Slave to Love (2 page)

Cuntessa and I roll our eyes at one another. Laura’s insanity is one of the few things over which we actually bond.

“Will we be hiring a new west coast sales director?” Cuntessa jumps right in.

Kemp makes a face, “I would if I didn’t think you two bitches could handle it.”

The man actually called us bitches. Which is probably an accurate assessment. Laughing, I lock eyes with him, “You’re a fucking HR nightmare.”

Yes, there I am in my short turquoise pencil skirt, and oh so hot, Christian Louboutin Pigalle Follies aquarium colored glitter pumps, and I drop the first F-bomb of the day, opening the window for a veritable shit storm which will undeniably follow.

“I think you got me beat, babe.” Kemp is amused, his sexy smile making its morning debut.

Bitches. Fucking. Babe. Yeah, we’re quite the crew. The funny part is, we’re a highly profitable division of a Fortune 100 company. It doesn’t get bigger than that. And we work our asses off. Work hard. Play hard. We are the definition of high risk, high reward.

“So, is that the answer,” Cuntessa presses, “we get more work?”

“Pretty much.” He smiles at her and I know her panties are wet. She’s loved the man since the day he hired her whiney ass as a territory sales rep and climbed the ranks with him. His evil little protégé.

“Are we going to be compensated for this extra responsibility?”

I sit back, letting her do the dirty work.

“What do you think?” He gives her the “don’t be stupid” look.

“I don’t know, why don’t you tell us.” She’s now somehow lapsed into something between a whine and baby talk and I want to slit my wrists. I have not had freaking caffeine yet, damn it, and I have to listen to baby talk. Kill me now. Please just kill me now.

“Yes, you’ll both be nicely compensated. I’m taking her base pay and splitting it between you two bitches.”

Cuntessa and I are now smiling at each other. Without even knowing exactly what crazy Laura’s base pay was, it’s safe to assume we each just got a six-figure raise or something close to it. Oh happy day!

Kemp looks around at the guys (the rest of his team are men), “The things I have to do to keep these two happy.”

“So, how is this splitting up?” I ask, anxious to get every last detail.

“Well, since you’re down in Texas and Susan is here in New York, I thought we’d do a north/south split. You’ll take on Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. Susan, you’ve got Washington and Oregon. We don’t have much in the other states up there.”

“She gets all of California? San Francisco should be considered the north. After all it is Northern California.”

The greedy bitch is already trying to poach from my territory. “You picked up Washington State. You just got Microsoft and Boeing, so stop bitching.” I know I’m sneering at her and I’m not even attempting to hide it.

California. I’m trying not to show how thrilled I am, but I am jazzed and want to get up on the conference table and do a happy dance in my sparkly shoes. I love the sales reps out there and our clients are to-die-for awesome. We provide outsourced services to all the major movie studios and a prestigious array of Silicon Valley companies and Napa/Sonoma wineries. I have just landed a big fat slice of heaven.

“You love Pinot Noir.” I smile at Cuntessa as I reference the wine coming out of Oregon.

Her expression is less than friendly.

After three hours, Angela has lunch brought in for us as we continue to review accounts and quarterly projections. Cuntessa is still sulking over California and giving her best shot to wear down Kemp for at least San Francisco, as he attempts to eat a corned beef on rye. As I finish my sandwich, Angela places a steaming cup of hot dark roast coffee in front of me.

“I love you hard.”

“Is this your first of the day?” she whispers discreetly.

She’s surprised when I nod, then turns to Kemp, “Shall I make dinner reservations for all of us at the Old Homestead?” It’s his favorite ‘Old Boys’ Club’ steakhouse.

“I won’t be joining you.” Everyone turns toward him in surprise, he never blows off staff dinners when the whole crew is in town. “And I’ll be needing these two for drinks,” he points to me and Susan, “but they’ll be back with the rest of you for dinner.”

Generally, he does private sessions with me and Cuntessa that don’t include the remainder of his directs. I assume we’re going to get some dirt on his last conversation with the nut job, Laura, that he just canned, as well as some inside scoop on what’s going on with top brass.

Kemp McCoy is on the fast-track for a top executive spot, and Susan Smith has made a near full-time job of trying to marginalize me and my team’s success so that she becomes the heir apparent to his current position. One small problem for Susan and her minions – my team has taken the number one spot three years running, so she resorts to backstabbing, and commenting on my skirts and high heels, tits and nipples, to try and diminish me and my success.

