“And there they are,” I say, putting my hand on Carlo’s chest, “just in time for our meeting.”
“Meeting?” he smirks, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Right,” I say, standing up a little bit straighter, “meeting. A professional meeting.”
They guys come up to the bar and shift into two of the high stools, and I look from them over to Carlo.
This afternoon is going to be fun. Good, clean fun.
Mark
The first thing you guys will need is shoes.”
Scarlett introduced us to her friend and employee Carlo - a nice guy her age, clearly a loyal employee and good friend. He has a nice face and a good body, and he will look good in a suit. I am already thinking we should offer him a general manager position at the alley should we take it over. He’s also personable and obviously smart, so hell, depending on his qualifications we might even want to offer him a position at our firm. I could definitely see him negotiating and closing deals.
Carlo has a good handshake and I want to tell him to send me his resume, but I don’t want to look like I am trying to poach Scarlett’s employee right in front of her before we’ve even agreed on a deal going forward.
Scarlett brings Elliot and me over to the shoe rental area. There’s no one manning it, so she hops over, shimmying over the wooden counter. She lands gracefully on the other side and smiles.
“So,” she says, “what size do you guys need?”
“We’re gonna have to get someone to work this area, don’t you think Elliot?” I say. “We can’t have Scarlett running around having so much responsibility. She should be running things from a little bit of a distance. Delegate so she won’t have so much stress.”
“Absolutely,” Mark says, nodding.
We give Scarlett our sizes and she grabs two pairs of bowling shoes for us and a pair for herself.
As she does it, she looks so confident and self-assured. She is so used to having to run things, and she doesn’t show any weakness. She makes it look easy. I didn’t realize how hard she really has it, because she hasn’t made herself look weak or like someone who can’t handle everything. She doesn’t want people feeling bad for her, and I admire her for that.
She hops back up onto the counter, and I watch her as her round, plump ass lands there.
“Let me help you,” I say, taking her hips in my hands and guiding her as she swings her legs over. She smiles at me and puts an arm around my neck, allowing me to lift her onto the ground.
Feeling her in my arms is so natural, and as I put her down, she rests one hand on my chest as she looks from me to Elliot.
“We have a game to play, boys,” she says, leading us over to the lanes.
As she walks ahead of us, her hips sway and move temptingly and beautifully, making me think of all the things we did last night and more. She is wearing a pair of dark skinny jeans and a black and white checkered flannel button-down, with her long hair flowing down her back. She makes sexy look so damn easy.
I glance over at Elliot and I can tell he is thinking the same damn thing.
“So Mark,” she says as we get to the last lane, “I know you haven’t bowled before. So what do you think the first thing you need to do is?”
“Uh,” I say, running my hands on the top of my head, “you go down to the end of the lane and kick over all the pins?”
“Really?” she says, laughing. “That’s really what you think?”
“That would make everything a whole hell of a lot easier,” I offer. “I guess I just like the idea of getting right to the point. I don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
“So you think enjoying a nice, fun game with your friends is a waste of time?” she asks sweetly and with a little sarcasm in her voice.
“No,” I say, “but I’m just thinking of all the other things I’d rather be doing with you right now.”
Our eyes lock and she smiles softly, and all I want to do is scoop her up and take her to my hotel.
“Elliot?” she says, her eyes sliding over to him, “since Mark here thinks he’s too good, do you know what the first thing to do is?”
“Yes,” he says, “the first thing is you need to select your ball.”
“Correct,” she says, “you have to grab a ball, and don’t rush it too much at first. If you don’t know what weight you want to play with, hold a few, see how they feel. You want it to be heavy enough to have force behind it when you throw it down the lane, but you don’t want it to be too heavy to handle.”
I follow Scarlett over to the area where the bowling balls are set up, and she deftly hands me one.
“Here,” she says, “try this one. I think this will be a good weight for you.”
“It’s perfect,” I say, taking the ball, smiling down at her.
She looks so easy and natural here. Elliot grabs a ball for himself, showing a bit more comfort with it than I possess, and we make our way back over to the lane.
“Now you have to put on your bowling shoes,” Scarlett says, “and I will enter our names for our game.”
“I remember coming here a few times back in high school,” Elliot says, lacing up his bowling shoes. “I would never have imagined that I’d be in a position to buy it years later.”
Scarlett looks over at us and gives us a small, melancholy smile.
I don’t know if Mark realizes it, but I feel Scarlett’s disappointment in his words, and her inner conflict when she hears them. I’m sure she never realized she would be in a position to have to make a tough choice about the thing she loves most in this world.
“Okay,” she sighs, shaking it off, “let’s get to it.”
