When I Saw You Read online

  “I like it,” she said. “I don’t really understand it.”

  “Liking it is enough.” He took a seat across from her and opened a folder on the table, his eyes briefly scanning her resume before lifting to hers. “Are you aware you’re interviewing for a position in our Marketing Department?”

  Lia felt her face heat up. “Yes, that resume was tailored to the finance position I applied for a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t see any entry-level openings in the Marketing Department.”

  “You’re blushing again,” he said, a hint of a smile on his lips.

  “Sorry,” she breathed, shaking her head.

  “I’m teasing you,” he said. “And we don’t advertise for positions in our Business to Business Division. We either hire from within or human resources will identify promising candidates—like in your case.”

  “I’m definitely interested in marketing.”

  “Good.” He didn’t speak for several seconds, his intense gaze meeting hers. “Cecile’s right,” he finally said. “You’re a natural fit for this division.” He closed the folder. “Why don’t I tell you about the position and then you can tell me what you think?”

  “Yes, please,” Lia said, barely able to contain her enthusiasm. She was going to leave his office with a job. She could feel it.

  Zurtech’s Business to Business Division, or B2B, functioned as the Marketing Department’s VIP service, responsible for nurturing Zurtech’s most important customers.

  “The B2Bs sell goodwill,” he told her. “And that goodwill fosters loyalty, which ultimately results in increased company revenues. I personally created this division four years ago. Within the first year, revenue from our select group of clients increased over fifteen percent. The number of clients we now consider elite has quadrupled in the past three years. The personnel in this division are the crème de la crème of my marketing staff, and they are compensated accordingly.” He leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped on the table. “I’m not going to lie. This is a competitive division and there is nowhere to hide. I have fifty percent attrition in the first year with my new hires. Some quit, but most are fired or transferred to other divisions.” His intense eyes continued to meet hers. “This job isn’t for everyone, but I personally feel it is not only the most important division within marketing, but the most rewarding. You are basically paid to pamper and spoil some of the richest and most powerful men and women in the world. The value of the contacts you’ll make here is immeasurable.”

  “There is no product selling?”

  “No. You sell our brand. This is high-end customer service. Essentially, it is your job to become friends with our top clients. Friends like to buy from friends. It’s as simple as that.”

  “So, on a day-to-day basis, what does that entail, exactly?” She was a bit confused.

  “It entails getting to know our VIPs,” he said. “Learning about every facet of their lives—whether they are married, their children’s names, their favorite foods, favorite vacation spots, their hobbies, even their favorite color—anything and everything you can learn. The B2B staff has spent the last few years compiling extensive files on our elite-level customers.” He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his fists. “We create an energetic, friendly, and pleasure oriented environment, which will feel more like a cocktail party than a meeting, but make no mistake—you are there to work.” He watched her in silence for a long moment. “You still look confused.”

  “No. I’m just— Where do these interactions with the customers take place?”

  “We have suites at most of the venues in the Washington area. We host our clients for sporting events, concerts, even the occasional ballet. We also have the Zurtech house: a ten-thousand-square-foot facility in Great Falls we use to entertain.”

  “So would my hours be predominately in the evening?” She hated asking, but as exciting as the position sounded, she couldn’t leave Taylor five nights a week.

  “Not quite.” He smiled. “I’m trying to sell the position, so I was highlighting the perks. Most of your time will be spent in the office updating client files and identifying potential elite-level customers both from within Zurtech and from our competitors.” He glanced at his watch. “How about a tour and lunch? And then we can talk compensation.”

  It was a few minutes past 5:00 p.m. when Lia parked her car in her mother’s driveway in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. Her mother had proved to be a godsend over the past two years, faithfully serving as Taylor’s babysitter while Lia completed her bachelor’s degree and then later when she began to work for a temp agency. She was literally living paycheck to paycheck, and there was no way she could afford an outside caregiver. Plus, knowing Taylor was with her grandmother removed some of the guilt she felt for being away for nine or more hours a day.

  “Hello?” Lia called out as she stepped into her mother’s foyer.

  “Hi.” Her mother approached from the back of the house. At fifty-five, Elaine was still quite attractive, with dark hair and the same high cheekbones as her daughter. “Well?”

  “I got it!”

  “Oh, Lia, that’s wonderful.” Her mother gave her a hug. “I had a good feeling about this one. When do you start?”

  “Monday.” She followed her mother to the kitchen at the back of the house.

  “Monday? That soon?”

  “Yes. Their employee-orientation programs begin the first Monday of the month, so it was either Monday or I’d have to wait another month.” She set her purse on the kitchen table and turned towards the family room, which was separated from the kitchen by two steps and a wooden railing. “Hi, Taylor.”

  “Mommy!” Taylor scurried up from her position in front of the television and ran across the room. “You’re here!” She jumped into Lia’s arms.

  “I missed you.” Lia gave her a hug. “How was school?”

  “Good. I got to be the teacher’s helper.”

  “That’s nice. What does the school helper do?”

  “Teacher’s helper. Not school helper.” Taylor laughed.

  Lia smiled. “Sorry, teacher’s helper. What does the teacher’s helper do?”

