After His Peonies: A Romantic Comedy Read online

  "I love corporate sabotage," Danielle said. "You're James Bond, and I'll be your Pussy Galore." She smiled at me, her teeth as sharp as a cat's.

  "Corporate sabotage would be illegal," I said. "No, this is just a little karma."

  "I could get behind a little karma. It's not a secret I hate my hopefully soon-to-be-ex-husband. I would walk away right now, except that I need the money," Danielle said. "I suppose he'll put it all in some trust and fight me for custody."

  "I'm sure the judge will give you more than fifty-fifty."

  She snorted. "I don't actually want to take care of the little brats. I just want the monthly check." She must have seen the shock on my face, because she backtracked. "Surely you understand, Hunter? I know you're responsible for all your younger brothers. Children can be so messy and annoying."

  I would never say I didn't want to take care of my brothers. Sure, they could be obnoxious, but I never would think of them with such vitriol. I tried to keep the discomfort off of my face.

  Danielle smiled. "Of course I can help, Hunter. You're not married to someone for years without picking up a few things. But, Hunter, you need to promise me that you'll make it worth my while." She traced the neckline of her low-cut blouse and licked her lips. "And I don't mean winning my divorce case."

  "Anything for you," I promised.

  Danielle reached out and lightly ran her nails down the side of my jaw. "You have a face I'd like to sit on."

  I forced myself to keep the disgust off of my face. It was just business. "You should see the rest of me," I said with the best bedroom eyes I could muster.

  We had arrived a little early at Harrington-Thurlow. Charles Thurlow was going to make us wait. I had worked for him for a few months right after I passed the bar. He liked to use old-school mob intimidation tactics. I had no patience for that. I preferred to be more underhanded.

  If Charles was going to make us wait, I was going to eat my lunch. I hadn't had a chance to eat my sandwich, and I excused myself to hurry off to a hidden storage room near the fire stairs.

  I opened the door, preparing to scarf the sandwich down in a few huge bites.

  Except the room was already occupied. Looking up at me was the tear-stained face of the girl from the sandwich shop.

  3

  Meghan

  Crap, crap, crap! I ran into the office, the grainy smoothie dripping down my suit jacket.

  Karen, ferret faced and beady eyed, swiveled around in her chair.

  "Look who's late," she said as I dumped my stuff on my desk. "You have something green on your suit."

  I hated open-office floor plans, if only for the fact that Karen sat right next to me and constantly looked over my shoulder, micromanaging me and picking apart everything I did.

  "Is that your lunch on your shirt?" she sniffed.

  "At least you tried to eat something healthy instead of the pasta and bread you usually eat," Karen said, turning back to her screen.

  My genetics tended toward the bigger side. My people were bred to survive long, cold New York winters with nothing but a tarpaper shack for shelter and potatoes to eat. As such, I held onto the pounds, especially when I was stressed. And Karen stressed me out.

  "Do I need to remind you that we have Walter Holbrook coming in for a meeting?" she said, mouth turned down. "A meeting that you were supposed to prepare for and haven’t."

  "I can't find the email about the discovery documents," I told her.

  "Of course you can't," she said in a snippy tone. "I'm forwarding you the email. We need this in the next thirty minutes. Also, I will be putting this in your file for reference when associate positions are handed out."

  Sagging, I sat at my desk and looked through the document. I speed-read through it, making notes. My heart yammered as I typed, the adrenaline surge making my hands tremble. My brain kept shooting images of Mr. Thurlow firing me in front of everyone. Finally, I thought it was good enough and sent it to Karen.

  I heard her send it to the printer. I fished a Tide pen out of my purse, cursing the peonies that mocked me.

  "This is shoddy, terrible work," Karen said, coming over to my desk and frowning as she watched me trying to clean the green gunk off of my suit. "We can't use it."

  "It's all I was able to do in the short time," I said, trying to explain.

  Karen shook her head. "I guess we just won't use it for this meeting."

  "I thought you said it was important!" I said, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. She always did this!

