by Hazel Parker
The Client
Hazel Parker
Table of Contents
The Client
Preview of Her First, Her Boss
Author Bio
The Client © 2018 Hazel Parker
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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The Client
What do you do when your ex hires you to hook him up?
“Corbin, what do you want from me?” Arabella Wilder stands frozen with regret. Taking in his hazel eyes and self-satisfied smile, her stomach clenches at the many nights his soft lips kissed hers.
“I want love.” He smiles his I’m-a-good-guy-who-happens-to-be-hot smile. “I mean, I want you to help me find love.”
Her heart races. Her cheeks flush. She remembers vividly his hands running along her arms, her waist, her back.
Four years ago on their anniversary, they were celebrating in a hotel all night long, when they realize they didn’t have protection, and took a gamble.
One month later, Arabella made some rash decisions: hiding a secret and dumping Corbin.
Fast forward, now her client, she’s face to face with the unbelievably hot Corbin Goode and all of the feelings for him she suppressed resurfaced.
Arabella is ready for love.
Does Corbin really want her to match him with someone else?
What happens when she tells Corbin about her secret?
Will he forgive her? A second chance?
Or will it be the second tragic end to their love story?
The Client
Arabella Wilder has a new client.
She makes her way to the new brewery in downtown Princeton. After spending the morning in her four-story townhouse with her three-year-old son and au pair from Barcelona, she’s ready to get back to work. She loves her baby boy, but she’s ready to jump back into her passion: setting up two strangers who will hopefully fall in love and live happily ever after.
The suburban winter is gray and chilly. Arabella looks up at the charcoal clouds fast approaching Palmer Square where the brewery and her new client awaits her. She smooths out her long blond hair that she hasn’t cut since she got pregnant four years ago.
Pushing open the glass double doors of the brewery, Arabella glimpses her reflection in the window and feels confident.
Arabella walks down the long gray hallway where a popular song, loud voices, and cool air greet her. She tells the young brunette hostess that she’s meeting Adam Smith. The hostess grabs a menu and gestures for Arabella to follow her through the narrow walkway between the packed tables to a booth in the back where a built man in a baseball cap sits hunched over a laptop.
Her new client.
Through his navy-blue blazer and white-collared shirt, she can tell from his build that he works out regularly. Maybe he’s a local heir ready for a commitment after looking for love in all the wrong places? Maybe he’s a Wall Street wizard ready for Mrs. Right after dating the entire New York City model scene? Arabella’s heart races at the challenge of matching a wealthy playboy with the love of his life. He just needs an ambitious, smart woman who won’t let him walk all over her.
“Mr. Smith?” Arabella looks at the top of the navy-blue baseball cap with a cream-colored letter G on it. She wonders what the G stands for: a university? A boarding school? A private hedge-fund?
She’s sure that Adam Smith isn’t his name. Her billionaire clients prefer to remain anonymous until they meet her and vet her. They want to avoid any leakage to the press that they’ve resorted to matchmaking to find the one.
As the cream G disappears and a slightly tanned face appears, Arabella inhales sharply. Those hazel eyes that turn green in the sun, those two dimples, that self-satisfied smile. She is very familiar with this face.
“Corbin Goode!” She’s frozen, standing beside the table.
Corbin thanks the hostess who quickly retreats back to her post. Arabella remains standing beside the booth. The shock of seeing Corbin after avoiding him for four years leaves her frozen. Her blood runs cold. Her heart pounds in her ears.
While she didn’t outright ghost him, she did break up with him rather abruptly during an unseasonably cold February. She remembers her breath forming white clouds as she breathed out the frigid air trying to gather the courage to break up with the most eligible bachelor in New York City. Looking back, she wonders if she made the right decision. Standing before him now, she can’t help but second guess her younger self.
“Arabella Wilder.” He grins, and a stream of memories flood her.
She remembers the twinkle he got in his eyes just before his soft lips kissed hers for the first time on a snowy winter night five years ago beneath a street light in the Meatpacking District. He hailed a black cab for her. She stood in the open door of the car with her face tilted up to the unbelievably gorgeous man she had just danced the night away with. She remembers the surprisingly smoothness of his hands as he caressed her face. She remembers his scent: a mixture of men’s cologne, that new-clothes fragrance, and masculinity. Her body warms at the memories of their year of making love. Her body misses his.
She wants to stay, and she wants to go.
She wants to hug him, and she wants to run from him.
She stands frozen with indecision and growing regret.
Why did she break up with him?
“What’re you doing here?” She feels foolish staring at him. She feels guilty about breaking up with him after an amazing year of fun and passion. She feels like she owes him an explanation, but she can’t possibly tell him the truth.
“What are you drinking?” He smiles his I’m-a-good-guy-who-happens-to-be-hot smile.
