"Right. Everyone sit down. Let's be clear." I moved to the podium and pulled out my notes. "This isn't a career, it's a life. And if you're not one of the chosen few who might be ushered to the top, you have a long life ahead of you."
I glanced up and crossed my arms across my chest. "So why do it? What would be your reasons? Fame? Money? Prestige?"
"All the above," Handsome called out and winked at me.
"And what is that promise worth to you, Sir? Would you sell your last second in the day? The last warm meal you might ever experience? The last romp in the sheets you might get?"
The room was solemn... right where I wanted them to be. I stood in stony silence and ignored Dr. Darren's chuckle from beside the stage. He knew where I was going. It was a lesson he'd taught me far too well.
"Right. That's step one in making this thing work. What would I be willing to give up for the fame I'm capable of reaching and step two... how do I get the confidence to grab ahold of it when I see it."
I moved through the rest of my presentation, dragging the students back into an interactive discussion about all the parts of the investment world and what to truly expect. My time was over far too quickly.
"Now, if you're still interested in working for a large firm like Taylor, Taylor, and Barden, then stand up." I smiled as half the class stood up. "Good. Come see me in a few years when you graduate."
I walked across the stage to the room clapping and moved over to Dr. Darren.
"Excellent job. Why mention Taylor, Taylor, and Barden? Did you get an offer from them?" His eyebrow raised sharply.
"Not yet, but I think it's coming soon. I'm dating one of their partners, but I didn't think that would go over too well as a good reason to sleep with the boss." I laughed and touched his shoulder. "It's been a long process. Luke Taylor and I have been dating since my junior year here. We've talked about me joining him. I'm just waiting on his offer."
"I think that's incredible news." He pulled me into a side hug and chuckled as students walked toward us. "You were successful here, and will be in any endeavor you decide to take on."
All of them but the one that mattered most. Love.
"Miss Desmant, I'm Talon. Nice to meet you." Handsome from the front row stuck out his hand, and I shook it firmly.
"Pleasure is all mine."
"Can I call you Olivia?"
"I'd rather you didn't, but suit yourself." I pulled my hand from his and watched him closely. I'd known his type all my life, and yet I couldn't force myself to judge him too harshly. He'd already labeled me as an easy win either in business or the bedroom, but that is where he was wrong - on both accounts.
"A tough cookie, I see. I like it."
"What's that? Cookies?" I smiled and moved past him to talk to a few more students. After twenty minutes of answering questions, I made my leave. My best friend Dana was flying in that night for the next week or so. She needed a vacation from UCLA, and I needed the company. Luke was becoming more and more pushy about the future. He didn't at all seem like the kind of guy who would want to settle down, but his words spoke of another reality entirely.
"Olivia." A deep voice called my name, and I turned to see Talon jogging toward me.
"I'm late for picking up someone at the airport." I glanced over at him as he walked with me toward the exit just ahead of us. His sandy blonde hair and dark blue eyes most likely made a few hearts flutter and thighs clench, but he wasn't at all my type.
Dark brown hair and deep green eyes with a southern accent, and I was all in, but the frat boy look with a cocky disposition? Hell no.
"I won't keep you. I just wanted to ask a question and you were so busy in there answering questions." He chuckled as if something he said was funny. Nervous.
"It was the Q&A portion of the discussion." I smiled and stopped beside my red BMW. "What's your question?"
"I'd really like to come by your office sometime and talk about the future. I graduate in December this year, and I think I could offer a lot to any firm smart enough to take me on."
I opened the door and pulled a card from my handbag. "I like your confidence, but you'd better understand what you're signing up for before you dive head first into something that has the power to suck you under, drink you dry and spit you out."
"You're surviving well. If you can do it... I can do it." His smile was out of place for the comment.
"Because I'm a woman?"
"Yeah. Exactly. And you're blonde." He slipped his hands into his pocket. "And likely the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Can't be easy for you. All those alpha males vying for your attention."
