N.Y.E. Page 2

  That settled it.

  He wasn't just one of those entitled men raised with silver spoons and no concept of common decency.

  Nope.

  He was just an asshole.

  But he was an asshole with seemingly bottomless pockets.

  "I will take that as a no," I said, raising a brow.

  "Do you need your parking validated?"

  As if I could afford the parking fees to have a car in the city.

  "I don't believe I turned you down. Yet," I added as a last minute thought, not wanting him to think that I was so desperate that I would take the job no matter what.

  To that, one of his dark brows rose, his hands rising, steepling in front of his mouth for a moment as he watched me.

  "And if I told you this was for between one and two thousand people?"

  "Why such a large discrepancy?"

  "Employees will be permitted to bring spouses or dates. No children," he added with a bark, like the idea was asinine.

  "You realize that everything - tables, drinks, the food menu, any swag packs you might want to hand out - it would need to be ordered to accommodate the larger number, even if only half of your employees show up."

  "Everyone is going to show up."

  "You can't kno..."

  "It is New York City on New Year's Eve, Miss Walters. Everyone is going to be clamoring to bring their friends and family for the chance to be indoors on the biggest night of the year."

  That was fair enough.

  But his tone didn't need to be quite so condescending.

  "And if they do show up and want to be admitted?"

  "That would be why you, Miss Walters, would need to hire a doorman. A discerning one."

  Like Evan.

  I was sure he could use the cash.

  And he loved telling people no.

  "Understood. What did you have in mind for the party? Open bar? Or pay-for-your-own? Sit down food or finger foods? Give me an idea," I suggested, reaching in my purse for a pad and pen.

  "All that would be your job to figure out, would it not, Miss Walters?"

  I was starting to hate the sound of my own name.

  "Of course. But the budget would dictate everything mentioned."

  "Do I look like I am worried about the budget?" he asked, waving an arm around.

  It was right then and there that I decided he was the most distasteful person I had met this year. Which was saying something since just three months ago, I was doing a gender reveal for a couple who had tried for a decade to get pregnant and were finally having a little girl, and the father grabbed my ass and whispered in my ear how much he'd like to fuck me. Five feet away from his beaming, pregnant wife.

  "Well, Mr. Calgary, I have found in business that knowing the max saves a lot of confusion. Everyone, even the CEO of Calgary Industries, has a cap."

  "Keep it under a million, Miss Walters, and we won't have to discuss it. If you project you will go over, then you come to me."

  "Right," I agreed, jotting that down though I knew a million was not something I was likely to forget seeing as my biggest party to date had been a wedding for under eighty-grand.

  "Are you going to state your percentage, or are you leaving it up to me to decide how to pay you?"

  Typically, event planners make fifteen to twenty percent of the overall budget. And, being that I was a nobody for all intents and purposes, I usually just pitched fifteen to the client.

  You're undervaluing yourself. That was what Evan admonished after each interview.

  Maybe I was. But I also understood that people worked with limited budgets. And if they thought my fee was too high, they might decide to have their aunt who once threw a kick-ass Thanksgiving party do the task for free. Fifteen percent was better than no percent.

  But for this job, I was thinking that wasn't nearly enough. Not just because of how challenging it would be. But because I would have to work for him as well.

  "Twenty-percent of the budget is the typical rate."

  "Two-hundred," he mused, looking me over slowly. "That should buy you a couple thousand more pairs of those plastic shoes."

  Was it possible to be both humiliated and angry at the same time? Because that was what I was feeling right that moment in his fancy office in his fancy building with him wearing his fancy suit. And me in my, well, I was pretty sure they weren't plastic - but they were faux leather, so maybe he was right for all I knew - shoes.

  "Twenty-five."

  "Excuse me?" he asked, head jerking up, brows knitted, pinning me with those dark eyes with so much intensity that I wanted to say Nothing, never mind.

  But I didn't.

  "Twenty-five percent," I told him, raising my chin a bit higher.

  "A moment ago it was twenty."

  "A moment ago, I thought you were tolerable. Now, I'm not so sure. So this moment, the rate is twenty-five percent. Take it or leave it, Mr. Calgary, but I think you and I both know that if your secretaries were calling my office, you don't have another choice. So unless you have an aunt who once threw a kickass Thanksgiving party and would be willing to do this for you, the rate is twenty-five percent. Take it or leave it." I rose at the last part, pulling my purse back onto my shoulder, ready to leave on my plastic shoes, making it clear I was serious, not just trying to milk him for whatever I could get.

  His brow and chin raised as I did. Dare I even think it? Impressed.

  He was likely used to people who got on a knee begging for the opportunity to kiss his ring. People who stood up to him were likely few and far between. And while I was nobody's Rosie the Riveter, something about him - his conceit, his condescension, his cruel streak - it gave me strength and an untied tongue right when I needed it most.

  "Alright, Miss Walters. I will have one of my secretaries send you the employment contract. It should be at your office by the time you return."

  "Very good," I agreed with a nod.

  "Not 'Thank you?'" he asked, still not bothering to stand. So much for all those movies where the rich guy always stood when a lady did.