  “She helps the teacher.” Taylor smiled. “You’re funny, Mommy.”

  “So are you.” She kissed her small, upturned nose. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Taylor struggled out of her arms. “Can I watch the rest of my show?”

  Lia glanced towards the television and was relieved to see a cartoon on the screen. “Sure,” she said to Taylor’s quickly retreating back.

  “Hi, Frank,” she said to her stepfather as he came into the room. Frank Law, her mother’s husband of just over eight years, was one of the nicest people Lia knew. After a career in the government as a program manager, he’d retired the year prior and spent most of his days in his garden or golfing.

  “Hi, Lia.” He smiled. “I’m sensing congratulations are in order?”

  “Yes, I start Monday.”

  “Very good.” He patted her arm before leaving to join Taylor.

  “Would you like something to eat?” Elaine asked.

  “No, thanks. I had a late lunch.” She lowered herself onto one of three barstools lining a granite island.

  “I want to hear all about it,” Elaine said before setting a bowl of tortilla chips and guacamole onto the counter. “Tell me everything.”

  Lia quickly recounted details of her new position to her mother. “And,” Lia said after several minutes, pausing with a chip at her mouth, “I get a clothing allowance. Well, not exactly an allowance. I meet with a personal shopper at the Neiman Marcus at Tyson’s, and I’ll be completely outfitted. Zurtech has an account—it’s all paid for.”

  “Neiman Marcus?” Elaine’s eyes widened. “Wow!”

  “I know. I feel like pinching myself. It seems too good to be true.”

  2

  “Nice picture in the Washingtonian.” Tony Prossi, one of three founding partners of th
e law firm of Prossi, Stuart and Craig, stepped into Joseph Craig’s office.

  Joseph lifted his gaze from his computer screen. He’d been profiled in the latest issue of Washingtonian as one of the ten most eligible bachelors in Washington. “It’s not like they gave me a choice. You wouldn’t believe how many women read that magazine.”

  “You’re fighting them off, are you?” Tony lifted his eyebrows.

  “Yes, I’m fighting them off.” He gripped the arms of his chair as he pushed himself to his feet and then he was crossing to the bar in the corner of his office. At six foot four, with dark, wavy hair and a model-worthy face, Joseph Craig didn’t need assistance attracting the opposite sex. He had an almost untamed air about him that women found irresistible.

  “I hear the cute weather woman from NBC was all over you last night.”

  “We were all over each other.” He turned from the bar with a glass of water. “And I’ve been paying for it all day. I’m exhausted. There was no stopping her. She went down on me in the back of the cab on the way to her place.”

  “I’m sure it was painful for you,” Tony said dryly.

  “It was.” He laughed. “I’m getting too old for this. I got about a minute’s sleep last night.”

  “And here I thought you were about to pop the question to Kathy,” Tony said, referring to Joseph’s girlfriend, a former model and the owner of a plush art gallery in Alexandria, Virginia.

  “I probably should.”

  “And this is why you were screwing the weather woman?”

  “We’re not exclusive.”

  “Does she know that?”

  Joseph shrugged. “We haven’t discussed it.”

  “I bet.” Tony glanced at his watch. “I’m off. See you Monday.”

  “Wait—wait.” Joseph followed him to the door. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go up to New York for the weekend. There’s an opening at a gallery. A new artist I want to see.”

  “New York City in August? No thanks.”

  “Come on, when was the last time you were up there?”

  “Not even tempted. Have a nice weekend.”

  “You’re getting boring, Prossi,” Joseph called after him as he left his office.

  Joseph Craig and Tony Prossi started life on the same day in hospitals six hundred miles apart—Tony the first son of a young senator and his wife, both of prominent Virginia families, and Joseph the son of an eighteen-year-old girl who would later become a maid at the estate of a prominent Massachusetts family. And when they met twenty-one years later, they were law students at one of the most prominent colleges in the country. As their lives started the same day, their paths to becoming attorneys too started the same day.

  The illegitimate son of a maid would receive the same education as the senator’s son. Joseph spent his entire life with the affluent, not as a servant or as an equal, but as an outsider striving to be like them because they were all he knew. His childhood home was on one of the largest estates in Massachusetts. His neighbors had names like Kennedy, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. He shared their world, but not their status. He was a no one in a world of someones and he knew it, had known it since almost the beginning.

  As a little boy, he often sat on the porch off the small two-bedroom cottage that served as his home, staring at the mansion where his grandmother worked and asking why his house was so much smaller. “Because we come from different places, Joseph,” his grandmother would say. “We only live here because I work for the Williamses. This is their home… Most people live in much smaller houses.” But Joseph never saw those smaller houses.

  His grandmother, Elizabeth Craig, came to the United States from England when she was thirty-one years old. Recently widowed, with a ten-year-old daughter, she was hired by Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Williams as a maid and provided a small house on the estate.

  Elizabeth’s daughter, Helen, grew into a beautiful young woman with platinum hair and green eyes. She turned the heads of men wherever she went. And the summer before she was to begin her freshman year in college, she turned the head of Richard Jefferson Eastwood III, the oldest son of Mr. Williams’s banker, Richard Jefferson Eastwood II. He came to the estate to attend a Fourth of July party and noticed Helen sitting on the porch of her cottage reading a book. He was charming and handsome, and when he asked her if he could call her she said yes. He never mentioned he was getting married in September.