"It's real easy. I don't like men." I shrugged, winked and got in my car. "Nice meeting you, Talon. Good luck."
"I'll be in touch." His cheeks were pink as he moved back and watched me like a hawk.
Too bad for him that the card wasn't mine. I didn't even know who Sylvia Warner was, but having the card flutter out of my purse on the way into the event couldn't have been a better omen. There was always one asshole in the group if I was lucky. Looks like it was Talon that day.
I chuckled as I headed toward the airport to get Dana. I needed a girl's weekend, but work was too crazy to get away. The transition from my firm to Luke's was going to be hard, but worth the leap. I could only hope that he would try and respect me enough in the office to steer clear of anything relational and simply treat me like the professional I was.
At the office, I was an investment manager, not the girl that rode him every other night until he begged me to stop. We were great lovers, but not much else.
Somehow he'd fooled himself otherwise.
2
Caden
"You nervous?" My secretary Annie stood at the door to my office with a smile on her ruby-red lips.
"Never." I continued to tap my fingers in a slow cadence across my desk as I glanced back down at the file laid out on my desk. "I've done this a million times in the last few years. Why would I be nervous?"
"It's a big account." She walked in and took the seat in front of my desk. "You know this could be a game changer for you and Luke."
"And Perry." I glanced up and gave her a knowing look. Everyone at the office liked to ignore the fact that Luke and I had a silent partner in the firm, but I wasn't able to forget him. He was the reason we had Taylor, Taylor, and Barden. The older man had not only believed in me but given quite a sum of seed money to help my brother and I start our empire.
"Of course." She shrugged and cleared her throat. "You know Luke is expecting you for lunch downstairs in ten minutes, right?"
"Damn. Is it already eleven?" I glanced at the clock and closed the folder, ignoring the way Annie watched me. I'd have to have a conversation with her soon, but I was hoping that her odd infatuation would simply disappear.
I had a rule about dating anyone at work, no matter how cute she might be.
"It's almost eleven. You need anything from me today?" She leaned forward and pressed her hand to my desk, shifting just enough so that I could see down her shirt. The creamy-white tops her tits caught my attention, but I ignored her and gathered my stuff. Why my brother wanted to have the most attractive women in all of New York working for us was ridiculous.
Or maybe it was because he was a fucking pig. That's what it came down to. A twenty-eight-year-old manwhore who spoke about a girlfriend that none of us had ever seen. It had become the central joke of the office. Luke's beautiful, talented and brilliant girlfriend that worked for our top competition. He promised to introduce the two of us soon but soon was the promise a year back.
"Nope. Just continue to keep the place held together, and we'll be good." I grabbed my wallet, phone, and keys and moved around her, stopping only as she spoke again.
"You know we're having the office party tomorrow night at Kadia, right?"
"Kadia?" I glanced over my shoulder. "That place is fucking wild."
"Yeah. It's a lot of fun." Her smile was highly inappropriate, almost comically so.
&
nbsp; "Maybe too much fun for an office party?" I shook my head and walked out of the office as I tried to think through how I was going to tell my bull-headed older brother that having an office party at the hottest night club in New York was idiotic. They had a sex room on the third floor from what I'd heard. How his reasoning to have the anniversary party for the firm there made sense was beyond me, but we were talking about Luke.
I squeezed into the elevator and turned at the sight of a pretty blonde near the back. My heart fluttered in my chest. Olivia?
No. Stop being stupid. Let it go.
I wanted to let it go. To let her go, but I couldn't seem to do it. Five years of nothing - not a word from her - and then she had the audacity to send in her resume to work for the firm. It'd been a year since it came in, and I still felt like shit for shredding it, but I couldn't have her there. We had too much history between us, too many hurt feelings.
Six years. I was such a fucking puss for still lamenting over her. It was high school and I was far beyond getting over it, but the what ifs drove me into a craze to think through how my life would have been different if she hadn't turned her back on me our senior year.
