Sleepless In Manhattan

“None of us has a sex life. This is Manhattan. Everyone is too busy to have sex.”

“Apart from my mother,” Frankie muttered.

“And Jake,” Eva intervened quickly. “He was at the Adams event the other night. Sexiest guy in the room. Smart, too. He gets laid regularly, but I guess being scorching hot and having that killer body helps. I can see why you had a crazy teenage crush on him, Paige.”

Paige felt as if someone had thrust a fist into her stomach. “That was a long time ago.”

The thought of Jake having sex shouldn’t bother her; it really shouldn’t.

“First love is very powerful,” Eva said. “The feeling never quite goes away.”

“So is first disappointment. That feeling never goes away, either. My crush on Jake ended a long time ago, so you can stop looking at me like that.”

But the relationship wasn’t easy.

There were days when she wished Jake wasn’t her brother’s closest friend.

If he’d been some random guy from her teenage years she could have moved on, laughed and forgotten about it, instead of which she was destined to carry the embarrassing memory around like a ball and chain. It was always there, clanking behind her.

Even now, so many years later, she cringed when she thought about the things she’d said to him. Worse, the things she’d done.

She’d been naked—

The memory made her want to slide through a hole in the floor.

Did he ever think about it? Because she thought about it a lot.

Eva was still talking. “I’m willing to bet he’s on a million women’s bucket lists.”

Frankie shook her head in disbelief. “When people are compiling a bucket list they usually choose skydiving or a trip to Machu Picchu, all amazing life experiences, Ev.”

“I’m pretty sure being kissed by Jake Romano would be an amazing life experience. Much better than skydiving, but then I’m scared of heights.”

Paige kept walking.

She was never going to find out.

Even when she’d thrown herself at him, Jake had never come close to kissing her.

She’d dreamed of him being overcome by lust. Instead he’d gently disentangled himself from her clinging limbs, as if he’d suddenly found himself covered in laundry blown by the wind.

His patient kindness had been the most humiliating blow of all. He hadn’t been fighting lust; he had been fighting her, fending her off.

It was the first and only time she’d ever said “I love you” to a man. She’d been so sure he had feelings for her and the fact that she’d got it so wrong had governed all her interactions with men since. She no longer trusted her instincts.

These days she was very, very careful with her heart. She exercised, she ate her five portions of fruit and vegetables and she focused on her work, which always proved more exciting than any of the few relationships she’d had.

Paige paused outside the offices of Star Events and breathed deeply. She didn’t need to be thinking about Jake right before the most important meeting of her life. He had a tendency to turn her brain and her knees to jelly. She needed to focus. “This is it. No more laughing. Fun is not allowed inside these walls.”

Cynthia was waiting for them by the reception desk.

Paige felt a flash of irritation.

Surely she could manage one small smile on a day like today?

Fortunately even Cynthia couldn’t spoil the job for Paige. She loved it. Managing every detail and making each event a memorable occasion was fun. The most important thing for her was a happy client. As a child she’d loved organizing parties for her friends. Now it was her job, and her job was about to get a whole lot bigger.

Anticipating the new level of responsibility lifted her spirits and she walked across the foyer with a smile on her face.

Senior Event Manager.

Already she had plans. Her team was going to work hard because they wanted to, not because they were afraid of repercussions. And the first thing she was going to do was find a way to hire back poor Matilda.

“Good morning, Cynthia.”

“As far as I recall, your contract says nothing about working part-time.”

If anyone could kill the excitement of the moment, it was Cynthia.

“The Capital Insurance event didn’t finish until past midnight last night and the trains were packed this morning. We were—”

“Taking advantage.” Cynthia glanced pointedly at the clock on the wall even though she knew perfectly well what time it was. “I need to see you in my office right away. Let’s get this done.”

This was a meeting about her promotion and she wanted to “get this done”?

Her friends melted away, and Paige heard Eva softly humming the theme from Jaws.

