Wall Street Titan (Wall Street Titan #1) - Anna Zaires Page 0,15
mention of food, and Queen Elizabeth joins in with her softer, more delicate voice.
Even when hungry, she sounds like a lady.
When I finally make it into my tiny kitchen, I grab three cans of cat food and open them, putting their contents on three individual plates. My cats are very particular about their food, so I’m careful to put on each plate the precise flavor and brand that cat prefers. Queen Elizabeth likes Fancy Feast Wild Salmon, Cottonball likes variety so he’s getting the Chicken Feast Classic today, and Mr. Puffs has developed a taste for Purina Seafood Stew Entree. Once Puffs finishes his portion, he’ll eat some of Queen Elizabeth’s and Cottonball’s too, but he has to start with his own plate.
I suspect it’s because he feels more like the boss that way.
As soon as I put the plates on the floor, the cats dive in, and I’m free to feed myself. Fortunately, I got my bookstore paycheck on Monday, so my fridge is full. I have fruits, vegetables, bread, and some deli meats, so I slap together a quick sandwich and devour it while standing in the kitchen. Then, feeling infinitely more human, I check to see if I got any messages from the real Mark.
To my disappointment, the answer is no. He must’ve taken offense to being stood up and decided to forego all contact with me. Though I’m exhausted, I write him a quick email with an apology and explanation about the mix-up, and then I finally head to the shower.
I have to rinse off the city grime before I get into bed.
By thinking about ways to get new editing clients, I manage to keep my mind off Marcus all through the shower. It’s only when I’m lying under the covers, surrounded by my cats, that I realize I’m still far too hyper to sleep. It’s as if an electric current is buzzing under my skin, keeping my heart rate elevated and my body uncomfortably warm.
Marcus was waiting by my door when I came home. He came all the way here to return my phone.
It still feels unreal, partially because it’s hard to believe he went to such trouble just to be nice. Though our meeting in the café was brief, Marcus didn’t strike me as much of a good Samaritan. Nor is his choice of profession indicative of a man who’s particularly altruistic. I was an English major in college, but I know several finance majors who went to work on Wall Street after graduation, and all of them are highly ambitious, driven to maximize their productivity and monetize (their terminology, not mine) every hour of their time. They’re Type A in the extreme, and if Marcus runs his own hedge fund, he must be that, times a hundred.
It doesn’t make sense for a man like that to spend his limited free time returning a phone to a stranger—not unless he had some other agenda. Only I can’t think of what that agenda might’ve been. Unless… Could he have been hoping I’d reward him financially?
Crap. I didn’t think about it, but I should’ve probably offered him some money for his trouble.
For a moment, I feel awful, but then I remember his suit and coat—not to mention his Italian leather shoes—and my guilt fades. I doubt Marcus needs my twenty bucks, certainly not enough to go out of his way to get them. So why did he come? My phone doesn’t require a password to unlock, so he could’ve just emailed me from my own email, and I would’ve picked up the device from wherever Marcus told me to meet him.
Hell, he could’ve had one of his analysts—say, the one he was planning to task with researching the odds of our meeting—return the phone on his behalf.
The only other explanation that occurs to me is so ridiculous that I dismiss it right away. There’s no way he’s interested in me in that way. I’m not particularly insecure about my looks—I got over that in college—but I am realistic. I know I’m nowhere near Marcus’s league. He undoubtedly has gorgeous women falling all over themselves for the privilege of decorating his arm; he wouldn’t need to go after a short, frizzy-haired redhead with too-wide hips. Besides, wasn’t he meeting someone? This Emmeline that he mistook me for? With a fancy name like that, I bet her hips are in perfect proportion to her body, and her hair magically behaves at all times.