He was certain that what he had done was for the best, but that didn’t make it any easier and that certainly didn’t stop him from feeling like absolute garbage after it all was said and done. Luckily, he didn’t have any appointments or anything important going on for the rest of the night. It was his first day back in the office after being in Canada, but things around here were designed to work without him being in residence for everything to happen seamlessly. He could run his business from anywhere. He’d designed it that way and tonight, he was going to do something that he rarely ever did. Preston was leaving the office early and going home before the close of business for the day.
Today was a Friday and normally, he would have been preparing to meet with Charlotte for the evening. At least, that’s what he would have been doing before he had run away to Toronto for a month. Now, all he had to look forward to was a long, quiet night on his own. He supposed, since he was technically single, he could have called one of the women he had spent his time with before Charlotte had wandered into his life. Honestly, that was the last thing he wanted to do right now, he felt sick to his stomach just thinking about it. If he couldn’t spend his evening with the one person he really wanted to be around, then he was going to spend the night alone. Maybe he would change his mind in time, but for now, that was exactly what he was going to do.
Preston slid open the bottom drawer of his desk, pushing the files that he had been looking over into their place in the drawer before grabbing the last of his things from the desktop and shoving them into his pockets. He picked up the phone to use the intercom to talk to Sophie, but as soon as the tone sounded that he knew would ring her desk, she came bursting into the office, half slamming the door behind her.
“I hope you’re going home for the day and I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
He could hear the anger in her tone. Preston had made Sophie angry plenty of times during the years she had worked for him. One of the things he liked about her was that she wasn’t afraid to be herself or to be completely honest with him when the occasion called for it, but tonight, he wasn’t sure how much of this he was going to be able to take.
Letting go of Charlotte hadn’t been an easy decision. As a matter of fact, it had been one of the hardest ones he had ever had to make. He just didn’t think he could explain it all to Sophie right now. There was so much wrapped up in his decision and he didn’t want Charlotte to know that he had been blackmailed into breaking up with her. Frankly, just thinking about all of it made him feel like a heel, like he never should have gotten involved with a younger woman to begin with and especially not with one who was so bubbly and had so much of her life ahead of her.
“Yeah, I’m going home for the day, but I’m not proud of myself. I’m pretty sure I’m a jackass. So, make sure to hold my calls and messages for the rest of the day unless it’s an emergency. I’m probably turning my phone off anyway. I need a break.” He started out towards the door, not waiting for Sophie to reply to him before he turned to face her.
“As a matter of fact, I’m taking the next four days off. I’ll be back on Wednesday. Everything is settled with the Toronto deal and I’m sure that things can run without me. You’re capable enough to make decisions in my place. Don’t disturb me unless it’s important.” He left his assistant blinking and shocked in his wake.
Preston couldn’t remember the last time he had taken any real time off work. He travelled, but it was always because of work. He was never out of reach of Sophie or the rest of the office, but he had never really had anything like this he needed to wrap his head around either. Of course, Preston had gone through breakups in the past. He hadn’t gotten to be nearly forty years old without having his fair share of relationships. Some of them had even ended badly, but they’d never had the same effect on him that this one had.
Charlotte had been different. He’d known that from the start. It was the reason he had made exceptions to so many of his personal rules for her, but that was over now. Preston needed a chance to mourn what could have been between the two of them now that it was over. He knew that much, and taking a few days for himself seemed like the only logical thing he could do.
Preston was texting his driver to meet him downstairs before he hit the elevator and the only place he wanted to go at the moment, was home.
❖
A couple of hours later, Preston was in his penthouse apartment, staring at the sun setting across the skyline of the city. He grasped a glass full of scotch in one hand, leaning back in his chair to let out a long breath. This was far from his first glass of liquor tonight and it was probably far from his last. He’d thought getting out of the office and spending some time alone was the best way to get his mind off everything, but really, it had just given him that much more time to think about Charlotte and everything he had lost.
When he sat back to think about things, it had all been his fault. He wavered back and forth between the state of mind that told him she was worth anything their relationship might have cost him and the one that told him she deserved a great deal more than he could ever offer her, no matter how much money he might have. Preston had always put so much importance on his financial success. It was odd to prioritize something above his business. It had never been an issue before now.
In the past, he had told himself that women came and went, but the only thing that would be around for the rest of his life was the empire he was building. It was going to be the thing that supported him through his life and the thing that was left behind as his legacy when he was gone.
When he was a kid, financial stability had been far from the defining characteristic of his childhood. His father had disappeared long before Preston was ever born and his mother had struggled to make ends meet by working two or three jobs at a time. She was gone for all the important things, but she had made sure that Preston had what he needed to keep him going. It was one of the reasons he was so determined to make a success of his life once he was out of school.
