Bad Boys Box Set – Part 1-3

Chapter 3

My ears started ringing. I had thrown together a rough idea but I didn’t know if it was enough. Bowen and his arrogant smile had thrown me off and now I had to pitch something that would get me in Dunn’s good books above Mr. Please-Everybody.

I took a deep breath. I could do it.

“Let me be the first to say,” Bowen started. “That life and its beauty here in Manhattan never gets old.” He glanced at me. “It never fades. I live here, and I’m still not used to it.”

My mouth dropped open. Was he using my line – the sincerity I’d spoken with outside – to pitch for a job?

“I think we should use that concept for a campaign, to emphasize beauty and that something like loss shouldn’t draw our attention away from it.”

I glared at him. He smiled at me, arrogant, cocky. Son of a b***h.

Mr. Dunn nodded, impressed.

If this was my competition, this was going to be fun. Lori had warned me against Daniel Bowen, the handsome charmer who could mesmerize any woman.

Not me. The only thing I felt toward him was contempt. If this was how we were going to play the game, bring it on.

I could be better. I could make it happen. This was the man that charmed women out of their panties? Well, he had another thing coming. My panties were staying right where they were.

Chapter 2

Daniel

Work is work. It always has been. You do it to get somewhere in life and the better you do it, the faster you get there.

I didn’t hate my job. I couldn’t stay I loved it – why would I love something that took up half of my waking hours? I was good at it, though, and winning was better than anything else out there.

I stepped into the office at five past nine. Henry and Blake were already in my office. Henry tapped his foot restlessly. Blake paged through a Sports’ magazine.

“What’s the point of your team being early if you’re just going to be late?” Blake asked when I stepped into my office and shrugged out of my suit jacket.

“I thought you boys would have started,” I said and grinned at them.

“Not on your life, buddy. We do this together, remember?” Henry was in a bad mood. I shrugged and leaned over to grab the mail from my IN tray.

At school, I had been the one to ride the coattails of others. Why do the work when someone else was willing to? In the grownup world, it wasn’t much different. If you waited long enough, someone would come along eager to get in the way and take over. Who was I to bust their dreams and insist on doing it myself?

So, I wasn’t always the most ethical person. I didn’t always give someone else the credit when they did all the work. Sometimes they didn’t know I was riding their coattails. Some people called it stealing. I called it being smart.

Life is all about money. If you do it right, no one gets hurt. If you do it wrong… there’s nothing like a charming smile and a sincere apology to make things right.

“Okay, so what do we have?” I asked Henry. He was the type that had always been a team player – fair and honest and all that.

He shrugged. “If you were on time you would have known that Brisk Insurers are looking for someone to put together a new campaign,” he said. He rubbed his nose with his forefinger and sniffed.

I looked up at him. “Tell me we’re shortlisted.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

I clapped my hands together and rubbed them.

“It’s in the bag, boys. Brisk is a big one.”

Big names on résumés were always good. It made the next tenders so much easier. Not to mention Brisk paid a hell of a lot of money, and I was due for a promotion or a raise anyway.

“We still have to get it, superstar,” Blake said. “I know you feel like you’re king of the world, but others are on the list, too.”

I frowned at Blake. “Like who?”

“Wonderworks has also been approached.”

I rolled my eyes. “When you said others, I thought you meant someone important.”

Henry cleared his throat. “They’re not bad, you know that. They nearly got Pristine last year, remember?”

“Yeah, it was close. But we still got it. It’s just a bunch of women. That happens to be my specialty.”

Blake and Henry looked at each other. Neither of them could argue with that.

“You just get yourself to that meeting, see what Dunn wants…”

“Wait. Harold Dunn? Is he handling this?”

The boys both nodded.

I lifted my hands up in the air and spun my chair around to the view of the city from my office.

“Then we’re in. I know the old man personally.”

I spun the chair back around and grinned at my teammates. This was going to be even easier than I thought. Maybe we wouldn’t even have to go through the motions of pitching a campaign each – I could jump right to being hired for the project.

“When is the meeting?” I asked.

“This afternoon. At three.”

I looked from Henry to Blake and back.

“We’ll, that’s not a lot of time, is it, boys?”

Blake shrugged. “If you got here earlier…”

I waved him off. “I know, I know. No sweat, though. I’ve got this one. And don’t worry about those dollies from Wonderworks. I have a feeling it won’t even matter if they pitch at all.”

I spun back to the window and looked out over the buildings that made up the skyline of Manhattan. Imagine Solutions had their offices nearly at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Lower Manhattan. I didn’t even have to imagine what it would be like being at the top – I was already there. This town was mine. I was a player and this was my game. I knew exactly what I was doing

Overconfident? Maybe. But when you won as many times as I had you started to disregard losing as an option, and it snowballed into a positive loop that just kept on giving.

