by Sienna Ciles
Now, at thirty-five years old, I was preparing to take over as CEO, and my father was giving me more responsibility than ever, yet his expectations had not wavered in the least.
I thanked him for the opportunity and stood up to leave his office. Just as I was about to walk out the door, he called out to me one last time.
“Alex,” he said sternly. I turned around to face him with my hand still on the doorknob.
“Yes, Da—er—Charles?” I replied, stammering over my words like a nervous, bumbling schoolboy.
“Don’t let me down, son,” he warned, winking. Had I not known any better, I’d have taken it as a playful, friendly comment. But, having been the only son of CEO Charles Michael Westbrooke, I absolutely knew better than to think that.
“Yes, sir,” I replied coolly, and then let his office door shut behind me.
Chapter 2
Holly
Am I really about to do this? Shaking my head, I made my way out to my small silver sedan parked in the far-left end of the Grantville Elementary School parking lot.
It was a few minutes after four o’clock and I had stupidly let my best friend Joana Wharton talk me into going out on a blind date. My date, a guy named Martin Langley, was supposed to be meeting me at a lavish restaurant called the Lovehouse—one of the nicest eateries in the area, which was actually the main reason why I’d even agreed to go in the first place. I figured that if the guy could afford to take me to the Lovehouse on our first date, he just might be someone worth getting to know.
Joana had told me that Martin was a friend of her brother’s and that he worked in the financial planning department at a huge corporation on the other side of town. Apparently, she thought that he’d be perfect for me because he seemed to be everything that my ex-fiancé was not.
I had been single now for several months, and ever since the break-up I’d been focusing most of my time and energy on my teaching career. I had finally broken things off with my ex because his work was more important to him than I ever was.
We had been dating for nearly three years when he’d finally gotten around to proposing to me, and the way that it happened was way fucking far from the romantic, dreamy type of marriage proposal that most women fantasize about. To this day, I still wonder why I accepted.
We had just had a big fight, one of the worst fights of our relationship, and I was ready to call it quits for good. I had started packing up all of my things and had just filled my second suitcase when he came back to the condo after having stormed out in a fit of anger less than an hour earlier.
He walked in the front door and his jaw hit the floor when he saw that I was in the middle of packing all of my stuff up. Without saying a word, he rushed down the hall and went into the extra bedroom he often used as his personal office space. Less than a minute later, he came back out to the living room and stood in front of me, looking at me in silence. He no longer appeared to be angry, and he was holding something in his hand.
“Holly,” he’d said softly. “Please don’t go.”
But I was still in tears and my mind was all but made up. “Babe, all we ever do is fight anymore. Your job always comes before me, no matter what, and I just can’t live like this,” I explained through tear-streaked eyes.
“Holly,” he said again, bending down on one knee.
I stopped dead in my tracks and looked down at him. I really did still love him, but our relationship had become so strained and so unhealthy that I was sad, disappointed, and upset much more often than I was ever happy. But when he got down on one knee and held up his hand, it was like some kind of invisible switch in my brain totally turned “off” and my heart just completely took over.
He opened his hand and there was a little gold ring box inside of it. When he opened it, a huge, gorgeous, sparkly diamond was the first thing I saw. It was bigger than any other piece of jewelry he had ever given me before. It was absolutely beautiful. I placed both of my hands on my cheeks and my mouth dropped open.
“Holly, if you stay, I promise I will marry you,” he said softly, removing the ring from the box and taking my left hand into his.
I was so stunned that I couldn’t even speak. I just stood there and let him slide the ring onto my finger. It hadn’t even registered yet that he had not even actually asked me to be his wife. So much for romance, huh?
Completely caught up in the moment, I had simply answered yes. Of course, I had been saying yes to both staying and becoming his wife. Though, to this day, I still have no idea how or why I thought that agreeing to be his wife would somehow make things better between us. He didn’t change at all, and things never got any better—they actually got way fucking worse. He became controlling, manipulative, and emotionally abusive. Six months later, I packed up all of my belongings while he was out of town on a business trip and I moved out.
My friend Joana had been there for me throughout the whole ordeal, and she’d been hounding me relentlessly over the past several months to start “getting back out there” and enjoying the single life. Apparently, to Joana, that consisted of dating multiple men with no commitments or complications.
Personally, I’ve never had a “friend with benefits” kind of thing before, and honestly, I really didn’t see the point of it. I told Joana that when summer finally came, I was already planning to leave the city and go back home to the country where I truly felt I belonged. She told me that she was determined to change my mind. I was guessing the blind date with this “Martin” character must be part of her elaborate plan to try and keep me from leaving the city.
I sighed as I turned into the small parking lot of my apartment building and pulled into my assigned space. Turning the car off, I headed up to my second-floor unit to get ready for my date. When I opened my front door, I almost screamed in surprise when I saw my bestie Joana seated comfortably on my white leather sofa. Her feet were propped on the ottoman and she appeared to be watching something on the screen of her smart phone.
“Joana! Girl, what the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.
