As I walk across the room I catch my reflection in the sliding glass doors. My bun has come loose and I can’t have that. I pull my hair down and mentally note I need to go get it cut, it’s just too long. I pull it into a tight bun and notice a slight wrinkle in my khaki colored Dickies. Smoothing it out, I take the time to make sure my starched, white button down is looking snappy too, and push my glasses further up on my nose. A smile I give myself at the perfect look for an aspiring accountant I’ve put together.
My dad always told me to dress for the job I want. To rid the world of financial mistakes is my goal, a lot like a superhero. All I need is a khaki cape with a big, white letter, ‘A’ on it and I can get to work saving the planet, one spreadsheet at a time.
My cell dings and the old dude has responded. He wants to have lunch and show me what he needs done.
I’m not a real social butterfly, hence the work at home gig. But he’s paying me an exorbitant amount of money so I’ll go meet the old guy. At least he gets to know he’s hired an accountant who looks the part. It should give him confidence in my abilities, I think and perhaps he’ll decide to keep me on long-term.
The restaurant isn’t too far from my apartment so I hop on my bike and pedal on over. I have a car but I prefer not to pollute the air as often as I can. Okay, I’m not really all that into saving the planet. My car is a POS.
I chain my bike up in front of the restaurant, then smooth out my clothes again and notice a scuff on my penny loafer and bend down to wipe if off. My glasses fall off and a piece of broken cement puts a long scratch across one of the lenses. I can see enough to get by. If I’m close enough I can see everything.
Into the restaurant I go, tapping on the pouch I placed around my waist to carry my small laptop in. It’s all the rage in Paris I’m told. A long mirror is in the entry way and I take a quick glance to be sure I look good.
Perfect! Just like any accountant in any fine office building, complete with a pocket pencil organizer. This man is sure to be impressed.
A waiter comes towards me. “May I help you?” he asks.
“I’m here to meet Mr. Lane.”
The man looks me up and down as he says, “Do you know his first name, because the Mr. Lane I’m thinking of, well it’s most likely not him.”
“Yes, of course. It’s Max,” I say and the man’s eyebrows move to the very tippy top of his balding head.
“Oh! Please follow me.”
I follow him and peer around trying my best to focus on the surrounding fanciness. I pull my glasses out of my pocket and close one eye to look through the one good side.
Stud alert, front and center!
What a man! Broad shoulders, suit that probably cost him a cool thousand or more. Dark waves of luscious hair that falls to his shoulders. Eyes the color of emeralds, oh be still my heart.
I put the glasses back in my pocket protector and follow the waiter dude. Fantasy man is making my panties wet, I need to find the old guy and get back into reality.
The waiter stops and pulls out a chair for me. I smile and plop down as accountantly as possible.
I blink to try to get my stupid broken eyes to focus. An arm with black sleeves reaches across the table and I shake a hand. It’s a firm hand, it doesn’t feel all wrinkly like I expected it to. “Hello, Miss Mathews. I’m sorry, you surprised me, I thought you were going to be a man. Your first name is Alex.”
That voice is much too deep and sexy to belong to an old man. “It’s actually Alexis, but everyone calls me Alex. I broke my glasses a minute ago, do you mind if I sit a little closer to you so I can see you,” I ask.
“Let me come to you, don’t move.” I watch him as he gets up and notice he’s tall.
He sits down and scoots his chair close to mine and slowly he comes into focus.
Oh God! It’s the gorgeous man who made my panties wet!
“Mr. Lane?” I ask.
He nods and smiles. “Can you see me now?”
I nod back and am sure my face is making some awful half smile, half frown thing I’ve been told I do on occasions when I feel awkward, which is often. “How nice to meet you,” I say as I extend my hand to shake his, but pull it back as I realize we already did that. My elbow knocks the plate sitting on the table in front of me and makes a loud clanking sound. My cheeks are most likely red and I may be sprouting beads of sweat on my forehead.
Mr. Lane laughs and places his hand on my shoulder. “No need to be nervous with me, Alex, I assure you.”
