Forever Charmed: Book One Forever Loved

by L. J. Hawke

  Unfortunately, Lupe still didn't get exactly how much trouble she was in. “How much money I owe is none of your business. I didn't owe you a thing. And yet you delayed selling me half the company? For what? For you to fuck your girlfriend?”

  Sanur stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. Sanur’s voice took on a very interesting, sinuous timbre. “How would you have gotten the money to buy half the company?” Sanur asked Lupe.

  Lupe looked like a cat ready to strike, claw, and spit, but her jaw was clenched shut. Sanur smiled grimly. “You would have asked the people that you call friends. Some of them are wonderful people that I also call friends. Some of them are not, and some of them are quite dangerous. Do you understand that this is a family-owned company? Do you know that I would have offered you slightly under half of a company because I considered you to be part of the family? Those people you would have asked, they had no part in this business. They would have been looking for a quick payout, possibly at a ruinous interest rate that you couldn't possibly afford to pay back. And those people will never own part of anything that I own. I will make sure of it.” Sanur slit his eyes. Lupe stared at him, wide-eyed.

  Sanur stepped forward, focused unblinking, flat eyes on Lupe's wild ones. “You didn't think about any of that. You just wanted money, and possibly power and prestige. You desired, and then you became jealous, the emotions of a little child. How many times have I explained to you that I will not tolerate your snubs, your cold tone, the way that you have treated Tania since she took over? Instead of stepping up and becoming an adult, you acted like a child. So, I had already put aside that new contract.”

  Lupe recoiled as Sanur stepped closer. “You haven't thought once of the people you have abandoned upstairs during your photo shoot. You didn't think about all of those workers that had to run out into the courtyard so that their customers wouldn't hear you screaming and cursing. And now you've accused me of a heinous crime. If Tania permitted it, which she most certainly would not. If I hurt her in any way, she would be on the next plane to anywhere other than here, after she physically, mentally, or emotionally damaged me in some way. Now. Get. Out.” He stepped aside.

  Lupe glared at both of them and barged past Sanur. He caught the door lightning-fast as Lupe tried to slam it, then gently shut it.

  “I've read the contract while you were talking to…to her.” Tania waved at the screen while working to control her breathing. “It reads exactly the same as my old one. She won't receive anything other than the time until now, and we just got paid. That's not even enough for a plane ticket.”

  “Someone has been feeding her this nonsense. I have an enemy, someone who wants to take over the company through Lupe. I'll give you two guesses.”

  “Malee and Somchair. Your friend and his lover that screwed you over before, literally.” Sanur snorted. “I ignored Lupe’s little barbs over the last few weeks because I figured she would be signing the contract pretty soon and get over it. And because it was too petty to even acknowledge. That was probably a mistake.” Tania sighed, then paced a little bit behind her desk. “If she had signed the paperwork to own part of the company, it would have been disastrous. How did I not see that she was so far off the deep end? Am I crazy, blind, or just an idiot?”

  “None of the above. This is a plan that has been running underground for some time. You took someone into this company out of the kindness of your heart, then this person decided to listen to the wrong people. Little snubs are a huge jump to what just happened today.”

  “Point taken. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a photo shoot to finish, and I suggest that you make sure Little Miss Crazy doesn't run off with all of our accounts or something.” She stepped past Sanur, and he gently touched her back.

  “I will do as you say.” Sanur gave Tania another one of his enigmatic smiles. “But the minute I heard about this little altercation, I blocked her from accessing anything at all.”

  Sanur followed Tania out of her office. Tania headed upstairs to finish the photo shoot but stayed at the top of the stairs looking down to witness the fireworks.

  Sanur went straight up to Lupe, who was trying to pack her company laptop into a bag. Sanur walked up to her, smiled a vicious smile, grabbed the laptop, and twisted it to where she had to let go or suffer broken wrists. Lupe cried out and jumped back. Aat came up behind him and took the laptop from Sanur. Sanur whipped the bag out of Lupe’s hands and dumped out the contents onto the desk. He pointed out several USBs and printouts of confidential company financial documents. “Time for you to go to jail,” he said very quietly. He held up his phone. “I got an alert that you were accessing confidential accounts. So, I called the police.”

