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“Julian,” she said, taping her knuckle on his open door causing him to look up from the pile of papers on the desk. His desk was a mess and the cluttered cabinet to the right suggested he wasn’t as much of a neat freak as his meticulous appearance suggested.
“Hello, good morning,” he said, rising from his seat. “I’m sorry for the mess. I’m changing the office and we just lost an associate yesterday.”
Panic made her take a stride forward. “Lost him?” she asked, hooking her thumb over the purse she had across her body.
“Yes,” he said, coming around his desk. “He was poached by a Manhattan firm… I can’t lie, people are twitchy around here since, you know.”
He got that odd look of solemnity again, so she smiled to try to put him at ease. “I came to reassure you about that,” she said. “I know the board isn’t meeting until next week but stability will be returning to Cormack Industries.”
Concerned with his work and consumed by his own thoughts, he spoke as though he may not have heard her. “I’m glad you came because I was going to call your office. A client got in touch, an important client who CI has done a lot of business with.”
That narrowed it down to about a million. CI didn’t have unimportant clients. Reminding herself to stay cool and patient, she did her best to pace her words. “That’s good. Things are getting back to normal. Who is heading up the—”
Julian’s smile was joined by a shake of his head. “Oh, I’m sorry, I meant, he’s looking for you. Specifically you. He stated that you are the sole person he will deal with.”
Her thoughts stalled. She was an assistant, she didn’t head negotiations, she got doughnuts and Danishes… at least, she sent one of the girls to do it while she lined up the presentations and set out contracts. While all of their assistants knew her by her first name, few of the clients knew her as anything more than a voice at the end of the phone or a name on an email. No client would request to talk to her on the phone, let alone have a private meeting with her.
Naivety was a liability, so she greeted this development with suspicion. “Who is he?” she asked. “What does he want?”
“He didn’t leave his name, just said that you’d met before and that you knew what it would be about,” he said. “He requested to have the meeting in Grant’s office. Will that be suitable for you?”
If the client had asked for it, she had no choice, she knew that much about being professional—personal issues didn’t matter a damn if someone was going to spend a shitload of cash with the company.
Given her association with the Kindred, and the possible outcomes of this peculiar request, she didn’t probe Julian for any more information or let her true curiosity show. If she played down her confusion, Julian shouldn’t follow up with questions when they next saw each other after the meeting. If it turned out to be Kindred related, she wouldn’t be able to be honest with the ignorant lawyer. The less he knew, the safer he would be.
It could be that the appeal for an audience with her was benign. One of CI’s longer standing clients might just want to snoop now that Grant’s obituary had been printed. In their eyes, she would be the most likely candidate to have salacious details, and they’d probably guess she was weak and stupid enough to share them. Though if that were the case, there would be no reason to specify a meeting location or to be so guarded about who they were.
“Yes,” she muttered, taking her attention to the sunshine beyond the window. “I’ll go upstairs and set it up.”
“What did you want to tell me?” Julian asked and she looked at him again.
Her forehead was still tense, but she didn’t have time to speculate about who the stranger might be. So she did what she’d come here to do. “I wanted to let you know that there is a woman coming in to take over Grant’s position, subject to board approval.”
Julian didn’t flinch. “Yes, Mischa Corvi.”
His knowledge was unexpected. “You knew?” she asked. Brodie didn’t make phone calls, didn’t like to talk to people, yet he’d apparently called ahead. “How did you—”
“Her people called last night. The rest of us were notified this morning,” Julian’s face lit. “She’s an incredible woman. She triumphed after her father’s unexpected suicide. She took over the family firm and has helped several others return from the brink of bankruptcy. She has a knack for business.”
Wasn’t it just wonderful that everyone worshiped this woman who Brodie used to fuck? Zara did her best to smile. “CI is not near bankruptcy,” she said, trying to remain upbeat while being visited by an immature pang of jealousy.
“No,” Julian concurred. “And I didn’t know she was affiliated with the McCormack family. Grant was so private about that sort of thing.”
Grant didn’t know Mischa Corvi personally, at least as far as Zara knew. But it turned out there was plenty she didn’t know about the man and the company she thought she knew so well.
“What do you know?” Zara asked, finding it difficult to maintain the façade.
Julian was too distracted by his own eagerness to notice her discomfort. “She knows the family, was sent by them according to her people, hand-picked. I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
She never would’ve guessed. “I can tell. We’re all in for a treat.”
“I think we are.”
Observing the clutter of the office, she took a deep breath. “Well, I should let you get back to tidying up. We want everything in order for Ms. Corvi’s arrival, don’t we?”
“Yes,” he said and his glee dissipated to concern. “Yes. Yes, you’re right.”
Having notified the man of something he already knew, Zara left him to his work and began to think about her own. A day of preparing for the arrival of Cuckoo to the company was bumped down the priority list too. A mysterious client wanted a meeting with her.