“I’m not. I’m meeting a client.” She looks at his hand gesturing for her to have a seat in the booth beside him. A memory of him sitting in a booth in a steakhouse in midtown flashes through her mind. He was wearing a tuxedo. She was wearing a long white dress. They were attending the fundraiser of a scholarship foundation to help underprivileged students attend college. He pulled her into his arms in the booth and kissed her neck. Goosebumps run up her arms at the thought of his lips on her skin. She hopes he doesn’t notice.
“What’re you drinking?” He motions to the server who appears instantly.
“I’m not.” She shifts from one high heel to the other, trying to decide how to bow out gracefully.
“Two vodka tonics.” He says to the young brunette dressed in a tight black t-shirt and black pants. She nods and hurries off through the crowd.
“I’m not drinking. I’m working.” Arabella glances around the bar and back at his amused hazel eyes at her discomfort.
“Please, have a seat.” His smile takes on a hint of shyness. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
Arabella looks at his open palm and remembers the feel of his hand on her face when he kissed her tenderly so many days and nights. She remembers the warmth of his hands caressing her cheek, her neck, he
r back. She breathes deeply to focus on the moment.
She cannot flirt or fall back into the pattern of fun and sex with Corbin again.
Never mind that he was the best sex she ever had.
Never mind that he’s the father of her son.
He can’t find out.
Ever.
After everything he’s been through she promised herself that she would never become one of those gold-digging women, so she disappeared.
“Corbin,” she slides into the cool leather booth and leaves ample space between them. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” He takes the cool glasses of vodka tonic from the server. “Hungry?”
“No, thanks.” Arabella reaches for the straw and stirs the ice. The sound of the ice clinking against the glass keeps her in the moment.
She has a lifetime of things to say to Corbin. But, she swore that she’d never entangle him in her complicated life. A life that became complicated four years ago when they ran out of condoms the winter night of their one-year anniversary. It was snowing. The fireplace in his place was blazing. The scent of a fire and his sweat intoxicated her. They decided to keep having sex. She was on birth control. He was clean. She succumbed to the false belief that since she had never gotten pregnant before, she probably wouldn’t get pregnant the one time they went bare. She sighs at her faulty logic.
Corbin sends the server off through the after-work crowd of suits, collared shirts, and expensive leather. A popular song comes on and a group of college girls at the end of the bar squeal, throw their hands up, and begin to dance. Arabella smiles at the scene. A few years ago, she and her best friends—Sasha, Nora, and Audrey—would have been that group of girls dancing and singing and drinking at the bar. Now, her good friends are scattered throughout the world building their careers. They text and call each other to keep in touch.
“I don’t have time for a date.”
“I’m not asking you out.”
His amused eyes take in her sleeveless form-fitting cream-colored dress that stops just above her knees. Arabella likes to wear shades of white when meeting her clients to send subliminal messages of matrimony to them. She’s not sure of the science behind her technique, but all of her clients have gotten married. She doesn’t want to mess with process even if it is a tad superstitious.
“I’m meeting my client.” She sits up straight and scans the bar. She wants to believe that one of the men at the bar will disengage from his conversation and walk over to their booth and introduce himself as Adam Smith. She sips her drink. The cool liquid calms her nerves. She wishes she had the courage to face him.
“I’m your client.” Corbin’s signature self-assured grin spreads across his face. Arabella’s heart warms to his smile.
“I don’t have time for games, Corbin. What do you want?” She doesn’t want to be cruel. But she doesn’t want to prolong the uncomfortable meeting. Awkward for her at least; perhaps not for him.
She sips her drink again. She wants to run the glass across her forehead to calm herself down, but she doesn’t want to mess up her makeup. She hasn’t put on a full face in years. All those years she spent at home with her baby boy it just wasn’t a priority.
She starts to smile at the thought of her son running to the door with open arms when she gets home. She looks into Corbin’s eyes and sees him watching her, intently. She suppresses the smile.
“What do I want? Is Arabella Wilder really asking me that question?”
She blushes at the acknowledgment of the irony of the question. She remembers sitting beside Corbin in a crowded, trendy beer garden. She remembers leaning towards him to be heard over the happy hour crowd. She remembers his thigh muscle tensing against hers when she said that she couldn’t date him anymore because she needed to get serious about her life. She remembers the range of emotions that flashed across his face: shock, confusion, sadness. Corbin wore an unfamiliar smile. It was hurt and embarrassed and resentful.
It was the resentment that upset her the most.
He was the most happy-go-lucky guy she had ever dated. She didn’t want to cause him any acrimonious feelings. She reached to touch his days-old beard. He leaned back from her hand as if her touch would sting him. She felt a sharp pain in her gut at the reality that she wouldn’t be able to touch him whenever or wherever she wanted to again. She could barely watch him struggle with all of the feelings dancing across his face that she was causing him with her words.
