Page 49 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

OPPOSITES (NEVER) ATTRACT

KAITLYN

“We’re trending in the right direction though,” said Jeffrey, a twenty-eight-year-old finance wunderkind who liked to get drunk at happy hours and hit on me.

“Trending,” I said with an appropriate level of disgust. This was why he failed at every attempt to get me in bed.

I didn’t do half-assed. “Trending feels a lot like hope, Jeffery. Or wishing. That’s not what made Berkley and Brothers the top brokerage firm in this city… no, in this country. Did it?”

“No,” he said, looking like he did at the end of Happy Hour after I shot him down.

“No,” I repeated slowly.

One of the keys to leadership as a woman in finance was that you had to be balls out badass. Never letting anyone imagine they could surpass you. But as a woman, you also couldn’t be a bitch.

“Now I like wishing for things too,” I continued with a smile. “Peace. Harmony. Calorie free cheesecake…”

There it was. A smattering of laughter. An easing of the tension.

See, I’m just like your wives. Your sisters. Nothing scary here.

I tugged my charcoal Chanel suit jacket over my black pencil skirt and straightened my back. Success in this position was all about moving from bad cop to good cop at will. Always keeping everyone’s attention, but never pissing off one person individually.

Slowly, I walked the space between the table and the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the conference room. The late afternoon sun hit the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan and turned everything to gold.

“But that’s not going to get us where we need to be. Where we want to be…”

There was a thump in the hallway outside of the room.

What sounded like a scuffle. Everyone turned to look through the glass walls of the conference room in the direction of reception.

Voices got louder and I heard my assistant, Matthew, say, “You can’t go in there, she’s in a very important meeting. ”

We all watched the person, the man , who clearly wasn’t taking Matthews’s advice, walk through the reception area like he owned the building.

Oh. My. God.

There was no hope for it. I wasn’t getting the crowd’s attention back because this was not the type of man who walked through the hallways on the 86 th floor of a building in downtown Manhattan.

He was six-foot four. Broad shoulders and lean hips with an impossibly wide chest. He wore a black denim jacket with a dark beard that covered his face.

I could feel the reverberations under my feet from his beat-up cowboy boots hitting the hardwood floor. But the boots weren’t even the piece de resistance. Or the black Stetson he wore on top of his thick brown hair.

No, it was the mirrored aviator sunglasses he wore over his eyes. So cool. So…hot.

This man was a force of nature. A tornado sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Every ruthless money shark around that table who - as a rule were not impressed by anything - were utterly captivated by him.

He was the least New York thing that had ever dared to enter this building.

“Who is that?” Ellen, a twenty-year veteran with the firm, whispered to Bethany.

“My fantasy come true,” Bethany, a recent Wharton School of Business grad with a genius brain and killer instinct, replied in the same whisper.

“Should we be worried?” Jeffery looked up at me. “Should I call security?”

There was no point.

Security was no match against Taggert Durham.

The glass door to the conference room swung open to a collective gasp from those in the room with me.

There was no way he would recognize me. Last time he saw me I was a tall skinny fifteen-year-old. With hair in desperate need of a conditioning treatment and a blowout. Terrible skin. Braces. Glasses.

Your typical social outcast uniform.

Now, at thirty, that girl was nowhere to be seen.

My blonde highlights and blunt bob haircut cost several hundred dollars every other month at a prestigious uptown salon.

I’d filled out with curves in the right places (mostly my boobs).

My teeth were finally straight and after years of acne treatment my skin was so clear even my dermatologist couldn’t believe it.

So there was no way he would be able to pick me out in this crowd.

“Hey, Sunshine,” he said, taking off his sunglasses and looking directly at me. I was so shocked I had to place one hand against the table for balance. “Sorry for interrupting your work and all, but I’m here to bring you home.”

“I’m calling security,” Jeffery said, getting to his feet. “You’re not authorized to be here.”

Tag broke eye contact with me to stare at Jeffery and I took a minute to catch my breath. Good lord. Tag Durham. Here? I hadn’t thought about him in years.

Except at…certain moments. Certain private moments.

Tag had been my earliest crush. My first sexual fantasy. That kind of thing tended to stick with a girl. Apparently, I had a weakness for the strong and silent type. A man with rough hands and broad shoulders. Thick thighs and a chest that had never been waxed. Who spoke in growl more than words.

Who stood up for the ugly duckling in a classroom.

Tag was the original cowboy fantasy.

I shook my head, trying to gather myself from the hot internal place this man could send me.

Why was he here? It didn’t make any sense.

“I’ll be happy to leave. But Sunshine needs to come with me,” he said.

“Why does he keep calling you Sunshine?” Bethany asked me.

“Because it’s her name, ma’am,” Tag said with a tilt of his hat in Bethany’s direction.

Bethany, who dated and dumped men and women for sport, was in danger of passing out she was blushing so hard.

It wasn’t her fault. Tag was laying on the cowboy charm thick. There was a time when he could make me blush just by looking at me.

I was happy to say those days were over.

Wait were they? I wasn’t blushing was I?

“Kaitlyn, do you know this man?” Kirk asked. He sat on the other side of Jeffery. His slicked back hair and gold pinky ring gave him a finance-bro dude vibe.

“Kaitlyn?” Tag asked me, one unmanicured eyebrow raised.

“It’s my professional name.”

He looked me up and down like he was finally taking in my appearance. Two thousand dollar business suit, contacts instead of glasses. A white gold Rolex watch. Shoes that cost as much as a horse and not an oversized backpack in sight.

It took everything in me not to cock my hip and dare him to look all he liked.

That ugly duckling he once knew was long gone. I’d killed her with my Louboutin stilettos.

Tag snorted. “Your name’s Sunshine, Sunshine.”

“That’s it,” Kirk said. “I’m getting security.”

Kirk stepped behind me on his way to the conference room door. Tag held up his hand and like a well-trained dog, Kirk stopped in his tracks.

“Excuse me, sir,” he told Kirk like he was being totally reasonable. “I just need a minute to talk to an old family friend.”

When I didn’t move, he cocked his head in a way that was entirely too familiar even though I hadn’t seen him in years.

“Easy or hard, Sunshine. Either way this is happening. You decide.”

“I think I just had an orgasm,” Ellen whispered loud enough for the room to hear.