It lifted her mood.

Working with her friends was one of the best things about this job.

As she followed Cynthia toward her office they passed Alice, one of the junior account managers.

Catching a glimpse of reddened eyes Paige stopped walking.

“Alice? Is everything—”

But Alice passed her quickly and Paige made a mental note to seek her out later and find out what was wrong.

Boyfriend problems?

Work issues?

She knew several of the staff had been horrified that Matilda had been fired after her unfortunate accident with a tray of champagne. It had created a general atmosphere of unease. Everyone was secretly wondering who would be next.

Following her boss into her office, Paige closed the door.

Soon she’d be in a position to make her own decisions about staffing. In the meantime, this was her moment. She’d worked hard for it and she was going to enjoy it.

Please let the pay raise be good.

Eva was right, they should celebrate later. A few glasses of something cold and sparkling. And then maybe dancing. They hadn’t been dancing in ages.

Cynthia reached for a file. “As you know we’ve been looking at ways to streamline Star Events and reduce costs. I don’t need to tell you that we’re operating in a challenging market.”

“I know, and I have some ideas I’d love to share with you.” Paige reached for her bag but Cynthia shook her head and held up her hand.

“We’re letting you go, Paige.”

“Go? Go where?” It hadn’t occurred to her that promotion might mean transferring to another office. And there was only one other office. Los Angeles. The other side of the country. This, she hadn’t expected. She loved New York City. She loved living and working with her friends. “I assumed I’d be staying here. Moving to Los Angeles is a big step.” Although if she wanted promotion she should probably be prepared to accept that it might involve relocation. Maybe she should ask for a little time to think about it. That was acceptable, wasn’t it?

Cynthia opened the file. “Why would you think we were relocating you to Los Angeles?”

“You said you were letting me go.”

“We’re letting you go from Star Events.”

Paige stared at her stupidly. “Excuse me?”

“We’re making cuts.” Cynthia leafed through the file and didn’t meet her eyes. “Putting it bluntly, business has fallen off a cliff. Everyone in the hospitality industry is laying off employees and reducing hours.”

Letting her go.

Not promoting her or moving her to Los Angeles.

Letting her go.

There was a buzzing in her ears. “But—I’ve brought in nine major new clients in the past six months. Almost all the new business growth has been down to me and—”

“We lost Adams Construction as a client.”

Shock flashed through her. “What?”

Chase Adams, the owner of the most successful construction company in Manhattan, had been one of their biggest clients. It was after an event for his company that Matilda had been fired.

Karma, Paige thought. First Cynthia had fired Matilda and now Chase Adams had fired them.

And she was a casualty.

“I wasn’t in a position to argue.” Cynthia continued. “That stupid girl Matilda ruined their event.”

“That’s why he fired us? Because of an accident?”

“Spilling one glass of champagne might be termed an accident, but dropping an entire tray is closer to a catastrophe. Adams insisted that I get rid of her. I tried to persuade him to rethink, but he wouldn’t. The man owns half of Manhattan. He’s one of the most powerful players in this city.”

“Then he didn’t need to crush poor Matilda.” Paige could think of a few choice words to describe Chase Adams, none of them flattering. She certainly didn’t blame Matilda.

“It’s history. Naturally we’ll give you excellent references for your next job.”

Next job?

She wanted this job. The job she loved. The job she’d earned.

Her mouth was so dry it was hard to speak. Her heart pounded, a brutal reminder of how fragile life was. This morning she’d felt as if she owned the world and now control had been wrenched from her hands.

Other people were deciding her future. Closed doors and conversations. People expecting her to wear a brave face.

And she was an expert at that. She did it without thinking whenever life got tough, like a computer going into sleep mode.

She knew how to bury her feelings and she buried them now.

Stay professional, Paige.

“You told me that if I met my performance objectives I would be promoted. I exceeded them.”

