For how this had started, for how quickly she had moved, and for the conviction of her body and the contour of her curves, it was hard not to let my mind carry away to some dangerous places.
Chapter Seven
The good news was, I wasn’t allowed to go to those dangerous places in person over the next week.
Unfortunately, it was only good news within the specific confines of acting—I wasn’t sure that it was great for my mental sanity overall.
Because for as much as I thought about Layla, as much as I fantasized about her, as much as I wanted to bring her back to my office to finish what we had started, consequences be damned... I never even saw her at her father’s office, let alone my own again.
No messages either. It wasn’t like she didn’t know how to contact me. She had my email and both my work and my personal cell numbers.
So what the hell had happened?
Worse, had what had happened screwed me over, the gears moving a bit too slowly for me to notice but inevitably leading to my firing? I couldn’t imagine that it was a great look for me to be hooking up with the CEO’s daughter of a company we had interest in investing in. The only thing that kept me slightly sane in this regard was the idea that it would be a really bad look for Layla too, and that self-preservation would win out.
Of course, that self-preservation also might have meant that she would never speak to me again in any context except around family.
God, how I hated being back in this spot again. Ten years had passed since Sarah Hill, and I’d done so damn well at keeping my distance from girls, not allowing myself to have that heartbreak...
And now Layla Taylor had laid that to waste. As flawed as my plan might have been for both shooting for business success with this deal and sexual success with Layla, I could not help myself. I wanted it all. And I wanted it now.
But I didn’t get it now, or for that whole week that followed our initial near hookup in the office. I threw myself into the work, running papers, organizing conference calls, sending emails that were ignored by Mr. Burnson, collaborating with other staff members, going out to dinner with employees at Craig’s company, all things that I knew had to be done for the sake of the deal.
And, if I was being very honest, thing I had picked up on from Mr. Hunt and Morgan in closing the deal. I had learned that direct demands did not work, often compelling people to push them away; but indirect deals, third party opinions, that sort of thing had a way of making it all come together.
When speaking to Craig, I never demanded he acquiesce to any of the particulars of the deal; those would come together in due time. Besides, if one of his VPs recommended that they give in to a certain request because of what I had told that VP over dinner, it would become a lot more authentic.
The work provided a decent distraction in that when I was in the moment, typing that email out, analyzing the file, or having dinner with a middle manager, I stayed in the moment. I only thought of Layla in spurts, and my mind quickly refocused.
But when it didn’t? When I had nothing to do but toss that balled up piece of paper in the air? When I had finally headed home for the night and had nothing but my Manhattan studio apartment to occupy me as sirens blared outside the window and taxis honked incessantly?
Layla. Layla. Layla.
I tried pushing her out, but it seemed to go to no avail. Fucking Layla. If only she were fucking, then maybe my mind would slow down a bit. Maybe...
In any case, though, I arranged to have dinner with Craig Taylor that Friday evening, hoping that seeing the name “Taylor” attached to an older man who looked more interested in getting out and retiring than being a vibrant, model businessman would somehow diminish the feelings that I had. We arranged to meet at Giordano’s, a nice Italian restaurant on the upper east side of Manhattan.
I made sure I dressed up especially sharp that day, even though Friday most of the employees came in with jeans and casual wear on. I walked out and called a taxi immediately, refusing to risk scuffing my shoes or anything I wore on the subway or on a long walk. I got to the restaurant without incident and stepped inside to see Craig sitting at a table slightly obscured by a wall. I waved, he stood up, and I walked over and shook his hand.
And, out of the corner of my eye, Miss Layla Taylor also stood to shake my hand.
“You remember my daughter, Layla, right Chance?”
“Oh, yes, of course, it is good to see you again,” I said.
I spoke with aplomb and with such ease that Mr. Taylor would never suspect anything had happened between us. Layla did not have quite as good a poker face as I did, but then again, I don’t think her father was on the lookout for her daughter flirting with the representative from Burnson Investments closing the deal.
We ordered our food and our wine and, without even a transitional word, Craig looked at me.
“I have to be honest, it is a little out of character for a firm to have an intern do all this work, as adept as you are,” he said. “I wonder if Mr. Burnson might have... well, how should we say this, experienced a little bit of slippage in business?”
I took no offense to what was said, because it was beyond “a little out of character.” I also really didn’t care for Mr. Burnson, as he struck me as dismissive at best and lazy and inefficient at worst. But I knew I could not actually say that for my future goals.
“Well, Mr. Burnson still has the skills that make his firm one of the best in the world, let alone the New York area,” I said. “He knew that I come from a family that has a reputation in business like no others.”
“The Hunts,” Layla said, a glimmer in her eye.
“Precisely,” I said as I took a sip of my just-placed wine. “I may only be an intern, but that is only because it is a temporary title. Burnson Investments, seeing the chance to get a Hunt on staff, brought me on as soon as they could.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t technically a lie. It just didn’t mention the fact that I largely suspected that Mr. Burnson did it as a favor to Mr. Hunt for some reason from the distant past, and that while I did have assignments beyond the typical intern, I had only assumed control of this case on a dare.
