you’d want to—”
“Want to get used by a man who wanted to land a new client bad enough to sleep with someone?”
She turned and headed out of my office before I could respond. Once again I’d managed to say the wrong thing. It was becoming a habit as far as Harper was concerned.
Chapter 7
Harper
I’d called Grace right after my fight with Max, and we’d met at a bar on Murray Street in Tribeca. I waved to the bartender. “Can we get more cocktails and a snack? Something with cheese as a major component.” The bartender nodded and I turned back to Grace.
“Okay, I’m totally confused now. You’ve been banging Max King, the person you hate most in the world?”
“You’re totally focusing on the wrong thing.”
“Rewind and tell me what the fuck has been going on.”
She was looking at me as if I’d just told her I’d decided to move to Alaska.
“I think I got hired by King & Associates because of my sperm donor.” I should have changed my last name. We’d never had any sort of connection, so it didn’t feel like his name to me.
“The sperm donor being your dad?” Grace asked and I nodded. “How do you know?”
“And he slept with me, like some kind of whore.” I shivered. “Well, little does Max know that my father and I only communicate through lawyers these days.” How could he have been so cold? I should have trusted my instincts about him.
“We’ll get to the sex later. You didn’t answer my question.” Grace tapped me on the arm, trying to get me to focus. “Who told you that you’d been hired because of who your father is?”
“Max. In his office.” I took a sip of my mojito.
She tilted her head to the side. “He said, ‘I hired you because of who your father is’?”
“Of course not. He claimed he didn’t know. But he was clearly lying.” He’d said himself that he really wanted to work for JD Stanley.
“Okay.” Grace paused, her eyebrows drawn together. “And you were sleeping with Max? How did that happen?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Late night in the office?”
“He lives in my building. He’s penthouse man.”
Grace’s eyes went wide. “The couple who fucked like bunnies? You banged that guy? Jesus, I’m jealous.” She took out the cocktail stick from her martini glass and bit off one of the olives.
I tried hard not to smile. She should be jealous. Max knew what he was doing with his cock, that was for certain. He probably should have hooked up with Grace in the first place. After all, her family’s connections were far more impressive than mine.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “Is he boyfriend material?”
“I have no idea. And of course not.” I placed my elbows on the bar and pushed my hands through my hair. “What was I thinking, fucking my boss? Now I have to quit.”
“He said he didn’t know who your father was. Wouldn’t he have said something already if he did? Is he the liar-y type?”
“Liar-y?” I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye.
“It’s in the Dictionary of Grace. Look it up.”
I hadn’t thought Max was the sort to lie; he was too direct. But it was perfectly possible I’d just been taken in by his hard body and beautiful green eyes. Had I been seduced by his genius brain and passion for what he did? “Does it matter? He knows now. My father invited him to pitch.”
“And he said your father told him?”
I waved my hands. “No, he said he put two and two together, and then he asked for my help with the pitch.”
“And you don’t want to work for your father?”
“Not because of my last name.”
Grace nodded vigorously, alcohol clearly loosening her body parts. “I get that, but you are where you are. Max is saying he didn’t know. Are you going to cut your face off to spite your nose by quitting?”
“I definitely won’t be cutting my face off, or even my nose, but I do think I have to quit. It’s all too humiliating. Everyone’s going to know who my father is and why I got the job, and I can’t work with the man who fucked me to get ahead.”
“You’re thinking like a woman. You need to think like you have a penis.” She slapped her hand on the bar and the bartender jumped before setting down a cheese plate on the counter. “However you got this job, you need to