by K. L. Kreig
As if she’s just noticing the clothes sticking to me, along with the beads of water running down my forehead, she teases me. “Make another getaway, did you?”
I laugh loudly. “Along those lines.”
She unlocks her door. I follow. Her condo is identical to mine, except the layout is flip-flopped with the spacious kitchen and open main living area on the left and two bedrooms down the hallway to the right. She has a bay of floor-to-ceiling windows that mirror mine, except I have a corner space, so my windows span two sides.
“When are you going to learn not to shit where you eat?” She shakes her head in mocking disapproval. “You’re going to bang the wrong woman and she’s going to know where you live and go all stalker on your ass. Not smart, Connelly. Not smart at all.”
I shrug. “I’m a slow learner.” I drop the bags on the counter and start helping her unload groceries.
Ella and I have been neighbors, and friends, for the last year. When I first saw her, of course I wanted to do her, badly. I even considered breaking my “one-and-done” rule because this woman is something incredible.
She’s beautiful, both inside and out. Petite, at most, five foot three. Tight, fit body. Average tits, but they’re all natural and I’d rather have a smaller, malleable handful than rock-hard fake ones any day. She’s smart, witty, and successful. You can’t have a three-thousand-square-foot condo in downtown Chicago that overlooks Navy Pier if you’re not doing something right with your career.
But the more I got to know her, the more I discovered there’s just something extraordinary about her heart that I don’t want to ruin. Like we all do, she tucks a part of herself away that should only be shared with that one special person when he comes along. I’m not that guy, so I don’t want to take that away from whoever he is.
I sincerely like Ella and if we cross that sometimes-wavering line, I will lose her as a friend. I don’t want that. Outside of my brothers, she’s one of the few genuine people in my life who’s not after something of mine, whether it be my contacts, my power, my money, or riding my coattails until they find something or someone better. When you are a young, attractive, wealthy, single man, trust me…you have a lot of sharks circling your boat, hungry for what you have, trying to take a bite, no matter how small. Many have tried before in innumerable ways.
“When are you going to settle down?” she asks after putting the last of the fresh vegetables in the crisper.
“When are you?” I retort.
“You know the answer to that.” At thirty-three, Ella is three years older than me. I know she’s been married and divorced, but other than that, she refuses to talk further about that relationship or any relationship for that matter. “Besides, we’re talking about you, now. Not me.”
My lips curl. “This is a tired conversation.” And one we have all too often. Ella thinks by now I should be settling down, having babies, and building a six-thousand-square-foot house by the lake. I wholeheartedly disagree with her hypocrisy.
“Well, someone needs to make you see you have more to give of yourself than just your dick. As impressive as I’m sure it is.”
My smile grows wide. “Impressive, huh? Want a demonstration?” I joke, wagging my eyebrows up and down.
Laughing, she answers, “As tantalizing as that offer is, it has to be a hard pass for me, cowboy.”
“Hmmm. Your loss.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She winks playfully.
This is what I love about hanging out with Ella. We flirt, we banter, we play around and it butts right up to the edge of sinful, but that’s where it stops. As much as I don’t want to ruin what we have, neither does she.
“How’s that big acquisition you’re working on?”
“Almost sewn up, actually. Did you secure that big marketing campaign?”
“Sure did,” she replies with a shit-eating grin on her face. The small digital ad agency that Ella co-owns was going against a big-time, well-known large firm for complete redesign of a multimedia marketing campaign for a Fortune 50 firm. It’s a campaign worth over ten million dollars. Annually. She’s been working on it for months and it’s been an all-out dogfight.
“Did you have to sell your soul?”
Her perfectly shaped brows rise. “Pretty damn close. I had to give up my first-born.”
“I didn’t think you were going to have kids.”
“Exactly,” she winks.
I spy a box that has brightly colored cartoons on the front and after leaning over to inspect it, I see it’s a design tablet.
“Take up drawing?”
“It’s for my niece. She loves photography and drawing. Has a great eye for that stuff.” She offers me a beer. I take it, popping off the top with a hiss. “I need to get it mailed.”
“You have a niece?” I’ve known Ella for almost a year and this is the most I’ve gotten out of her about family.
“What are we? Girlfriends?”
“Well…yeah. I thought so.” I laugh.
She chuckles. “Well, we’re not, hot stuff. You talk about your conquests. I berate you. You ineffectively defend your manwhore actions and then we veg and watch a movie or stuff our faces with your sinful home cooking.”
True. We’ve never talked about the secrets we hide under the surface. Yet I find I want to know more now that she’s opened that door. “So, a sister or brother?”
“Sister.” I get the evil eye like she knows what’s coming next.
“She as beautiful as you?”
“Oh, no you don’t, Conn. Don’t even ask about my sister.”
“Why? Isn’t she my type?” I take a long pull of my hops and barley. “Is she a butter face?”
“A butter face? What the hell is a butter face?”
“You know, everything’s smokin’, but her face.”
“Oh my God. No, she’s not a butter face, you fucking asshole. She’s stunning. And smart. Exactly why she’s not your type.”