His cell rings and he looks at it. He’s so close I can see it too and a picture of a gorgeous blonde woman fills the large screen. A slide of his finger sends the call to voicemail and I say, “You can take the call. I don’t mind.”
“I never take calls when I’m with someone. It’s rude, don’t you think?” he asks as he looks right into my eyes with those gorgeous green ones he has.
“She’s kinda, completely gorgeous. I’d hate for her to get mad at you.”
His laugh is deep, and it rattles my chest he’s so close to me. “She kinda stays mad at me, so no big deal. As far as gorgeous, I have no idea what she really looks like. She’s had so much work done to her whole body there’s no way to tell.”
The idea anyone does that much to themselves is crazy to me. “Wow,” I say.
He nods in agreement. “So what’s up with the spreadsheet, Alex?”
I lean back to unzip the pouch to remove my laptop and see the gorgeous man smiling like he’s amused, so I say, “Um, I know it sometimes is considered odd, but I heard these things are really popular in other countries.”
He shakes his head and laughs, then finishes unzipping the pouch and reaches in to pull out my laptop. “I’m sure they are and I apologize if you thought I was finding humor in your, ummm, fanny pack, I think it’s called.”
His hand touches my stomach as he gets the laptop out and I nearly fall apart as it sends shock waves through my entire body. He isn’t even trying to be sexy, yet he can’t help it, I guess. “Thanks for helping me out there,” I say as I grab the linen napkin to my side and use it to wipe my now definitely perspiring forehead.
He places the computer on the table and leans towards me, his lips near my ear. Hot breath burns my ear as he says, “Alex, are you always this nervous?”
Honesty resides in my head and I just say it, “You’re gorgeous, sir.”
“Sir?” he asks as he sits back in his chair and thank the Lord his good looks blur in my messed up eyes. “How old are you?”
“Not that is matters, but I’m twenty-five, sir,” I say as I straighten my shirt and find my pocket protector fascinating.
“Don’t call me sir, you can call me Max. You got a significant other, Alex?” he asks and leans back in.
I shake my head and find him smiling at me. “Do you?”
He shakes his head and the smile fades. “Tell me, Alex, what do you do for fun?”
I thought this was a business lunch, but it seems to have gone awry. “Fun?”
“Yes, fun,” he says then turns away from me. “You say it like it’s a four letter word.”
“I read a lot,” I say, inciting a chuckle from him.
The menu in his hand tells me he’s ready to order and get this lunch over with. He says, “Tell me what you normally eat for lunch.”
Before my brain can stop my mouth, I answer, “PB and J’s, mostly.”
The slightest turn of his head shows me small wrinkles have formed on his forehead and he says, “We used to eat those all the time for lunch when I was a kid, growing up in the children’s home.”
“You grew up in a children’s home?” I ask, with surprise. “Did your parents die or something?”
“Or something,” he answers. He turns his whole body to me and leans in. “How about we get out of this stuffy restaurant and go back to my place and I’ll have my chef make us up a batch of PB and J’s with a couple glasses of milk?”
I find myself scratching at my neck as the st
arched collar rubs my skin, making it itch. “Ummm, I, don’t, umm.” I mumble and stumble with what to say.
He frowns. “Forget about it, you don’t want to go. We’ll eat here. You want a steak?”
Now I feel bad. The guy lost his parents and grew up in a home and just wants to eat a dang ol’ sandwich and I’m being dumb so I say, “No, I want to go. But I’m on my bike and would have to go home and get my car, which might not make it to where you live. Where is that by the way?”
“What’s wrong with your car?” he asks.
I laugh. “What’s right with it is a shorter list than what’s wrong.”
He smiles and my heart beats a little faster. “I’ll take you in my car. I’m sure your bike will be safe here.”
I shrug my shoulders and say, “Okay then let’s go get our peanut butter on. I hope you have grape jelly.”
He stands and takes my hand and I get up. My arm is quickly interlocked with his as he whispers, “Hang on to me, so you don’t trip on anything since you don’t have your glasses.”