It was a dare that could have gotten me fired, I had to admit. But Mr. Burnson’s sharp mind proved itself by not firing me when I had gotten more out of the deal than perhaps even he would have. Mr. Burnson was lazy, but he valued results over the process, no matter how bizarre the process was.
“Well, titles and custom aside, I feel we are having a wonderful experience with your firm and am confident that with your investment, we will grow and dominate our industry even more.”
Very easily and very quickly, the conversation shifted from a potentially awkward topic to a free-flowing, easy one. The food came out and we ate and spoke like an old professor and graduate student combo. Layla didn’t say a word the entire dinner beyond thanking the waiter for her food and drink, but she didn’t seem to mind one bit. In fact, she seemed to relish the opportunity to silently observe what was going on between the two of us.
Mr. Taylor and I became so at ease with each other, in fact, that we started trading stories of our favorite European travel locations. I kept it business appropriate, of course, but Mr. Taylor was willing to discuss the time he got more drunk than he should have in Slovenia, a rather amusing experience for how few people spoke English there.
What I did not say—and what I tried not to dwell on for too long—was while I enjoyed the trips as a chance to learn about foreign cultures, I never felt perfectly involved with the family. The photos would show it, too—I smiled a fake smile whenever I had a family shot unless I was only with Morgan. If I was in a shot with Mr. Hunt, forget about it. It was clear no matter where in the world we were what our family status was.
At one point, finally, the request for dessert came in. Mr. Taylor suggested that such an event require such a celebration, and so we put our orders in.
But at that moment, Craig’s phone rang three times in a row.
He ignored it the first time, made a smartass remark on the second, but he could not dismiss it the third. He was quick and hung up in less than ten seconds.
“I must get going,” Craig said. “Business calls, as it often does when you run a company looking to expand. Layla, please pay the bill for Chance Hunt when it comes. I will reimburse you later. Chance, thank you for coming out.”
“My pleasure,” I said, able to only briefly shake his hand before he departed so quickly it almost felt like the classic movie trope where he was in a spot, I looked away, and then I looked back only for him to have completely vanished.
I took a sip of my wine, allowed myself to process what had just happened, and then turned to the wonderful opportunity before me.
Only to find Layla looking down at her phone.
I knew she wasn’t actually looking at her phone. I could tell by how mortified and nervous she looked. She looked like she had not anticipated this move and was frequently gulping.
“Boy, your father is a busy man, huh?” I said with a chuckle.
Layla looked at me, looked like she wanted to say something, but couldn’t bring herself to speak. It was an utter contrast to the girl who had practically promised to fuck me in the lobby of Burnson Investments. If this was a body swap moment, I would have believed it fully.
“Layla, are you good?” I asked again, my tone a little more serious.
She paused, looked down, and then did something I never expected.
She abruptly got up, placed five one hundred dollar bills down, and left without a word.
Just like that... what the fuck had just happened?
Chapter Eight
The waiter came by with all three desserts.
“Is your party coming back?” he said.
I had no idea. I barely even heard him. I just watched as Layla stood up and walked out, her heels clacking on the wooden floor, as if I had just called her the world’s sluttiest whore. I had no idea what the hell I had said or done—not today, not a week ago, not ever. If things were so awkward, why couldn’t she at least say as much in the moment? Why did she have to stand up at a business dinner like this?
Surely, it wasn’t something she had read on her phone. If it was, if an emergency had popped up, she would have said something. She wouldn’t have just left me out to dry like this.
There was really only one way to interpret this—she didn’t want me around anymore. She didn’t want me to continue what we had done. She was doing what Sarah Hill had done ten years ago.
Except ten years ago, I had gotten ruined not by my actions, but by my adopted status. Sarah Hill had not misunderstood me—she had understood me too much. Layla probably just felt flustered by what had happened and the sudden situation she found herself in; there was nothing about what we had done that would prevent us from seeing each other again.
Well, the whole investment and business aspects part aside. But that had been present since day one.
I thought for more than a few seconds about how to respond to the waiter.
“Sir?” he asked.
“We had an emergency, I’m sorry,” I said. I really wasn’t even that conscious of the words as I said them. I felt that my subconscious had forced them up, and I was grateful for that—I had an excuse to move forward. “I... I have to go. I’m sorry. That should cover it, right?”
I pointed to the five hundred dollars. The waiter’s eyes went wide. I had the answer I needed. They weren’t wide eyes of disappointment or anger.
I quickly hurried out, apologizing over my shoulder for the abrupt exit. I looked to my right. I didn’t see Layla. I looked to my left. I didn’t see Layla.
But to the left was the nearest subway station, and I’d be damned if Layla had just taken a cab away. If she was going home, she wasn’t going to do so in a cab.
I ran as fast as I could, my tie fluttering in the air and my suit blowing back, looking like a cape.
