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CHAPTER ONE
"Mr. Burke will be with you shortly, Miss Kincaid."
Jewell nodded and smiled at the woman behind the desk whom Travis Traynor had introduced as LaTrisha Jordan. She took the wait as an opportunity to calm her twisting nerves, pulling in a deep breath as she wiped her palms down her skirt. She'd already been at Bulwark Mutual Funds for nearly two hours, completed preliminary interviews with Human Resources and Mr. Traynor—one of the department heads within the Capital Management division—and had apparently impressed them sufficiently to move on to an interview with Kevin Burke, Mid-Cap Assets Manager.
She turned away from the high paneled, wooden desk to survey the room. Mr. Traynor had called this the bullpen; a twelve hundred square foot open space on the seventeenth floor of the Bulwark building, lined on parallel walls with dark wood doors. There was a desk identical to LaTrisha's for each two doors, six desks on each side of the room, for the administrative support staff assigned to each fund manager team. A brass nameplate on the front of each receptionist-style desk indicated the name of a fund manager and division. Below that, a smaller plate with each manager's executive support staff member.
A low hum of conversation, accompanied by the click of keyboards and the occasional twitter of a phone, skimmed through the room. Someone laughed several desks down.
"I apologize for the delay," LaTrisha said, and Jewell turned. "Mr. Burke has been stuck on a call."
"Not a problem at all."
A door slammed behind her and Jewell jumped, as did everyone within her line of sight. An older woman stood outside one of the many doors along the hall, her cheeks flushed bright red with her hands clenched at her side, her lips bunched up in an angry purse. A young woman with dark brown hair seated at the desk outside the recently slammed door, startled in her chair at the sound. One by one, curious heads disappeared again behind their high desk walls.
The older woman headed for the younger at the desk, cutting her left hand through the air. While Jewell couldn't make out her words, the tone was enough to express anger. Based on the way the younger pushed back, Jewell wondered if she was the recipient of misplaced frustration.
She didn't realize she'd stepped closer until the woman's words came into comprehendible focus.
"I don't know who the hell he thinks he is. Thinks he can get away with talking to me like I don't know what I'm doing. I've been in this industry since before the Dow hit 5K!"
The younger woman looked around, briefly making eye contact with Jewell, her cheeks flushing. "Carol…”
"What? It's not like he hears me."
"Carol!" the younger said louder. “He doesn’t but everyone else does.”
Carol huffed, turned, and stormed away. Once she was away, the younger woman at the desk sighed, her shoulders visibly dropping, and she braced her hand across her forehead. Jewell glanced around and spotted a water bubbler. She crossed the room and filled a cup before going to the desk. The brunette looked up when Jewell set down the cup, looking surprised as she reached for it.
"Thank you."
"Rough day," Jewell stated since it wasn’t a question, keeping her voice low. She smiled, trying to keep the conversation light.
The woman shook her head, frowning. "Sometimes I feel like a kid watching my parents argue. Except that would imply that at some point there might have been some sort of affection between them."
"Clashing personalities, huh?"
The woman's laugh was humorless. "That's putting it mildly. Mr. Roth isn't exactly the easiest person to work for. He’s demanding and holds everyone to high expectations. Carol is convinced she knows more because she's been in the industry longer. She doesn't like?—"
"Being questioned?"
April nodded and sighed. Jewell squinted, trying to grab hold of a mental note floating around the edge of her memory.
"Roth. Benjamin Prescott Roth?"
April nodded again, arching her eyebrows in a look of surprise. "Yes. You know him?"
"I know of him. My economics professor once used Mr. Roth's profile analysis process as an example in class."
"Mr. Roth is very good at what he does. He's just—" The woman stopped herself, rolled her eyes, and offered a half smile, then extended her hand. "Sorry. I'm April Baker, and the woman who just left is Carol Soldano. Are you applying for the position with Mr. Burke?"
"I am."
"I hope you don't think this is what it's like to work here. Most of the fund managers are very nice, and everyone works great together. And it’s not that Mr. Roth isn’t nice. It's just Mr. Roth and Carol."
"It's not me, it's him," Carol snapped, coming back from wherever she'd gone, still scowling. When she spoke again, she said his name with a mocking frown. "B.P. Roth is full of himself, obnoxious, arrogant, and demanding. If you don’t do what he wants, the way he wants it, when he wants it, he's intolerable."
The office door behind April's desk opened and the commanding presence of B.P. Roth stepped into the hall. Having already formed a mental image of a late-middle-aged, probably barrel-shaped man with a growing bald spot, Jewell was surprised to see a young man, probably mid-thirties, with caramel-blond hair that waved back from his forehead, and a defined, chiseled chin. There was an inherent strength in the set of his jaw. The starched-white shirt and tailored slacks accentuated a tall and athletic build. His distinct profile turned from Jewell, deep brown eyes sought out and found the two women in his employ. April sat straighter, but Carol just sighed deep and long.
