Slowly, in the past few months, I had begun to delegate meetings like these to the men and women I had trained. Today, however, I was in the mood for some action. I enjoyed the buzz I got from closing a deal, of saying the right things, exchanging hard handshakes, and making sure that our company was still on top. I was buzzed today, and it was exactly what I needed to get me out of the slump.
If we were going to give the C Scape boys a run for their money, I wanted to have a personal hand in it. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than watching their would-be empire sink and burn. I was looking forward to their total and complete destruction.
I was high off a rush of adrenaline, and I was glad to get that winning streak back.
In my office, I had a half-eaten salad box lying forgotten in front of me. On days like these, I could have survived on nothing but espresso shots and neat whiskies. I’d lost my appetite or the will to eat.
I clapped my hands together and nearly did a fist pump in the silence and isolation of my own office.
The exhilaration I was feeling in this moment reminded me suddenly of the exhilaration I had felt when I came inside the woman I had met at the summer ball.
That was a week ago, and I thought I had successfully forgotten about her. The morning after, when I woke up in my bed alone, I had written off the experience of that night as stupid. No way was I actually feeling those feelings of connection I thought I was experiencing. I decided it was just a side effect of seeing the two C Scape men at the party.
Aubrey—she had told me her name at the last moment, just before I left the bathroom. I could still see the way her body moved in that tight white gown, how her blazing red hair shook and fell around her gentle shoulders when I drove my cock into her. The sadness in her eyes when she told me about how hard she had been struggling to make a living with her art.
I snapped open the drawer in my desk. A crumbled piece of tissue paper was in there, with lipstick marks on it. I picked it up and smoothened it out to see an address scrawled on it hurriedly.
At the time, still high from my orgasm, I had strongly and genuinely believed that I would be interested in her art. The next morning, I wasn’t sure if that would be the right thing to do.
Not only had I spilled wine on her dress and ruined her one chance at making connections in the industry, I had also fucked her in the public bathroom. If I turned up at her place now claiming that I was interested in seeing her work, there was only one thing she could possibly think of me: that I was the biggest asshole on the planet. I didn’t want to be an asshole to her.
If we hadn’t slept together, I would have been eager to see her work, to discover another new underdog. Now the scales had tipped, and I wasn’t sure how my body would react if I saw her again. I still remembered how good it had felt to be inside her. It wouldn’t be a good idea to do business with someone I had slept with. I didn’t mix the two things.
There was a knock on my office door.
“Come in!” I called out, barely recognizing my own high-pitched, exuberant voice.
It was Chad. He walked in, in his usual curt manner, and closed the door behind him. He hadn’t said anything yet, and with the quiet steps he was taking in my direction, I got the sense that he was the bearer of bad news.
“Spill it, Chad,” I said, furrowing my brows at him.
Chad cleared his throat, clasping his hands in front of him before he spoke.
“Sir, I thought I should inform you that the deal with the Japanese clients is off,” he said, trying to keep as straight a face as he was capable of.
“It’s off?” I growled, and Chad clenched his jaws.
“They have decided to give the contract to C Scape.” Chad said this next bit in a near-whisper. I banged my fists on the table and jumped off my chair. Chad had clearly been sent in to tell me this, because none of the others on the team wanted to do it themselves.
“What the fuck is going on? What are those boys offering that we don’t have?” I was barking and Chad remained standing there, his spine erect and his face forward. He had no answers for me, because he was just my personal assistant and not an expert at business deals.
“This is ridiculous. This was not supposed to happen!” I growled, then picked my cell phone off the desk and hurled it at the wall again. I heard the crack and then the thump as it fell to the floor.
I took in a deep breath and squared my shoulders. I needed to calm down. I needed to go for a walk.
“I’ll take care of the phone situation, sir,” Chad said, and turning from me, he went to pick the cell phone off the ground.
“Drop it off at my place later. I’ll be out,” I grunted at him, and fixing my cufflinks, I walked out of the office, taking long strides to get out of the building.
I needed a recharge.
***
I looked at the address scribbled in lipstick on the tissue paper, and back up at the apartment building I was standing in front of. I wouldn’t have imagined a girl, wearing a dress like that, to be living in a place like this. Then I remembered how she’d told me about her struggle as an artist. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see her home.
I walked up the steps, and someone opened the door on their way out, which was an easy way for me to get in. If I was going to have to ring the buzzer for her apartment, I wasn’t sure how I might have introduced myself. I didn’t even know if she was home!
I took the stairs up to the third floor and found her apartment door easily.
I didn’t know what I was doing here. After I heard what Chad had to say, I’d felt an unbearable urge to go see Aubrey. Like she was some sort of drug. It had been a week since I last saw her, and chances were high that she wouldn’t want to see me again.
Sucking in my gut and feeling the first pangs of nervousness, I knocked on her door. I was transported back to my teenage years again, when I was too much of a nerd to have the confidence to knock on a girl’s door. When I had been too embarrassed to ask a girl to prom. I didn’t go to prom in the end.