“Layla!” I shouted.
I debated if I should have done that, considering Mr. Taylor might still be in the premises, but then I decided I had a good enough cover story. I could say that it looked like someone had messaged Layla something terrible and I wanted to catch up to make sure she wasn’t distraught and broken up over what she read. That, of course, was not what had actually happened, almost certainly, but it was plausible and possible.
I saw someone stop, but with the sea of New Yorkers between us, I could not see enough to see if they were Layla. Like observing an invisible object by seeing what moved around it, I could only see that people had to adjust for someone who had stopped walking, but I couldn’t see who.
“Layla!” I shouted.
I again ran forward, my speed picking up. The figure stood still.
I came into view. Thank God, it was Layla Taylor.
“Layla, what’s going on?”
She looked me up and down for a second, paused, and turned and heeled.
“Oh, hell no,” I said.
I got in front of her and began walking backwards, practically a suicidal move in New York City but one I was willing to make for the sake of understanding what the hell was going on.
“At least let me know what’s going on,” I said.
“Chance, this whole thing is just... I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Shouldn’t have done what?”
I let a sly grin form on my face, even though internally I was more than a little bit nervous. The only solace I took was knowing if she truly did push me away, it would not take long for me to get over it... but in the interim, it was going to suck if she did.
“You know what,” she said, but she did not walk as fast as she had before.
“I don’t, actually,” I said. “I know you shouldn’t have abruptly walked out on me like you did just now.”
Now she locked eyes with me and I saw that fire. Granted, it looked more like the fire of a little bit of anger and aggravation, but I knew from experience how to kindle that fire in the direction of passion and sex. I didn’t necessarily need the right kind of emotion at the start, I just needed some degree of any emotion present.
“And I also knew you should have called me as you said you would.”
“I said I would see,” Layla said, but I could see in her eyes a losing effort, one that she knew she was losing.
“Well, you have seen, and now you are here,” I said. “I know a girl like you is a girl of her word. She keeps her promises. She is sweet and kind. She is funny. And she wants to grab a drink with me.”
“Oh, is that so?” Layla said, laughing.
Once again, I had to thank my subconscious for spouting off the words before I could think of them. It helped to be a charming person, but it also helped to have experience and a brother who liked to womanize as much as, well, I did.
“That is quite so,” I said. “You can pretend like you don’t. Oh, I don’t expect you to grab five dozen drinks with me. I don’t expect you to even grab two drinks with me. But I know what you want—you want to grab a single drink with me, just to live up to the promise you made. You want to see what one drink might do for tonight. You want to see if one drink might remind you of what we had, or if one drink might make you decide you should walk away. But I think you know what one drink will do for you.”
And there it was.
That laugh turning nearly seductive, the way her eyes narrowed and her lips curled and her chest protruded forward a hair.
“And where will I get this one drink, Chance Hunt?”
Bingo.
I had everything I needed. Now I just had to not fuck it up.
“Oh, that easy, huh?” I said, teasingly turning around before suddenly whirling back and grabbing her arm, leading her from the direction we came. She made no move to fight it, and in fact moved in closer to me. “I am taking you to one of the best bars in town. Oh, it won’t look like one of the best bars when you first walk in. But you know the saying, appearances can be deceiving? Well, no one ever said de
ception always had to be bad.”
Strangely, Layla did not laugh as hard as I would have expected. But perhaps my joke had just not landed as well as I could have had it; regardless, though, she did not make any effort to move away, and I felt like the king of the world.
I just had to hope no one from either of our companies saw us, but even if they did, it was hard for me to give a shit. I was in a great place, with a great girl, and I was feeling like I had ten years ago before my soul got broken. I wasn’t about to fall into that hole again.
The lounge I took her to, M Grace, was as promised—a hole in the wall, or rather, a hole in the ground. We descended some stairs and then another flight of stairs and came to a dark, mostly empty place. There was a corner table that I instructed her to sit at and I sat quite next to her. I made no bones about what I was going for, and I think Layla didn’t want to either.
The waiter came over and I ordered each of us a shot of tequila.
“Just like that, huh?” she said.
“Just like that.”
She chuckled and squeezed my arm.
“You’re dangerous, Chance,” she said. “I shouldn’t even be out here right now.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer me, continuing forward.
“But I suppose for a man as entertaining and charming as you, I might as well go along for the ride and see what transpires.”
“Indeed,” I said, although I still had not left alone the fact that she had said that she shouldn’t be out here.
Maybe it was as simple as the fear of looking like there was a major conflict of interest. Maybe her father frequented this bar. Maybe it was even simpler than that—maybe she just had other obligations or promises that she was skipping.
But then, an idea took hold that I could not shake.
Maybe this was a repeat of ten years ago with Sarah Hill. Maybe she knew I was the adopted one in the family, and that while in the short run, my charm and wit worked wonders on her, in the long run, she would end up leaving me all the same.
Flawed (Hunt Brothers Saga) Page 6
