Brooke waited, trying to figure out where Curt was going with this. So Spectrum’s CEO knew she was going after another one of their clients. So what? It was hardly a secret that Sterling was aggressively building its sports and entertainment division. “And how does this relate to our meeting?”

Curt gestured to the conference room. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

Confused, Brooke stepped inside and saw a man wearing a tailored navy suit sitting at the conference table. He stood up when she walked in.

Curt made the introduction. “Brooke Parker, this is Palmer Green. CEO of Spectrum North America.”

Palmer looked her over with a sharp gaze. “So you’re the one who’s been stealing away my favorite clients.”

Well. This was indeed a surprise.

Brooke looked back at Curt, beginning to understand why he’d insisted that she come alone. “Unorthodox? In your business, Mr. Emery, I’d think we’d call this a blindside.”

Nevertheless, she walked over to Palmer and held out her hand. No clue what this was about, but if Spectrum’s CEO had thought he could fly out here and intimidate her into backing off his company’s business, he was in for a rude awakening. “What an interesting surprise, Mr. Green,” she said while shaking his hand. “Let me guess. This is the part where you ever-so-charmingly suggest that I stay away from Spectrum’s clients.”

He smiled at that. “No, Ms. Parker. This is the part where I ever-so-charmingly offer you a job.”

Twenty-seven

DESPITE BEING SURPRISED by Palmer’s words, Brooke managed to give Curt a withering look as he smiled apologetically and quickly excused himself from the room.

“Don’t be mad at poor Curt,” Palmer said with a chuckle when the two of them were alone. “He was just following orders.” He sat down at the conference table and gestured, the air of a man who was used to getting his way. “Please, have a seat. At least hear me out.”

Brooke considered this for a moment, and then sat down. “Five minutes. But you should know that we’re already off to a shaky start given the theatrics. Any reason you couldn’t just pick up the phone if you supposedly wanted to offer me a job?”

“This isn’t the kind of offer you make over the phone.” Palmer eased back in his chair. “Besides, I wanted to size up the illustrious Brooke Parker myself.” He cocked his head, taking her in. “Stealing Cowboys Stadium and the United Center was bad enough. But the Staples Center?” He whistled. “That was a dagger to my heart.”

“I take it you’re a Lakers fan.”

“Born and bred in L.A.”

That certainly explained the theatrics. “I think I need to clarify a misunderstanding,” she said. “I’m part of a team at Sterling. My partners, Tony and Micah, were just as instrumental in landing those deals.”

“Not according to my contacts at the Cowboys, the United Center, and the Staples Center.” Palmer must’ve caught her look of surprise. “Oh? You think I didn’t call them to ask why we’d lost their business?”

“I’m sure they told you it’s because Sterling offers top-notch upscale hospitality service.”

“They mentioned something to that effect. But they also said that you are a very convincing woman, Ms. Parker.” He studied her. “It’s remarkable, really, what you’ve accomplished for that company in two years. I hope Ian Sterling appreciates that.”

“Ian Sterling appreciates it just fine.”

The edges of Palmer’s mouth curved in a smile. “You’re loyal to him. I respect that.”

“Thank you.” She checked her watch. “You’re down to three minutes, Mr. Green.”

“All right, I’ll get to the point,” he said, appearing undeterred by her directness. “I want you on my team. You’re smart, bold, and ambitious—and I’ve personally seen the fruits of that. You’ve stolen away three of my top clients in the past eighteen months, and now you’re going after a fourth. I either need to shut you down—which I don’t believe is possible—or get you to work your magic for me.”

He folded his hands on the table. “You want me to be even more blunt? You are a rising star in the business world, Brooke. But you have a problem. There’s nowhere for you to go at Sterling Restaurants. One man sits at the top—Ian Sterling. Think about that.”

Brooke sat quiet for a moment, digesting everything Palmer had said. Frankly, his speech had caught her off guard. Of course, she was aware that the company had been getting a lot of good press. But she’d had no idea that people like Palmer Green, CEO of a billion-dollar-plus corporation, were specifically paying attention to her.

“What do you envision me doing at Spectrum?” she asked cautiously.

“Executive vice president of sales and business development.”

Brooke blinked. She’d been thinking he planned to offer her an assistant general counsel position, but this was something else entirely.

“You seem surprised,” Palmer said.

“Actually. . . yes,” she admitted. “I’ve always considered myself a lawyer first, businesswoman second.”

“Once you take the position, I’d be happy to have the legal department send a few problems your way,” he joked. “But I think you’ll be busy enough.”

“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

He leveled her with his gaze. “Very serious. I believe in striking while the iron is hot. I don’t know what’s driving you, and frankly, I don’t need to know. I just want to tap into it. So I think you need to ask yourself something: are you ready to step up to the big leagues?”

What popped into Brooke’s head right then was a similar meeting she’d had, two years ago, when Ian asked her to join Sterling Restaurants. She remembered the excitement and thrill she’d felt when first taking over as general counsel—feelings she still had to this day.

But she also remembered the promise she’d made to herself long ago: that she was going places.

“Just how big of a league are we talking?” she asked.

Palmer smiled, knowing that he had her attention now. “Seventy-five-thousand-dollar signing bonus. Three hundred thousand base salary, plus another one hundred and fifty thousand in stock via our equity incentive plan. You’ll also receive a bonus of one hundred percent of your base salary, assuming you bring in the kind of deals you’ve been landing at Sterling.”