The door opened soon, probably too soon, and I felt like I hadn’t had the chance to gather my courage to say anything. Aubrey was on the other side of the door, looking as much in shock to see me as I was to see her.
It was obvious that she had been in the middle of painting. She was in a pair of old denim dungarees, with a slinky sleeveless T-shirt underneath.
“Gareth!” she exclaimed, like I was an alien creature.
“Hello, Aubrey,” I said when I had found my voice. “Sorry to surprise you like this.”
Her fingers were covered in paint stains, and there was a gash of green running across her left cheek. She lifted her hand up to try and rub it off her face, but most of it was still there.
“No, it’s okay. I just didn’t think I’d see you again,” she said and stepped aside. I walked into her apartment and was greeted by an extraordinary mix of color and tapestry. There was art everywhere on the walls, which were no doubt Aubrey’s experiments, and the small studio apartment seemed to have been clearly divided into two.
“That’s where my roommate, Ira, lives. She’s the one who got me the ticket to the ball, and it was her dress too,” I heard Aubrey explain behind me, while I stood and gazed around the place.
I had never seen a home like this before. It was quirky, messy, and yet artistically attractive at the same time. The two girls clearly lived a sort of casual bohemian lifestyle, and in the middle of her apartment, I felt severely out of place.
“I hope you’ve told your friend just how sorry I am to have ruined her dress,” I said, turning to Aubrey again, who had bright red spots on her cheeks now.
“Again, it wasn’t entirely your fault, and Ira didn’t really mind. She works for a fashion house, so she’d got that dress for free. She insists that she was never going to wear it anyway,” Aubrey replied, and slowly, she led me toward her section of the apartment.
I followed her, stepping over paint pallets and discarded mixing jars. A
ubrey’s part of the home was definitely more cluttered and also more colorful.
She stopped when we approached a half-painted canvas, and she turned to me. Her red hair was tied in a messy bun on top of her head. Some strands of hair escaped the confines to frame her face. I hadn’t forgotten just how beautiful Aubrey was, but I was reminded of it again. I had been inside this woman. I knew how amazing she felt. My body was reacting to her presence, just as I’d predicted it would.
“So, Gareth, what are you doing here?” she asked. I fished the tissue paper out of my pocket and showed it to her.
“You gave me your address, remember?” I asked her, grinning. Aubrey wasn’t really smiling. She almost looked a little worried, like she wasn’t sure about me being in her apartment. It was late in the evening after all, and I was beginning to wonder if this had been a good idea.
“Yeah, but why are you here?” she asked, and I kept the smile fixed on my face. This is exactly what I didn’t want her to assume—that I was here for sex. She wasn’t my booty call. I didn’t do booty calls.
“I want to see your art. I told you I did. I wanted to come sooner, but I was caught up with work,” I said, in as much of a matter-of-fact voice as I could manage. Aubrey gulped and then dragged her gaze away from me, nodding. I wasn’t sure if I had managed to convince her.
“I don’t want you to feel obliged just because I told you about my life, and because we…” she said, her cheeks turning a deeper red.
“Because we had sex?” I asked, trying to catch her gaze. Aubrey brushed some stray strands of red hair off her face.
“Trust me, that is the last reason why I would land up here. I don’t feel obliged to you, Aubrey. I just want to see your art,” I said.
She met my eyes finally. Hers were green and glittering, and she held my gaze for a few moments before she looked away again.
“Okay, follow me, then,” she said.
***
“What about this one?” I asked, looking at the canvas that was hanging in front of me. Aubrey and I had spent the past twenty minutes going over some of her recent work. They were spread all over the apartment. Some were hanging on the walls, some were boxed away behind her pull-out bed, some were in suitcases. It was obvious that Aubrey was quickly running out of space, and it was also obvious that she was a talented artist. She had a unique style and just hadn’t been discovered yet.
“This one’s not anything special; I painted it many years ago. It’s not one I’m proud of or anything,” she said, trying to divert my attention away from it.
It was a simple work of art. Scribbled in black paint on a fawn background, there was a silhouette of a small girl looking down at a puppy, who was looking up at her. Surrounding the two figures was a jumble of black paint.
“Is that you?” I asked, turning to look at Aubrey. She was standing beside me, looking flustered.
As much as she tried to hide her feelings, I was finding it increasingly easy to read this woman. Her cheeks became ruddy, matching the color of her hair.
“I think so,” she replied in a soft squeaky voice.
“Is that your dog?” I asked, still looking at her delicate profile, while she stared at the painting.
“I had a dog like that one. He died,” she said and turned away from the canvas.
I felt an uncontrollable urge to pull her into my arms.
“What happened?” I asked, following her, as she walked over to the clutter of a few other canvases. From the way that she was refusing to meet my eye, I could sense that this was a difficult subject for her to talk about.
“He ran out in front of my father’s car,” Aubrey replied, and I could see her back, her petite frame. She kept her face firmly turned away from me, and even though I couldn’t see her eyes, I knew that she was on the verge of crying.