"Stop. You're too fucking old for this." I ran my fingers through my hair and got off the elevator, not caring who heard me talking to myself. The building we rented a floor on had enough people to fill the small city I was from two times over. Running into someone from our small firm was highly unlikely.
I moved back and waited as everyone left the elevator. The blonde was last off, and she glanced at me and smiled as my heart dropped. Not her.
Good.
I turned and walked toward the overpriced restaurant at the bottom of our building, stopping by the hostess stand only for a moment before hearing my brother call my name. He looked nothing like me, and I was almost grateful for it. He was an asshole no matter who we were dealing with or what audience we were in front of. It was nice to think most people didn't associate us as anything more than business partners. A good cop - bad cop type of relationship, and he was forever the bad cop.
"There you are. Shit. I thought you'd forgotten." He nodded at the chair across from him. "Sit. I have fucking great news."
"Your idea of great and mine are two totally different things." I unbuttoned my navy suit jacket and pulled it off my shoulders as I glanced around the restaurant. "I think you need to fire Annie and let me do the hiring from here on out."
"Why's that? She still after you to take her to bed?" He chuckled and leaned back in his seat. "Just lock the damn door to the office and pop her cherry for her. You know after a hard fuck she'll calm down a little. All women just need to realize who's in charge, who's capable of bringing them to heel."
"That so?" I rolled my eyes and sat down.
"Yep. And a man is what they need."
"And you're that man?" I glanced up at the server, grateful it was a guy. If I had to watch my brother eye-fuck another poor unsuspecting girl, I might have to reach across the table and slap him. We got along beautifully, as long as we didn't broach the subject of women. They were toys to him... and always had been. I couldn't remember a time in my life of ever thinking about them as anything but precious. Maybe I was a puss.
"I was." He sighed as I ordered a beer.
"Was?" I chuckled, unable to help myself. He was such a bleeding heart over his loss of freedom. This invisible girlfriend was cramping his style from the looks of things.
"Yeah. My girl is getting a little pushy about us moving into something more serious."
"Really?" I took the bread basket from the center of the table and fished out a piece of bread. "And you're wanting to take another step with her?"
"Yeah, if it means I keep getting to bury various parts of my body deep inside of her anytime I want." He growled. "She's so fucking hot, Caden. Even after three years of seeing her off and on. The thought of how well she can work her sexy little body drives me absolutely insane."
"Yeah, let's talk about something else. I'm not going over the ins and outs of you ass-fucking this girl again. I'm not interested."
"Because you're jealous. Plain and simple. She's a whore for me."
"Awesome. Keep that shit to yourself." I buttered my bread and tried to keep my pulse steady. I hadn't slept with someone I cared about in too many years to count. A few drunk one-night stands, and I was good to go for a little while longer. Relationships were messy, complicated and hurt like a bitch when they ended.
"You need to stop wallowing in your tears and get a woman. You're being a fucking tit about it." He snagged a roll and tore into it like it was beef jerky.
I chuckled, unable to help myself. "Fuck off. I'll figure out my love life when I'm not married to my job anymore."
"I could ask my girl if she's willing to have us both one night."
"What?" My eyes moved up to his shit-eating grin. "Shut the fuck up. I'm not fucking some poor girl with you. You're sick."
"Sick with lust. God dude-"
"Awesome. Stop. Seriously." I gave him a stern look, wondering why in the hell he was like he was. Our father was nothing like him. Must have come from his mother seeing that he got most of his looks from her too. I was almost grateful that my mother was softer, more empathetic. The fact that we weren't from the exact same gene pool gave me great relief.
"All right. Shit." He lifted his hands. "Can I at least tell you my good news?"
"Yeah, and then we're talking about why we're not having the anniversary party for the firm at Kadia. Shit."
"No, we're not. It's booked, and the guys at the firm deserve all that crazy fucking place has to offer. It's perfect."