  I took a breath, steeling my nerve, and said instead, "You're welcome."

  With that, I turned on my plastic heel and left his office.

  I made it to the elevator.

  That was when, well, my sanity seemed to return to me, making all the feelings that should have been coursing through me back in his office assault me all at once.

  My pulse pounded not just in my chest - though I would swear my heart was looking for some way to escape the confines of my ribcage - but in my throat, wrists, groin.

  Groin?

  No.

  That wasn't right.

  A trickle of sweat blazed a path downward from between my shoulder blades.

  My chest tightened, making breathing more of a wish and a prayer than an actuality.

  And my head, well, that just spun and spun around while I made my way down the elevator, out of the lobby, onto the street, down into the subway, back up, and down the street toward my office.

  "Girl, you're sweating like me on the line at Sephora when they were giving away one-hundred free gift bags and I wasn't sure I made the cut. What happened?"

  Somehow, in the hour and a half since I left the office - and at only ten in the morning - he had performed a full-on wardrobe change, now standing there in a very tightly tailored cream suit with a yellow and black polka dotted pocket square and everything.

  "Why did you change?" I asked, moving across the space toward the coffee machine even though what I really needed was a drink.

  "I asked first. Are we ruined?"

  "We're ruined," I affirmed, turning to face him as the coffee dripped, letting the counter hold most of my weight.

  "And that is why I changed," he told me. "I figure if we are going to be working for one of the richest men in the city, I should at least look the part.

  He did, too.

  Evan wore designer clothing like he was born in it.

  How he
afforded it was completely beyond me.

  "What was he like? Is he as smoking as he looked on that Most Eligible Bachelors write-up last year?"

  "It's hard to tell."

  "Bitch, you got eyes," he told me, rolling his.

  "After he opened his mouth to speak, it was impossible to give an unbiased opinion on his outside since his inside is so hideous."

  "What did he say?"

  "He called my shoes plastic."

  "Well... they are. But that was rude," he agreed, shrugging. "That's it? Because, Sagey angel, I say worse things to you before you've even had a sip of your morning coffee."

  That was true enough.

  "He said we were his last possible choice, that he was, essentially, scraping the bottom of the barrel."

  "So... we hate him."

  "Yes," I agreed, turning to slip some vanilla creamer into my coffee before turning back.

  "But we're still working for him."

  "For twenty-five percent," I told him, hiding my smile behind my mug.

  "Twenty-five is not even industry standard. Did he just... offer that because the job was hard?"

  "No. I suggested twenty. Then he mouthed off on me. Then I told him it was going to be twenty-five since I would have to deal with him on top of the actual event planning."

  Evan's face was a mask of shock for a long moment before it slowly transformed to one of pride. "I just knew I would rub off on you sometime. Did he freak?"

  "He seemed impressed actually."

  "Well, it was some impressive negotiating you pulled out of your ass. I'm proud of you," he told me, making my heart squeeze a little. I didn't realize how badly I needed to hear that from someone until the words came out of his mouth. "Is it a huge party?"

  "Between one and two thousand."

  "Between?"

  "I guess it never crossed his mind to have people RSVP."

  "And what's the budget?"

  "One million."

  "Bitch! Why didn't you lead with that? Twenty-five percent of one million is officially rolling in it."

  "I know," I agreed, thinking of all the possible things that kind of money could mean. A Christmas bonus for Evan. Maybe a new pair of designer - or, more likely - designer markdown - shoes for me. A new computer that didn't freeze up on us all the time.

  Not a new office.

  Not yet.

  Not until new, bigger budget clients filed in after we pulled off the party of the year for someone such as Grant Calgary.

  But that was okay. I could wait for that. It was nice just to know that it was no longer some crazy pipe dream, that it was so close to being a reality.

  "So what aren't you telling me?" Evan asked, shocking me out of my wandering thoughts.

  "What do you mean?"

  "There's something you're not telling me. Some bad news. Otherwise, you wouldn't be sweating like a whore in Mississippi."

  I took a breath, swallowing hard.

  "He doesn't have a venue booked."

  "That's it," Evan declared, throwing an arm dramatically up in the air. "We're ruined."

  Maybe we were.

  Or maybe we were made.

  I guess it would all depend on how the planning went.

  And on my new asshole boss himself, Grant Calgary.

  TWO

  - Interloping

  "No."

  That was Grant Calgary from the driver's seat of his BMW i8 in a sedate black color.

  I hadn't known the name of the car, of course. That was all Evan, leaning forward to whisper the information in my ear after Grant demanded we all go in his personal car to see the possible venue ideas.

  A hundred-and-seventy-thousand-dollar car.

  Which was another fun fact from Evan. How he even knew such things was beyond me.

  I had to admit that the seats were undeniably comfortable - and heated, a luxury I once thought was ludicrous, but now thought was necessary - and the ride was smoother than any I had ever felt before even with the constant start-stop pace of New York City traffic.

  I hadn't thought a man such as Grant Calgary would want to be so hands-on while planning a company party. I figured men like him had meetings with important people, documents to look over, multi-million-dollar checks to deposit.