  "I never said that. I said it would be nice to have," Karen said.

  Karen always tried to find a way to make me miserable! She loved to act as if something was life or death when it was really trivial.

  "The clients are going to be here any minute," Karen said, looking down her nose at me. "You need to be in the meeting taking notes. Go clean yourself off. Harrington-Thurlow has a reputation to maintain."

  I fled to the bathroom. Wetting a paper towel, I scrubbed at the green gunk on my suit. A gaggle of well-dressed associates came in, glossy hair swinging. They set down their high-end designer bags with the small logos that let you know they were expensive and looked at me in disgust.

  Grabbing a handful of paper towels, I ran to a storage closet near the fire stairs. This was the secret room that few people in the office knew about. I think when the building was originally built, it had been a telephone booth. Then, when telephones became small enough to fit on desks, the little room had fallen into disuse. One solitary light fixture that looked like something left over from the thirties flickered as I slumped down on the old bench.

  Then the tears came.

  Crying at work had become a regular occurrence for me. I clenched my teeth, trying to keep from sounding like a beached whale as I took off my suit jacket then the shirt to dab at the fabric with the paper towels.

  The door opened, and I froze. I thought I was going to vomit. A man walked in, blinking in the low light, his teeth clenched around a sandwich.

  It was my sandwich. I recognized it from the smell. Hunter the sandwich stealer, who had unfairly perfect teeth, looked at me in shock as the door swung shut behind him.

  I started sobbing again. "That was my sandwich, and you took it!"

  "Geez," Hunter said, taking the sandwich out of his mouth. "I'm sorry I took your sandwich." He came over to me and awkwardly patted my back. His hand was warm on my skin.

  "Holy smokes! Where is your shirt?" He jumped up, his hand covering his eyes, and turned around to face the wall.

  I looked down at myself. I was just in my bra and skirt. My stomach was not toned, and my face, already red from crying, ached with embarrassment.

  "Sorry," I muttered, hurriedly shrugging on my blouse.

  "I hope you weren't expecting anyone else," Hunter said in an amused tone. "Don't want to ruin some sort of workplace romance. Although, considering the grief you gave me today about breaking the rules, I should have known you had a kinky side."

  "Don't...that's clearly not what was going on!" I said, jumping up to grab his arm. "You can't go spreading rumors like that."

  He grinned at me. "I knew that would knock you out of your crying slump."

  I glared at him, annoyed that it had actually worked. The overwhelmingly hopeless sadness was gone, replaced by irritation.

  He held out the sandwich to me.

  "I don't want your leftovers," I snapped, batting his hand away.

  "It's not leftover, I just bought it. It's good! It will cheer you up. Harrington-Thurlow is horrible and attracts the worst type of people. I'm sure you aren't the first one to cry in here. And," he said thoughtfully, "you're probably not the only pretty girl to undress in here."

  "I wasn't doing anything," I lowered my voice, "sexual."

  He cocked an eyebrow and took a bite of the sandwich.

  "I was trying to clean off the smoothie…"

  "You bought one of those nasty smoothies?" he said after swallowing. "Why woul
d you do that when you could have had the most amazing sandwich ever created?"

  I could smell the amazing sandwich tempting me. I ignored it.

  "You took the last one," I hissed at him.

  "I'm sorry. I guess I should have given you all of my peonies then. That would make up for it."

  My face burned. "It's pronounced pee-OWN-ies, not PEE-nies."

  He smirked. "You said penis."

  "Oh, I did not—I can't even—"

  "You know, if all you wanted was my penis, you could have just asked. You didn't have to go through this elaborate undressing ruse." He waved the hand with the sandwich, trailing the smell of the pesto aioli.

  I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snatched the sandwich out of his hand and stuffed a corner of it into my mouth. I would have to rebuild my pride later.

  "Feel better?" Hunter said with a grin. I nodded. He reached for the sandwich. I jerked it away and took another huge bite. I'm sure I looked horribly unattractive with my cheeks bulging, but I had been looking forward to this sandwich. I needed this sandwich. Hunter had stolen it from me once today, and that wasn't happening again.