  Two men in police uniforms stepped forward, and Sanur spoke to them in Thai. Lupe squealed and tried to fight as they put the cuffs on. One of them took pictures of the USBs and the edges of the confidential documents. Aat held up a picture on his phone of Lupe trying to steal the laptop.

  Sanur stepped closer. “Do you have any idea how enjoyable Thai prisons are? I need a name. If the name is correct, I can make a request for you to be deported instead.”

  Lupe opened her mouth to scream, but Sanur simply held up a finger. “This offer will expire in five seconds. Five, four, three, two?” Lupe spit out two names, Somchair Buarin and Malee Choeyram. Sanur nodded, and they took her away. They heard her screams from the courtyard, and then things went blessedly silent.

  Sanur spoke in quiet Thai to the workers, words of respect, of reassurance, of apology at the cobra in their midst, reiteration that their jobs would continue exactly the way that they were. He praised them for their handling of the situation and sent them all to an early lunch.

  Tania and the teen boys soon came back downstairs, relieved that most of the photo shoot had already occurred. They sat down and covered the phones until it was time for lunch.

  Sanur sent the young men away with cash from his pocket for lunch, and he said, “We can eat and then work out, or work out and then eat.”

  “I do need to beat the shit out of something,” agreed Tania. Sanur laughed, swung her home to pick up her gym clothes, and took her to his gym in a new building near the office. He dressed in clean blue shorts, a red sleeveless shirt, and maroon trainers. Taia dressed in blue and gold, with pink and black trainers. It was a traditional bare-bones Thai gym with white walls. Sanur and Tania hit the jump ropes, weights, and the light and heavy bags before sparring.

  Sanur watched Tania work with a lithe, fast Thai teen who had probably been sparring since age ten. Sanur was surprised at how good his woman was, how she moved her feet, bided her time to beat her opponent. Tania got a bloody nose and thought it was funny. Sanur’s woman was tough, and he reveled in it. He got her a soft cloth from his bag and passed it to her, the pale blue turning crimson. She laughed. “Teach me not to sleep on the job.”

  Her sparring partner, Phet, was as hard as her name, which meant “diamond.” She pulled on the tail of her French braid and said, “Americans. So easy to beat.”

  Tania stood, stretched, handed Sanur back the bloody cloth. “Not today, I’m not. I just lost a friendship, and I’m pissed.”

  “So?” Phet held up her gloves. “Are you going to cry, or are you going to fight like you mean it?”

  Tania stretched her neck, felt it pop. Then, she raised her gloves. “I feel like hitting. So, bring it.” Phet pushed Tania to use her footwork, to see false fronts and to move out of the way. When they finished, Tania gasped, drank water, found her voice again. “I think I have the funds to hire a trainer. Want to train me?”

  Phet grinned. “It’s either that or subject myself to bad fighting.”

  Tania snorted and climbed out of the ring. “Give this young woman my digits, love. I’ve got to shower, then I’m going back to work.”

  Sanur grinned. “That’s my woman.”

  Proposal

  Tania and Sanur made it through the day and discussed the situation over pad tha
i that evening. “That little heifer didn't damage us as much as she thinks she did.” Tania squeezed lime on her chicken and shrimp, then doused them in ground peanuts. “Lupe got into a snit and primarily was upstairs doing photo shoots we didn't need to stay away from me. She must have had some sort of alert to fight you about the new contract.”

  Sanur nodded. “I do not know what a ‘snit’ is, but I concur.”

  “A snit is getting coldly angry, like a child. Whoever she was working with may be able to try to get something away from us, but what? What we have is very unique, and there's really no way to damage that business except computer crap like, I don't know, a virus. You said you have some sort of hacker friend who did stuff that made that nearly impossible. That person still working for you?”