I was never all that great at sports. In high school, instead of playing football like my brother did, I was heading up my own rock band, playing bass and singing. I originally wanted to be a musician, and when I went to college, I took a course in finance because I wanted to be in control of my own career - manage my own finances and make my own decisions, without much outside influence. I’d have advisors, that much I knew, but I wanted to be confident in my own decisions with my money without having to blindly follow others’ advice. It turned out that I was pretty good with the numbers aspect of my course of study, and the music took a backseat when I realized I had a new passion.
I’d always had an entrepreneurial, independent spirit, that’s what made me want to control my own finances as a musician in the first place, but I discovered that finance was more exciting than music.
“Forgive me for not knowing the rules of the game,” I say to Scarlett, “but what exactly happens first?”
“Of course you have to know what happens first,” she says, “because how are you going to learn anything new?”
She waves us over and hoists her ball in front of her as the pins are lowered by a machine down at the end of the lane.
“Watch and learn. For now, we aren’t going to get into any technical details. Just remember that when you release the ball, you should keep your wrist strong and straight. You should imagine that you are shaking hands with someone. Don’t allow your wrist to rotate or become soft. But you have to have a little ease behind it at the same time.”
Scarlett lowers her chin as she takes two steps forward and releases the ball down the lane.
We watch as it spins gracefully, glides down the lane with a little curve at the end, and hits the pins just off center, sending them all crashing down.
“That’s a strike,” she says, turning to us.
“Not bad,” Mark says. “How many perfect games have you thrown?”
“Oh god, not many,” she laughs. “Only two.”
“That’s a perfect hundred points, right?” I say.
“That’s cute, pal,” Elliot says.
“What?” I ask, smirking. I know very well that when you add up all the points a perfect game is more than a hundred points, but I like to play around sometimes. Plus, it’s cute to see Scarlett get all sassy and smirky.
“You
get extra points for throwing strikes and spares,” Scarlett says, “so a perfect game is actually three hundred points.”
“I knew that,” I say, checking the talley board above the lane.
“Sure, sure you did,” she mocks me sweetly. “You’re up, hot stuff.”
Positioning my ball against my chest like Scarlett did, I make my way to the lane, putting the tips of my toes against the line marking the start of the lane.
“So Scarlett,” I say, knowing there’s no use in me trying to actually hit any pins, “what would you be doing if you weren’t here?”
“I’d probably be helping a kid get their arm unstuck from a claw machine,” she says, laughing softly. “True story, this actually happened to me this morning.”
“I think he means what would you be doing if you weren’t in charge of this place,” Elliot chimes in. “You clearly love it here, but where else could you see yourself?”
“Ah,” she says, “trying to soften the blow about me having to give this place up, I see.”
“Not at all,” I offer, “I’m just curious. You are clearly very smart and dedicated. What else have you wanted to explore? What did you study in college?”
“Well,” she says, perching on the edge of a chair behind the lane, “at first I studied business administration, because I thought it would help me out here. Neither of my parents had a background in business. They kind of just figured it out as they went, which kind of sounds crazy when I think about it now. So I thought I should have knowledge of business administration should I take over some day. I never really thought about continuing on for an MBA or anything, I just wanted the undergrad courses. Contracts, some human resource classes, pretty basic finance, things like that. I even took a few accounting classes because I thought I’d want to be able to prepare the tax returns for my parents. I ended up hiring someone to do that.”
“I’m sure you could do it yourself,” I say.
“I guess I could, but it just ended up being too much work for me to do all alone. This was back when my parents were still here, remember, and even then it was too much work for me. So we ended up hiring an accountant.”
“You said you studied business administration at first,” Mark says, sitting down next to her, “so what did you end up ultimately studying?”
“I ended up making a change half-way through my Junior year,” she says, “when I got the crazy idea in my head that I wanted to study French. At that point the business was kind of running on autopilot. It wasn’t doing amazing, but it was giving my parents a very stable middle-class life. I always imagined myself taking over the business, or at least being there by their side for many, many more years, but then I realized I never really reflected on what else might be possible. I wanted to follow in their footsteps, but then I started to think...what if I didn’t?”
“French,” Elliot says, “what made you decide on French?”
Scarlett’s eyes light up as she looks between me and Elliot.
“It was the most foreign thing I could imagine,” she says. “It represents something so different from here, you know? I could just imagine myself being far away from everything when I happened upon it. I went to this assembly for incoming students, even though I was a junior, because it was meant to assist you in finding a major. I just kept my eyes open to every possibility. I found the foreign language department’s booth, and I was just drawn to French. It was kind of random, but it felt natural at the same time.”
“So can you speak to us in French?” Elliot says.
“Oh, no,” she laughs, “I am extremely rusty. I ended up switching back to business after one semester with French. I guess my pragmatic streak just took over my idealist streak.”
“Did you parents support you when you showed an interest in French?” I ask.
“Oh,” she says, looking down at her hands, “they did, yes. But then my dad got sick, and they definitely continued to support me, but…”
She keeps looking down at her hands, her pretty hair falling in waves around her face as her head starts hanging a little lower. I feel my heart clench up when I see that she’s thinking of her dad’s passing, and then, to add even more pain and heartache to this perfect woman’s life, the untimely passing of her mom, also.
