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One
Cassidy
C
assidy ran her fingertips along the sandstone wall, the once roughened surface worn smooth from the thousands of students who’d meandered along this path over the university’s long history. The country’s best and brightest studied there. It was almost hallowed ground for those with a love of learning. Cassidy wanted her name to be remembered among the greats. Both the university and the bastions of capitalism—the blue-chip companies that called Sydney home—would one day count her as worthy of her place among them. She was working on it. Steps one and two in her grand plan—secure a business degree from the country’s leading university and land a job in one of Sydney’s best real estate agencies—were ticked off. The next step—make a name for herself in that agency—was well on its way to being achieved.
A year post-graduation and Cassidy had found her niche—commercial property. The C in CIR, the agency she worked for. Industrial and retail were the engine room of the city, but Cassie loved everything about the corporate world she operated in.
Dressed in a knee-length slim-fit black dress and stilettos, she looked like she was heading out to party. But disconnecting from her laptop and putting down the research was purely strategic. The industry was as much about who you knew as what you knew. Connections were everything, and Cassidy was at the mixer to network. Her targets were the three executives from one of the world’s largest co-working platforms in town for business meetings.
They just so happened to be the very same people her boss had arranged a ten-minute pitch to the next day. Michael had heard the rumour only days earlier. Accord Hub was seeking to expand into Sydney. It was no coincidence that the executives flew into the city overnight. Cassidy’s instructions were simple—pull together the results of their key marketplace research, business start-up statistics, and any government grants available for new businesses, and synthesize it into a single-page flyer that he could discuss over a coffee. Instead, she’d dashed out of the office at 6:30 p.m. to race home, change, and head to the university for the exclusive alumni event.
The executives were in town, and Cassidy was determined to get more than ten minutes with them.
If she managed to pull it off and win the contract to find them their first location on Australian soil, she would be up for a quick promotion. Details stayed with her, the market research she’d buried herself in nightly was burned into her brain, but she wouldn’t be giving the presentation, which didn’t fly for Cassidy. Connections were hard to come by, and seniority always took priority when they had none. She might have done all the work, but her boss would get the credit for landing the client. So, when she’d made the connection between the event speakers and the company, Cassidy jumped on the chance to muscle her way into that presentation. Michael would have done exactly the same thing, so she’d kept the information close to her chest.
CIR only hired people who were greedy for success, so it was as cutthroat as it came. She didn’t trust any of her colleagues. They would take advantage of her hard work and claim the success as their own in a heartbeat. It had happened before. She wouldn’t let it happen again. Especially when Michael, through Cassidy’s hard work, had just signed on the most up-market, about-to-be-completed office building in the city. The untenanted space stretched over fifteen floors. It would give a tenant such as Accord Hub, with an international reputation to match the exclusivity of the building, the flexibility to create the perfect space for their Sydney debut. The timing couldn’t be anything but serendipitous.
Cassidy smiled to herself, picturing the neat red bow that tied her plan together. She was going to pull it off.
Rounding the corner, the glass addition to the sandstone building, nicknamed the fishbowl, came into view. It was ultra-modern, a contrast that some traditionalists had criticized when its design was unveiled, but Cassidy loved it. The new mixing with the old, seamlessly integrating to modernize an outdated building, dragging it from the last century into this one. It was an apt comparison to her generation entering the workforce and revolutionizing the way business was conducted and by whom.
Light spilled out into the courtyard, a warm yellow in the cool of the evening. Men in designer suits and women in elegant dresses and pantsuits gathered around sipping wine and chatting, the odd business card being exchanged.
Cassidy signed the register and clipped her name tag to her dress while she scanned the attendee list. She had her targets, but it never hurt to get to know a few others too.
One name stood out. His. Fury, hot and heavy like a burning oil slick, descended on Cassidy. She ground her teeth and glared at the name before her, wanting to erase its very existence. Even the letters written on the page offended her.
Jacob. Fucking. Denyer.