“Ouch, that hurts,” I say, pointing my bottle at her. “And I’ll have you know the women I date are smart. Some of them anyway.”
“Date?” she asks mockingly, dragging out the word unnecessarily.
I shrug, wondering why that causes a twinge inside.
“See? That right there is why you are going to stay away from my sister. Now, have you eaten?”
“No. You offering?” I ask, finishing off my drink.
She smirks. “No. I thought maybe you would offer this time. You’re a better cook than I am.”
“True that.” We both laugh. One of the very many lessons forced on me by Barb Colloway, my fan-fucking-tastic mother. “Okay. Give me twenty minutes to shower and change then pop on over. I’ll leave the door open. Fish okay?”
“Sounds perfect. I’ll whip up some rice.”
“You mean that bagged crap?”
“Uh…is there any other kind?” Her nose wrinkles in confusion. Ella eats processed food like it’s about to be banned. It should be—it’s poison in a bottle or box or can or whatever else they put it into.
“Yes. The good fucking kind.”
“Fine. Then I’ll bring some wine.”
“Now you’re talking. You have excellent taste in wine. See you in a few.”
“Okay,” she calls after me. I walk to the front door and let myself out.
* * *
As I slip inside my condo, strip off my clothes, and step under the hot spray a few minutes later, I think about Ella’s question regarding the acquisition. I let my mind drift to the business meeting I have in two days with the owner of Steele Executive Recruiting—SER for short—which is the executive recruiting firm I’ve been doggedly pursuing for the last several months.
At first, it was just mild interest on my part. I’d heard it was for sale and I almost dismissed the acquisition after our first meeting—until I found out who “he” was, that is. From then on, I have actively pursued the company, continuing to up the stakes whenever Carl Steele has gotten cold feet, which
has been several times.
With one hundred fifty employees, SER is a relatively small organization that works with small- to mid-level-sized clients. They are highly successful and have a fantastic reputation in the industry yet don’t place even a third of the executives my company does. So it’s not like they are a huge competitor of mine I need to gobble up. And they could merge with a number of other smaller firms or simply dissolve; a competitor would easily scoop up their best and brightest.
No, I don’t need Steele Executive Recruiting to round out my business plan or fill a competitive hole. I don’t need them for technology or their talent or their paltry 5.7 million dollars in annual net revenue to add to my own bottom line. There’s one reason and one reason only I want to acquire them, adding them to Wynn Consulting’s portfolio, the human resources consulting company I run as president and CEO.
Nora fucking Cantres.
Do you know how many Nora Cantreses there are in the US? Surprisingly, too fucking many. I could have pulled a Gray and hired a PI to find her like he did with Livia. I could have, but my youth at first and, as I grew older, my pride prevented me from doing it. Even though I haven’t hired a professional to find her, I’ve always kept my ear to the ground and my eyes peeled for her, nonetheless.
And this is the thing about my line of work: human resources. It’s a small and incestuous community. And the subspecialties within HR? Even smaller. So a few months ago when I started hearing rumors of a “star” executive recruiter who worked for SER by the name of Nora Cantres, my interest was piqued. And when everything about her fit my Nora to the proverbial “T,” I knew this wasn’t coincidence. I had finally found her.
Some men would do anything to scourge the woman who callously trampled their fragile masculine ego from their memory banks without a backward glance. Especially one who whispered promises of love and devotion yet coldheartedly broke them weeks later.
But I’m not like other men.
I still think nonstop about the woman who devastated me eleven years ago. Do her eyes still sparkle like jewels when she laughs? Does her voice still drop low and throaty when she’s turned on? Will her moans of ecstasy still dive right into my chest cavity, squeezing my heart like a gentle fist?
I hear her whispers, her whimpers, her moans, her laugh, her very heartbeat. I feel the silk of her hair under the pads of my fingers, the kiss of her breath on my cheek, the brush of her lips against mine. I imagine her sweet taste lingering on my taste buds.
Her memory has forever echoed inside of me since the last day I saw her. Yet as much as it’s haunted me, there was a part of me that always held fast to that echo anyway. When it would fade, I’d sit quietly and listen until I could hear it again. I couldn’t force myself to let it go, let the ties sever. If I let her memory fade, it felt like none of it was real and I had to believe it was. It was real to me anyway. Now I have to find out if it was real to her.
It’s time for Nora and me to meet up again, but this time, we’re all grown up and in very different places in our lives. And now, I’m pulling the strings. I am going to reel her in and tie those fucking strings in so many goddamn knots she won’t know where to begin to free herself. With any luck, she’ll just give up and give in.
I’ve gotta hand it to my mom about now. Because she wanted “worldly,” well-rounded boys, my brothers and I were in just about everything under the sun, including Boy Scouts, and I became very fucking proficient at tying knots, even earning a Knot Master patch.
Tying a physical knot isn’t much different than tying an invisible one. You simply take the tools you have to work with and bend them to your will. You play, you twist, you curve, you angle, you loop, and you pull tight. You pull so damn tight, you know whatever you’ve bound won’t come undone without a big fucking razor-sharp Ginsu.