“It’s okay, Scarlett,” Elliot says, putting his hand on her back, “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she says with a dim smile, looking up to us. “I don’t talk about them a lot, but it’s okay. Mark, isn’t it your turn?”
“Yes it is,” I say, stepping back over to the lane. I position the ball in front of my chest, narrowing my eyes on the pins at the end of the lane. I remember what Scarlett told me. Hold steady, be firm, stay focused. That’s easy. That’s what I do for a living. Hooking the ball back, I release it steadily and it races down the lane, reaching the end quickly, and send all the pins except one crashing into the air.
“Nice, Mark!” Scarlett says, coming over to me. She throws her arms around my shoulders and smiles, and I put my hands on her waist, pulling her close to me.
“Scarlett, you are so beautiful,” I say. Her eyes close softly and then open, her eyes sparkling and glittering amidst the chaos of crashing pins.
Scarlett bites her lip softly and clears her throat, putting her hands on my chest as she exhales shakily.
“Good job,” she says softly.
“Merci,” I reply.
She laughs, pushing away from me gently, shaking her head.
“I didn’t know you spoke French,” she says.
“I don’t,” I say. “I only know that one word.”
She walks away from me and goes over to sit next to Elliot again, and he smiles at me as he puts his arm around her. She leans into his chest and they quickly disentangle.
And that’s when I realize this is a relationship. I haven’t been in a relationship in a long time. I don’t like them. They get messy. There’s too many feelings. I haven’t been able to achieve what I’ve built with Elliot by spending my weekends with a girlfriend doing boyfriend duty, making brunch plans and going out to movies and dinners, and taking long walks on the beach.
But that’s all I want to do with Scarlett. I want to take her out to dinner and a movie. I want to get into a popcorn fight with her and Elliot and have people tell us to keep it down because they’re trying to watch the movie, and I want to take her to the beach and just sit on the sand and watch her dig her toes in, and then I want to take her to our beach house and cuddle with her between me and Elliot.
I want a relationship with her. And I know she wants me and Elliot.
I know she wants us both.
I take a deep breath, and I feel like I’m about to dive into a big, vast ocean. And it feels good.
Elliot
What have you got there?”
Mark comes up next to me and puts his hands on my desk, peering over my shoulder at the screen of my laptop.
We are set up on the second floor of our new office space, in a corner by the window that I’ve claimed for my eventual office to be built out.
“First draft of the contact to present to Scarlett,” I say. “I already checked in with the main office. They’re pleased with our progress. They think we will be able to close by the end of the week. Then all that will be left is the attorneys double checking everything, vetting her finances, and then the thing will be done.”
“I wasn’t aware she agreed yet,” he says, crossing his arms in front of him. “Unless you’ve been taking meetings without me.”
“You’re right, she hasn’t agreed yet. But we have to come prepared with our terms. I thought we could bring this draft to dinner tonight.”
“Sounds fine to me,” Mark says, “but I want to review everything first.”
“Of course,” I reply. “I will email everything to you. Now what should we do for Scarlett tonight?”
“I was thinking dinner and a movie,” Mark says. “But first we will show her the contract. I want to get
all of this business bullshit out of the way so we can focus on her.”
“I agree,” I nod, “and I have added a clause in the contract that will allow us to continue working with her after the deal is closed. If and when it’s closed, that is.”
The clause is simple, but it’s a good idea. I know Scarlett and Mark will both agree with it, as will our investors. Simply put, it is a provision that keeps Scarlett on as a consultant for a six-month period after closing, with the option to renew her consultancy every six months for the next five years. It’s a way to keep her afloat with a very large but fair fee to her written into the agreement, and it will be an absolute boon for us as we navigate the waters of a new market and territory, one we can definitely use her continued support in.
Mark peers over my shoulder as I scroll to the page that contains the clause.
“That’s good,” he says. “That’s really good.”
“I just want to make sure she is taken care of, even after the deal goes through,” I reply. “I know it was a little awkward at the alley when we were bowling with her. It’s not a secret how we feel about her, but I think we both agree that it’s best to keep things discreet for the time being. And then once the deal goes through and she is working with us as a consultant, we can maybe transition into being more open with her.”
“With our relationship,” he says, with gravity he usually doesn’t speak with.
“I agree,” I say, “it is a relationship. My feelings for her have grown so much, just in the short time I’ve known her. I have to say when I spoke to her on the phone before meeting her, she sounded like a sweet girl. I even thought one of us might be interested in her, but I blocked out the possibility of anything happening with her on account of our professional relationship….”
“But now?” Mark says.
“Now it’s different. I want to see what can happen with her.”
Double Wood_An MFM Billionaire Romance Page 9