My answer to her, go sell something, bitch. (Or “Did you and Hillary Clinton coordinate on pants suits and shoes again today?”)

We wrap up at 5:30 and my brain is mush.

“Do I have time to go back to my hotel or are we going straight out?” I ask Kemp.

He looks at his watch. “You have time to go to the bathroom. Hurry.”

Sitting in a cab in rush hour traffic, I watch the wilting people walk the stewing sidewalks of Madison Avenue and I’m profusely thanking the cab gods that the one we hailed actually has air conditioning, because there’s way too much body heat being squished in the back of a cab with two other people on a June afternoon.

“Are we meeting someone?” I wonder if we are since he hasn’t given us any prep information.

“You’ll see,” is the odd response I get.

Cuntessa finally asks, “Where are we going?’

“That I will tell you. The St. Regis.”

“The St. Regis Hotel?” her voice rises an octave.

“The bar,” Kemp clarifies.

I look at him, wondering who we are meeting at the King Cole Salon, the St. Regis’ famed bar. I silently snicker thinking it’s more of an infamous bar in my case, as my dating past includes the bar manager from when I was living in New York in my early twenties. Lesson learned from that relationship – if a guy tells you he has a history of commitment issues – believe him. No, you are not special. No, your relationship isn’t different. He’s got commitment problems. Believe him and run, if commitment is what you seek. Do not get attached to a man with commitment issues.

I’m smiling as the bellman escorts me out of the cab. The St. Regis is truly one of the grande dames of old New York. I am lost to visions of boyfriends past and hot, passionate kisses against walls, and champagne splashed on my body, while lying on the bar long after the last patron has gone for the evening.

Before we enter, Kemp stops us. “Okay, I don’t want you two to go crazy, but drinks tonight are with Hale Lundström.”

“Oh my God.” Susan locks my upper arm in a death grip that I’m sure will leave nasty purple bruises.

I’m clueless, looking from Cuntessa to Kemp and down to what is surely going to be a bruised biceps. “Who’s Hale Lundström?”

“You’re not serious?” I can tell Kemp is already annoyed with me. He’s worried that if I don’t know who the guy is, how am I going to have any meaningful conversation about his business? “Have you looked at the Forbes fastest growing tech companies over the last three years? He’s the founder and CEO of SpaceCloud.”

“Oh, okay. I’ve heard of SpaceCloud, I’m just not familiar with him.”

Cuntessa is staring at my tits and I look down. My nipples are flashing their high beams through the thin silk of my blouse. My memories of bar fucking must’ve gotten the twins excited.

“You need covers for those things,” she comments and I can see Kemp is uncomfortable.

I look at her lack of anything sizable hidden under her Hillary Clinton blazer and shake my head, “Maybe I’m turned on by you.”

“Very funny. But I bet you will be turned on by Hale Lundström. The man is drop dead gorgeous.”

“Well, maybe he’s a nipple man,” I comment, as we follow Kemp into my old stomping grounds

As if seeing an old friend that I’ve missed for years, the Maxwell Parrish mural of Old King Cole adorning the back of the bar brings unexpected tears to my eyes. I was twenty-three. He was twenty-five. And I’d never before met someone who I clicked with, in every way, like that. We’d gotten into the habit of saying, “Hey twin,” to each other because we were like mirror versions of one another.

Approaching the bar, I smile at the bartender, an older man with warm eyes and an inviting smile. He probably thinks I’m already drunk approaching the bar with such a huge grin. Either that or he’s smiling back because he too is a fan of nipples and legs.

We’re just feet away, when from the highly polished counter, a man in a navy blazer and worn jeans turns on his bar stool, immediately planting his sneakered feet on the floor as he stands, unfolding to his full height before us. His dark blue eyes are sharp and focused as he breaks into a movie star smile, taking Kemp’s outstretched hand for a hearty shake. Loose wavy curls, slightly too long for a businessman, top a handsome face graced with a square jaw and slightly dimpled chin. The look is completed with a day’s dark stubble. I’m thrown, the man looks like an Italian movie star. I was expecting a Viking with the last name Lundström, not Raoul Bova’s younger brother.

