Maybe deep down it was me who wished that. I certainly would have chosen it if given the choice because it was him who’d had the family. He’d been the guy with the wife and a child, who was two at the time. It was unfair that he was the one to go and not me. Tommy had been the one who did so much good in his life. He’d impressed people, and he’d never had a bad reputation to live down.
Dad had made him business partner straight out of college, and he was always going to be that until, I guess, Dad would have handed the business over to him.
Tommy would have deserved it, and I would have been happy for him. I would have been damn proud to work for him, like I’d always been.
I guess now… now, I just wanted some kind of chance to see what I could really do with my life. See what I could be.
“I never think people fill the shoes of others,” Dad said, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Everyone is different. You do a lot of good, but maybe in the past you were just unfocused. You have changed a lot, and it’s good to see the work you’ve accomplished in so little time.”
“Thanks again. This is important to me. Here’s to me doing an even better job and helping you get Patterson Inc. on the map.” I nodded with determination.
Dad smiled. “Here’s to you being my new business partner. We’ll discuss that more very soon. I’m looking forward to it.”
I couldn’t help the smile that tugged on my face. “I am definitely looking forward to that too.”
Soon couldn’t come quick enough for me. Nine weeks , two days and counting.
Business partner. I wanted it bad. It was everything and definitely something to be proud of, indeed.
It showed I’d made progress in Dad’s eyes.
All I had to do was keep going, no matter what temptation was thrown at me.
Temptation in the form of Taylor Cartwright with her perfect body. Her perfect naked form that would be forever sealed to my mind.
I would resist until it killed me.
Chapter 6
Taylor
* * *
Hi, Taylor,
I’ll be with you by twelve today. I just wanted you to go over my reconstruction proposals for the next three events. I think this is where we need to start because these events are happening over the next six months. If we can tighten up the budget in various areas, we may be able to salvage some of the waste in some form of way.
Kind Regards,
Dylan
That was the email that greeted me this morning from that pompous asshole.
It was only nine in the morning, and my blood was already boiling in my veins.
He wanted to reconstruct my events and salvage the waste.
What a prick.
I wasn’t the kind of person to get angry and upset for nothing. I’d spent the weekend worked up following the shit Dylan had thrown my way last week that he called guidance.
Now this.
I hated that he’d gone through all my work from last year and practically ripped into it. The whole of last week was spent just doing that, and he really did make his recommendations. For everything.
He’d ripped it all apart, and now he wanted to reconstruct the plans I had for the next three events. Those were all to do with the upcoming football season. All set to take place starting from the week before the playoffs and in the lead up to Christmas.
We usually put on a masquerade summer ball and a winter-themed Christmas ball. Then there was a fundraiser. Those events were the highlight of my year. Those events were the core of my job, and I’d started making all the arrangements a year in advance.
Now he was talking about restructuring it.
I’d sat down and read through his proposal, and when I was finished, tears stung the backs of my eyes. Apart from the location, the man wanted to change everything.
He wanted to change everything, and the whole document had this patronizing feel to it.
He’d even gone as far as setting out the four steps to a good PR campaign. Research, action planning, communication, and evaluation. As if I didn’t know. This was stuff they taught on the first day of freshman year. Fuck, it was a thing that was widely available on the internet, and no one needed to go to a class to get it.
Yet, Dylan felt he needed to school me in the most basic of things.
His analysis of the plans so far was that too much of the budget had gone into services that cost far too much. It was the same critique as his comments on the report he’d given me last week.
All of it was bullshit and not helping at all. What it made me look like was some incompetent idiot who wasted company money and didn’t think first. I wasn’t stupid. There was a reason why certain brands maintained their excellence, and that was because of quality. Quality they could rely on because of loyalty and that solid relationship they’d built with all their stakeholders. Now, I was basically supposed to start from scratch and dig deep to outsource other companies who could give me the same for less. People I’d never worked with and would know nothing about. My six years of working for Dad had led me to this. Square one.
At twelve, when Dylan knocked on the door, I didn’t even answer.
He knocked again, and I still didn’t answer. He then pushed the door open with a frown on his face that lifted when he saw me sitting behind my desk.
“I didn’t think you were here,” he commented, coming in.
Of course, he would have to look better than he did last week. He’d had his hair and beard shaped up to give him a sharper edge. I must have been losing my mind slowly because I should have hated him enough by now to find his personality ugly.
He had some stupid document in his hands. It looked like a thick wad of paper.
I must have looked like I was ready to kill because he had the good sense to look cautious, especially since I hadn’t answered him or spoken. Yet.
“Did you get my email?” he asked, taking a seat in the chair in front of me.
“Yes.”
“And what did you think?”
I pulled in a deep breath and turned my head to face the window.
What did I think?
