Chapter1
The first day of my promotion from “coffee girl” to “assistant to the junior marketing executive,” I wet my pants at work. Kind of, anyway. Specifically, my co-worker Sheila wet my pants for me.
Sheila was a woman of about sixty, who worked as the head secretary in our office in downtown Detroit. She’d had a severe anxiety disorder ever since her husband had divorced her about a year earlier. This disorder made her perpetually jumpy, and she frequently dropped things and spilled things in the office, having some kind of an “incident” at least once a week. So, on this particular day, when she spilled at least half a large carafe of ice water down the front of my pants after I’d accidentally startled her, I knew she hadn’t done it on purpose.
There were some women in the office who I knew definitely might have, just to make a co-worker they didn’t like miss a meeting or something, but not Sheila. In fact, she’d always been kind to me, because I’d always been kind to her. During my year-long tenure as “coffee girl,” she’d been friendly and respectful to me, unlike most everyone else, who seemed to think I was beneath them.
My “coffee girl” duties had also included many secretarial duties, and Sheila had helped me with them without complaint, even though she was usually busy enough with secretarial duties herself. To repay her for these kindnesses, I’d taken her out to dinner several times since her divorce, and out shopping a few times as well, because she’d told me once in confidence that all she did most weekends was “just sit home and cry.”
Wanting to reapply my lipstick before my first big meeting as “assistant to the junior marketing executive,” I’d been up at the front desk, quietly rifling through my purse, when Sheila had suddenly turned around, holding two large glass carafes full of ice and water. She’d been filling them with water from a five-gallon cooler near the front desk, humming, when I’d come back there, so apparently, she hadn’t heard me. Startling upon seeing me, she’d jumped about half a mile, spilling one of the carafes. And that was how I’d come to have at least half the contents down the front of my pants.
Gasping, Sheila immediately set both the carafes on the desk. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Jasmine. I’m so sorry.”
After grabbing at least ten tissues from a box behind the desk, she did her best to mitigate the damage, trying to blot the water now soaking the front of my pants, but her efforts were of little use. And just then, Ted, our boss, breezed by the desk.
“The meeting is starting now, ladies. Let’s go.”
Having years of experience and a mind for marketing, Ted was good at his job. However, he was also a jackass. Being somewhere in his mid-fifties, he’d been married for thirty years, yet had asked me out no fewer than three times in the past year, saying that my “climb up the office ladder” would be much quicker if I’d just agree to join him for a cocktail one night.
Not long after the third time that I’d turned him down, he’d agreed to give me my hard-earned promotion anyway, saying that he knew I’d “come around in time,” maybe as a way to “thank him.” I’d reported this conversation to HR, and since then, Ted had been just as frosty to me as some of the marketing executives in the office, who were always on guard for any up-and-comers who might want to take their jobs one day.
I pretty much hated everything about the office, the culture, and my job in general. Some days, I had no idea why I was even there, or what I was doing.
After Ted had breezed by, Sheila began looking increasingly frantic. “Oh, I’m just so sorry, Jasmine. I guess my mind has just been all scrambled today, just with Mr. Balducci’s arrival in the office, and then with Ted wanting me to take notes during the meeting. Put all this together, and I guess I’ve just been a little jumpier than usual.”
Mr. Balducci was the founder and CEO of the company we worked for. He was also an inventor; an investor; an engineer; and supposedly, a visionary. He’d founded Testera Motors, an electric car company with headquarters in Detroit, with the thinking that just how the city had once been the “car capital of the world,” it could be once again, although this time, via the manufacture of his innovative electric cars.
I’d never met Mr. Balducci. And, if he was anything like Ted, I never wanted to. However, I realized that I would soon have to, being that he would be leading the important meeting I was soon supposed to attend.
Mr. Balducci was said to be extremely good-looking, and if pictures I’d seen were any indication, he was, which, in my mind, meant he’d probably be even more arrogant and entitled than Ted was. Mr. Balducci was also Italian, having been born in Rome, which for some reason, only added to my expectation that he’d be arrogant and entitled. I didn’t even know why.