  “Yes, I went to school with him. There were no alarms tripped, so I think yesterday was the day she decided to try to steal your power but wasn't expecting you to fire her. I think she thought you were a lot weaker than you were,” said Sanur. “She thought you would not be willing to engage her. Petty anger is a sign of weakness, not strength. Maybe she expected you to sell half the business to her to appease her.”

  Tania narrowed her eyes. “I get into petty arguments with my friends all the damn time. I did to her exactly what I do with them; I wait them out. There's usually an apology by the next day at the earliest, a week at the latest. She had about two more days before I was expecting a full apology.” She sighed. “Who am I kidding? She would have had to apologize for an entire checklist. I was trying to be professional. I think I crossed the line into stupid.” Tania grabbed a shrimp with her chopsticks.

  Sanur le a bit of his anger over how Tania had been treated show in his eyes. “This shows that you can't trust everyone to behave the way in which one is used to people behaving.”

  Tania rolled her eyes. “I should have known that one by now.” Tania picked up noodles with chopsticks from her bowl and stuffed them into her mouth.

  “I didn't see this coming either. No one ever expects someone to behave quite so unprofessionally. Looking back, I can see the pattern, her shutting down. She was listening to those who were trying to get into our company. That is unfortunate.” He sighed. “I still own just over half the company. I'm going to end up sexually harassing you.”

  Tania let out a laugh. “So, let's get married. Then what's yours is mine and what's mine is yours. We’ll split the company down the middle or leave me at fifty-one percent so I can make all the day-to-day decisions.”

  Sanur looked directly into Tania’s eyes. “Tania, among my people, this is not a joking matter. This is also not some medieval thing where we marry to handle joint property and businesses. My family has been doing that for centuries, but I decided I wanted more a long time ago. You would be marrying millennia of tradition, honor, and the network of responsibilities far greater than anything you've seen before. It's going to be upsetting, disturbing, and more work than either one of us can handle alone, even with my valet.”

  Tania stared at him, slack-jawed. “You make it sound like you are royalty.”

  Sanur nodded. “To all intents and purposes, I am.” At her raised eyebrows, he said, “Take away your Western thoughts. There are no castles. None of us drive Ferraris. Or have suits of armor in the hallways.”

  Tania grinned. “You don’t drink champagne with diamonds in the glass?” She knew Sanur wouldn’t get the reference to the 2001 version of the song “Lady Marmalade.”

  He shook his head. “Why would anyone do that? No, we are...well hidden. We do not want paparazzi or to...influence others. We are not on social media.” He shuddered.

  “I see.” Tania sipped her tea. “Actually, I don’t. You’re hidden royalty?”

  “From an ancient line. We have people that we help.” Tania nodded. Things suddenly made more sense. Apparently, his people had helped people for thousands of years. He was just continuing what his people had always done.

  He ate another piece of chicken, then said, “I've already called someone to take care of the Somchair and Malee problem, one of my people. A woman, an old family friend and distant relative. I believe you would call her a third cousin.”

  Tania grinned. “Will she leave a trail of bodies in handcuffs, ready for prison, in her wake?” she asked, gleefully.

  “No,” said Sanur, taken aback. “You have a bloodthirsty side I wasn't expecting. I find it alarming and alluring at the same time.”

  Tania laughed. “Acceptance. I accept you differences, and you accept mine.”

  “There is a problem with too much acceptance.”

  “Yes, there is. You can accept your way into being a doormat, or you can accept what is around you until the point that your brains fall out, or when you let yourself or other people get hurt. Well, listen up. This is my family this woman, and whoever the hell is pulling her strings, has hurt. That will not be tolerated. And no, I do not want to marry you out of some medieval urge to live in your damn castle. Your home isn’t some freaking showcase on a golf course, or a giant mansion. It fits into its surroundings, and it's beautiful. Understated.”

  Sanur put down his chopsticks. “Understated is our way.”

  “I know you have all sorts of money and property and all that sh—stuff, and you absolutely should make me sign some sort of prenuptial agreement. Get the lawyer on it. I have no intention of taking away what your family has built for, from what you’ve said, centuries. I can't guarantee I won't do something stupid and lose at least some of it, because I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I do want to be protected, so buy me a damn house in Bali or something for if we break up. You can have your life, I could have mine, and we will lick our wounds and continue.”