After Brooke recovered from a split second of being absolutely dumbfounded, she pulled herself together and quickly did some math. If she did her job well, which—hello—of course she would do her job well—Palmer was talking about a compensation package, for the first year alone, that totaled $825,000.

Wow.

“Also, we’ll obviously pay to relocate you to our headquarters in Charlotte,” Palmer added.

That snapped Brooke out of the green haze of dollar signs floating before her eyes.

Right. Of course. She would need to relocate for this job. All the way to North Carolina.

“That’s quite an offer, Palmer,” she said.

“Trust me, you’ll earn every penny. I won’t sugarcoat it—you come to Spectrum and you’ll work your butt off for me. I’m offering you a lucrative position, but also a demanding one. Lots of travel, schmoozing with clients, you know the drill. Although from what I hear, you’re already putting in long hours. At least I can pay you more for it.”

Certain parts of Palmer’s speech were buzzing around in Brooke’s head like annoying gnats. Work your butt off. Demanding. Long hours. She shook it off, remaining focused. “You’ve certainly given me a lot to think about.” She saw Palmer raise an eyebrow, as if waiting for more. She chuckled. “You don’t actually expect me to give you an answer on the spot, do you?”

He laughed. “No. Although I thought I had you for a minute there.” He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a business card. “Call me after you’ve had a chance to think everything through. What I’d like to do is fly you out to Charlotte to meet the other executive officers, get a feel for us, get to know Spectrum better. Not sure if you’re married or have kids, but the whole family is welcome. You could make a long weekend out of it and explore the city.”

Brooke shook her head. “No husband or kids. Just me.”

Palmer grinned confidently. “That makes things even easier, doesn’t it?”

Twenty-eight

“SO AS IT turns out, your idea wasn’t totally lame.”

Cade looked at Zach, needing to squint in the noon sun. Belatedly, he realized he should’ve worn his sunglasses, although the decision to eat outside had been spur-of-the-moment.

They perched on one of the stone ledges in Daley Plaza, just a few feet away from the city’s iconic fifty-foot Picasso sculpture, eating burritos from a restaurant across the street. Zach was downtown for the afternoon—some errand to run, he’d said—so they’d agreed to meet. While walking to the burrito restaurant, they’d heard a blues band playing a lunchtime concert in the plaza, and had decided, along with many other Chicagoans, given the size of the crowd, to grab a seat for a few minutes and enjoy the eighty-degree weather.

“What idea?” Then he noticed Zach’s sneaky smile and remembered—the poetry book. “You talked to Paige, didn’t you?”

“Sure did,” he said slyly. “Got a date with her Friday, too.”

“Way to go,” Cade said, high-fiving him. “So? Tell me what happened.”

“I decided to tweak your original idea. Instead of giving her the book, I figured I would pretend to read it myself at her dad’s ice-cream shop, hoping that she would come up to me and ask about it.”

“Coward.”

“Ha. What you fail to understand is that, in this day and age, women want to take charge. So I was merely being supportive of Paige’s natural feminist instincts by giving her the tools and the opportunity to approach me first.”

“Nice try.”

Zach grinned, conceding. “Okay, fine. Maybe I wussed out. Anyway, it was really busy in the shop that day, and I was getting bored waiting for everyone else to clear out, so I figured I might as well actually read the book I was pretending to be reading. And, you know, there was some stuff in there that was pretty cool.”

Cade smiled at the kid’s surprised tone. “Imagine that.”

“So I’m reading some poem by Louise . . . something, I forget her last name, but it’s about Hades and the underworld, and I don’t even notice that Paige has come up to my table until she says, ‘Doesn’t everyone want love?’ And I’m thinking, wow, that’s a pretty deep question, but then again Paige is really smart, and this is my chance to finally show her that I’m not just a dumb jock. So I say, ‘I heard this theory once that love means your subconscious is attracted to someone else’s subconscious.’”

“Very deep,” Cade said.

“Exactly. And I’m feeling proud of myself for that one, until she points to the book and says, ‘Oh, that wasn’t a question. I was just quoting a line from the poem.’”

Cade covered his mouth to hide his smile. “Well, that’s . . . awkward.”

“You think? I’m mortified at that point, and thinking that I’m never, ever listening to your advice on getting a girl again . . . but then she asks me what I think our football team’s chances are of beating our rival, McKinley Tech, this year.”

“She likes football? Sounds like this girl’s a keeper.”

Zach shook his head. “That’s the thing—we started talking and, dude, she doesn’t know anything about football. But I think she wanted me to think she did.”

Cade thought about this. “Let me get this straight—you secretly pretend to like poetry to impress the smart girl in your English class, while she’s secretly pretending to like football to impress you.” He paused. “That’s gotta be the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I guess her subconscious finds my subconscious pretty irresistible,” Zach said, all teenage confidence right then.

“You were lucky to pull that line off once, Garrity. I wouldn’t push it.”

Zach laughed, and then the two of them segued into a conversation about football, and what the chances were, in fact, that his team would beat their rival. They finished their lunch, and Cade checked his watch and realized he should get back to the office.

Zach cleared his throat. “Oh, hey, before you head out I wanted to mention that I’ve been thinking more about telling my dad that you and I have been hanging out.”