Aiden’s mouth quirked in a grin as he watched her fidget before him. There was an innocence about her that drew him in and made him want to do really dirty things to her. He loved making good girls show their bad side. It was one of his favourite past times. And new girls, well, they were the perfect game for an experienced man such as himself.
Slowly, the girl’s hands stilled and she looked up to meet his gaze. Aiden had thought that the rear view of her was nice to look at, but from front on, she was probably the most stunning woman he’d ever laid eyes on. And when her deep blue eyes met his green ones, for the first time in his life, he became locked in a gaze, unable to make his brain connect with his mouth so he could speak. Then, feeling a slight stirring down below, he realised his inability to speak was caused by a lack of blood flow to his brain – it was being directed elsewhere.
The girl’s cheeks flushed a bright pink as she opened her mouth to say something –anything to explain what she was doing in the CEO’s office. But she found herself unable to speak as well.
Something happened when their eyes met that she couldn’t explain, and all she could do was stare back and wonder about the man who stood in front of her–who he was.
She found herself wanting to know everything about him. And not just the basic things that anyone could find out. She wanted to know the things he never told anyone–the things he didn’t even admit to himself. She wanted to know who he was and not just the man he presented to the world–who, from the look of him, was much older and world-weary than her own twenty-three years of close family and private schooling.
Despite first impressions, when she looked a little closer, there was a boyish quality in his masculine features. His dark hair was a little messy on top, like he’d styled it. He spent the morning raking his fingers through it in thought. And he had a line that ran down his right cheek that appeared to either be a scar or possibly from years of smiling on that one side of his mouth. It was a quirk, and she noticed the crease deepen as his mouth twitched. He was enjoying this silent exchange of nothing more than pheromones.
Continuing her silent perusal of what she thought was his character, her eyes gazed over him as a whole, taking in his height, his stature and his innate presence. She imagined that to most, he appeared tough, intimidating. But to her, he was intriguing–the epitome of a man, broad, tall and strong–his hands looked rough–powerful. She sensed that he was once a cop of some sort as he had a great air of control. A gentle shiver ran down her spine as she imagined those hands sliding over her skin toward more…intimate areas.
Neither knew how long they stood there looking at each other. Something strange was happening, something neither had experienced before. For both, it was incredibly disconcerting, as it was in that moment that both their notions of attraction and their ability to control it, were thrown out the window and replaced with this…tension.
“Aiden,” Terry Donovan boomed suddenly, slapping him on the back in greeting. “I was just about to call you in. I see you two have already met.”
Aiden cleared his throat, snapping out of whatever trance he’d seemed to slip into, and shook his head. “Actually, no. I just arrived,” he said, keeping his eyes on the girl as he stepped toward her and held out his hand.
Slipping her small hand into his, she tried her best not to get caught in his gaze again, but struggled to maintain her composure when a warmth seemed to spread from his hand to hers, reaching over her body like a soft warm blanket. She wanted to stay there. To curl up inside it and feel everything it promised.
“Aiden, I’d like you to meet Chloe, my daughter,” Terry said, by way of introduction. “And Chloe, this is Aiden Price. My head of security.”
Suddenly, Aiden released her hand and stepped back, the word ‘daughter’ echoing in his mind. “It’s nice to meet you, Chloe,” he said, nodding at her courteously, as he squashed the desire he was feeling toward her down into a box he kept in his mind labelled, ‘Don’t be an Idiot’.
Chapter Three
PRESENT, 14 days before the job
Chloe
“THAT DIDN’T take very long,” Leah, my friend and current flatmate, says, in his slightly mixed accent as I get in the car.
“He wouldn’t speak to me,” I tell him flatly, feeling like absolute shit as I reach over and buckle my seatbelt.
“What do you mean he wouldn’t speak to you?”
“Exactly that. I walked in there, he saw me, and he told me to get out.”
“You want me to talk to him?”
I glance over at Leah. My eyes take in his black jeans with the chain on the side, his fitted black tank and the tattoos that run down his rather large arms. I meet his cat-like eyes, which look very serious as he looks back at me.
“No. You going in there will just make things even worse.”
“Jesus, girly. When you break a guy’s heart, you break it good.”
“I didn’t break his heart,” I insist, folding my arms across my chest petulantly. “He was a player. He would have moved on with the next pretty girl that came his way the moment his bed grew cold.”
“Then why is he so pissed? It doesn’t make sense that he blames you for what he thinks your dad did.”
“Of course he does. Just drive, Leah. I want to go home.”
He reaches forward and starts the car, slowly pulling his way onto the street when the road is clear.
For a while, we drive in silence, listening to the latest hits as they blast through the radio. Then he reaches out and shuts it off.
“What are we going to do now? Don’t we need him for this?”
“Yeah, we need him.”
“Then what’s your next brilliant plan? Going to hire him directly didn’t work and we have ten days, tops. We need him in and we need him now.”
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose as my head begins to hurt with all the information it holds. “I know,” I snap, before taking a deep breath so I can speak calmly. “We need to move on to plan B.”
“What’s plan B?”