These weren’t the only things that had me feeling less-than-warm toward Mr. Baluducci even before meeting him, though. The thing that had me thinking “jackass of Ted-like proportions” when it came to him was his financial status. Mr. Balducci was a billionaire. Many times over. Which made me think words like “greedy” and “ruthless” and “pig.”
Sheila frantically dabbed at the front of my pants with a fresh tissue a little longer before finally giving up. “It’s no use. You’re just going to have to change really quick.”
The light brown dress pants I was wearing were the only pair of pants that I had at the office. And, unfortunately, their color was one that perfectly displayed the water spill. Had my pants been cream-colored, or dark brown, or black, things might not have been so noticeable.
Taking the tissue from Sheila, I told her there was no time. “I don’t have any other pants here, and I definitely don’t have any time to go home and change. Mr. Balducci is probably starting the meeting right this second.”
“Well, I know you probably don’t want to incur Ted’s wrath by not showing. As for me, I’m supposed to be in there taking notes about what Mr. Balducci says. I just thought I’d bring in a few carafes of water beforehand, because you know how Ted gets so thirsty during meetings.”
I sighed. “Ted is pretty thirsty all the time.”
Scurrying down to the boardroom, Sheila and I soon decided that we’d try to mask my “accident” by way of her entering the room first. This way, hopefully everyone would be focusing on her and wouldn’t notice me or my wet pants while I entered, trailing a short distance behind.
Once we reached the boardroom, Sheila took a deep breath, giving me a nervous little look, before plunging in ahead through the open doorway, holding the two carafes of ice water, one of which she’d refilled after the spill. After pausing for just a split-second, just long enough so that I wouldn’t be right on her heels, making her trip, I plunged in through the doorway myself. However, immediately, I stopped dead in my tracks, seeing that Mr. Balducci, who was in his late thirties, was even more handsome in person than he was in pictures. He was “stop a gal dead in her tracks” handsome.
With thick, dark hair; a strong jaw; piercing gray eyes; and a commanding presence surely helped by his height of maybe six-foot-two, he stood at one end of the polished mahogany table in the boardroom. He wasn’t pacing; he wasn’t leaning over the table; he was just standing, just as relaxed and as casual as could be, as if he owned the damned place. Which he did.
My observation of him made me lose two or three seconds before I was finally able to make myself move to follow Sheila in. And, by that time, I’d lost the chance of cover that she might have provided had I been a bit quicker.
While I hustled to my seat, a woman named Genevieve Taylor, who was the junior executive that I was now officially assistant to, hissed at me in a quiet yet perfectly audible voice. “Jesus, Jasmine. Did you get so nervous for your first day as my assistant that you wet your pants?”
So, the jig is up, I thought. Mr. Balducci’s damned handsomeness made me lose my cover.
In response to what Genevieve had said, a couple of the fifteen or so people at the table tittered quietly.
Ted, however, chuckled out loud. “Well, let me guess. Did Sheila have one of her infamous ‘accidents’ and spill water all over you, Jasmine?”
Taking my seat, I didn’t respond, not wanting to embarrass Sheila.
As if he hadn’t expected me to respond anyway, Ted looked over at Mr. Balducci, who was still standing up by the head of the table. “Our head secretary, Sheila, the one carrying the water, has had a little case of butterfingers lately. And, by ‘lately,’ I really mean for about a year. In fact, it’s not a regular week at the office if Sheila doesn’t accidentally drop, dump, or spill something.”
Ted chuckled at his own remarks, and a few people tittered quietly again. I, however, did not, observing Sheila’s beet-red face while she took a seat. Mr. Balducci didn’t make any sign of amusement, either, and instead just ignored Ted, looking from Sheila to me.
“Welcome to the meeting, Sheila and Jasmine. I’m pleased to meet you both.”
