“I know you’re ready. It’s not that.”
“I mean it, Max. I can show you. Seriously. I can give the presentation to the whole company, bring people in off the street even. I can do this.”
Fuck, this was going to be harder than I expected. She was so committed to this pitch. Even if her reasons weren’t all business, her attitude was. I nodded. “I know there isn’t a better person for the job.”
“Then why?” she asked, slamming her hands on the arms of her chair.
“Your father called me this morning.” She shifted forward in her seat and I took a deep breath. “He said he didn’t want you at the presentation.”
She flopped back in her chair, staring at my desk, her eyes glazed. I’d never experienced anything like this. In the office everything was so clear to me. It was at home that everything was gray and I always questioned my decisions. Telling Harper this brought out a different side of me. I wanted to go over to her and comfort her.
“Did he say why?” she asked.
“Just that he didn’t want to mix personal and professional. Which I can understand.”
She rose to her feet. “He employs his three male children. That’s not mixing business and personal?”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. How could I make this okay? “I understand this is frustrating.”
“Frustrating?” she yelled. “Are you kidding me? The guy’s an asshole. He’s trying to ruin my career.”
I hadn’t gotten the impression he was doing anything but being selfish. “Maybe he felt a little uncomfortable because the two of you are estranged.” I thought I’d feel the same. “I’m sure he wasn’t trying to make you look bad.”
Harper laid her hands on my desk, and leaned toward me. “And so what, you just said, ‘yes, sir, thank you, sir? Who cares if I fuck over the girl I’ve been screwing the last few weeks. Who gives a shit about her feelings? As long as I’m still in line for your business, I’ll do anything you say.’ Is that how it went?”
There was real venom in her tone and she was out of line. I’d acted in the best interests of King & Associates and if she was being rational she’d see it. “No, I said that I thought that you were the best person for the job.” Had she expected me to argue with him? Ultimately he was the client. He got to choose his team.
She shook her head. “But you still told him you’d swap me out?”
“Harper, he’s the client. He can choose who he wants working for him.”
She shifted, putting her hand on her hip. “Guess what, asshole? You can choose who you work for, too. Don’t you see? He was testing you. Seeing if he asked you to jump, if you’d ask how high. He’s a piece of shit who’s determined to make me miserable.” She covered her face with her hands and my heart squeezed. Fuck, I hated that she did that to me. I hadn’t done anything wrong. The last thing I wanted to do was upset her. I desperately wanted to go to comfort her, but this was business.
She smoothed down her skirt and pulled back her shoulders. “He asked you to choose between him and me,” she said, her voice quiet. “And you made your decision. So good luck.” She turned and headed to the exit.
I wanted to run after her, make her understand, but she was out of my door before I’d stood up. The last thing I wanted to do was make a scene, escalate the situation. I’d leave early, but instead of going back to Connecticut tonight, I’d go to her place and we could talk.
Chapter 15
Harper
I arrived at Grace’s apartment straight from work, tearstained. On the subway ride over, I’d tried to figure out why I was upset, who I was most upset with—my father or Max. I hadn’t come to any conclusions.
“Do you think he knew?” Grace asked.
I sat on her gray five-thousand-dollar couch in Brooklyn, stroking the velvet arm, which was providing me with some small comfort. Grace handed me a huge glass of red wine and sat.
“What? That my father was testing him?” I asked. Was that what it was? A test? Or a show of power?
I’d left Max’s office, gone straight back to my desk, printed out my resignation, put it into an envelope, and given it to Donna to deliver to Max. I didn’t have a lot of personal items in the office and I’d managed to get them all into my work carryall.
I’d cried all the way to Brooklyn.
“No, do you think your father knew Max King was fucking his daughter?”
I lifted my head. “How could he? And anyway, why would he care?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Fathers are protective over their daughters.”
I snorted. “Yeah well, sperm donors aren’t.” I was pretty sure Charles Jayne hadn’t had a parental instinct in his life.
“I just think it’s a little strange that he accepted the lunch invitation and then didn’t want you working on the account.”
A lot of what Charles Jayne did didn’t add up. He must have known JD Stanley was a big account and if he requested I was dropped from the team it would look bad on me. “He just doesn’t want me anywhere near him.” I dug my fingernail into the pile of the velvet.
Grace took a sip of her wine. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I asked.
“It just feels like we’re not seeing the whole picture.”
Jesus, since when did Grace give my father the benefit of the doubt? She knew what an asshole he’d been over the years. “Are you taking his side?”
She twisted the stem of her glass between her fingers. “No, not at all. There is no side for me except yours. I’m just saying things don’t add up.”
I glugged down some wine, desperate for the liquid relaxation to do its magic.
“Okay, so your father’s an asshole. Let’s just take that as read. And, for whatever reason, he didn’t want you working on his account.” She rolled her lips together as if she was trying to stop herself from saying what came next. “I’m worried about how bothered you are by it. And that you resigned from a job you worked so hard for. Aren’t you just letting your father control you?”
When the JD Stanley pitch had come up, I thought it would be an opportunity for me to finally be free of my father. “I just thought I had the upper hand this time. I was going to get my chance to press his nose up against the glass and show him what he’d been missing.” I should have known better. I never had the upper hand as far as my father was concerned.
“I’m guessing he knew that and didn’t want to see. Most assholes don’t want to be reminded of their assholishness. They either reinvent reality so they’re not assholes, or they avoid any situation where they could be reminded.” Grace was talking from experience and suddenly I felt bad for being here and dumping all this on her. Her father had cheated on her mother more than once, and she always said afterward it was as if he’d used an imaginary chisel and gone through people’s memories, re-carving history. “Your father’s a powerful man and powerful men don’t like to be wrong.”
“But he was okay to go to lunch.” I wiped a nonexistent drop of wine from the outside of my glass. Why had he agreed to lunch knowing I would be there and then had a problem with me working on the account?