by Alexa Rynn
Braden puffed out his chest. “Ruining one of the most important meetings of the month at a multi million dollar business is hardly something I would call amusing.”
Of course he wouldn’t.
Braden’s voice reminded Trent how bad he needed to talk to him. “Braden, I really need to talk to you.” He glanced at me. “Alone.”
Braden glanced at his wrist, revealing an expensive looking watch. “Now isn’t a good time. I have a conference call with Channel 9 in twenty minutes and I have to…” He lowered his voice. “I have to make sure Addison is comfortable.”
Something about the way he said it made me think there was a deeper meaning behind it. He was probably having seconds thoughts now that he was witnessing how clumsy I was. He thought I was going to burn the place to the ground. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
Braden looked unconvinced.
“I need to talk to you now,” Troy whined. “Right now.”
“Who the hell is this?”
All three of us swung around. Braden groaned.
“Hi, Hayden,” Troy screeched.
A small girl with dark hair and bright eyes was looking me up and down like I must be in the wrong place. Her waist was about as big as half of one of my thighs. I was instantly envious.
“Who the hell is this?” She turned her small frame toward me. “Who the hell are you?” Her eyes looked very suspicious, she instantly didn’t trust me. “Braden?” She asked, her eyes still on me.
Clearly a pissed off girlfriend.
I tried to ignore my sinking stomach. Of course he had girlfriends. What did I think that someone as handsome and powerful as him was saving himself for me? Men who looked like Braden Nash didn’t have trouble getting women. He probably had multiple.
“You didn’t tell her?” Troy whispered.
“Tell me what?” She snapped her head around and narrowed her eyes at Troy.
Troy looked panicked. “I just remembered I left something in my office.”
“Hold it.” Hayden held her hand up, stopping Troy in his tracks. “Can someone tell me what the hell is going on here?” She really did have a strong presence for such a small person.
“I really do have a meeting…” Troy said but it sounded unconvincing.
“Oh, shut up.” She glanced at Braden again. “Braden?”
She was actually kind of rude. I mean wasn’t this supposed to be a professional atmosphere? That’s all he kept telling me and he couldn’t even keep his girlfriend under control.
“This is Braden’s new secretary,” Troy said slowly.
Hayden laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, you already have one of those.”
“Well now I have two.”
Her eyed narrowed. “Are you joking? You must be joking.” She paused. “Oh, my God, you aren’t joking. Were you even going to run this by me?”
Yikes.
Braden rolled his eyes. “You’re my sister, not my mother, I don’t have to check with you before I do every little thing.” He looked very bored of the whole scene.
My insides sored at the revelation that she was just his sister.
I hated myself for it.
The small girl looked appalled. “Braden, I need to talk to you, now.”
Troy laughed. “Get in line.”
“I need to talk to you, too.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized I was saying them. I snapped my mouth shut but it was too late, the three of them already had their eyes locked on me.
Hayden kept her eyes on me. “Braden, your office, now.”
They all seemed so fucking weird to me. Like they all had to talk about things that I could never understand. It was almost like they were hiding something.
A buzzing came from Braden’s pocket and he took his phone out and glanced at the screen. “Looks like you’ll all have to wait.” He turned his back on us and started walking toward his office.
“This really can’t wait.”
“You can’t just go around hiring strangers and…”
“I have the story that could change the way your enterprise is looked at forever!” I yelped. Well, if I was going to make an absolute fool of myself once again I might as well go for it completely.
All three of them looked at me again.
I wanted to kick myself.
I had told myself I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to bring up my mystery hero for at least a few weeks but I couldn’t help it. He could be anywhere by now and it was killing me not knowing who he was or how he had known just how bad I needed him that night.
I needed this job… but I needed him more.
Even if it was just the illusion of him for now.
No one was getting back to me. I had called and E-mailed every news network in the city and no one believed me, no one even considered my story. It had only been a few days and I was already starting to lose hope. The thought terrified me.
“Oh, Jesus.” Hayden looked at Braden like she was going to kill him.
“I know it sounds crazy, okay? Trust me, I know but he was there. I swear, as god as my witness, he was there and he saved my life. He was wearing a black mask with bright green eyes and he was so strong and kind and…” All three of them are looking at me like I have four heads. “If someone else does get a hold of this story eventually, they’re going to spin it like he’s crazy or a monster and I can’t let that happen.”
Hayden mumbled something under her breath and looked at Braden again.
“He’s going to do it again.” I looked Braden right in the eye. “Trust me. Something about the way he talked to me and the way he looked at me… he’s addicted to it or something. It’s not a one time thing, he has done it before, and he will do it again.”
“I thought you couldn’t see his face,” Hayden pointed out.
“Sometimes you don’t need to see someone to be able to feel their emotion.”
Braden’s phone started vibrating again and he hit the ignore button. “Okay, okay.” He looked exasperated. “I need to take care of this. Troy you can come with me. Hayden you’re going to have to wait to give me a lecture until later on.” He paused and looked at me.
