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Soft gasps slipped out of the others’ mouths, but this didn’t make sense. Cabot Reed started his publishing house in the early nineteen-seventies. No way that devastatingly handsome, devastatingly calm, cool, and collected man in the elevator was my new boss. He would have been… I don’t know, not even born yet when he started Reed Publishing? The man in the elevator was only, like, what? Forty years old? At best?
“I don’t understand. Isn’t Cabot Reed, like, sixty or something?”
Marisa grinned. “Sixty-nine, actually.”
I frowned. Yeah, there was no way the Smirker was closing in on seventy.
“He’s retiring soon. It hasn’t been announced yet, so of course you don’t know, but we’ve known about it for sometime. Admins talk, you know?” Marisa shrugged. “That man you rode the elevator with, who you snapped at apparently, is the man who’s about to take over at the helm.”
I looked around the table at my new friends. “I don’t understand.”
“Honey.” Marisa laughed, shaking her head. “That was Cabot Reed junior.”
“Ungh, daddy,” Hector growled.
I met his gaze, eyebrows raised.
Hector laughed, raising his drink. “I mean, if I was into older men…”
“Hey now.” Marcus shot Hector a glare. “I’m right here, babe.”
Hector rolled his eyes. “You know that man is as beautiful as they come.”
“I’ve heard he’s a hard ass,” Eloise whispered.
“He has a hard ass,” Marisa said, swiftly covering her mouth to hide a giggle.
Hector snorted. “Hard ass is putting it mildly. The old man is a hard ass. Junior is something else entirely.”
“A sadist,” Marcus agreed. “And not in a good way. I swear he got off on making you cry, babe.” Marcus reached over to rub Hector’s shoulder.
“He took over for a few weeks of my internship last fall, when his old man had to fly out to the L.A. office, and I cried every day during that time, no joke. You have to have really thick skin to work directly beneath a man like that.” Hector shrugged. “I’m a lot of things, but thick-skinned is not one of them. I hated every moment of it.”
My stomach twisted into knots, and as the server returned with our lunch orders, I stared down at my niçoise salad without the appetite I’d had just a short while ago.
I’d snapped at Cabot Reed. It didn’t matter which Cabot Reed I snapped at. Both men were equally in charge. Both men could end my internship and tank my publishing dreams.
And they’d have every right to. I’d acted like an insolent child.
“The knowledge I gained while shadowing Cabot Reed was priceless, but…” Hector paused until I looked up at him. “Spending any time at all with the heir to the throne?” He shuddered. “I don’t envy you, new girl. I nearly didn’t even accept the editorial gig when Blanca offered it to me.” Hector motioned toward the others at the table. “If I hadn’t found this crew, I would have run as fast as I could away from that place and that stuck up suit.”
Jeez, was Cabot Reed that bad? Really? He’d seemed cold and standoffish in the elevator, sure, but was he scary enough to warrant passing on a dream job?
And how could a man that horrible send a gift as thoughtful as the one he’d sent me this morning?
It just didn’t add up.
Sighing, I said, “Okay, so, let me get this straight… the man I thought I was going to shadow for the next twelve weeks is retiring? Is that correct?”
Marisa smiled sympathetically. “Yeah. It’s not official, but it’s definitely been going around the office for some time, and the fact that junior is here way more often than he used to be…” She shrugged “Well, all signs point to one thing, you know?”
I’d worked hard to secure this coveted spot, all in the hopes that I’d spend the next twelve weeks learning everything I could from a man with decades of knowledge in the publishing industry.
Instead, now I’d be shadowing his son, an arrogant man who made people move out of his way like they didn’t exist, who mocked romance readers–okay, maybe… I wasn’t so sure of that anymore–and made grown men cry.