  Hunter pulled out a bag of chips from his coat pocket and crunched them as he watched me eat. I tried to ignore him. He made it impossible.

  "You know," he said, "I think that's the longest sandwich I've ever seen a girl eat that fast."

  I studiously ignored him as I put the last bite in my mouth.

  "And she swallowed!" he said. "Bravo!"

  "You suck," I said, reaching out to shove him. He grabbed my hand with one of his larger ones, inspected it, then licked it. I shivered from the sensation of his tongue on my skin.

  "You had some pesto aioli left," he said. His voice seemed to have lowered an octave. "Can't waste that. It's gold."

  Hunter checked his watch. I noticed it was a Patek Philippe, not some gaudy Rolex. Another check in the perfect boyfriend column. It was too bad he was a line-cutting sandwich stealer.

  "What are you here for?" I asked him as I put on my suit jacket.

  "I'm representing Danielle Holbrook in her divorce from her husband," he said, balling up the chip bag and sandwich wrapper.

  And it was too bad we were on opposing sides.

  4

  Hunter

  Imagine my surprise when the crying girl walked into the conference room, laptop in hand. So we were on opposing sides. I smirked in her direction. She turned red and looked down at her screen.

  Another woman with a pinched face came in with Charles Thurlow. She did an honest-to-goodness batting of her eyelashes at me.

  "This is one of the associates, Karen, and this is our intern, Meghan Loring," Charles said after shaking my hand. I was going to make a snide comment about Harrington-Thurlow relying on low-paid labor, but then Walter Holbrook walked into the conference room.

  "Walter," I said.

  "Hunter."

  I couldn't believe this had happened. I had thought of Walter as a sort of father figure. That was, until he stole Greg's and my company out from under us. Then I understood: the only rule was that rules were meant to be broken. There was no such thing as loyalty in the corporate world.

  The meeting was tense. Meg never looked up from her laptop the entire time, just furiously typed as we went back and forth about money and shell companies and child support.

  "I think we're going to be seeing more of each other," I said to Meg after the meeting ended.

  "Yes, unfortunately," she replied.

  "Hi, I'm Karen," the pinched-face woman said, butting in as Meg scooted around her.

  "Hunter Svensson."

  "Your reputation precedes you," she said, shaking my hand. She had a weak handshake, and I felt as if I was only shaking three of her fingers.

  "I hope it's only good things!" I didn't think the joke was that funny, but Karen shrieked in laughter.

  I turned to look for Meg, but she had already fled to her desk.

  "That went well," Josh said when we walked outside into the cold.

  "My husband is a boor," Danielle replied, tapping at her phone.

  "I can't wait to wipe the floor with him," I said, looking back up at the building and wondering when I would see Meg again.

  Greg was waiting in the office when we returned.

  "You can't just come into our office whenever you want!" Eric complained.

  "Yes, actually, I can," Greg said in a clipped tone. "This is my building, and I'm allowing you to stay here for free."

  "Don't act so high and mighty!" Josh said as he took off his coat. "You only let us have two little offices and a conference room. There isn't even a kitchen."

  "What do you need a kitchen for? You don’t even have any clients," Greg scoffed.

  "Yes we do!"

  "Speaking of which," Greg said, holding up a hand to silence Eric. "How did it go?"

  I shrugged. "It's the beginning of a long, drawn-out process."

  "Can they handle it?" Greg asked me.

  "I'll be here with them," I replied.

  "You can't just hang around," Greg said with a scowl. "You'll set a bad precedent."

  "I spent the last decade and a half taking care of all of you and building a company and amassing a vast amount of wealth," I told him, unwinding my scarf.

  "A company you lost and wealth I now manage," my half brother countered.

  "What is this about?" I said coldly. I didn't have much patience for Greg.

  "Mace called. The nanny quit."

  I swore.

  "I convinced Maria to come have dinner with us tonight so we could talk about it. I was hoping you could give her the Hunter Svensson star treatment, as it were, to convince her to stay on as the nanny."