  Helen lost her virginity that summer. She was in love and never doubted the dashing Richard would one day be her husband, until one Sunday morning in August when she was lying next to him in bed and his telephone rang. He spoke to the other person only briefly, but before he hung up he said, “I love you too” into the receiver. When Helen asked who he was speaking to he told her it was his fiancée and was surprised when she seemed shocked by the admission. “It has nothing to do with you,” he said. “I want to keep seeing you after I’m married.”

  Devastated, Helen listened to him as he explained how they came from different “stations in life” and he would never even entertain the notion of marrying someone with her background. A month later she discovered she was pregnant. Richard, his wedding two weeks away, was in his office when Helen called.

  “Helen, hello,” he said, obviously pleased to hear her voice until he learned the reason for the call. “Are you sure it’s mine?”

  “Of course I’m sure. You’re the only man I’ve ever been with.”

  “I’m not going to marry you. I’m marrying Elise next week.”

  “I’m having your baby!” she cried. “You have to marry me.”

  “I’m not marrying you, Helen.” His voice was cold. “Even if I wasn’t marrying Elise, I wouldn’t marry you…My family would never accept you.”

  “But…but I’m pregnant.”

  “That’s not my problem.” He hung up the phone and several days later she received a letter and check in the mail.

  Helen,

  This letter in no way acknowledges responsibility for the predicament you’ve found yourself in. I am not in love with you, have never been in love with you, and would never want to father a child with you.

  If you are in fact pregnant, I recommend you terminate the pregnancy immediately. I’ve enclosed five hundred dollars to pay for the procedure.

  I will be getting married next week. Please stop calling my office.

  Richard

  Helen never spoke to Richard Eastman III again. Seven months and two weeks after receiving the letter, she gave birth to a ten-pound boy and named him Joseph. Joseph had a full head of curly black hair, a cleft in his little chin and the hint of deep dimples in his cheeks.

  Elizabeth never discussed the pregnancy or birth with her employers. The Williamses thought it odd when Helen stopped attending college after only one semester, but didn’t realize she was pregnant until the spring when it became impossible to hide. Even then Elizabeth didn’t bring up the obvious fact that her single daughter was pregnant. And when she asked for a few days off in late May to take care of her daughter, there was no mention of the baby.

  Joseph was three weeks old the first time the Williamses met him. Helen, who was out walking with him in the garden, came around a corner and almost collided with them. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here,” Helen said, quickly turning.

  “It’s okay, Helen,” Mrs. Williams assured her. “We came out to meet your baby.”

  “Oh.” Helen turned back, surprised. “His name is Joseph,” she said with the hint of a smile. She moved the blanket down from his face so they could see him. “He weighed ten pounds.”

  “He’s beautiful,” Mrs. Williams said, her eyes moving from the baby to her husband. “Isn’t he, Theodore?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t take his eyes from Joseph.

  Later that day, Mr. Williams approached Elizabeth and asked if he could have a few moments of her time. “Of course, Mr. Williams.” She followed him down the long marble hallway leading to his study. “I know I sho
uld have asked your permission before bringing him home from the hospital, but she had nowhere else to go,” she began nervously as soon as he closed the door.

  “Elizabeth, your grandson is welcome here.” He led her to a leather chair beside a fireplace before taking a seat himself. “Does Richard know? It’s obvious, Elizabeth. He’s a perfect replica of him.”

  Elizabeth showed Mr. Williams the letter Richard Eastman had sent to Helen and the two never again discussed Joseph Craig’s paternal roots. Joseph grew up not knowing he was the illegitimate son of Richard Eastman III. His mother told him he was the son of a Frenchman she met during a trip to Europe the summer after graduation—a man who died in a car accident before they were to be married.

  Almost from the beginning, it was obvious Joseph inherited more than the Eastmans’ looks. He inherited his grandfather’s keen intellect. Richard Eastman II was a brilliant financier. His son, Richard III, was gifted both academically and athletically.

  Joseph inherited it all. He taught himself to read when he was three. He was beating Mr. Williams at tennis and chess by the age of eight. He was witty and shrewd, and Mr. Williams spent hours counseling and teaching the boy. Joseph attended a prestigious private day school through eighth grade and then was accepted to the exclusive Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut for high school.

  The week before he left for Choate Rosemary, Joseph was in his mother’s closet searching for his birth certificate when he found a large manila envelope. Inside were several newspaper clippings about the founder of a new brokerage firm, Richard Eastman III. He read through each article and then he found the letter Richard Eastman had sent his mother almost fifteen years earlier. It took him a moment to comprehend what it meant. His father wasn’t a dead Frenchman. He was from Massachusetts and he had three Roman numerals after his name.

  Joseph read the letter thirty times, never mentioning the discovery to his mother. She seemed to have almost convinced herself he was the son of a Frenchman, telling him dozens of stories over the years about the handsome man who swept her off her feet. She’d even given him a name: Jean la Montagne.