He was going to fire me, tell me to get my crazy ass out of his building.
“And you.” His dark eyes were intense and sexy. “Tonight, 6 O’clock at the grill. One shot, that’s what you get to pitch this story. And if I’m not sold you drop it for good, understand?”
I nodded.
He shook his head. “Good. Then don’t be late. You can tell me all about your green eyed friend.” Then he started to walk away from me again, Troy at his heels.
“A shimmer,” I said to myself.
“What?” Braden turned around, frowning. Somehow he had heard me.
I cleared my throat. “His eyes, they aren’t green exactly. They have more of a… shimmer behind them.”
“A shimmer?” Hayden sounded shocked.
I bit my lip. “Uh huh.”
“Oh, for Crist sake.” And then Braden shut the door behind him.
Chapter Eleven
BRADEN
“That girl is completely and totally out of her mind.”
“She’s not out of her mind, she’s just been through a really traumatic experience that she’s trying to make sense of. It hasn’t even been a week, I’d say she’s doing pretty damn good.”
Troy shook his head. “Yeah, well, her traumatic experience is threatening to expose you and that’s not good for anyone.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against my desk. “So, what are we going to do?”
I pulled a folder out from underneath him and pushed him away. “We aren’t going to do anything, I’m going to take care of this myself.” I pulled up the security video from the traffic cam by the police station.
“The last time you said that you hired the woman to work here!”
“Did you need something?” I barked.
I was a little sick and tired of everyone trying to tell me wha
t the hell I should and shouldn’t do. It seemed like people were starting to forget just who was in charge of things around here.
Troy swallowed. “It’s about the guy from last night.”
I huffed. “What about him?”
“He’s in the hospital.”
The vision of me kicking the guy in the stomach flashed through my mind. I had followed him back to his apartment after he dropped his girlfriend off at her house, or should I say shoved her out of the car looking all bloody and messy. I guess he had gotten a little angry on the way home and used her face as a bunching bag.
“Good. He should be.”
“No. It’s… it’s not looking good. He might not make it.”
I snapped my head up. “Don’t be stupid, of course he will make it.”
Troy looked uncomfortable. “It doesn’t… it doesn’t look good. He’s lost a lot of blood.” He paused, studying my face. “What the hell happened in there, man?”
“He was fine when I left.” I sat back. “He was moving around, talking.”
“Maybe you got carried away…”
“I said he was fine, I meant it.”
Troy held his hands up. “Okay, okay, I believe you but, Braden, this kind of changes things. You weren’t rescuing someone; he was home alone. It looks like a home invasion. If he dies… there is going to be an investigation.”
“He’s not going to die.” I said it more to myself than to Troy.
“But if he does…” Troy inched closer to me. “I think, I think we should dial things back for now, just until this whole thing is resolved. We should stay under the radar, and then when this whole mess is cleared up you can go back to saving the city.”
“You want me to give it up?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“No! No! Just… for now.”
I stood up and pushed a stack of papers onto the floor. They went flying in every direction. “I’m not giving up anything. I’m not going to let innocent people die just because some douchebag who spent most of his life beating the shit out of woman is lying in a bed somewhere.”
“Braden, you aren’t listening to me. I…”
“I don’t have to listen to you!” I reminded him. “I don’t have to listen to anyone. You guys have to listen to me or have you forgotten who started this whole thing in the first place?” I kicked my desk chair across the room and it landed with a thud against the wall.
I could feel my body starting to pump my anger more and more.
“Look, I’m just trying…”
“I know what you’re trying to do and I’m telling you to knock it off.” I walked over to the window and looked down at the city below me. Thousands of people milling around beneath me, who knew how many of them would be terrorized or have unthinkable things happen to them in the next week. Misery didn’t discriminate and Troy was trying to make me leave them, he was trying to make me give them up.
“But…”
“No. I’m going to keep doing what I have been doing and I’m going to go to dinner tonight and handle this whole mess with the girl just like I handle everything.” I let my eyes get lost in the sea of people below me. “Now get the hell out of my office.”
“Braden…”
“I said get the hell out.”
A second later I heard the door shut.
When were people going to learn to not challenge me?
***
ADDISON
Braden Nash seemed abnormally intense tonight. I knew it was weird for me to make such an assumption since I had really only met him a few days ago. But still, something about him was… too intense. He sat across from me, looking at the view of the city being chaotic behind me.
“So many people,” he mumbled.
I titled my head to the side. “Excuse me?”
He locked his eyes on me, surprised. “There’s so many people in this city.”
He made me feel like he had forgotten I was there completely. I turned around and followed his gaze anyway. “Yeah, all searching for something, some dream they never knew was anywhere near in reach.”
He chuckled. “Dreams that will probably never come true.”
