Page 29 of Last First Time
“Yes, ma’am. It’s nice to meet you…” my voice trails off, waiting for her to complete the introduction.
“Right this way please.” She ignores my outstretched hand and turns toward a hallway with heavy wood paneling and old-fashioned wainscoting. I notice too that she doesn’t wobble on her heels even a little bit, not once.
I do my best to keep up, but I am not a fancy shoe type of girl. I am so ungainly in heels that I have to expend twice as much effort to keep myself upright. I have to look like a walking punchline.
She reaches the end of the hallway and waits for me to get caught up, then she knocks on the heavy door before her, pokes her head inside, and announces my arrival.
“Come in and have a seat, Ms. Troudeau.” She holds the door open, and I wobble toward the heavy barrister’s desk that takes up nearly half of the office.
The man behind the barrister’s desk looks me over from top to bottom, slowly and lewdly, with very obvious intent. I get the feeling that he’s undressing me with his eyes, then cataloguing all of my bits and pieces for later review.
Depending on his memory, I suppose he is more than capable. He has, after all, seen it all before.
“K.T.,” he proclaims, standing up and crossing toward me, arms outstretched for a hug.
“Jeffrey,” I answer. I can still do this. Just because the man before me, who is now squeezing my stiff and uncomfortable body against him, was responsible for the biggest, most traumatic break up of my entire life that doesn’t mean I can’t be professional here.
I can still be in control of this situation. For starters, there’s no way on earth that I’m going to return the snake’s hug. I really don’t want him touching me. He doesn’t have the right to do that anymore, and the only person I want touching me these days is my favorite mayor.
I take a small step away from him and move toward the chairs in front of his desk. His mouth tightens for the barest instant, but I remember that move all too well. He is definitely still the man who always gets what he wants, except when it comes to me. It galled him so terribly to not be able to boss me around all the time.
“It’s been years, K.T. How have you been?” He crosses his arms in front of him, tilting his head at the precise angle to give me that look of sincerity that I’d seen him practice in a mirror more than once. Because that’s Jeffrey in a nutshell. He’d pretend to be whatever you needed him to be in order to get what he wanted out of you. Eventually it was difficult to remember who he was when he wasn’t pretending.
“Well, if you’ve looked at my loan documents, you can see that I’ve been quite successful with my business here in Valentine.” I take a breath, but he’s already waving a hand at me to cut me off, before I’ve even gotten started with my speech.
“Let’s not ruin this moment with talking business.” My horrible ex gives me a toothy, predatory looking smile.
“Interestingly, that’s exactly what I’m here to talk to you about. My business.” I take another deep breath, and pull my portfolio out. “Here’s a copy of my application, if you’d like to review it.”
He snorts, again waving a hand in obvious dismissal. “Let’s take a few moments and catch up, K.T. It’s been what—five, six years now?”
“Seven and a half.” I want to facepalm as soon as the words slip out. This arrogant man is trying to make a power play with me, and I’ve somehow walked right into that particular trap. Amateur move, Kar.
“Oh, that long now? Well it seems only like yesterday.” He crosses one leg over the other, manspreading like it’s his job and making his crotch level with my face as I sit in the supplicant’s chairs in front of his behemoth desk.
I want to punch him in the dick. Or at least stand up and make him look me in the eye instead of him using his meaty little body like a weapon with me. Me, of all people. I practically invented that particular game of motivate people to do what you want with the power of your body.
But no. I’m sitting here in his office because I want his bank to give me final approval to take out a giant loan and buy an entire building. I’m hardly an expert in commercial real estate loans, but I’m fairly confident that if I do punch Jeffrey in the dick, then my funding isn’t going to get approved. Well, I may not be able to get violent with him, but I can still needle him a bit. Especially if he’s going to try to use head games on me.
“Funny, it seems like an entire lifetime ago to me.” I angle my body the opposite way from his, purposefully turning my entire frame away from him. It’s the body language version of flipping him a deuce, and he knows it, and I know he knows it. We’d both taken the same Body Language in Business seminar together so long ago. That’s why he has me positioned with my face at dick height, and that’s why I’m giving him the cold shoulder, so to speak.
His mouth thins out again, and I know I’ve won this round. Now to see what his next move will be. “Well, I did see that you had been in the news lately, K.T. There you were, trailing along after Reed Harrison, even after all these years.” He shakes his head, clucking his tongue. “Be careful with that one, K.T. You don’t know where he’s been.”
I flinch at his tone. It’s one thing for him to try to psych me out because I’m his ex and he likes power games more than anything else in the world, but it was entirely something else for him to talk some smack about Reed when he isn’t even here to defend himself. The very thought makes my blood boil. Honestly, if I make it through this meeting with my professional demeanor intact, I’m going to be eligible for sainthood.
Fucking Jeffrey.
“Now, now. You know Reed and I have been friends since we were in college. Remember? You used to complain about how close our friendship was way back when you and I were dating so long ago.”
I watch him roll his eyes, but it’s the truth. He’d always carried on and on about how close Reed and I were with one another, chastising me about how I spent too much time with a guy who wasn’t even my boyfriend. And that’s how I’d gradually slowed down my time spent with Reed in favor of Jeffrey way back in the days of my stupid youth.
It was the wrong choice, obviously, but I was young and supposedly in love, and more importantly, I was trying to get as far away from the poverty of my youth as possible. Jeffrey seemed like he’d be perfect for that part. He was every bit as driven by money as I was. He always put work and making money first, ahead of every other thing in his life.
But I didn’t like who I was becoming when I spent more time with him and less with Reed. I felt mean, like I didn’t have it in me to laugh about anything back then. Intellectually, he may have been my perfect match, but Jeffrey definitely wasn’t the right guy for me.
Jeffrey was all flash and Reed was quiet, old money. If you didn’t know Reed and know about his family, he came off as this perfectly harmless politician type. You’d never know that he had moves planned out years in advance.
Jeffrey had moves planned out years in advance, too. I didn’t fit in with those plans, and that’s how we ended up breaking up. I certainly didn’t belong in his flashy, aggressive lifestyle. He’d made it clear that I was far too lowbrow to be on his arm as he clawed his way into the network of the rich and famous.
