Tempting the New Boss(8)

“Mr. Talbot,” she said when she reached him, trying to hold the umbrella over them both as he felt around inside his jacket, then in his outside pocket for something.

“Oh, here you go. Wait.” He pulled back the business card he had just extracted to read it and then handed it to the guy. “No, it’s mine. I have so many cards in there I wanted to make sure I wasn’t giving you the number of a banker.”

“That wouldn’t do me no good,” the man joked.

“They don’t do anybody any good, Frank. No, that’s my assistant’s number, just call her and she’ll set it up.” He patted the top of the shelter, and thankfully it didn’t come down on the man’s head.

“Ingenious.” Talbot stood, losing the protection of the umbrella, and turned to her. “Oh, there you are. I couldn’t find the limousine.”

“It’s this way.” She tried to keep on umbrella duty, holding it high enough for both of them, but he walked ahead, his long gait too fast for her.

He didn’t say a word after they climbed into the limousine, the view out his window once again apparently impossible to miss.

As the limo pulled out into traffic with a jerk, she laid off the small talk. They could download about the meeting another time. Midtown traffic hadn’t geared up to its climactic gargantuan fuck-up as yet, and the limousine had to run up on the curb of the expressway only once or twice to jump a slower vehicle. A smooth ride comparatively speaking. It was only twelve miles to Teterboro, the private airport where a corporate jet awaited.

In the muted light of the drizzle all around them, Talbot’s face appeared paler than it had in the fluorescents, making his hair seem even darker, like a gypsy’s with all its wild curls. If he looked at her, she felt sure his eyes would be an even deeper blue, contrasts all around. Like him to begin with.

“What were you doing with the homeless man?”

“Just admiring the construction of his shelter. It was three-plied. Very sturdy.”

“He didn’t pick a very good place to squat, though. Outside the Time-Life Building. The police will probably move him along. Can’t have the tourists tripping over homeless folks. It’s so sad.”

He said nothing.

“Why did you give him your card?”

“I want him to work for me.”

“Uh…really? Doing what?”

“Not sure yet. But building something like that, in the rain, no resources.” He shrugged. “There are all different kinds of intelligences.”

It was a sentiment everybody in her family had expressed, many times, and firmly believed. Not something she heard elsewhere, though, especially in this city where they worshiped at alters of elite degrees and bursting bank balances.

Talbot took out his phone and tapped on it, undoubtedly a text to Marcia about the man who would be calling her.

“His name was Frank,” she offered, and he glanced up, smiling.

“I remember.”

A warm sensation formed in the pit of her stomach.

When he put his phone away, he said, “I hate those big meetings, by the way. But they tell me my attendance is mandatory.”

“It’s a lot of posturing,” she agreed. “They talk to hear themselves, while everybody’s meter was running.”

“So, Marcia says you’re going to teach me some manners,” he reminded her. “Actually, she sold it to me more like coping skills. In any case, you can start there because I feel as uncomfortable as hell in those types of situations, everybody trying to get at me. Makes me want to reach for the hand sanitizer.”

She laughed.

“And I never have anything to say while they all look at me sort of accusingly for it. I don’t give a shit, but…”

She wondered if that was true, her fingers automatically straying to her pearls. His eyes followed the motion. Maybe she’d sit on her hands.

“Well, we could try something, if you want. It worked in all my PR classes.” And in her psychology class with certain phobias, though she declined to mention it. “You pretend I’m a stranger at a meeting, just like in there.”

“You are a stranger. Pretty much.”

“Right. But let’s say I know you, by reputation of course.”

“Don’t you?”

She rolled her eyes, but one corner of his mouth came up, the dimple she’d noticed before making even the hint of his smile very attractive.

“Didn’t you ever act out plays or anything when you were a kid with your siblings?”

“I don’t have any siblings. That I know of.”

“Oh.” She’d walked right into that one. “Well, with friends then? Even if it wasn’t actually a play, but more like cops and robbers or army sergeant and cadets?”