“Thanks,” I say and find I have the weirdest sensation in my stomach.
Max
As we ride out to my place the utterly clueless, Alex, keeps me laughing. She’s the most interesting creature I’ve ever met. Tall, with perfect skin, and exceptionally shiny blonde hair, eyes like blue diamonds that sparkle when she smiles, which is often, but no fashion sense at all.
“That was some smancy restaurant,” she says as she looks out the window. “Do you eat there a lot?”
I find myself laughing. “Smancy? Is that a word?”
Her eyes dart to mine and she blushes. “I’m stupid,” she says. “Don’t listen to me, I use a lot of dumb words.”
“No, they’re funny,” I say. “And the answer is yes I do eat there often. So you find reading fun?”
She nods and looks around at the interior of my Jaguar. “This car is really snazzy.”
I fight the urge to laugh at her crazy words again. “I bet you’d find flying with me in my helicopter more fun than reading.”
Her eyebrows, which are badly in need of a good plucking, raise and she says, “You have a helicopter?”
“Yeah, I got one last year. I devised a seat which extends out of the body of the helicopter while keeping the occupant completely safe with a restraint system I designed. That’s how I made my money. The military bought a bunch of them and now it seems most anyone with a chopper wants one.”
Confusion fills her face. “So you hang out of the helicopter while it’s flying and just why would someone do that?”
“To shoot at things,” I say and pull up to the entry gate of my place.
Alex looks at the large gate and nibbles at her bottom lip. “That’s a big gate, dude.”
“Yeah it’s here to protect the even bigger house you’ll see in a second,” I say and press the button to open it.
“This is a lot to keep clean,” she says as we pull up to the mansion.
Okay, that’s not a thing I’ve ever been told before. “Do you like it?” I ask.
She turns to me and smiles. “It’s a blur to me, Max.”
As I park the car and get out, I go to open her door, but she’s beat me to it and waits for me outside the car. I take her hand and lead her into the house. “Follow me, Alex, I need to find Hilda and get her to make us lunch. We can talk about the spreadsheet while she does that.” As I pull her along behind me I feel giddy for some unknown reason.
I find Hilda in the kitchen chopping vegetables. She looks up at me and her face breaks into a huge smile. “Mijo, who is this?”
I pull Alex up to stand next to me. “Hilda this is Alex. Do you suppose you could make us both some peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches and some glasses of milk and bring them to the pool?”
“Peanut butter, Mijo?” Hilda asks with furrowed brows. “I have a couple of lobsters I can get them ready in a few minutes. Let me make you that.”
“I’d really like what I asked for, Hilda. I used to eat one for lunch almost every day when I was a kid.”
Hilda gestures towards Alex with the long knife she holds. “Are you an old friend of his from the children’s home?”
“I’m not his friend. I work for him.”
Hilda’s eyes move down to our clasped hands. She wags the knife at them. “You hold your employee’s hands now?” she asks with a concerned look.
I laugh and hold our hands up. “She broke her glasses just before our meeting and I didn’t want her to trip, so I grabbed her hand.”
Hilda frowns and goes back to chopping. “I’ll get the food ready and get James to serve it to you by the pool within a few minutes, Mijo.”
As I lead Alex outside I’m finding myself bursting with energy. It’s unexplainable to me. Am I so excited to start figuring out the problems on the damn spreadsheet? “Here we are, my smancy swimming pool, complete with a waterfall. Wish you could see it.”
“You stole my word,” she says as I help her sit at the table.
I pull up a chair close to her so she can see me. “I prefer to say I’m borrowing it, if you don’t mind.”
She smiles and her eyes twinkle. “It’s okay you can borrow it. I like the way it sounds coming out of your lips.”
My lips? She’s thinking about my lips just as I was thinking about her perfect smile and how her lips are perfectly proportioned all on their own with no collagen!
“We should take a dip in the pool after we have our lunch,” I say and can’t believe I just asked her to do that.
Her eyes grow wide and she begins to stammer, “I, uh, I don’t have, um a…”
I hold up my hand, stopping the stammering she seems to be so good at. “There are lots of bathing suits to choose from in the pool house. No worries, come on, it’ll be fun.”