Then he smiled. It was a self-protective smile. A smile that said, I-won’t-let-you-hurt-me or I’m-already-over-you. She wanted to explore his feelings, but she knew that she already lost that right the moment she told him it was over.
“What do you want from me?” Arabella quickly regrets her choice of words.
This isn’t going well at all. She doesn’t want to open up Pandora’s Box and unleash the range of feelings that she managed to stuff down into the recesses of her mind the day she walked away from Corbin T. Goode. He’s from such a good family. His family is in oil and gas. They all went to elite New England boarding schools and Ivy League colleges.
Corbin is great—on paper. Her parents’ dream union. But, four years ago Arabella wasn’t ready for the alignment of old-moneyed families. She wasn’t ready for a shotgun wedding. Not that her parents would’ve need a shotgun to get Corbin to marry her. Not that she would know. She didn’t think he was ready. She never asked.
Arabella cried for months. She buried her love for him in the busy work of preparing to give birth to her baby. Their baby—in secret.
She’s afraid of what he’ll say to her if he finds out the truth. Will he be angry? Sad? Cruel or vindictive?
“I want love.” Corbin’s words suck the air out of her lungs.
She blinks rapidly. Is he asking her to love him again?
Now, after four years have passed?
Is she ready to let herself love him again?
“I mean, I want you to help me find love.” He studies her face beneath the bright lights in the busy bar. The air conditioner blows wisps of blond hair into her eyes. Her manicured fingers brush the hair away.
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the best.”
Her heart skips at the compliment. She’s at a loss of words. This never happens to her. She usually guides her clients through a list of questions. But, sitting across from the only man she ever truly loved, she is speechless.
“How?”
“I’ve seen your show.” They laugh together.
She’s embarrassed at the small amount of fame she acquired from her cable matchmaking show. She’s known as the Billionaire Matchmaker. The title is a play on her own billionaire-heiress status. Her family made its fortune in international shipping. She’s lucky enough to pursue the life she wants.
In college, she started fixing up high profile-friends with career-minded college friends. Then her reputation and business took off. After graduation, she got a cable TV show where she fixed up billionaires with career women who could hold their own in the presence of ambitious men.
“Remember that guy who took his best friend on his date? She was so pissed off.” He laughs.
Arabella shakes her head. She remembers that client. He was in his late twenties, balding, and refused to go anywhere without his assistant—a tall, slender model. Even though Arabella asked her client if he was in a relationship with his assistant, he always denied it. But, after the first date where he brought the model to dinner and dancing with the lawyer-with-a-heart-of-gold, Arabella cut her ties with him.
“Whatever happened to that guy?” Corbin sips his vodka tonic. He rests his forearms on the cherry wood table and looks straight into Arabella’s eyes.
“I have no idea.”
“You didn’t follow up with him?” His eyebrows raise.
“After I cut ties, I don’t look back.” She instantly regrets her choice of words.
“Don’t I know it.” He leans back in the booth, folds h
is arms across his muscular chest, and examines her. “Arabella, why did you break up with me?” He asks softly.
She glances over his navy-blue blazer with gold buttons, white collared shirt, and khaki pants. At first glance, he looks like every other preppy guy who went to the prestigious Chevalier Boarding School in Princeton. If her parents had known she was dating Corbin T. Goode, they would have met with his parents and compelled him to marry her when they found out that she was pregnant. But, she refused to tell them who the father of her son was. Tragically, her parents died in an airplane accident nine months after her son was born.
Arabella remembers getting the call and then reading in the papers the morning after: that her dad’s beloved red-and-white Piper Saratoga IV single engine with the tail modified to a “T” disappeared off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard Airport. She remembers the gut-wrenching grief she cried as she held her baby. She knew in her heart that her parents would not survive. The news covered the planes disappearance: first, the Federal Aviation Administration reported that her dad’s plane failed to arrive in Bridgeport, Connecticut; then, the U.S. Coast Guard launched their search and rescue operation; two days later, fragments of the Piper Saratoga IV were found in bits and pieces on the Atlantic Ocean floor. Arabella cried for days. Her only reason to get out of bed was her son. She lived for him. She fed him, bathed him, soothed him. He saved her. Without her baby boy, she would’ve never got through it.
Aware that she’s been staring at Corbin for a beat too long, Arabella clears her throat. She thinks about telling him the truth—the whole truth. But she dismisses that thought quickly.
She can’t. Can she?
She wonders if telling him the whole truth is a good idea. She doesn’t want to hurt him anymore. She wants to help him find love. Even if it’s not with her. She takes a sip of her drink stalling. Corbin continues to watch her in the silent speculation of a guarded, yet hopeful, man.
