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She looked mildly surprised at this, her sleek eyebrows lifting only slightly. Damn, the side of her temple was really starting to swell. He’d been preoccupied with other, more important matters—like confirming whether she was wearing a bra or not—to really notice that.
“Call a Miss MacFadden and ask her to accompany me. Also, get her a gift, something nice from Harry’s or Fred’s, maybe some earrings or a bracelet.”
Lucy briskly took notes, trying not to show her confusion and puzzlement. “All right,” she said, closing her notepad with a loud thump before rising to her feet. “Will that be all?”
“No. I want a dozen donuts, at least half of them glazed, in my office at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Be sure to be fully recovered by then, Miss Divine.”
“I will try, Mr. Holden,” she muttered, sticking her notes back into her briefcase and slamming it shut. “It’s not that I wanted to fall, I assure you.”
“Also, please be sure to keep your cell phone on at all times. You never know when there might be an emergency.”
Lucy eyed him levelly. “Does this mean I still have a job?”
Holden had to admit that he appreciate her frankness. God knows it pissed him off when his employees beat around the bush and made him lose any more minutes of his time than was necessary. Employees didn’t seem to get the fact that a minute of Holden’s time was a lot of freaking money. “Yes, Miss Divine, you still have a job,” he said flatly.
Not for long, Miss Divine. Not for long, he thought to himself.
Ten minutes after her departure, he smiled wickedly and dialed her number, lifting the receiver up to his ear with flair. When she answered, he spoke casually into the speaker, just to let her know she could expect this sort of event every single day of her job as his assistant. “Miss Divine, I need you to come back here.”
“Is something wrong, Mr. Holden?” If the strain in her voice was any indication, she was trying her damnedest to sound unaffected but failing miserably.
“Yes. Didn’t Phelps explain to you? I need you to select my tie for tomorrow. And make it quick, Miss Divine, I don’t have all night.”
Two
Lucy had sore ribs, a swollen ankle, a purple temple and a wounded pride.
She had been playing nursemaid to Patrick Holden for just over a week and she was feeling tired and a little desperate. This was not going the way she had hoped. The man was impossible. First, she’d had a headache of a time finding a present for his date. “Something from Harry’s or Fred’s,” he’d said, leaving her to figure it out for herself, until one of Holden’s three secretaries, Bitch Number One, had finally said, “Fred Leighton and Harry Winston, Lucy, puleeeze. They’re only two of the finest jewelers in the world.”
Oh! Silly, stupid Lucy for not having learned that at Stanford!
And that had not been her only dilemma. It seemed that all three of Holden’s personal secretaries hated Lucy more than their own mothers-in-law. At their best they were intelligent, hardworking women, and at their worst, they were real bitches intent on doing only two things—filing their nails and making Lucy’s life miserable. As if she didn’t have enough misery already with the ridiculous demands of her boss.
Unlike Lucy, who limited her contact with her boss to as little as possible, his secretaries seemed to vie for his attention in such a way that was almost laughable. While Lucy waited promptly at 8 a.m. with his donuts sitting in a box atop her lap every morning, his three secretaries, especially Bitch Number Three, got extremely pissed when he stormed into the office and barked, “Miss Divine. You. Follow me.”
As Lucy had expected, his office was like a palace and every piece of furniture in it screamed of new money trying to look like old money. There was a mixture of eras, decades and tastes in his furniture. It wasn’t exactly displeasing. Instead, she found it rather interesting. Polished mahogany wood covered the vast expanse of the floor, while the grand wall parallel to the double doors was glass from floor to ceiling, boasting an impressive view of Wall Street. The rest of the office walls were covered in a plush, deep emerald green fabric, all boasting an assortment of framed artworks.
Holden’s leather-topped rosewood desk occupied the right side of the grand palazzo, where it stood facing three carved wooden chairs upholstered in wine suede strategically positioned across from it. Behind his desk was a tall leather swivel chair that served as his throne, and hanging proudly on the wall behind was a large painting of oil on canvas—an impressive abstract work with violent brush strokes in a green and brown palette. At the opposite side of the room stood a floral-patterned English-style sofa facing a plasma TV, which he kept on at all times to watch the Bloomberg channel for stock news and reports. The TV hung like a trophy in the center of the fabric-paneled wall, and to the left of it was a modern mirror-backed, fully stocked wet bar.
Every morning he expected Lucy to place a dozen Evian water bottles on top of his desk and set down the box of donuts with a pile of napkins before quietly taking her leave to do other errands. And she had no idea how he could come up with so many—all of them inane. The man wanted very specific engraved stationary, had her send his suit from the day before to the dry cleaner’s daily, ordered her to hunt down special caviar he had a toothache for and called incessantly during the day to pile more errands on her, or complicate the current ones. Like the recent phone call she remembered all too well.
“I just changed my mind, Miss Divine. I want beige stationary, not white,” he’d said.
“But I’ve already ordered the white,” she countered, doing her utmost best to remain cool. Really! Was there such a grave difference between b
eige and white stationary?
“That’s not my problem now, is it?”
And then he’d hung up.
The man also wanted her to schedule his dates, among other strange requests that only a lunatic could think of.
Last week, while they’d been riding in the back of a black Lincoln Town Car through the crowded Manhattan streets, Holden had pointed a thick, long finger at the huge bronze sculpture “Charging Bull”—the symbol of Wall Street and that of a growing and prosperous stock market.
“I want that, Miss Divine. Get it.”
“Mr. Holden, that’s impossible,” she immediately said.