“The situation has changed and as a commercial operation we need to be fluid and react to the needs of the market.”

“How many people? Is that why Alice was crying? She’s been laid off? Who else?” Was it the same for Frankie and Eva?

Eva had no family to turn to and Paige knew Frankie would stop eating rather than ask her mother for a single cent.

“I’m not in a position to discuss other employees with you.”

Paige sat still, battered by emotion. She felt a dizzying loss of control.

She’d trusted her employers. They’d made big promises. She’d delivered time and time again, worked hideous hours and put her future in their hands. And this was what they did with that trust? They’d given her no warning. No hint.

“This company has grown because of me. I can show you numbers that prove it.”

“We’ve worked as a team.” Cynthia was cool. “You are good at your job. You have a tendency to be a little too friendly toward the people who work for you, and you should say no to the client more often—that episode when you had that man’s suit express dry-cleaned in the middle of a party was beyond ridiculous—but apart from that I have no complaints. This isn’t about your work.”

“I dry-cleaned his suit because he’d spilled his drink and he was trying to impress his boss. He gave us a huge piece of business after that. And I’m friendly because I like working in a happy team and a positive environment.”

Something Cynthia knew nothing about.

Looking at her boss was like looking at a locked door. Nothing she said was ever going to open it. She was wasting her time.

Instead of a promotion and a pay raise, she was out of a job.

She’d have to turn to her family for help. Once again she’d be causing her parents and her brother anxiety. And their instinct would be to protect her.

Paige felt her heart pound and instinctively lifted her palm to her chest. Through the fabric of her shirt she felt the solid shape of the little silver heart she sometimes wore hidden under her clothes.

For a moment she was back in the hospital bed, seventeen years old, surrounded by get-well cards and balloons, waiting for her operation and scared out of her mind. Her brain had been conjuring awful scenarios when the door had opened and a doctor had strolled into the room wearing a white coat and carrying a clipboard.

She’d braced herself for more tests, more pain, more bad news, and then recognized Jake.

“They wouldn’t let me in because it’s not visiting hours, so I’m flexing the rules. Call me Dr. Romano.” He’d winked at her and closed the door. “Time for your medicine, Miss Walker. No squealing or I’ll remove your brain and donate it to medical science.”

He’d always made her laugh. His presence did other things to her, too. Things that made her wish she were wearing something slinky and sexy instead of an oversize T-shirt with a cartoon on the front. “Are you doing the operation?”

“I faint at the sight of blood and I don’t know a brain from a butt, so no, I’m not. Here. I bought you something.” He’d dug his hand into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small box. “Better open it quickly, before I’m arrested.”

For a crazy moment she’d thought he was giving her an engagement ring and her heart, her misbehaving heart, had missed a beat.

“What is it?” Hands shaking, she’d opened the box and there, nestled on a bed of midnight-blue silk, was a beautiful silver heart on a delicate chain. “Oh, Jake—”

Engraved on the back were three words.

A strong heart.

“I thought yours could do with a little help. Wear it, honey, and think of it as reinforcements anytime your own is in trouble.”

Maybe it wasn’t a ring, but he’d called her honey and he’d given her a necklace.

That had to mean something, surely?

She’d stopped worrying about the operation and thought of nothing but Jake.

By the time they came to collect her to take her for her operation, she’d had a whole future mapped out with him. She’d named their children.

They’d had to drag the necklace from her clenched fist in the operating room, and the moment she was able she put it on again.

A strong heart.

She always wore it when she needed courage and she was wearing it today.

She stood up, her movements automatic. She had to start looking for jobs. She couldn’t waste a moment and she wouldn’t waste time fighting the inevitable.

“You should clear your desk today,” Cynthia said. “We’ll give you a severance package of course.”

Severance.

If promotion was her favorite word, sever was her least favorite. It sounded brutal. She felt as if she was having major surgery all over again, only this time they’d taken a scalpel to her hopes and dreams. So much for climbing the ladder. So much for her plans to eventually start her own business.