"What's the news, Luke?" I was almost surprised by how worn down I was just being around him lately. A few years back when we started the firm, I couldn't seem to get enough time with him, but he'd grown cynical, nasty and vulgar.
"My girl's coming tomorrow night." He wagged his eyebrows. "I mean, she's coming tonight, but you don't get to see that, now do you."
I thanked the server for my beer and glanced back over at him. "I think that's great that she's coming to the party. It's about fucking time that I get to meet her."
"I need you to treat the evening like an interview, okay?"
"What? No. I'm not screening this chick for you. You've already painted her as a two-bit whore that likes it in the ass." I pressed my beer to my lips and pulled my thoughts from depravity as my cock twitched in my slacks. I needed to get laid, to feel the warmth of someone beneath me and soon.
"Not for me, you dickwad. For the company. She's coming to join us. I've almost talked her into it."
I spit my beer halfway across the table. "Have you lost your fucking mind?"
"Nope. She's brilliant, Caden. More than you, more than Perry, hell, more than me."
"No way. That isn't happening. I don't care what she is. We're not bringing her into the firm. That's a disaster waiting to happen."
"You're going to love her." He laughed and tossed a napkin at my face as I wiped up my mess. "Just remember when you see her to keep your eyes above her shoulders. She's likely the most beautiful woman in all of New York."
"Doubtful, and my answer is still no. She's not working for us. Period."
3
Olivia
"I still can't believe you cut your hair." I reached out and tugged at the short strands of Dana's dark hair. "It was almost down to your butt at Christmas.”
"I know. I just got tired of having to deal with it all the time." She shrugged and sunk back into the softness of my over-sized couch. "Let's not mention how sick I am of being called Pocahontas. Now, if a certain John Smith were to-"
I laughed and pushed at her leg with my foot as I reclined against the far side of the couch. It was beyond good to see her, and as always, I dreaded her leaving before she even really settled in. Having been my friend since we were able to talk back, Dana was like the sister I never had.
"You don't need John Smith, just that hottie professor you
keep going on about." I tried to hide the smile that tugged at the side of my mouth. We all had fantasies about a college professor bending us over a desk... or at least I did. A hot one, anyway.
"Oh man." She pressed her hands to her face and leaned back. "He's so fucking beautiful, Olivia. Like the perfect man for me, but he's a stickler for the rules."
"So get him off campus." I pulled my legs back and turned to stand. "I have to get ready for dinner with Luke. I wanted to reschedule, but he made me promise not to. Something about a big surprise."
"Seriously?" She jerked her hands down and sat up straight. "Do you think it's a ring?"
"What? No." I walked toward the bedroom to fix my make-up from the war my long day had waged against it. "No. God, I hope not."
"What?" She followed me into the bedroom and jumped up onto the bed. "I thought you were in love with this guy."
"I'm in love with his power, his money, his dick." I glanced over my shoulder as she squealed.
"You hooker."
"Yep. Not much has changed." I was being cheeky for sure. I'd been a prude back in high school, or so Dana and our other friends said. Being a cheerleader had an odd stigma, but I'd kept to my beliefs that sex belonged in marriage until my senior year. Then the drive to lock Caden Taylor to my side forever drove me to do something I promised myself I'd never do. And it had blown up in my face. He wasn't at all the guy I thought him to be.
Seven years of dating down the tube over one night. One mistake.
"Not much has changed?" She laughed loudly as I leaned over and reapplied my eyeshadow. "That's rich. You were a good girl. You might not be now, but you were then. The candle by which the rest of us made it through the dark."
"All right. All right. Don't make me a saint." I stuck my head out of the bathroom and wagged my eyebrows at her. "Those days are long gone. Life's a bitch and Luke has enough of the things I want in a man to settle."
"Are you saying you'll accept his proposal if he gives one?" She sat up and tilted her head to the side.
Captain Hotness: A Single Father Bad Boy Novel Page 47