“His father owned a bar that he inherited a while back. He runs it with his sister. His company runs the security, so it’s where he spends most of his nights if he isn’t working on some other job.”
“Fuck you’re a stalker. How long have you been watching him for?”
“The whole bloody time,” I say, reaching out to turn the music back on before I look out the window, my face turned away from him, signalling that I’m done with the conversation.
***
The moment we get in the door of our small two bedroom flat, I flop down on the couch and pull my heels off my feet. A warmth spreads through my toes as I wriggle them up and down, working the circulation back through. I’m not used to heels anymore. I don’t tend to wear them a lot as my current life is built around an obsession that doesn’t involve an office and suits as often as it involves backyard dealings and information gathering in places unseen. Today, however, I wore the heels for Aiden. I remember how much he loved me in them, back when things were different and there was hope in my world.
I pause, staring off into the distance as my mind replays the way he used to look at me, like he wanted to devour me, over and over in my mind. I replay the touches and the stolen moments of temptation that slowly sent us catapulting into each other’s hearts for a moment so brief and so fierce that it marked our souls for eternity. Damned to be forever apart. Damned to never find lasting peace in each other’s arms. Our time was beautiful but it was gone way too fast.
A shiver runs down my spine and I realise that I’ve closed my eyes. I jerk them open, slightly embarrassed but glad that when I open them, Leah is no longer in front of me.
“So why didn’t we just approach him at his club in the first place?” Leah asks from the open fridge door where he’s probably looking for beer.
I hear the clanking of full glass bottles as he stands and shuts the door. He heads over to me, holding one out to me before he sits on the seat across from
me. Gladly, I accept and twist off the top, flipping it like a coin so it lands in the ashtray that lives in the centre of the beat up coffee table.
Lifting the bottle to my lips, I take a long thirsty pull before I finally answer his question. “Because it’s in a shit area. I didn’t really want to go in there.”
“An area shittier than this? I see, not a good place for a nice looking girl like you, huh?”
I take another drink and reach up, pulling my hair out of the business-like bun I’d twisted it up in. “I’m not nice, Leah. You know that more than anyone.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t look nice. It’s how you get away with half the shit you pull. You’ve got this whole butter-doesn’t-melt-in-your-mouth vibe going on.”
I look at Leah, taking in his dark spiked hair, and his narrow black eyes. With a Korean mother and a Tongan father, he has a uniquely exotic look that is further aided by the massive tribal tattoo that runs up his muscled arm, across his chest, and up his neck. In a nutshell, Leah looks like a badass. I met him three years ago, not long before my life turned to total shit. At first, he hated me–found me a threat in a life he felt a precarious hold on. But after hearing my side of things, I guess he took pity on me, because he’s been my saviour, my friend, and my partner in dubious activities ever since.
“Well Leah, luckily for us, you look like you’d kill someone if they crossed you in a dark alley.”
He laughs, leaning forward to place his now empty bottle on the table between us. “And why is that lucky this time?” he asks, raising his brows as he sits back and folds his thick arms across his chest.
I grin, pulling one side of my mouth up higher than the other, as I lean forward to meet his eyes so he can see how serious I am.
“How do you feel about hitting girls?”
“Are you fucking serious? No. No way.” He shakes his head and places his foot on the coffee table as his arms fold across his chest.
“Come on, Leah. Just think about every time I’ve ever pissed you off.”
“Girly, no. This is not cool at all. I know you think you’re badass and all that, but if I hit you, I could fucking kill you and you dyin’ kind of fucks with the plan.”
“Look at it this way–if you don’t do it, then I’ll pick a fight with some other nasty looking guy in there, and they won’t be as careful as you will. And you know the stakes here.”
“Whatever it takes,” he recites with an eye roll, knowing it like a war chant.
I nod in agreement. “Whatever it takes,” I repeat.
His mouth twists downward, and he shakes his head. “Fuck you’re a bitch sometimes,” he says, his head still shaking as he stands up and storms into his room, reaching his arm out and gripping the edge of the door, slamming it shut with the full force of his strong body. The hard clap of wood resounds through the room, causing me to flinch slightly. The glasses in the cupboards quake and clink together unhappily and the whiteboard drops with a thud to the floor. The pen rolls in a dramatic arc until it stills in the middle of the floor and everything goes quiet.
“That means you’ll do it, right?” I yell after him, smiling to myself because I know he will. He’s as invested in this as I am.
Chapter Four
APRIL, three years ago
BEING THE boss’ daughter meant that Chloe felt she needed to work twice as hard as anyone else to prove that she deserved the role she had been given within the company. She’d worked hard at university to make sure she came to her employment with the best qualifications possible. Despite that, a lot of other employees didn’t see Chloe in a good light. They looked at her and saw a spoiled rich kid who was being groomed to take over when her ageing father retired. They didn’t know what the real story was. They didn’t know Chloe at all. To them, she represented a glass ceiling and she knew she was never going to fit.