Walking out of Cynthia’s office, she closed the door between them.

Reality seeped in. If she’d known what was going to happen, she wouldn’t have bought that coffee on the way in to work. She wouldn’t have treated herself to another lipstick when she already had plenty. She stood, frozen, regretting every cent she’d spent over the past few years. In the darkest part of her life she’d promised herself that she’d live every moment, but she hadn’t anticipated this.

She walked down an empty corridor into the nearest restroom, the only sound the echo of her heels.

Less than an hour ago she’d been excited about the future. Optimistic.

Now she was unemployed.

Unemployed.

Alone in the soulless room, finally she let the mask slip.

In his glass-fronted office in Downtown Manhattan, Jake Romano sat with his feet on his desk only half listening to the man at the other end of the phone.

Across from him a young, blonde reporter fidgeted and tried to check the time without him noticing. Jake rarely gave interviews but somehow this woman had managed to maneuver her way past his assistant. Because he had a certain admiration for tenacity and creativity, he hadn’t thrown her out.

It was an impulse he was regretting. He was willing to bet she was, too. So far they’d been interrupted three times and each time she grew a little more frustrated.

Given that her questions so far had bordered on the intrusive, he decided to make her wait a little longer and focused on the call. “You don’t need a content strategist for a lightweight application redesign. What you need is a smart copywriter.”

The reporter bent her head and checked over her notes. Jake wondered how many more interruptions she’d tolerate before she blew.

He swung his legs off the desk and decided to end the call. “I know you’re a busy man so I’m going to stop you there. I understand you want a beautiful design, but a beautiful design isn’t worth shit if your content is bad. And theory is great but what matters is solving real problems for real people. Talking of problems, I’m going to think about yours and get back to you. If I decide we’re the right people for the job, then I’ll talk to the team and we’ll have a face-to-face. Leave it with me.” He broke the connection. “Sorry about that,” he said, turning his attention to the reporter.

Her smile was as false as his apology. “No problem. You’re a difficult man to get hold of. I know that. I’ve been trying to set up this interview for over a year.”

“And now you’ve succeeded. So are we done here?”

“I have a couple more questions.” She paused, as if regrouping. “We’ve talked about your business, your philanthropic goals and your company ideology. I’d like to tell our readers a little about Jake, the man. You were born in the roughest part of Brooklyn and you were adopted when you were six years old.”

Jake kept his expression blank.

The reporter looked at him expectantly. “I didn’t hear your answer—?”

“I didn’t hear a question.”

She flushed. “Do you see your mother?”

“All the time. She runs the best Italian restaurant in New York. You should check it out.”

“You’re talking about your adoptive mother—” she checked the name “—Maria Romano. I was talking about your real mother.”

“Maria is my real mother.” Those who knew him would have recognized the tone and taken cover but the reporter sat oblivious, like a gazelle unaware she was being stalked by an animal right at the top of the food chain. “So you’re not in touch with your birth mother? I wonder how she feels now that you’re running a multimillion-dollar global business.”

“Feel free to ask her.” Jake stood up. “We’re out of time.”

“You don’t like talking about your past?”

“The past is history,” Jake said in a cool tone, “and I was always better at Math. Now if you’ll excuse me I have clients waiting for my attention. Paying clients.”

“Of course.” The woman slid her recording device into her bag. “You’re an example of the American dream, Jake. An inspiration to millions of Americans who had it tough growing up. Despite your past, you’ve created a highly successful company.”

Not despite, Jake thought. Because of.

He’d created a highly successful company because of his past.

He closed the door on the reporter and paced across to the window that wrapped itself around two sides of his corner office. Sun glinted through the floor-to-ceiling glass and he surveyed the high-rises of Downtown Manhattan spread beneath his feet as if he were Midas studying his pile of gold.