I was pleased to hear his voice, which was deep and rich, having what my high school band director would have called a “chocolate tone.” Hearing it was just about as pleasurable as eating chocolate, as I’d realized when I’d watched a few news interviews with Mr. Balducci during my time at the company. From what I’d been told, he was perpetually hounded by media outlets, although he didn’t often give interviews, and when he did, it was usually to Italian media outlets and not American ones.
“That’s probably because the news outlets in his home country actually ask him questions about the company, his ideas, and his goals for the future,” Sheila had said to me once. “As opposed to media outlets here in the States, which always seem far more interested in his personal life and his billions.”
Not too much was known about Mr. Balducci’s personal life, and it seemed that he liked it that way. It was common knowledge that he was born in Rome, and educated at private schools both in Italy and the United States, where his father had worked in banking in New York City for many years.
Mr. Balducci had also attended college in the U.S, at one of the ivies, and all of this stateside education was why he was perfectly fluent in English and why he only had the faintest trace of an Italian accent. In fact, to me, had I not known otherwise, I might have thought he was a native English speaker, which he nearly was, having spent only his first few years of life speaking exclusively in Italian.
As for other details of Mr. Balducci’s personal life, he held dual Italian and American citizenship, and was said to have residences in New York City; Rome; London; and Paris; and it was common knowledge that he’d done quite a bit of dating in these cities. He’d been photographed with numerous models, actresses, and even a few women that the tabloid press had once rudely referred to as “complete nobodies” in an article titled The Complete Dating History of the World’s Hottest, Richest Bachelor. However, despite all this dating of beautiful women, he’d never been married; he didn’t have any children; and he never seemed to stay in a relationship longer than a year or so.
“He’s waiting for true love,” Sheila had said to me once about this topic after reading some tabloid article about Mr. Balducci’s dating life. “He wants the real deal; I can just tell.”
Fighting hard not to roll my eyes, I’d told Sheila that maybe he just liked playing the field. “With his billions, he probably figures that he’s entitled to a continual revolving door of beautiful women…probably one for every night of the week.”
Sheila hadn’t liked this opinion very much, saying that I was being cynical. I’d countered this by saying that I was just being real.
At any rate, whether I was being cynical or just real, it seemed that Mr. Balducci was currently on some sort of an uncharacteristically long dating break, as Sheila had told me the day before, while perusing a gossip website at her desk. “It says that he hasn’t been photographed with any specific woman in almost five months, instead showing up to different events all alone, and only going out to dinner with male friends and groups of married friends. ‘Billionaire Balducci has given up on love,’ this article goes on to say, and maybe they’re right. How horrible.”
A “hmm” had been my only response to this, because I wasn’t sure why Sheila should be so interested in Mr. Balducci’s dating life. I certainly wasn’t. I’d never been interested in playboys.
Back in the present, Sheila mumbled a “Pleased to meet you, too,” in response to what Mr. Balducci had said to us.
Responding right after her, I had to force myself to keep my gaze on Mr. Balducci’s incredibly handsome face, finding that his level of handsomeness was making me feel unexpectedly and uncharacteristically self-conscious. “It’s very nice to meet you as well, Mr. Balducci.”
He frowned just slightly. “Please, Jasmine…call me Federico. When it comes to meetings and sharing of ideas, I don’t like hierarchies and stiff formality.”
A little surprised, just because I thought he’d really like “hierarchies and stiff formality” for some reason, I said all right. “Federico.”
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I’d seen some little flicker of pleasure cross his face when I’d said his name. But then it was gone, and he became all business, having a seat at the head of the long, mahogany table.
“As the marketing arm of Testera, you’ve all made huge contributions to the success of the brand the past year, and I’d like to personally thank you all for your hard work. Now, for the first order of business….”
While Sheila typed away on a small tablet that she used to take notes at meetings, Federico began “going over numbers,” comparing sales figures from the past several years and things like that. As for me, I kind of zoned out. For one thing, the “results” side of marketing, at least as far as numbers went, bored me to tears. Then again, even the creative side of marketing bored me to tears most of the time, to the point that I’d barely made it out of college with a marketing degree several years earlier. I’d nearly flunked out a few times but had stuck with the degree program nonetheless, mostly at the insistence of my mother. Besides, I hadn’t known what else to do, not being interested in any other degree program.