If there was anyone who knew how childhood experiences shaped you as an adult, it was me. Everything I had gone through as a child and a teenager had made me into the person I was now. I thought I knew what Aubrey was feeling, why this painting was a sore spot for her.
“I’m sorry, Aubrey,” I said in a quiet voice, and she turned to me quickly.
She had managed to gulp down the misery she might have been feeling inside, and instead, she pasted a bright wide smile on her face.
“I don’t know why I keep telling you all the most depressing bits about me!” she commented, and adding a forced fake laugh at the end of that, she sprinted over to show me a few of her other paintings.
“This one is what I painted last week. It’s a scene from Central Park,” she said, lifting the canvas up to show me.
I looked at it and admired her unique way of using the brush and the paint, but I couldn’t help but keep glancing at the other painting with the dog. Something was drawing me to it.
“So, what do you think? Am I kidding myself?” Aubrey asked, placing the canvas back down on its easel. She had snapped me out of my thoughts, and I shook my head.
“No, you’re not. You are a talented young artist, and there is no reason why you should be any less successful than others,” I said. Aubrey shrugged and thrust her hands into the pockets of her denim dungarees.
Even though she didn’t have any makeup on today, and she wasn’t in that beautiful white gown from the other night, she looked even more beautiful to me. She was natural and real, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had met a woman like her.
“You are too kind,” she said, and walking past me, she went over to the fridge and pulled out two cans of soda.
“I don’t drink soda,” I said, refusing to take one from her, and she arched her eyebrows up.
“Bad for you?” she asked and popped open one of them. I shrugged while I watched her take a large gulp of it. Her neck was stretched, her head was thrown back while she drank, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the way her throat moved.
“You only paint in oils?” I asked as she rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth.
Aubrey walked around amidst her paintings now, and I followed her with my eyes. I had forgotten about C Scape, about everything that had been bothering me before I came to her apartment. She had a strange effect on me. Like I couldn’t focus on anything other than her presence when she was in the same room as me.
“I’ve tried watercolors and gouache too, but I think oils are my first love,” she said, fixing her green eyes on me now. I couldn’t help but feel mesmerized by her. I couldn’t look away.
“Where have you tried to sell them?” I asked, and she sighed loudly.
“I’ve tried a couple of art fairs, some markets in the Village. Ira helped me get a website up and running, but I’m not good at marketing. I don’t know how to get my work out there,” she said dejectedly and took another sip of her soda.
I walked closer to her now, and our gazes were fixed.
“You’re just going to have to try harder. You’ll have to keep trying. You have the talent, you just need the exposure. If you want, I can help you,” I said. Aubrey had stopped sipping her soda now, and slowly she lowered the can from her lips.
From the way she was looking at me, I knew exactly what she was going to say.
Chapter Eight
Aubrey
“You want to help me how?” I asked him, taken aback by his sudden offer. Everything about Gareth Gray surprised me. For starters, what was he doing in my apartment?
After that night at the ball, I had tried looking him up on the internet. What I found blew my mind. Not only was he one of the most eligible bachelors in the city, he was also one of the richest and most powerful person in New York. He owned a shipping company, was a self-made man, and was living the ultimate American dream.
Everything I read about Gareth painted him as a success story. There was very little information about his childhood or his life before he became successful, but from what I could gather, he had lived a life of privilege and luxury. So what was a man like him, who could have anyone and anything he wanted, doing in
my apartment? What more could he want from me now that he didn’t already have?
When I met him first, I had no doubts about the fact that he was rich, but a billionaire, one of the youngest in the country, was way beyond my imagination. The fact that we had sex in the bathroom was too much for me to wrap my head around. But that was understandable. Perhaps Gareth had sexual experiences like that with naive women at parties all the time. Perhaps that was his common practice; it wasn’t mine. For me, that night had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience and one I didn’t plan on repeating with anybody else.
In the past week since the ball, I had found my mind drifting to thoughts about Gareth from time to time. I wondered if it was going to just going to remain a chance encounter. We’d had sex, and now it was forgotten and we were destined to live our own separate lives henceforth. That was what was most likely. I didn’t think that he had given me one more passing thought since we went our separate ways.
Even though I’d scrawled my address down with lipstick on a tissue paper, I hadn’t expected him to actually keep it or use it to find my apartment a week later. I had accepted the fact that I would never see him in person again. That the night of the ball was going to be nothing more than a surreal secret I would have to keep.
And I was okay with that. I had accepted it as reality, until the moment that I saw him at my front door this evening. It was a shock to my system, something I least expected. What could he have possibly seen in me that night to make him find my apartment? One thing I was sure of was that it wasn’t my art. He hadn’t even seen my art before he landed up here today.
He was staring at me now, with that casual grinning expression on his face that made me weak in the knees. He was in a smart gray suit today and a navy tie. There were sparkling cufflinks at his wrists, and he couldn’t look more out of place in my apartment. I was embarrassed to think what he might be thinking of my place.
“Help you get the word out, help you with promotions. There are a million things we can do for you,” Gareth said, and I saw how his blue eyes sparkled as he spoke.
Desire Me Page 4