My name was out there for a reason. I, Daniel Bowen, dominated.

I walked out of my office at twenty to three and made my way across the road to the building where Harold Dunn had set up the biggest Insurance company along the West Coast. It was convenient. It didn’t make us neighbors by a long shot – in the business world you could exist side by side and never rub shoulders. But I felt like I was in my part of town and I was cocky and arrogant. I knew I had what it took to pull off this job.

I was just about to turn into the front doors when a woman caught my eye. I was a connoisseur when it came to women. I had a keen eye for beauty and there was a wide variety. And they responded well to me. Besides the obvious opposite s*x attraction thing, women didn’t think I was arrogant and cocky until it was too late for them to turn back. Men, on the other hand, usually felt intimidated by me. There’s nothing like the contempt born from intimidation. Jealousy, I believe they called it.

She was beautiful in the way a rare gem is beautiful – she was different than what’s usually out there – and that made me interested. I walked up to her. She stood looking up at the building, lost in her own thoughts, and I could watch her without her feeling awkward.

Shoulder length auburn hair, freckles on her nose, dark eyes. She wore a coat that covered up her body so I couldn’t see her body shape, but judging by her slender legs she was a looker.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked. I meant her, but she was looking at the architectural wonder that adorned Lower Manhattan.

She looked at me, her eyes wide like she was a little surprised at being back in the real world. Her eyes were dark and drowning deep.

“It is,” she said in a breathy voice. “I live here, and I’m still not used to it.”

I walked past beauty every day and I didn’t see it. When you look at the same thing every day, no matter how beautiful, you start to look past it, start to take it for granted. I looked up at the building and saw it the way you would see something for the first time.

And it really was beautiful.

She was the real jewel of the whole picture, though. And she had no idea. I took in her features, committing them to memory. I didn’t know what to say to her. Usually, I’m ready with a line. I’m ready to feed them something that would get them to sleep with me. This one was worth more a little more than that.

So, instead of saying anything and letting her see what a jerk I could be, I nodded at her and walked into the building. Someone as delicate and otherworldly as this woman didn’t deserve an i***t like me in her life.

I leaned against the reception desk and put on my best smile for Dana. I’d known her for a while – we’d slept together once or twice in the past – and she was one of the few women who didn’t seem to be cured of me. She flashed a cheeky smile.

“Are you supposed to be here or did you just come bother me again before my coffee break?” she asked.

I shook my head. “You know if I wanted to see you I would make a much bigger thing of it,” I said. I wasn’t even lying. The fact that I didn’t really want to see her was beside. The line worked, though. She blushed.

“Excuse me?” someone spoke and we both looked up. The woman from outside stood right next to me. She was irritated. I glanced at Dana who looked like she was being rudely interrupted. When the woman told Dana she had a three o’clock with Mr. Dunn, my ears started ringing.

This was the woman from Wonderworks? I had worked with them before but I’d never seen her around. Was she new?

Dana told her where to go and she disappeared. She didn’t know who I was. In a few minutes that would change. I didn’t want that to happen – if she was with Wonderworks she’d already heard my name, heard about my reputation. Still, I wanted her to look at me like I was just another person for as long as possible. God knew that would change soon enough.

She disappeared.

“Where were we?” Dana said in a seductive voice but I was suddenly over it. I didn’t feel like flirting with Dana anymore.

“I have to get going. I’m late for my meeting,” I said. I pointed in her book to my name.

“I thought you were just feeding me a line,” she said, still smiling.

“Sweetheart, would I do that?”

She raised her eyebrows at me. I flashed her a brilliant smile and walked to the elevator lobby. Instead of going straight to Dunn’s office, I walked to the men’s room, first. I checked myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess. I straightened the tie that I always let hang loosely in a sexy way and rolled down my sleeves.

Why was I freshening up? It was for the meeting with Dunn, of course. I was going to win this thing and I was making sure I looked the part. That was what it was.

I pulled out my phone and called Henry. The phone rang twice before he answered.

“I want you to find out what you can about A. Snyder. She was in the visitor’s book and I know nothing about her – I thought we knew everything about Wonderworks.”

“Are you not heading into the meeting with her, now?” Henry asked. “Why don’t you just find out for yourself?”

I shook my head. “She knows who I am and I don’t know who she is. I feel like I’m at a disadvantage.”

Henry chuckled. “Just do your job. Sometimes life shouldn’t be offered to you on a silver platter.”

He hung up. I looked at the screen and cursed. The fact was, I didn’t give a s**t who she was in terms of a competitor. I wanted to know who she was as a person. I was usually obsessed with women but this was different. I wanted to know her. And my time was running out – the moment she found out who I was, she wouldn’t want me to know anything about her.