“Kind of cynical, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “Not really.” He leaned forward and took a sip of his drink, allowing his eyes to drift down to my chest in the process. He licked his lips as he took in my exposed flesh.
Pretty sure I turned as red as a tomato.
He always made me feel like he was taking my clothes off in his mind. Which was ridiculous, someone like Braden Nash would never be interested in me. I was a nobody in his world and in his eyes.
A business dinner didn’t change that.
Then why did you wear such a revealing dress? A voice asked me in the back of my mind but I pushed it away. I could want to look sexy for myself, I didn’t need an excuse to look good. Besides this was the most expensive restaurant I had ever been to, it deserved a little class.
He landed back on my face. “So, the article?”
“The article?” I repeated, puzzled.
“The article you want me to print on Superman.”
“Superman?”
Braden nodded. “Yeah, was he wearing his cape?”
I threw the napkin that was on my lap down on the table and pushed my chair back. “Look, if you aren’t even going to take this serious then I’m just going to leave right now.” I stood up, trying to prove how serious I was.
“Sit down.”
Something about his voice made me obey. I didn’t want to piss him off. The thought of disobeying him was one that scared me. It occurred to me that it was something that probably wouldn’t go over well with him.
“Why did you wear that dress?” He demanded. “It’s way too revealing. If you belonged to me I would never let you out of the house looking like that. It gives off the wrong message.”
If I belonged to him… what was he talking about? In what world would I ever belong to him? Just the sentence was enough to thrill my entire body for some odd reason. “I’ve never had any complaints before.”
“That’s because everyone who’s probably seen it only had the intention of getting you out of it and fast.” He looked furious by this. “For such a smart young woman you seem to make a lot of stupid choices.”
Did that mean he hadn’t thought about getting me out of it?
Of course he hasn’t, Addison. You’re his assistant.
“I do not!”
He leaned forward and placed one of his hands in front of the other, exposing a different watch than earlier “Look, Addison, I had ever intention of coming here and humoring you, I really did but I’ve had kind of an frustrating day so I’m just going to get right to the point here.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” He leaned back and sighed. “You have to let this whole thing go, okay? I read the E-mail you sent us before I even knew you were the same woman I was considering giving a job and you know what I thought?”
I gulped. “That you were curious?”
He shook his head. “No. That you sounded like a complete nut. No one is going to publish a story about a man who breaks into houses saving woman from rapists, especially not one in a mask and a broken voice. You want to know why? Because no man fucking exists, Addison.” He downed the rest of his scotch and tossed the empty glass so far across the table that it almost fell to the floor and shattered.
“Yes, he does, he…”
He pounded his fist down on the table and the silver wear rattled against one another. “No, he fucking doesn’t. This isn’t a movie, okay? It’s real life and I can’t have a crazy woman working for me, running around telling people stories about characters she invented in her mind.”
I could feel the tears starting to form behind my eyes. Why was he being so damn mean to me? “But, I just… I was just trying to find the man who saved my life, Mr. Nash.”
His eyes lit up for a second. “Say that again.”
“
What?”
He rubbed his lips together. “My name.”
What the hell was wrong with him?
“Mr. Nash…”
A light came over his eyes but he shook his head after a second and it went away. “You don’t need to find him because he’s a fragment of your imagination, maybe you read about him somewhere or dreamed about him one night but he’s inside of you, Addison, you saved yourself, that’s the reality here.”
I shook my head and bit my lip to stop myself from losing it. I wasn’t going to cry in front of him, no matter what, I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. “No, I… I couldn’t have… could I of?” Suddenly I didn’t feel so sure. Somehow, he had a way of making me feel like his word was God or something.
But… I had been so sure.
His voice softened just a little bit but the same sternness was behind it. “You did, Addison, there’s no maybe about it. And I get it, you just went through something I would wish upon no one and while I sympathize with you, I still have a business to run and I can’t have a loose cannon running around the office telling fairy tales.”
I looked away from him. I was too ashamed to face him. This whole thing was so humiliating and he didn’t even seem to have any empathy for my feelings, for the situation as a whole.
“You’re going to have to decide, Addison, do you want to have a career or do you want to have this fantasy you’ve invented to help yourself cope with someone breaking into your apartment and attacking you? The decision is yours but you need to make it and fast.”
I felt about as big as a stone. What the hell was the matter with me? Was it possible that he was right? That the whole entire thing was just a fragment of my imagination? I guess I could have taken my fears out by creating a character that didn’t really exist. But had I? It had felt so damn real.
“But the glove…”
He chuckled. “Right, the mystery glove you suddenly can’t find. Was it ever really there to begin with?”
“I don’t… I’m not sure.” Suddenly I felt so lost and crazy.
“Addison?” He sounded like a master talking to his servant.
I shook my head. “I guess… I guess I could have imagined it all.”
He nodded. “I think you’re a nice girl, Addison, I really do. I want you… I think you could have a very bright future here if you just set the dramatics aside.” His eyes traveled up and down my body again.