  Since dinner and begging weren’t until later, I went over the Holbrook divorce case with Josh and Eric to make sure they understood the timeline for filing the various documents. Then I went up to the Svensson Investment offices for a meeting Greg had scheduled about another project. Our brother Liam and his roommate Jack wanted more money for their engineering company, Platinum Provisions. After Greg and I grilled them on their business plan, we approved them for another round of capital.

  Then I went out to buy flowers. Maria seemed like the type to soften up when presented with a nice bouquet.

  "Buying for your girlfriend?" the saleswoman asked.

  My thoughts went to Meg for some reason. I shook them off.

  "No," I said, "it's just business."

  "Well, not roses then," the saleswoman said. "What about these peonies?" I thought of Meg again, remembering the look of barely disguised desire on her face when she’d turned around to stare at me in line.

  "No," I said. "No, maybe the chrysanthemums."

  I didn't need to go back to the office before the dinner and opted to go to my condo instead. As I walked down a side street, I heard the unmistakable sound of sobbing.

  In New York City, it was inevitable that people cried on the street. Usually I ignored it. Either it was a junkie who had sniffed the wrong stuff or it was someone embarrassed that things had become so bad that they were crying on a public sidewalk and would prefer that you pretend to not see them.

  As I walked in the direction of the sobbing, I inadvertently looked over.

  "Meg?"

  "Why are you always here?" she said, her voice raw.

  "Why are you always crying?" I countered as I approached her.

  "My life is a disaster," she choked out.

  "It can't be all bad. You still have all your limbs."

  She looked up at me, her eyes red. I couldn't help myself, and I reached out and wiped the tears off of her face. She looked distressed, and she flinched when I touched her.

  "Did someone hurt you?" I snarled. She shrank away from the anger in my face.

  "No, no," she said. "My car was booted. I had to serve someone with papers. I was just going to park and be right back, but then I couldn't find the right apartment and then the doorman was having trouble co
nvincing the guy to come downstairs. Now my car is booted. They left a note. I have to pay five hundred dollars. I can't afford that!"

  She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing again. I gently pulled her against my chest and stroked her hair as I read the little slip of yellow paper.

  "Look, I'm going to fix this," I told Meg, tilting up her face. "This company," I pointed to the Hurbo Wheeelies logo, "is a scab on mankind and the great city of New York. They are scum, and if I wasn’t so busy I'd sue them out of existence. But for now, we're going to free your car."

  "How?" she said, following me as I walked around the vehicle.

  "They booted both wheels. Smart. That means we can't just swap out the tires," I said.

  "Maybe I should just pay the fine," Meg said, digging in her purse. "Maybe they'll split it across three credit cards."

  "I won't allow you to give them a cent."

  "I don't need your help," she said, blowing her nose. I was sure she meant it to be intimidating, but I just found it adorable.

  "Of course you do," I said.

  "I don't want your money," she said, glaring at me.

  "I wasn't going to pay these crooks," I said, shocked. "They just run around randomly booting people and ruining their lives. No, I have a better plan."

  "What is it?" she asked dubiously.

  "I'm calling in reinforcements."

  5

  Meghan

  I couldn't believe my car had been booted. This was already shaping up to be one of the worst days of my working adult life. I just felt stupid. I knew I should have ditched my car when I moved here. New York City is no place to have a car. But I didn't want to let go of it. It was my mom's old car; I had taken it after she'd died. It felt like my last connection to her. Also, I was afraid of being evicted from my apartment. Harrington-Thurlow did not pay me enough to live in New York City and, who knew, in a few weeks, if I didn't make associate, I might be living in the car.

  Thinking about my pathetic situation had made the tears come, then somehow Hunter had been summoned with another bouquet of lovely flowers. I wondered if they were for his girlfriend. Then I felt jealous. Then angry. I didn't even like Hunter. He was a sandwich stealer, and he was Danielle's lawyer. I probably would be fired if anyone found out I was talking to him outside of sanctioned meetings.