So while I started out tying physical knots in my youth, I mastered the invisible ones in adulthood. Now I’m the motherfucking king of loops and turns and angles, bending everything and anything to my will, my benefit.
And I’ve already expertly started weaving a combination of them to get what I want. I started the day I heard her name. And at last, two days from now, I will come face-to-face with Nora Cantres for the first time in eleven years. It’s a meeting I have requested, required actually. On top of Carl Steele’s demands, I have a few of my own before I ink this acquisition, which I hope will be after this next meeting.
The thing is…I just give a shit about one of my demands.
Just one.
When I said earlier Ella was the only woman I could possibly imagine myself with, that’s not entirely true. She’s the only one since Nora, but from the time I met Nora when she transferred to my high school in our junior year, she called to me on every level. Nora is the one woman I have had both an unholy physical attraction to and a bone-deep emotional, almost spiritual, connection with.
So I make no fucking apologies for what most people would consider extreme, maybe even unethical, measures to get to the woman who’s always had my balls firmly in her grasp. She’s managed to avoid me for more than a decade, but she can’t run anymore. I’ve made damn sure of that.
I realize that, while in just two days I’ll come face-to-face with the only woman I have ever loved outside of my mother, I know nothing about her now or how much she’s changed. Over a decade is a long time. People mature, evolve, and change whether we want them to or not. I know I have. As I wipe off the steam on the bathroom mirror from my hot shower and look at the reflection staring back at me, I have to wonder if Nora will like the different man she will see standing before her.
Not likely, I muse. Hell, even I don’t like the unemotional, aloof man I’ve turned into most days.
I may not know a lot of things, but I know now that I’ve found her again, I will not rest until I own Nora Cantres, thoroughly and completely.
And once I possess her, I’ll have to decide what I’m going to do with her. Because along with the deep-seated love that I’ve never been able to squash, I also have a whole fucking boatload of anger and resentment being thrown around in that noxious sea. I’m just not sure which emotion will bubble to the surface once I see her again.
Anyone will tell you I’m not a vengeful person. I’m not exactly a graceful loser, yet I don’t retaliate maliciously either. However, the need I have to hurt her so it’s a permanent scar on her psyche that will never heal, the same way she did to me, keeps trumping everything else I feel for her. And with eleven years to gather steam, right now I don’t know if I can stop acting on the revenge brewing inside me, waiting to be unleashed, waiting to blow.
Or if I even want to.
Chapter 2
Nora
“I really wish you’d reconsider the offer, Nora.”
“No. And I’m done talking about it, Uncle Carl.”
He sighs heavily, taking a seat in the empty chair across from my desk. With dark circles under his eyes, he looks more tired than usual and his color is off. I make a mental note to ask him about his health when he’s done grilling me for the hundredth time. He’s almost the only family I have left. I can’t lose him, too.
“Nora, it’s a good offer. You’ll have stability, build a good nest egg for the future and I want that for you. I want you to take the offer.”
He is correct. The offer is generous. Since I live and breathe the executive recruiting world, I’m intimately familiar with generous compensation packages. There is no doubt this falls into that category. While the base salary is the same as I’m making now, my bonus potential is substantial, more than doubling what my uncle pays. Plus, the profit-sharing percentage rivals that of a senior-level executive and all of my relocation expenses will be liberally covered, including an unheard of housing allowance to cover the sale of my existing home.
It’s a dream offer, actually. One I should take and quite frankly, one I would encourage any of my clients to accept. In fact, I was only one of six employees of Steele Executive Recruiting who ev
en received formal, long-term employment offers from the company trying to purchase SER, so I realize I should be jumping all over it.
But I can’t, because it’s also too good to be true. I am not an executive within SER. I am a recruiter, plain and simple. Just one of many. I may be a damn good one, but there’s no vice president title behind my name, so there’s no reason I should have even been on anyone’s radar screen to begin with, let alone be given a compensation package worth well over a quarter million dollars annually.
“I would have to move, uproot my life here. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to leave you.”
Another catch in the agreement. I would be required to move to Chicago. There could be worse places to live I suppose, but moving is only a small part of the reason I can’t agree to this.
The offer letter is signed by Camille Hayes, GRASCO Holdings’ Vice President of Human Resources and of course, his name isn’t anywhere on the document, but his stamp is all over it. I could smell it a mile away the minute I opened the fancy ivory linen envelope it was couriered in and reviewed the terms of the agreement.
Wynn Consulting is in a different league from SER. They’re the big fish in the HR consulting world. Our little company is but a drop in their bucket, so why Connelly Colloway has any interest in buying my uncle’s company may be a mystery to many, but it’s not to me. That was made even more apparent by the ridiculous offer sitting on the corner of my desk.
So, no. I am not, and will not, take this offer. While it can set me up financially, it will destroy me personally. I need to run far and fast in the complete opposite direction from the sinfully handsome, womanizing CEO of Wynn Consulting. I need to stay away from Connelly Colloway for so many reasons, not the least of which is if he ever finds out what I’ve done…well, I just can’t go there.