Good question. Damn good question, actually, since I was starting to think I couldn’t do this. My sanity was at stake. PR was me. I didn’t have to work for Dad. His company was just the best out there. The name said it all. Cartwright was known throughout the whole state for all that we did. So, I’d be an idiot to quit.
Or, was I the idiot to stay?
Just like my take on relationships, did I have this wrong too?
Maybe.
What this guy had attacked was my whole process. My process and way of thinking. Even now, I still couldn’t see where I went wrong. Image and brand, that was my focus, and I’d done it well.
All his recommendations were against me. They were against me, and this was all Dad’s doing. It was Dad finding an excuse.
“Taylor…” Dylan prodded, and I turned back to face him.
I’d actually almost forgotten he was in the room with me.
“What? What the hell is it?” I snapped and sat forward.
“You didn’t answer my question.” He blinked several times.
“Dylan, I’m not really sure what it is you want me to say. You want to reconstruct my events that I worked so hard on over the last year, and you want to do it in weeks. Yes, weeks because that’s all we have for three major events. Just because you want to salvage waste. There is no waste.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and frowned. We stared each other down until he straightened.
“Okay, okay, let’s do this.” He placed the paperwork he carried down on my desk. “Can you please, please not be so stubborn and look over this list of alternative suppliers I’ve curated? These are quality people.”
“Quality like how? Bargain?” I threw back.
He stood up. “They are reasonable, and that’s all you need to know. All we’re doing is going through the list, speaking with people, and looking at the reviews an
d recommendations. Once we have all of that, we can make an informed decision. We use them or not, but at least we know we looked into it and did the research.”
I hated that he spoke so calmly when all I wanted to do was rip into him.
“Fine. I’ll look over it.”
“I’ll leave you to do that. If you need me, I’ll be in my office.”
I looked away from him. I wouldn’t need him. Not for anything. I was going to work alone today and stay in here, away from everyone.
He left, and I started the laborious procedure of looking through the first hundred suppliers he’d recommended of the five hundred he’d made on the list.
At five, when there was a knock at the door, I thought it was him again, but it was Dad.
It was Dad, and he had that deep frown set on his face.
I instantly stopped what I was doing to give him my full attention.
“Taylor, I’m on my way out. I just wanted to talk to you quick. Dylan said you only spent five minutes with him today. Why is that?” Dad furrowed his brows.
“I’m looking over the stuff he gave me. I wanted to do it on my own today.”
“Taylor, look, to be honest, this isn’t looking very good at all. I didn’t know there was so much to be addressed, and I’m not happy about it. If I didn’t want you to work with me or have the chance to run the company, I wouldn’t have hired this guy. Now I see there’s more I need to worry about because you aren’t ready.”
My heart stilled, and my chest tightened. How the hell had I gone from where I was to this?
Not ready? How could he say that to me?
“I’m ready. I’m more than ready,” I answered.
“Then damn well act like it. I push you hard because I don’t believe in handing my kids everything easily. You all already have it easy. You want the company? Then stop being so damn stubborn and open your mind.” He tapped the side of his head and grimaced. “Taylor, don’t let me have to have this kind of talk with you again. If the next few weeks pass and I’m not happy, don’t expect me to hand you the company like your uncles did with their kids. I won’t do it.”
He didn’t give me the option to agree; he left me after dropping that bomb.
So, now I was stubborn. Wonderful. This was the second Monday in a row that I’d been made to feel like shit, and in the two areas of my life that I thought I had a handle on. I’d never thought I had to worry about work, and I thought I’d finally gotten the guy when I found Brody. Everything that had happened in such a short space of time had flipped me backwards, and my world with it.
I went home with a heavy heart deciding to try again tomorrow.
As I met with Dylan, I allowed him to talk while I made notes. I didn’t comment or anything; I just made notes. I’d come to the conclusion that I was going to do as I was told. I’d do that, and once I was running the company, I’d add my own spin on things. The problem was clearly that my ideas and skills weren’t appreciated, and what I needed to do was save them for myself.
Dylan closed our meeting at five, and it was as I was packing up to go home that I got a phone call from Luxa, our event organizer.
“Hey, Luxa,” I said, trying to sound like my usual self.
“Hi, Taylor, I got the notification this morning that you were canceling our services, and I just wondered if I could get some feedback if it doesn’t take too much time.”
My mouth dropped. No one I knew would dare cancel Luxa. She’d organized the events for the company for the last eight years and was booked in advance by up to two years from other businesses.
“Luxa, are you sure you got a notification like that?” I didn’t know why I bothered to ask. It was a foolish question that I knew the answer to. It was just shock that made me ask.
“Yes, do you think it was made in error?” she clarified.
I took a moment to think about how I was going to answer that. Was it stubborn to stand my ground? Stubborn if I reinstated her services?
I was in charge, and I’d used this woman’s services for the whole time I’d been here. Dylan couldn’t just pitch up, undermine me the way he had and go usurping my authority.
