Page 6 of Trick or Tease

There was a round of handshakes and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. My clients were a hell of a lot richer, my firm had just banked, and I had made a decent chunk of change too. Life was good.

After the sellers left, it was just me and my clients.

Robert Westbrook, the CEO of the Westbrook Group, loosened his tie and let out a long breath. “Damn, Garrett. When Morrison brought up that zoning issue on Tuesday, I thought we were dead in the water.”

“That was a curveball,” I said, instead of calling it what it actually was—a total fucking disaster. Never let a client see you sweat. “The research team pulled through, though. We found a way around it and got the deal you wanted.”

Robert stood and extended his hand. “Six months, Garrett. Six grueling months of phone calls, meetings, revisions, and more meetings. But you never let up. You kept pushing against those thugs.”

I shook his hand firmly. “That’s what you pay me for.”

“No,” he said. “What we pay you for is competence. What you delivered was excellence. There’s a difference.”

The praise felt good—better than good. I’d been chasing this feeling for years. I needed the validation that I’d made the right choice leaving Greenleaf behind. Every missed family dinner, every declined invitation back home, every time Billy called and bitched that he was doing all the work on the family farm had all been worth it.

The fact that I was very single with zero prospects for a wife was worth it.

I was getting the prize.

“I hope you’ll count on me for your next sale,” I said as I walked them to the elevators.

“Absolutely,” Robert said as the elevator doors opened. “You’re our go-to guy now, Garrett. You’re a miracle worker.”

I watched the elevator close and satisfaction washed over me. Another client locked down, another relationship solidified. This was how you built a career in Manhattan—one handshake at a time, one deal at a time. And one massive commission check.

I walked back through the lobby of our forty-second-floor offices. I walked past the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a breathtaking view of Central Park.

The reception area was all sleek glass and chrome, with the firm’s name in gold letters behind the desk. Our receptionist sat with a headset on. She barely looked at me as she typed and talked.

I used to dream about working in a place like this back when I was nothing more than a young boy slinging pumpkins on the farm. I always knew I was destined for expensive suits and fancy cars. I wasn’t the kind of guy that rose with the sun and ran a tractor all day.

That was Billy’s thing.

Not mine.

I walked back to my office and closed the door.

I couldn’t resist fist-punching the air.

Nailed it.

I fucking nailed it.

I grabbed the signed contracts and left my office, unable to conceal the pep in my step. I made my way down the hall to Ron’s corner office. His door was open.

“Ron,” I called out, rapping my knuckles against the doorframe. “Hope you’ve got some champagne stashed in that filing cabinet of yours.”

He looked up from his computer, his gray eyes narrowing over his reading glasses. At sixty-two, Ron Geiss had the kind of cold expression that came from three decades of high-stakes litigation and stress-induced insomnia. His hair had gone completely silver, but his mind was sharp as a fucking razor. I knew a lot of the women around the office thought he was a silver fox, but I didn’t care about any of that.

“Westbrook?” he asked, leaning back in his wingback chair.

I held up the contracts like a trophy. “Signed, sealed, and delivered. One-point-two-five billion. The wire should hit our account before close of business.”

For a split second, I saw something that might have been approval flicker across his features. Coming from Ron, that was basically a standing ovation.

“Commission structure as discussed?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Two percent. That’s twenty-five million to the firm.” I couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of my voice. “Not bad for six months of work.”