Howard Specter had been the reason that he had been able to do all of that. Now, Howard was the thing that threatened everything he had built. His niece had been the only person that had ever made Preston think about walking away from it all and Preston had let her go. The mere fact that he had been able to look her in the eye, see how devastated she was by what he was saying and he was still able to let her walk out of his office told him that she deserved better than him.
Their age difference had never been an issue. Her innocence had been a hang up for him. He hadn’t wanted to ruin her for the rest of her life by being the thing that caused her to become jaded, but he was fairly certain that was exactly what he was becoming. Any decent guy wouldn’t have let her get that involved unless he was certain there was nothing that was going to come between the two of them. Instead, he had let a financial threat trump everything that the two of them meant to each other.
He’d turned off his phone hours ago, not because of the business messages that came in from time to time. He could ignore those. They could all wait until he was ready to get back into things at Pierce Industries. None of the issues were pressing but, he couldn’t fight the urge to call Charlotte and apologize every time he saw the screen light up. He’d picked up the phone a million times, expecting to see a text from her flash up on the screen, but there was nothing. He’d even given his driver the night off so that he wouldn’t have an excuse to get in the car and head straight over to her apartment to beg her forgiveness.
He didn’t know if it would do any good at this point. He’d probably ruined everything for good, but he couldn’t stop his brain from seesawing back and forth between ideas until it made him dizzy. Not even the scotch calmed him down the way he had thought it would. It was Friday night. Charlotte should be in his arms and instead he was here alone while she was heartbroken. It was all his fault.
Preston deserved every bit of what was happening to him right now. He deserved to be alone for the rest of his life with nothing but his ba
nk accounts to keep him company at night. They were cold company when he remembered what it was like to have Charlotte in his arms, but they were the safest most stable part of his life.
He needed to do something to get all of this off his mind, but for tonight, he was just going to finish off the rest of this bottle before passing out in bed alone. Perhaps that was a little more wallowing in his own sorrow than he should have done, but he really didn’t care. He’d figure out what to do with the rest of his weekend in the morning when the sun came back up, if he wasn’t too hungover to think straight. Maybe he would go off to one of his vacation homes he never used and see what he could do to distract himself from the ache that was steadily building in his chest, like someone was tugging on a string that had been tied around the rib closest to his heart.
Maybe he would turn his phone back on then too, when he could trust himself to be sane enough not to ruin everything with a phone call or a text to the wrong person about the wrong thing. He wasn’t going to be able to fix this, as much as he wanted to, at least not right now and probably not ever. At least he could leave Charlotte alone to heal from the wounds he had inflicted upon her. If he couldn’t give her the life she wanted and deserved with him, he could at least give her the chance to have it with someone who could give it to her, even if the thought of her with another man made him physically sick.
The sun was sinking down below the horizon, leaving the sky fading into deep blues and purples as the stars burst into life one by one in the night sky. Preston felt this sudden tide of exhaustion wash over him and as much as he had planned to finish off the bottle that rested on the end table next to his chair, he just didn’t have it in him now. All he really wanted to do was crawl into his bed, go to sleep, and pretend that today hadn’t happened at all. Tomorrow would be a better day, one in which he had the strength and emotional fortitude to pretend that none of this had ever happened and move on with his life in the direction it had been headed before he had ever stumbled across a young woman, clutching a muffin basket, with that charming startled expression on her face. Even if he wasn’t going to ever be able to wipe her from his memory, perhaps he could at least get back to the way things were before she ever wandered into his life. Maybe then he could forgive himself for what he had done to both of them.
Chapter 7
Three weeks had passed since that day back in Preston’s office that Charlotte didn’t think she was ever going to be able to wipe from her memory. She’d only taken that one afternoon off from work and then she had thrown herself back into things with even more energy, trying to get her mind off of everything that had happened between the two of them. She was always there, always working, always dedicated, but never smiling. It was a change that hadn’t gone unnoticed by the people around her.
At first, they’d all offered her their condolences, told her that they should go out and get dinner or drinks or coffee and tried to comfort her in their own way. Slowly but surely, the invitations stopped coming when she turned them all down. Charlotte kept telling herself that she needed to be focused, to make sure that her business was successful, and that she shouldn’t have chanced that success by getting distracted by a man.
In reality, she was kicking herself for every bad decision she had ever made. She told herself that Preston had been a mistake, the worst one that she had ever made, and one she wasn’t going to make again. She shouldn’t have trusted him and she certainly should have listened to her Uncle Howard when he had warned her about the older man’s intentions. But, she had been innocent and naive. Charlotte always wanted to see the best in people.