This saw Chloe spending many hours in her office, working alone, and she continued to do that, long after everyone else had gone home for the day. It was something she did so often that Aiden had recently found himself sending his security staff home and staying behind as well, telling himself it had nothing to do with that weird electricity that filled the air between them. It was simply to make sure she wasn’t the only person leaving the inner city building in the middle of the night. He told himself that he was staying for her safety. After all, it was his job to protect the company and Chloe was the future of it.
“Will you be much longer?” Aiden asked from her open door, startling her from her work. It was almost eleven and as much as he didn’t mind keeping an eye on her, he did have other commitments that required his attention.
Chloe let out a gasp of surprise, placing her hand on her chest as if it would still the quickened beat of her heart. “I thought I was the only one here.”
“You’re never alone here, Chloe. Even when you think you are, there are eyes everywhere,” Aiden said, his gaze moving up to the small unobtrusive cameras that were located in two corners of her office.
“They don’t bother me so much. I’m used to being watched,” she said, lifting a pen and making a short note on the file that was laying open to the side of her laptop.
Aiden pressed his lips together in a slight smile, causing the line on his right side to fold and curve as he allowed his eyes to take in the sight of the woman who sat before him. She always seemed so absorbed in her work, and in the three months she’d been working at the Donovan Corporation, much to Chloe’s own disappointment, she and Aiden had only very few conversations.
Aiden had been trying to keep his distance, for he didn’t trust himself not to act on the feelings she stirred within him. But seeing the way the other staff seemed to ostracise her, he found himself reaching out to her more and more.
That itself was a risk for him. Never had he come across a woman who intrigued him as much as she did. There was something in her eyes, something behind that smile, and the impeccable manners and strict work ethic that just screamed to be let out. It was as if he could hear a little voice inside her that was crying out and saying she was trapped. It was strange, and most of the time he thought it was in his head. But then he’d catch her daydreaming or she’d make a comment such as the one she did now and he’d start to wonder who she really was. Or, at least who she wanted to be, because he had a feeling that this wasn’t her chosen life at all.
“Tell me, Chloe. What are you doing here?” Aiden asked, watching her as she glanced up and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear as confusion creased her brow.
“Isn’t that obvious?” she laughed uneasily. “I’m working.”
“Yes. But why are you working so hard to be a part of this deal in particular?” he asked, nodding toward the open file in front of her. Being who he was, he knew what everyone was working on at any given time. Everything in the company was tracked and logged and no employee’s activities went undocumented.
“I need to prove to my father that I can do it.”
Aiden stepped closer, lowering his voice as he reached her desk. “You don’t need to prove anything. When your father retires, you could be the one who runs this place right?”
“That would see our profit margin drop considerably. I’m sure the board would have me removed pretty fast if the investors weren’t able to line their pockets so thoroughly.”
“Fuck the investors. Do you really think all of this paperwork leads directly from the deal to the bank? This is all one huge maze, filled with deals and schemes that break things up and take them away. The intricacies are beyond my expertise, but I see it happening. I hear the words ‘shell’ and ‘offshore’, and I see investments in things that are guaranteed to lose.”
Her eyes dropped as the grip on her pen faltered, and she used both hands to steady it, then place it down gently. She swallowed. “Are you calling my father a crook?” she asked in a whisper, glancing up at him slightly before once again concentrating on her pen.
Aiden smiled, tucking his hands into his pocket
s as he watched her cheeks flame and felt that this girl had found herself way out of her depth in her position.
“We’re all crooks here, Chloe. There isn’t a legitimate bone in any of our bodies. You don’t become as powerful as your father without brokering some shady business deals. It’s what the team of lawyers is for.”
Her head snapped up and she met Aiden’s eyes with a look of defiance. “Don’t you think I know that? I’ve been watching him since I was small. I know exactly what type of man my father is.”
“And you’re fine with becoming just like him? You’re happy looking in the mirror and seeing him look back at you?”
Her gaze faltered and she hesitated in her answer. “Why are you being this way?”
“Because I think you’re better than this place, Chloe. I think you’re made of better stuff than your father.”
“I thought you liked my father.”
“I do. He’s been very good to me. But I’m not blind, I see his flaws.”
“I’m not without flaw, Aiden. I assure you,” she laughed, although it was a hollow sound with very little humour in it at all.
“I don’t see it, Chloe. In my eyes, you’re pretty damn perfect.”
Suddenly, everything stilled and her eyes dropped again, a blush making its way up her neck, heating her cheeks. “You don’t even know me,” she whispered.
“No. But I’d like to.”
“Haven’t you been warned away like everyone else?” she asked, forcing her eyes up to his again.
He nodded slowly.
“Don’t you care?”
He shook his head, keeping his eyes on hers.
Looking at him, she pulled at her lip. “You should.”
When Chloe had started at the firm, Terry Donovan had been sure to take him aside and remind him that his daughter was not to be touched by anyone. He had asked Aiden to keep an eye on her to minimise what he called ‘distractions’, and also made it very clear that anyone who messed with his daughter would face his wrath and never work in any sector that he had contacts inside again. Considering he had connections in almost every sector there was, it meant he’d effectively ruin their life.
Partners (Fire & Lies - One) Page 2
