Miss Chatterley, Part I by Logan Belle

Author:Logan Belle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Star

Chapter Eight

Ivy, talking on the phone to a corporate Realtor, looked up from her desk to find Tom Dukes looming over her.

Tom fucking Dukes!

It was almost five in the afternoon, a busy day of trailing Cliff in meetings and then manning her desk to field nonstop phone calls.

“I’m going to have to call you back,” she said to the Realtor. She hated being seen on the phone like a secretary, confirming his harsh assessment of her place in the Chatterbox hierarchy.

She looked up at him and said as casually as she could manage, “Can I help you?”

Tom Dukes smiled, his dark hair slicked back, eyes hidden behind titanium-framed Oliver Peoples sunglasses.

“I’m here to see Cliff,” he said. Ivy clicked open the calendar on her computer, already certain she wouldn’t find an appointment. She kept Cliff’s schedule, and this was one meeting she would have remembered.

“I don’t see you on his calendar,” she said.

“I’m a big believer in spontaneity,” he said, removing his glasses and meeting her eyes.

“Well, unfortunately for you, Cliff isn’t. And he’s at an off-site meeting.” If he was going to see her as a glorified secretary, she’d at least show him she was an unflinching one.

“That meeting wouldn’t happen to be with someone from Morgan Stanley, would it?” he asked, referring to his bank’s number one rival. Every major tech IPO went with either Goldman or Morgan. Go big or go home.

Ivy glanced at the screen as if she were checking, even though she knew full well that it wasn’t. Cliff wasn’t talking to any investment banks. That’s what worried her.

“I’m not a liberty to say,” she told him.

“Well, then,” Tom Dukes said. “Are you at liberty to go have a cocktail?”

* * * *

Il Fornaio was known for its power lunches, the type of place Cliff would only go to if dragged kicking and screaming. Still, Ivy had the unsettling fear that she would somehow run into him there, despite the fact that it was long past lunchtime. She knew he was interviewing a new marketing candidate, probably at Hobee’s, where he practically had his own designated table.

The pretty hostess seated them at a prime spot in the center of the restaurant. Ivy had been hoping to blend in at the crowded bar, or even for a more discreet table behind one of the wide, decorative support beams or nestled between the cubby-like wooden ledges in the back. But instead their table was next to a mirrored wall. Ivy doubted that Tom Dukes left anything to chance, and she was savvy enough to know that squiring Cliff Reid’s assistant out to Il Fornaio was his way of staking his claim on Chatterbox. This was dangerous territory, and she knew she should tread carefully.

“I thought it might be nice for us to sit down for a civilized cocktail,” he said.

“I didn’t think civility was high on your list,” she said.

“I wasn’t trying to insult you the other night,” he said. “I was just being honest. I’m doing you a favor in telling you how things work around here.

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