  It was why I had splurged on a nicer camera. Well, splurged wasn't exactly right. I had put it on a payment plan on one of those home shopping TV stations. Six months to pay off a six-hundred-dollar camera so I could take pictures of all the venues, have them printed up, then present them to him.

  When I had gotten an email that morning about what my plans were, and had explained that I was viewing some of the venues that hadn't laughed in my face about a New Year's Eve party, the last thing I expected was for him to inform me that he wanted to tag along.

  Last minute, I told him we would meet him at his office because I had this overwhelming feeling of insecurity about my office, about him, in particular, seeing my office. He knew the address, of course, since it was on the employment paperwork, but I doubted a man like him even knew the neighborhood, let alone the block.

  "You haven't even stepped inside," I objected immediately as we sat in the car out front the large, nondescript, and admittedly ugly, building.

  It was, for all intents and purposes, a gym, complete with bleachers that churned in and out of the wall and highly lacquered hardwood floors. But, with some very careful design and lighting choices, I really thought it would be workable. There wasn't much I could do about the hideous outside, but once people moved inward and were plied themselves with some free liquor, they would forget all about the high, barred windows and the ugly chipping stucco.

  "It's a gym, Miss Walters."

  "Yes, it is, Mr. Calgary. And if you wanted to book a premier venue, you should have had the foresight to do it a full year ago, not three and a half weeks before your event."

  From behind me, I could hear Evan cheering under his breath. Yes, girl.

  "I don't think you realize the kind of image I am looking to project here, Miss Walters. This is not some baby shower at the local firehouse."

  "First of all, I haven't ever done a baby shower at a firehouse." I had once done one in a veteran's hall, but he didn't need to know that. "Secondly, I am well aware of the image you want to project. But your desire doesn't move mountains. And no matter how much money you are willing to throw at this, there is no way you are going to get a premier venue. So you need to be a little more open-minded. And - dare I say it - flexible."

  His dark gaze slipped to me, watching me for a long second before declaring, "No one would ever accuse me of being flexible."

  "Well, there is no better time than now to enroll in a yoga class. Now, I am going in here. You can stubbornly sit in the car if you want, but I am not going to walk away without at least seeing this place in person."

  Five minutes later, we were in the gym space, waiting for the bleachers to be retracted so I could see what could be done about masking them.

  "And what, Miss Walters, do you think can be done about the ceiling and basketball nets?"

  "The ceiling can be draped with fabric and fairy lights. They make everything soft and romantic."

  "And the lines on the floors?" he asked with a brow raise.

  Okay, I had to admit, I had no solution for the lines on the floor. They were the only thing so far that I wasn't sure I could fix. If they weren't so white and wide, I could maybe have found some sort of creative solution that would make the whole floor into a pattern, but one look at Evan told me he was thinking exactly what I was.

  No way.

  "Exactly," Grant said, shaking his head. "And now that we have wasted our time, can we move on to a more viable option?"

  I wanted to remind him that we had literally only wasted five minutes, but pressed my lips together, knowing that getting into an argument wasn't going to help my case.

  From there, we moved all over the city. A gathering hall in Brooklyn. A hotel conference room in
the Bronx.

  Nothing was going to work.

  "I'm not impressed thus far," Grant told us after dropping us at the curb at his office around eleven.

  "Well, shit, I feel like I just let my daddy down," Evan said with a sigh.

  "There was nothing wrong with the conference room."

  "It was in the Bronx."

  "So?"

  "So, you have to remind yourself about the image he keeps telling you about. Men like him, they are all about their image. He's Central Park East, baby girl. Not the Bronx."

  "Well, there is nowhere to get a venue on the Upper East Side on this short of notice."

  "You are being rational. He is not a man used to hearing 'no,' or 'it can't be done.' You need to find something a little closer to what he has in mind. That's all."

  That's all.

  He made it sound so easy.

  It wasn't.

  I'd been chained to my laptop the entire night before trying to find even remotely workable venues.

  These were the best of the lot.

  "Look," Evan said, sensing my defeat, "take a minute. Go get yourself a chai. At Starbucks, not at home to save money. And then get back to it. I have to get going," he added, checking his phone. "But I know you can do this. Don't let him get in your head and make you doubt yourself."

  That, I was sure, was easier said than done. But I took a walk, got a chai, then did a little more walking, trying to clear my head, think outside of the box.

  I was walking past a street I'd been on countless times before. Nothing struck me as new at first.

  Until I saw a sign.

  It was unassuming, a small red and white sign in a window of a place that had been a new age store before it became an indie bookstore.

  Foreclosure.

  I spilled a third of my semi-hot drink on myself as I fished for my phone, dragging open a window, working on my idea standing right there in the middle of the sidewalk, determined to get it right, to prove that I had what it took. Not just to Grant Calgary, but to myself as well.

  "Gotcha," I declared twenty minutes later, tossing the chai, heading back to the office, and making a few calls.

  It was six-thirty when I found myself out front of Calgary Industries once again, waiting in the freezing cold for the man himself to come back out. He was thirty minutes later than he said he would be. It was sheer pride keeping me out in the cold instead of going inside to search for him.