That man, that thief, he’d stolen her listing, reviewed her confidential report, then shit on it. It had taken weeks of fact gathering, statistical research, and identifying potential listing strategies to get the property in front of the right tenants for such a blue-chip investment, not to mention writing the report before it was perfect. She knew it back to front. Cassidy’s presentation answering every question thrown at her should have won her the clients. It had.
Until Jacob Fucking Denyer called. He’d interrupted their meeting, and Cassidy, trying to be accommodating, encouraged the director to take the call. The next three minutes had derailed all her hard work, much to her disgust. He’d criticized the report, then stolen the listing from her. After all that, he had the audacity to use her marketing approach to sign up the very company Cassidy had identified as an audacious target to upgrade the quality of the tenants in the building.
All she’d needed was fifteen more minutes with them. But no, the thieving bastard had cost her far more than the hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission her agency would have been entitled to. It was the listing itself Cassidy really wanted. The feather in her cap that would skyrocket her career.
Where was the son of a bitch? She needed to give him a piece of her mind.
Cassidy spun, her gaze laser focussed. She searched for a face she didn’t know among a crowd of dark suits. She would have to work the room to find him, but damn it, it’d be worth it just to see him taken down a notch.
Stalking forward into the crowd, Cassidy ignored the waiter with the tray of champagne and the two others who tried to feed her. She didn’t know what Denyer looked like, but she sure as hell could pick his type. Slimy and in a cheap suit—the car salesman lookalike—he’d no doubt smell like he dumped a bottle of bargain bin aftershave on himself too. Urgh, Cassidy despised even the thought of him.
Her gaze roamed the crowd, and she picked out the three best-dressed people in the room. She liked fashion, enjoyed the feel of silky material sliding on her skin, and loved seeing her strategically bought pieces hanging in her room, but she was a simple girl at heart. Nevertheless, in her industry, it paid to be able to identify at a glance who had money and who was posing. The Dior and Armani suits, Louboutin and Gucci shoes told her the four men were a whole echelon on the business ladder above her. She could place three of them—the executives of Accord Hub—but she had no idea who the fourth was. He was gorgeous. Two decades their junior, fit and tanned with his blond hair pulled back in a bun and his perfectly fitted charcoal suit a contrast to the blacks and navy blues everyone else in the room wore. The pop of colour from his shirt—a pale pink—stood out too.
Cassidy sucked in a breath, her pulse pounding in her veins for an entirely different reason than anger now. She held it before exhaling slowly, refocussing. She was dying to know who the man before her was, but she had to focus. Dickhead Denyer and the Calvin Klein model lookalike would only derail her plans if she let them. And Cassidy had far more important fish to fry.
Cassidy plastered on a professional smile, straightened the sleeves of her dress, smoothed the front down, popped a mint, and made her way over to the group of men. “Gentlemen, hello,” she purred, holding her hand out to shake when there was a lull in the conversation.
“Evening,” the oldest man, who was probably midsixties, said politely. His smile tipped up the corners of his lips, but it was like every other smile she’d seen on men that age in her industry—patient and placating. “Marcello Ortiz, Accord Hub. Pleasure to meet you.”
“Cassidy Phillips, CIR Real Estate, and the pleasure is all mine.” Introductions were made, and she shook hands with Daan Janssen, the thirty-nine-year-old investment whiz, and Dieter Meyer, the company’s international business strategist. Cassidy bit back a giddy grin at having zeroed in and met her targets and listened intently as they answered her question about whether their trip over was a good one.
“Jacob Denyer, City Space,” the blond man interjected with his hand outstretched. She stilled, the name sinking in. From the corner of her eye, she saw him flash her a lopsided smirk. A ha!-I’ve-gotten-the-upper-hand smile. An irrational desire to maim the man consumed her. How dare he!
All pretence at professionalism fled. Her head on a swivel, she glared at him, her nostrils flaring and her nails leaving crescent moons in her palms. He shouldn’t be there. Not when she was talking to the three men who would mean the difference to her career. Not when she was on the edge of success. Not when he would try to steal her hard work again.
“You!” she growled, far louder than was appropriate in the gathering, and with smug satisfaction, she watched him drop his hand.