“I’d like you to meet two of the best sales directors in the country,” Kemp ushers us in. “Hale, this is Susan Smith, my east coast and now Pacific Northwest sales director and Sierra Stone, who manages the Midwest through California.”

“Pleasure meeting you, Susan.” Hale extends a hand to Cuntessa, gracing her with a smile that probably made her want to dance naked for him.

When he makes no move to greet me, I extend a hand, “Sierra,” I reintroduce myself.

He looks at me, the affect in his eyes flat. “Yes, I got it the first time.”

He doesn’t shake my hand.
Douche.

“What are you drinking?” Kemp turns around to us.

“Chardonnay.” Cuntessa is so boring.

“I’ll have a Red Snapper.” The bartender’s eyes are twinkling the minute he hears that come out of my mouth and I can’t help but smile back at him. Kemp joins Hale with a Guinness.

Picking up my drink off the bar, Susan announces, “That’s a Bloody Mary. What fancy name did you call that?”

I want to slap her, but just smile. “A Red Snapper.” And I take it from her, immediately diving in for a much needed sip of the spicy treat.

“Why?”

“Because this is where the Bloody Mary was first created and the name they originally called it was the Red Snapper.”

“You are a wealth of information,” Kemp kids me.

“Well, long ago a friend of mine was the bar manager, so I’ve done my fair share of drinking here.” I choose to omit the story that is dying to come out of my mouth.
See that spot on the bar right there? Yup, that one, right there. Well, one night, after four Red Snappers, I climbed up onto the bar and hiked up my skirt, (which was, yes, shorter than this one that I’m wearing tonight and I was, of course, going commando), and showed my boyfriend my brand new Brazilian wax, which he must’ve loved, because after he went down on me, he fucked me long and hard. And then he made me another Red Snapper. Obviously, on the house.

“Legal issues were ironed out today and I gave it my blessing late this afternoon,” Hale informs Kemp.

I watch Kemp’s face take on a glorious smile as the two men engage in a vigorous handshake and backslapping apropos more for a locker room than a hotel bar.

Turning to me and Cuntessa, our boss announces, “Ladies, I would like you to meet our newest client.”

Susan squeals and goes in for a hug with Hale, who bristles at her touch. The man is clearly not a hugger, although she didn’t notice. SpaceCloud is headquartered out of New York, so the bitch just picked up a huge client that neither she nor her team invested any time in selling. This one was a gift, a huge fucking gift, which just fell into her lap. I want to puke. And the bitch was busting on me all day trying to poach San Francisco.

I smile, my poker face shining brightly, “Awesome news.” And I signal to the bartender for another Red Snapper. With SpaceCloud now part of her portfolio, the balance of power may have just shifted, finally positioning Cuntessa’s team to outsell mine. Hale Lundström doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve spoken.

The ramifications of this news are horrendous, personally and professionally. If Kemp were to be promoted, and Susan had better sales numbers, there would be nothing stopping him from backfilling his position with his evil little protégé. I’m fucked. Totally and positively fucked. And it’s this handsome man who has acted like I’m invisible that has caused my corporate demise.

I just want to kick him hard in one of his long jean’s clad shins and then go off and cry, but I’ve got to take it like a pro, smile on my face. Which I do.

“When would it be convenient to schedule me, Susan and her team to come in and meet your team and get the ball rolling?”

Hale pulls his cell phone out of the inner pocket of his blazer and types out a message. “Let me get my admin on it.”

Looking at my watch, I nudge Cuntessa. “We need to head downtown to the Old Homestead.” I know from her look she wants to kill me. There’s no way she wants to leave Hale and Kemp.

Hale stands and reaches into the back pocket of his jeans. As he moves his jacket to the side, I can see his slim hips and athletic ass. Damn he’s a fine specimen, too bad he’s a douche.

He pulls out his wallet and removes a business card and hands it to Susan. She digs through her purse and reciprocates.

“Well, nice meeting you.” I can’t get out of there fast enough. Between this too gorgeous for his own good, arrogant dude basically being rude to me, and Cuntessa getting the account gift of a lifetime, I’ve had enough. I need to get downtown to the Old Homestead and drown my sorrows in a very large, exceedingly rare and bloody ribeye. On the damn bone! Because it will be the only bone I’m thrown.