  Sanur looked at her in shock. “A marriage based on the idea of it disintegrating is not ideal for the start of a marriage.”

  Tania shrugged. “We have kids, which is kind of weird because we're not married yet and I haven’t given birth.” Sanur tried not to choke. “Although I'm relatively sure they would survive whatever the hell life throws at them. I would like for them to be taken care of, their educations, loans for apartments and houses when they graduate, then work to start a business or continue with the ones we already have. I don't want our kids getting spoiled, but they deserve better than the absolute shitstorm life has given them so far. If something nasty happens, we take care of the damn kids first, because I'm an adult and I can take care of myself.”

  Sanur realized that he was truly in love with this blunt, fierce woman in front of him. “The orphans come first,” he agreed quietly. “And I understand protecting your assets from irresponsible behavior or simple mistakes. But I must train you in what I know, which will be intensely difficult, especially when we are trying to run several companies already.” Sanur sighed. “But, as my majordomo has pointed out to me many times, apparently I am not very good at doing things the easy way.”

  Tania laughed. “Kandace says that there is the easy way, the hard way, and a no-way-in-Hades way. She says I'm the queen of doing things in some way I have to turn myself into a pretzel to get out of it.”

  She put her chopsticks down on the edge of her plate. “I love you, and I've known you for nearly a year. We built up a very strong friendship before we got involved. Hell, we even waited some more to be sure that we weren't doing anything wrong.” Tania reached out, grabbed his hands in hers. “I've seen what kind of man you are, and I've seen you handle a truly wretched situation with intelligence and dignity. I didn't call the police on that heifer because I didn't think things had gone that far, but you saw what I couldn't.”

  Sanur opened his mouth, but she leaned forward and kissed him, then continued. “I love you, I love being with you. I love the company, I love the kids. Most of all, I love you. You are an integral part of my life now, and I can't imagine being separate from you. Yes, we have a crazy life. We can’t watch more than one movie without interruption. Our night together was amazing. And delightfully uninterrupted.”
>
  He choked. “I am so sorry. We have had difficulties. I believe they are the pains of building structure. Once the structure is made, the problems will minimize.”

  Tania shrugged. “I really don't know of anyone who doesn't have a busy life. Yes, we apparently have someone or some people after us. I have never backed down from a fight in my damn life, and I will not back down now. If you don't think getting married will make things safer or better for us, or you just don't want to get married, tell me now.”

  “This is not how my kind makes marriage proposals. We don't make them at food stalls on busy streets with motorcycles zipping by. We do them with offers of gifts to show our great esteem and promises of love and respect, and we light incense and candles and ring little bells.”

  Tania smiled, and it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “I don't need that. It sounds beautiful and romantic, so we can do that if you want. I crave you, your skin, your touch. I love your laughter. My day begins when we are together. If we can’t work together, then we can live together. Lunches and dancing and movies aren’t enough anymore. I need all of you.”

  Sanur felt his eyes mist. “If it makes you feel any better, I've been selecting the gifts for the past month,” said Sanur.

  Tania laughed, and was surprised to find tears sliding down her face. “Well, I'm going to have to select some gifts. I'm going to have to ask Htet what to give you.”

  “I need very little, so they should be small gifts.” He clenched her fingers, reached up to wipe her tears away. “You must also memorize words you won't understand. They make a prenuptial agreement moot. We join our lands, our businesses, our homes, and our lives. Deliberate mismanagement, infidelity without both parties agreeing to do so, adoption without the consent of both parties, and several other things are grounds for leaving one another.” Sanur sighed as Tania stared at him as if he were speaking Martian. “Most of the old promises are no longer necessary in the modern world. But the old ways must be honored. They brought us to where we are now. If we do separate in the future, we will separate with love, trust, and joy that we have been together. We also ensure that no harm is done to each other in those around us.”