.

“Does everyone from the old company work for the new one?”

He grimaced. “No. Just the three of us and a few of our former assistants. I don’t know how much you remember ’bout that case, but there are some guys we won’t have back anyway.”

“Risby Haus? I didn’t realize he got fired, too.” I crooked my eyebrow at him, his doorman’s name rolling off my tongue.

“The whole company folded. He isn’t suitable to our current business environment, anyway. We’re doing this with full-out professionalism. From scratch. It’s been going okay. Obviously people in the field know who we are, but they appreciate the effort of a fresh start. You don’t make profit without planning out your growth, though. I liked your proposal enough to come back.”

I sipped my iced coffee, thinking hard. “I promised Pillory I wouldn’t poach his clients.”

Azurri leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. His eyes edged away slightly, focused on a distant point. Was that a hint of blush on his cheekbones? “Thanks to you, Gaudens, I can’t show my face in Pillory’s office anymore. You totally screwed me over that day.”

His statement pushed my defensive button, and I could feel my stubborn chin jut out as I snapped back. “Pillory doesn’t care what you do. He fired my butt, not yours.”

“What did you tell him, anyway?” he asked in an apprehensive kind of way, but obviously unable to reign in his curiosity.

But boss… I’m in love.
My ears reddened at the recollection. “I believe you have no need to know that,” I answered, feeling no need to unveil the extent of my infatuation.

He drank some coffee and set the tall cup on the table. “Okay, Gaudens. This is the deal. You know we lost everything and had to start from scratch. You know I can’t work with Guajillo, and approaching your former boss is just a bit too embarrassing. So this is what’s gonna happen: you’ll do the work for free. That way you won’t be poaching Pillory’s potential clients.”

“Free?” I squeaked, fighting to maintain composure.

“Free.” He grinned.

“Or else?” I asked. He exuded an aura with a dangerous edge to it; his grin and his unwavering, fathomless gaze suggested that with a guy like him, there often was an “or else.”

“You, punk, have a strange hobby some people might be interested in.”

“You’re just such an asshole.” I sighed, shaking my head with incredulous disbelief. “You know I got fired—you played your little part in it—and now you’re extorting me to work for your company for free?”

“It is customary not to call one’s client bad names.” His voice might have been stern, but the thinly veiled tug at the corner of his mouth didn’t escape my attention, and an amorous song of hope rose in my heart.

“Since you are not paying, you don’t count as a real client,” I said, softening my unwavering glare in a coy way that expressed all the regret I could muster. “However….”

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi….

A good ten seconds passed before he broke the silence. “However, what?”

“What’s in it for me?” I asked, meeting his eyes straight on, my confidence rising. “There is free, and then there is
free
, you know.”

He measured me with a calculating look. “What would you suggest, Gaudens?”

I suppressed a smile and counted to ten once again, slowly. Let him think I’m thinking hard, undecided. “I want access to your clients. Many of them will need advertising services, too.”

“Your services, or your special skills?” He frowned.

“One of my rules is this: there must be at least three degrees of separation between me and my mark. That is, if we know the same people, or know people who know the same people as we do, they’re off limits.” I straightened and gave him my best straight-up look. “I broke that rule with you.”

“And surely you regret it terribly,” he snarled, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

A smile crept to my face, one I just couldn’t hold back. “Actually, no. Had I not broken a slew of my own rules that night, I’d have never met you.” Only my reflexes saved my laptop from certain doom as I saw him jerk up in stunned disbelief, spilling his hot, caramel-laden coffee all over the table.

T
HE
spilled coffee had been cleaned up long ago in a flurry of fuss and napkins. We were still totally focused, our third round of coffee barely touched and safely stationed on the window ledge next to us. My butt hurt, hips constrained by my fitted trousers and stuck on the hard, wooden chair, but I dismissed the physical discomfort and trained my eyes on the screen once more. Azurri checked off another edit on the blue-bound hard copy.

“Now about the educational seminars—you wanted to tailor the presentation to your audience, right?” My fingers were flying, inserting sentences and marking changes.

“Yeah. Small businesses investing their profit—that would be those hotel functions. Then, private investors—Blanchard wanted to teach those at a local community college.” Rick Blanchard was one of the original colleagues and had some good ideas.

“How about an investment club?”

He shook his head, the slicked-back chestnut hair slipping down the side of his neck. “No, too long-term. I need a teaser. Educate them, get to know them, but a shorter lead time.”

“Okay.” I made my corrections and glanced at the paper next to me; he’d made it bleed red ink.

It occurred to me that he was easy to work with. Doing all this work for free was a penance of sorts; I owed him something, anyway, and if he shared his leads with me, maybe I could do a few seminars on advertising for small businesses—

“Grrraahwrrr!”

The sound brought a slight, unconscious smile to my face instead of the former acute embarrassment. I saved the document and reached for my phone. “Sorry…. Let’s see if I need to answer—”

“Grraahwrrr!”

It was Reyna. “I’ll call her back later.”

Azurri loomed over me. His hand captured my wrist, and as I stood up, I noticed the faintest, most adorable flush of embarrassment making its way up his neck. “Let’s take care of that ring tone right now, shall we?” He pried my cell phone out of my hand and started to browse through my settings.

“No wait, wait…. Wait! Don’t delete anything!” I was alarmed to hear the tinge of panic in my voice.

“Why not?”

“I like it.” The words tumbled out of my mouth unchecked, and I turned a brilliant red, as though a tropical sun was beating down on my face.