His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, but he kept them open, drinking in the view, gaining satisfaction from the knowledge that he’d earned every dazzling piece of that view.

Not bad for a boy from the wrong part of Brooklyn who’d been told he’d never make anything of himself.

Had he chosen to, he could have given the reporter a story that would have made the front page and probably won her a Pulitzer.

He’d grown up looking at the shiny promise of Manhattan from the other side of the water. He’d blocked out the incessant barking of dogs, the sounds of shouting in the street, the honking of car horns and had stared enviously at a different life. Looking across the fast-flowing tidal stretch that was the East River, he’d seen buildings reaching up to the sky and wanted to live across the water, where skyscrapers stood tall, where glass reflected light and ambition.

It had seemed as faraway and remote as Alaska. But he’d had plenty of time to stare. He’d never known his father and even as a young child he’d spent most of his time alone while his teenage mother worked three jobs.

I love you, Jake. It’s you and me against the world.

Jake stared blankly at the crisscross of streets far beneath him.

It had been a long time since anyone had mentioned her. And a long time since that night when he’d sat alone on the steps to their apartment, waiting for her to come home.

What would have happened to him if Maria hadn’t taken him in?

Jake knew he had more than a loving home to thank her for.

He shifted his gaze from the view to the computer on his desk.

It was Maria who had given him his first computer, an ancient machine that had belonged to one of her cousins. Jake had been fourteen years old when he’d hacked into his first website, fifteen when he’d realized he had abilities other people didn’t. When he’d turned sixteen he picked a company with the largest glass office, turned up at the door and told them how vulnerable they were to cyber attack. They’d laughed, until he’d shown them how easily he could break through their security defenses. Then they’d stopped laughing and listened.

He’d become a legend in cyber security, the teenager with charisma, confidence and a brain so sharp he’d held conversations with men twice his age who knew half as much.

He’d shown them how little they knew, exposed the weaknesses, then taught them how to fix it. At school he skipped every English class, but never Math. Numbers, he understood.

He’d come from nowhere, but he’d been determined that soon he was going somewhere and he was going there so fast he left everyone behind.

It was exploiting those gifts that had put him through college and, much later, bought his mother—because that was how he thought of Maria even before she’d officially adopted him—a restaurant so that she could share her cooking skills with the good folks of Brooklyn without having them packed into her kitchen as tightly as olives in a jar.

With the help of his closest friend, Matt, he’d set up his own company and developed a piece of encryption software, which was bought by a major defense company for a sum that ensured he would never have money worries again.

Then, bored by the overcrowded cyber security market he’d turned his attention to the growing field of digital marketing.

Now his company offered everything from creative content to user experience design although he still accepted the occasional private request to consult on cyber security issues. It had been one of those requests that had kept him up until the early hours the previous night.

His office door opened again and Dani, one of his junior staff, entered carrying coffee.

“I thought you’d need this. That girl was harder to shake off than a mosquito on a blood bag.” She was wearing striped socks and no shoes, a dress code followed by at least half the people working for him. Jake had no interest in what people wore to work. Nor was he interested in where a person went to college. He cared about two things. Passion and potential.

Dani had both.

She put the coffee on his desk. The aroma rose, strong and pungent, slicing through the clouds in his brain that reminded him he’d been working until three in the morning.

“She asked you questions?”

“A few thousand. Mostly about your personal life. She wanted to know whether the reason you rarely date the same woman twice is because of your messed-up childhood.”

He peeled the cap off the coffee. “Did you tell her to mind her own business?”

“No. I told her that the reason you don’t date the same woman twice is because at last count there were around seventy thousand single women in Manhattan, and if you start seeing them more than once you’re never going to get through them all.” Her expression cheerful, she handed him a stack of messages. “Your friend Matt called four times. The guy sounded stressed.”

“Matt is never stressed.” Jake took a sip of coffee, savoring the aroma and the much-needed pump of caffeine. “He is Mr. Calm.”