It had been easy to look for the good in Preston because and when she found herself having feelings for him, it had made that process even easier. Her vision of him had been colored by her emotions, by the crush she had had on an older man who had only seen her as a toy no matter what he might have told her during their time together. In the end, the way he had been able to break things off without an ounce of emotion in his expression had told her everything she needed to know and confirmed all her fears.
At least she had had the bakery to distract her. It had been easier to focus on the day to day running of things around here, than it had been to sit around and mope about everything she thought she had had. This was concret, and if she played her cards right, it was the thing that no one was going to be able to take away from her without a fight, unlike the way things had ended with Preston.
Part of her had wanted to argue with him, to fight for what they had together, but what good was fighting when his heart obviously wasn’t in it. She’d clearly been more invested in things between the two of them than he had and fighting for something that only one of them had wanted was only going to end in her being even more heartbroken. Maybe he had done her a favor in ending things when he had before she had become even more invested in things between them. At least she hadn’t caught herself imagining a home and kids and a wedding and all the things that went with that with Preston yet. She’d known those weren’t the things he had wanted and for the time she was happy to give him that life, but maybe he was right about what the future would hold. Dragging things out to that inevitable conclusion was only going to lead to her becoming even more devastated than she was now.
Since things had ended between the two of them, Charlotte had been to work, her apartment and the supermarket. Those were the full extent of her travels. She hadn’t even had it in her to go to her aunt and uncle’s house for her regular Sunday lunch with the two of them. There was no way she was going to be able to sit around and answer the questions that she knew were going to come from the both of them, especially her Uncle Howard with the inevitable ‘I told you so’s’ that she had known were going to come when he found out how things had ended between the two of them. Instead, she had isolated herself with only Jake and Riley for company during the day and Andy to keep her warm at night.
Customers came and went and in the past, she had been as interested in her customer’s lives as she had been in those of her friends. Lately, she was just going about the job like a robot, rarely striking up conversations with the people who came and went, even the regulars. She was withdrawn and quiet, leaving the running of things behind the counter of the bakery more and more to Riley while she focused on things behind the scenes like bookkeeping and baking. She couldn’t handle someone asking her how that new boyfriend of hers was working out or those who hadn’t known she was seeing someone prodding her about what a pretty, smart young woman like herself was doing single.
Charlotte had hidden herself in the kitchen of the bakery this morning as soon as she had come in, keeping her focus on the wedding cake that had been ordered. Layer upon layer of cake and icing that was going to take hours and hours to get just right. It was something she could throw herself into to take her mind off the places it would wander if she left herself idle for too long. Now, she was in the middle of putting the finishing touches on the first layer of the cake when a familiar voice coming from the doorway shook her from her concentration.
“Well, I was starting to think you’d fallen off the face of the Earth, Charlotte.”
Charlotte looked up to see her Aunt Amelia standing in the entrance to the kitchen, clutching her purse in one hand and looking around bewildered for the moment at all of the gear strewn about the kitchen. The bakery was nothing like her kitchen at home, though some of the equipment would have been a little familiar, even if the stand mixer that Charlotte had was big enough for her aunt to lie down inside the bowl.
“Hello, Aunt Amelia.” Charlotte stood up, brushing a stray strand of hair out of her face as she straightened her back with a groan. She’d been bent over this cake for so long that her back ached as she moved away from it into a more natural position, but she had been so lost in her work that she hadn’t noticed the ache building in her spine until now.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, dear. I know you’re busy with work and that cake is absolutely lovely.” She walked ov
er, admiring the details on the icing in front of her, tiny flowers and swirls piped into intricate designs all made of sugar and butter. It was hard work, but Charlotte enjoyed every moment of it.
“Thank you. This one isn’t supposed to be delivered until tomorrow, but I figured I’d get a head start on it while I had some free time since things aren’t busy up front right now. I’m guessing Riley let you into the back?” It struck Charlotte that this was her aunt’s first visit to the bakery since she had opened it up. Amelia had been here when they’d chosen the location for the bakery, but she hadn’t seen any of the renovations and she certainly hadn’t been in since their grand opening. It was actually nice to see familiar face and one that she considered family walk through the door, almost as good as being able to show this place to her own parents.
Her aunt nodded as she looked over the design of the cake before she turned to face her niece.
“I just wanted to check in on you since I haven’t seen you in a few weeks. I’ve been worried about you.” She could see the expression of motherly concern written across the older woman’s face, and she felt bad about making her aunt worry.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Amelia. Things have just been so busy here and I didn’t want to put all of my worries onto the two of you. There’s just been a lot going on.” Charlotte looked away, picking up the piping bag full of icing she had left on the table when her aunt had come in, but her attention went straight back to her aunt’s face with the next reply.
“You mean you didn’t want to come back and tell your uncle that he had been right about Preston all along?”
Sweet Seduction: A Billionaire Virgin Romance Page 5