“Yes,” I answered, balling my fists. “Yes, it has to be. Leave this with me, and I’ll call you in the morning to discuss it further.”
“Okay, if you have any questions or anything, I’ll be in the office for another hour.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
I hung up and stared at the door, fury eating away at my insides.
Dylan cancelled Luxa. Who else did he cancel? What else had he done that I didn’t know about?
Before my brain could process another thought, my legs moved. My legs moved, taking me to his office in record time. Then I just barged in and slammed the door shut.
He was standing by the shelf, on the phone, but he hung up when I stormed in.
“How dare you cancel my contract with Luxa?” I howled, glaring at him. If I could have breathed fire, I would have.
“Taylor, she was one of the services I felt cost far too much,” he tried to explain.
“So, you cancelled her without speaking to me first? Do you even know who she is!” I challenged.
“I do, and there are a number of notable event organizers who have an excellent record.”
This was an outrage. “Who else did you cancel?”
“Everyone.”
The air left my lungs, and all I could do was stare at him, horrified. “What?”
“Taylor, you knew your duties ceased from last week. It’s part of my consultation to essentially take over your duties until we come up with an agreement on the plans moving forward.”
Take over…
Oh my God. This was it. That was what this was. He wanted my job. Maybe that was it because this all felt like some elaborate trick. There was so much happening that I didn’t know what to believe anymore. But… maybe I really was right. Maybe he wanted my job, and he was doing everything to make me look bad, or make me crazy so I would make myself look bad.
“This was some kind of joke, some trick right from day one to show me up and ruin me. Lies and trickery.” I sounded like a crazy person. “You followed me to the bar and only took me home to secure your position here because you had to do all this shit to make me look incompetent.”
“Taylor, that’s not true,” he contested.
“Yes, it is. No one works this way. You just come here and change everything and make big decisions behind my back. Decisions that could damage my reputation and damage me.”
“Taylor, I can assure you I definitely didn’t do that.”
I stepped right up to him and shook my head. “You think I’m so fucking stupid. You think I’m some stupid rich girl who gets wasted and has no sense, so you can take everything I worked so hard for.”
God, a tear ran down my cheek. I knew this was bound to happen. Tears. Only a matter of time before tears came, and I hated crying.
It was so much worse that I was crying in front of him.
“You think I’m—”
The words never came. He stole the words from my mouth by capturing my lips in a kiss that shocked me. The combination of anger and rage, want and desire, his lips on mine… it all robbed my mind of thought.
It washed everything from my mind, and I allowed it to overpower me. The sensation to get lost in the kiss seared my mind and body. It rode on a cascading wave of ecstasy and rippled through my being. I allowed myself to be taken along the ride and moved like a mindless puppet when he backed me against the wall and devoured my mouth like he was tasting me.
His tongue exploring the recesses of my mouth scorched me clean, and I couldn’t remember why I was mad at him. My hands trailed over the hard walls of his chest, to which his response was to pull me closer, flush against him so the hardness of his erection pressing into my abdomen weakened me further with desire. He smoothed his hands behind my head and angled my face to deepen the kiss.
The second he did
that, there was a knock on the door, and we jumped apart. We jumped apart, breathing hard and looking at each other in complete surprise.
The knock sounded again.
“Come in,” Dylan called out.
A shiver ran down my spine when Dad came in and yesterday’s conversation ran through my mind.
Not ready…
What the hell would he think if he’d seen us seconds ago?
“Sorry to disturb you two,” Dad said, looking at me.
“That’s okay. I was just leaving,” I answered and practically fled, not looking back.
It was clear to me now what was happening.
I’d lost my mind. It had to be that.
Nothing I was doing or had done made sense, so the only conclusion was that.
Why else would I kiss a man who was out to get me?
Chapter 7
Dylan
* * *
I was well and truly fucked.
Now that I’d tasted her, I knew I’d screwed myself over a million times.
There was a reason why people said forbidden flesh was the sweetest of all. It was because it was. It was, pure and simple, the sweetest because as I’d devoured Taylor’s mouth last night, nothing had tasted sweeter to me.
Nothing had tasted better, and I wanted nothing more than to taste the rest of her.
I didn’t know what happened. All I knew was, something inside me snapped when she accused me of lying about following her to the bar, and wanting to take over her job and destroy her. Nothing was further from the truth, and as the first tear left her eyes, that thing inside me that had exercised great restraint and agreed to do everything Peter had said, snapped.
It was he who gave me the authority to act in whatever way I saw fit, and that was why I’d cancelled the contract with Luxa and all the other contracts. I didn’t know that it would have worked Taylor the wrong way, or worse… put me in this state I was in.
One Last Time ?: Bad Boy Bachelors of Orange County BK 1 Page 5