Honestly, I shouldn’t even have been all that shocked. Joana did things like this on a regular basis. One night, she popped up in the backseat of my car and had nearly caused me to run off the road and into a ditch.
“I’m here to help you get ready for your date,” she replied excitedly as she hopped off my sofa and turned around to face me.
“Um, I appreciate the offer, Jo, but I’m quite capable of dressing myself for a date,” I replied with a frown.
“Oh, puh-lease!” she said, rolling her bright blue eyes at me exaggeratedly. “If it wasn’t for me and my A-1 hair and makeup skills, you would never have gotten past your first date with your ex!”
I knew there was no talking Jo out of anything once she had her mind set, so instead of wasting time in an unwinnable argument, I reluctantly agreed to let her play Barbie with me and dress me up for my date.
An hour and about three trial outfits later, she had me all dolled up in an asymmetrical lavender-colored knee-length dress with matching stiletto sandals.
“Jo, it’s April in fucking New York! It’s not warm enough for this outfit yet. I’m going to freeze to death in this!” I complained.
She had my long brown hair done up in a neat little bun with two wavy locks hanging loosely down on each side of my flawlessly made-up face. The lavender eye shadow she’d picked out for me made my brown eyes pop and she’d outlined my lids with a dark eyeliner to accentuate their almond-like shape. My lashes were so caked with mascara that they almost looked fake and she’d covered my lips in a shiny, shimmery lavender gloss that made them appear three times plumper than they actually were.
Even if I’d wanted to complain, I couldn’t have. She had truly dolled me up like a goddamned movie star. I couldn’t deny the fact that I felt sexier and more attractive than I had since I’d broken up with my ex.
“Jo, you’re a fucking miracle-worker!” I exclaimed, as my eyes lit up at my own reflection in
the full-length mirror on my bedroom closet door.
“See? You look like a million bucks, Holly! Thanks to me, you just might get lucky and get laid tonight!” she said jokingly.
“Yeah, right, Jo. There’s no way I’m sleeping with some random stranger on our very first blind date.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “And I’m taking a sweater just in case the temperature drops tonight while we’re at the restaurant.”
“No, Holly,” she said. “If you cover those great tits of yours with a sweater, how’s he gonna be able to see how hard your nipples get when you’re cold?”
I reached out and slapped her playfully in the arm, and both of us burst out laughing.
“God, Jo, you are such a fucking whore!” I joked.
Looking and feeling sexier than I had in long time, I headed out to the Lovehouse restaurant to meet Mr. Martin Langley for our blind date.
Chapter 3
Alex
“Thank you again for meeting with me on such short notice,” the short, stout, GameTime Inc. marketing rep said with an enthusiastic grin. After wiping his grubby right hand on his white cloth napkin, he offered it to me.
“Certainly,” I replied, reaching out and giving his hand a quick, firm shake.
The Lovehouse had always been one of my favorite restaurants. The food was spectacular and the atmosphere was very stylish and elegant. The quiet, laid-back environment made it a perfect spot for business meetings and social gatherings alike.
On a Friday evening, however, I would much rather have been romancing a beautiful young woman instead of sitting here with this chubby, balding, and implausibly annoying middle-aged marketing agent. For the majority of the meeting, I had been able to focus mainly on my delectable meal while tolerating his insufferable rantings and ravings about his company’s extraordinary first-quarter earnings and the obviously embellished projected earnings he was expecting for the remainder of the year.
Unbeknownst to him, his inflated marketing banter was all but being wasted on me because I had no intention of investing in whatever it was he was attempting to impress me with. In fact, the only reason I had even agreed to this arduous congregation was because my father had pretty much demanded that I do so. Apparently, Mr. Stubby Balding-Head here was the nephew or cousin or something of one of my father’s business associates, and my father owed the guy a favor.
I looked down at the gold-plated Rolex on my wrist and saw that it was almost eight o’clock. The client representative sitting across from me had finally signaled the waitress and asked for the dinner bill—much to my relief.
“Well, then, you have my card. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at any time—day or night,” he said eagerly, standing up to finally take his leave.
“Will do,” I said with a nod.
With one final, yellow-toothed grin and a weird army-like salute to the forehead, the annoying man finally picked up his briefcase and went on his way. After he left, I went back to the men’s room for a moment, and as I was making my way back over to the restaurant’s main bar, I noticed a lovely young woman seated at the far end of the counter, alone.
She was a pretty brunette who appeared to be in her late twenties with amazingly alluring eyes and pouty lips. I was certain that I’d never seen her here before.
Sitting with her legs crossed on one of the corner bar stools, she seemed to be looking around uneasily, and she kept pulling out her phone and looking down at it as if she was checking the time. Being a thoroughly experienced man, I recognized the situation I was observing immediately. This appealing young lady had obviously been stood up by someone, though judging by her outward appearance alone, I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would have stood up someone as enchanting as she appeared to be.
My mind immediately switched into charmer mode and I headed straight over to the empty bar stool directly to her right.