After college, I’d spent the better part of a year traveling through Europe with some friends, doing the experience on the cheap by staying at youth hostels and eating a lot of fast food. Upon returning to the States, I’d spent a few years working dead-end jobs in my hometown of Farmington. I’d done some secretarial work, and some waitressing. I’d even tried my hand at being a pet groomer for two months, finding out that while I loved animals, I wasn’t very good at keeping them calm and grooming them.
From there, I’d worked as the sole employee at a dry-cleaning drop-off and pickup center for two years, a job I’d liked, but mostly because the owner let me read books at my desk while on the clock, provided that I got all my daily tasks related to sending and receiving clothes to and from the cleaning plant done. I’d been a little sad when the dry-cleaner had eventually gone out of business, putting me on unemployment.
On my twenty-seventh birthday, my mom had given me a choice. Either “get with the program,” as she said, and get a marketing-related job so that my degree wouldn’t go to waste, or go back to school to study law and become an attorney, following in her footsteps.
At the time that she’d given me this choice, my mom wasn’t bankrolling me, and I didn’t live with her. I rented my own little apartment, and had been paying my own bills for years with my limited earnings. So, I probably should have felt free to politely yet firmly decline to make the choice she’d given me.
However, although we’d never been very close, I’d always felt the need to please my mom and not be a disappointment to her; so, when she’d given me her little “you have two choices” speech on my twenty-seventh birthday, telling me that she was fed up with the path I was taking in life, and “nearly sick” about how I was wasting my potential, I told her I’d take choice A, a marketing job. Then, after she’d made a few calls to some of her well-connected friends, it was a done deal, and I’d started my entry-level job as “coffee girl” to the marketing department of Testera’s Detroit division.
That had been a year earlier. I was now twenty-eight, had wet pants, and was zoning out during my first meeting as “assistant to the junior marketing executive.” I knew my mom would likely be so proud.
While Federico talked about numbers, I found that while I couldn’t focus on them, I couldn’t not focus on him. Specifically, on how good his broad shoulders looked in his impeccably tailored navy-blue suit. While he’d been standing, the rest of his body had looked damned good in his suit, too, from his trim waist and hips to his long, muscular legs. He was definitely in great shape; there was no doubt about that.
At present, while he was sitting, his white Oxford shirt was stretched over his chest just enough that I could see the faint outline of rock-hard pecs. With my imagination really beginning to wander, I stole a few little peeks at him and imagined running my hands over those pecs, a little embarrassed in the back of my mind for having this thought. I still didn’t stop thinking it, though.
However, a few minutes after Federico had started the meeting, Genevieve pulled me out of my reverie.
Hissing in my right ear, she slid a tablet across to me. “You should be taking notes, too. You are my assistant, after all.”
A little irritated, I whispered back. “I’ll have Sheila email her notes to us both.”
Genevieve said no. “You do what I say. Unless you want me to ask Molly to be my assistant.”
Molly was the “coffee girl” one floor up, on the twelfth, where the “creative managers” of the marketing division worked. After a year, I still wasn’t quite sure who the “creative managers” were or what they did, but I did know one thing. Molly had only been with the company for two months, but she was highly ambitious, having not only a marketing degree but an MBA, unlike me. She’d also recently started coming down to the eleventh floor sometimes, seemingly just to flirt with Ted.
In response to what Genevieve had said about Molly, I took the tablet and dutifully began typing notes about what Federico was saying, knowing that I had probably three years of servitude to Genevieve ahead of me before I ever became a “junior marketing executive” myself, which was something I was becoming less and less sure that I wanted. My mom sure wanted it.
Not long after I began taking notes, Federico switched gears from numbers to “creative concepts for the next campaign.” Saying that he wanted to illustrate a few key points, he got up, went over to a dry erase board near the table, and began opening a pack of markers. And it was at this point that the meeting got crazy.