She squints at the pool. “Is there a diving board?”
“Naw, I didn’t want one. I like to jump off the boulders I had brought in.”
Her eyes light up and she smiles again. “When I was a kid we’d go to this river every summer. There was a giant rock we’d jump off of. I loved it.”
“So your answer is yes?”
“No. This is embarrassing to admit, but I haven’t shaved in a while.”
Though I don’t really want to know, I ask out of morbid curiosity, “How long has it been?”
Her narrow shoulders shrug. “Don’t remember. So you see it’d be better if I didn’t.”
“The bathroom in the pool house is stocked with everything. You can de-fur yourself before if you’d like.”
Her hand flies up and slaps my arm. “It’s not that bad you need to use the term, ‘de-fur’ for the love of Pete.”
“So that’s a yes then?”
“I’d like to jump off that rock.” She squints out at it. “So yeah, it does sound fun.”
“Alex, do you have another pair of glasses or contacts maybe?”
“I have some contacts, but they’re at home.”
“How about I take you to get them after lunch? While in town I’ll pick up some beer and I’ll get Hilda to make us a pizza later and you can hang out for the evening. I’ll take you back home tonight.”
“You don’t have to spend the whole day with me, Max.” She leans back. “I mean you have to have better things to do.”
“I’d like to be honest with you, Alex. You’re fun and easy to get along with and I’m really enjoying your company. It’s not often I find someone who’s so easy to be around.”
She makes this half smile, half frown thing with her face and I find it adorable. “That’s nice to hear. To be honest with you, I’ve never been told that before. So the answer is yeah, I’ll hang out with you this evening, Max, it sounds like a lot of fun.”
Alexis
A bright red convertible sits in the drive of Max’s house. He took me to get my contacts, and we picked up some beer and apparently he considers me funny and fun to be around.
With my contacts in I can see t
he mansion and it’s awesome. “Now that everything’s not a big blur, may I say, this place is beautiful?”
“Thanks. I like it.” He looks agitated as he parks and looks at me. “That girl who called me earlier when we were in the restaurant is here. That’s her car. She’s quite the bitch so don’t get offended by anything that comes out of her fake mouth. I’ll get rid of her as soon as I can. I’m going to tell her we have to get to work right away, so don’t mention swimming, okay?”
“So she’s your girlfriend then?”
He shakes his head. “No, but she isn’t aware of that yet. She doesn’t want the same things I do. I’m going to break it off with her, but I just decided that last night. Today’s not the day to do it, I’ll most likely do it tomorrow.”
“K,” I say and hop out of the car.
Max walks around the car and grabs my hand, pulling me along with him. As we enter the house a shrill noise hurts my ears. “Where’s my Maxi baby?”
Max rolls his eyes and whispers, “I’m so sorry for what’s about to happen.”
A tall, thinner than necessary creature comes into view as we enter the large living area. From far away she’s gorgeous, but as we get closer I can see the obvious fake breasts, lips, and cheek implants.
Max lets my hand go and moves forward as she throws out one of her tentacle like arms and wraps it around him in the most awkward hug I’ve ever seen. Her bony finger extends out at me as she asks, “Who are you?”
I give her a smile and find myself happy to know Max is dumping her. He can do so much better. “Hi,” I say extending my hand to shake hers. “I’m Alex, I work for Max.”
She looks at me like I’ve thrown dog feces at her, so I drop my hand to my side as it’s obvious she’ll not be shaking it. The disgust for me infiltrates her voice as she says, “Okay, and what are you?”
Max takes her by her very bony shoulders and looks her in the eye. “No, Lauren. I can’t allow you to talk to her like that.”
The woman’s eyes fall on me again. “It’s a girl?”
I roll my eyes instead of saying some snappy comeback. Max takes care of her though. “She and I need to get to work. It may take us all night to figure out what the mistake is in this spreadsheet.”
Quartet Complete Series: Billionaire Romance Box Set (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Page 171