“He’s a fool, whoever he is,” I said casually, leaning against the bar and looking directly at her.
“Excuse me?” she replied, looking up from her phone and eyeing me with a questioning expression.
“The idiot who stood you up,” I explained, raising my arm to signal one of the bartenders.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Is it really that obvious?”
She picked up her phone and slid it into one of the outside pockets of her lavender-colored purse. That’s when I noticed her shoes, dress, and purse were all the same shade. Whoever this woman was, she had obviously put in a bit of effort to look nice for some nitwit who hadn’t even bothered to show up.
No sense in letting such a lovely get-up go to waste, right? A slight grin began to play at the corners of my mouth.
I could tell right away that this woman was definitely not just some average bar fly. She had poise and class, and though her short-length dress certainly had sex appeal, it was in no way tasteless or trashy. Her earrings, necklace, and bracelet set added a nice touch to her overall look but they weren’t gaudy. Something about her was intriguing to me, drawing me to her.
“I must look pretty pathetic,” she said with a deep sigh, closing the zipper on her purse.
“Not at all. In fact, you look absolutely beautiful,” I told her with a smile.
She looked up at me and smiled back for a moment. There was a shyness in her smile, as if she was somehow unaware of exactly how stunning she truly was. This intrigued me even more, because most women as attractive as she was were snobbish and conceited. Either that or they often tried to use their striking good looks to get whatever they wanted from men. Kinda funny how the moment that thought crossed my mind, an image of my flirty, blue-eyed assistant, Alicia, instantly popped into my head.
As I immediately shook both the thought and the image from mind, the bartender finally appeared. She was a tall, curly-haired blonde and she flashed me a friendly smile as she asked me for my drink order.
“What can I get ya?” she asked. I glanced down at her nametag. It read: Carrie.
“Good evening, Carrie,” I said, returning her bubbly smile. “I’d like to buy this lovely lady a drink.”
I turned my head to face the pretty Lady in Lavender. She glanced up at me and then lowered her doe-like eyes.
“Um, I really appreciate the offer, but I think I’m just gonna just go home,” she said as she pulled the strap of her purse over her shoulder and stood up.
But there was no way I was about to let this captivating, mysterious Lavender Lady walk out and leave.
When she rose from the bar stool, I finally got a good look at her entire figure, and I damned sure liked what I saw. She had a petite frame but her hips were curvy and her legs were long and toned. She’d gone through so much trouble to do herself up tonight and I was determined to talk her into taking advantage of the evening.
I immediately reached out and took her hand, firmly but gently, and she turned around and looked at me.
“Stay,” I said with an inviting grin. “Come on, just for a little while. You obviously got dressed up hoping to have an enjoyable evening. There’s no reason that still can’t happen, right?”
I was still holding onto her hand because she hadn’t snatched it away. I locked my eyes with hers and tried to hold her gaze but again, she looked away, shyly.
“Oh, I don’t know…” she said hesitantly.
“Well, were you meeting a boyfriend?” Her small, feminine hands were ringless, so I knew she wasn’t married or engaged, but I wanted to make sure she was completely available before I put the moves on her.
She shook her head.
“Listen, whoever that joker was who stood you up, perhaps it was fate. Perhaps you and I were meant to meet tonight.” I raised her hand to my lips and kissed the top of her wrist tenderly. Her hand was soft and smooth and a hint of a fruity aroma emanated from her creamy skin. “Stay—at least for a little while. Let me show you how a real man treats a lady who takes the time to get all dolled up for him.”
A sm
ile made its way across her face, and I knew I finally had her convinced.
“Okay, I guess I could at least have a drink or two,” she said with a sigh. I let go of her hand and grinned triumphantly. She sat back down and placed her purse on the bar in front of her.
“Excellent!” I said gladly, clapping my hands together in delight. “So, what’ll it be? You can have whatever you want, tonight, milady. Splurge and enjoy yourself.”
Her smile widened. “I’d love a glass of white wine,” she said cheerily, and I could tell that her mood was already lightening.
“This woman has class,” I told the bartender proudly. “A glass of your finest wine, please. In fact, just bring us the whole bottle.” I pulled out my black card and placed it on the counter.
“You got it, sir!” Carrie said with a wink. She picked up the card, looking quite impressed. “Would you like me to open a tab?”
“Absolutely,” I replied with an affirming nod. I then turned my attention back to Lady Lavender. “I’m Alex, by the way. And you are—?”
“Holly. Holly Shaw,” she replied.
“You know, Holly, I come here quite a bit, but I’ve never seen you before. Are you from around here?” I asked.
“I’ve actually been here a few years. I’m originally from a small town down south. I moved out here after college and started teaching third grade at the local elementary school.”
“A schoolteacher, eh? A very respectable gig, I must say,” I replied. “You must have a lot of patience.”
“I guess,” she replied shyly. “I’ve always loved working with children, though. I think I’d like to have a couple of my own someday.”
She was family-oriented. My dad would love that.
Just then, Carrie arrived with our drinks. “Keep ’em comin’,” I told her.
