by Sienna Ciles
Now, at first, my initial attitude toward their seemingly new viewpoint regarding my carefree, unattached personal lifestyle was a somewhat rebellious one. I originally became a little bit upset about the fact that they seemed to be, out of the fucking blue, totally against my lifestyle—after nearly a goddamned decade of them never having shit to say about it. At first, I didn’t quite understand what their problem was and I’d acted out in a rebellious manner.
But, finally, my father sat me down and explained to me that eventually I was going to need to carry on our company’s legacy and that meant settling down with a woman of depth and character—a woman I could completely and thoroughly trust—and getting married and continuing the Westbrooke name and company legacy.
Before I met Holly, I’d never really understood exactly what my parents had meant. But ever since meeting her, I had become convinced that she and I could have something amazing. We could have something I never got a chance to have with backstabbing Summer.
Chapter 12
Holly
“Joana, I don’t know what to do,” I said with a sigh of exasperation. I had been stressing out over things ever since I’d talked to Alex at Central Park.
“What’s wrong?” Joana asked, looking at me in concern with those big green eyes of hers.
She was wearing one of her bright yellow sundresses and the brilliant red roses in the flowery pattern really brought out the fiery red color of her thick, wavy hair.
“Jo, I think I’m falling in love with Alex,” I confessed as I plopped down on her sofa and folded my arms across my chest.
“Okay, this sounds like the kind of convo we’re gonna need a drink to finish,” she said half-teasingly as she opened one of her kitchen cupboards and took out two small glasses.
Honestly, Joana never really needed a valid reason to drink. In fact, I was pretty sure she was only saying that to try and convince me that I needed a drink so that she wouldn’t have to drink alone.
She came over and sat down next to me on her sofa, placing the small glasses down on the coffee table in front of us. Bottle in hand, she filled them with clear liquor, added a few drops of cranberry juice, and then set the liquor bottle down right beside them.
“Thanks,” I said as she handed me my freshly-made drink.
“So, now, what’s all this about Richy Rich Long Schlong, then?” she asked jokingly.
“Jo, seriously!” I said as I laughed, “you’re gonna make me spill this goddamn drink if you don’t stop it!”
“Stop what?” she said with a straight-laced expression, bringing her glass up to her lips and taking a long, slow sip.
“Jo, come on! I’m serious. I really need to talk to you about this,” I pleaded, taking another swig of my own strong drink.
“Okay, okay, all jokes aside, what’s going on?”
“Well, I really am falling for Alex, Jo, and I don’t know what to do about it,” I explained. “He just—he just seems so different from what I was expecting, you know?”
“Well, what the hell were you expecting?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I guess, I assumed that we were just gonna be—well, you know, maybe friends with benefits or something,” I replied. “I mean, at first I had just thought it was gonna be like a one-night fling. But then he tracked me down and wanted to see me again. And, he’s absolutely amazing in bed, of course, but he’s also really cool and easy to talk to. He’s sweet, romantic, and extremely thoughtful. It’s like everything he does, he does with me in mind. I never felt like this when I was with Danny.”
“Okay, go on,” Jo said as she refilled her glass.
“Well, he did the most incredible thing. Last week, I told him that Danny was my ex, and he confided in me how important Danny’s contract was to his company. Then, last night, he actually confessed his feelings for me and told me that he was terminating his endorsement deal with Danny. This is the first time a man has ever put me before his career.”
I sighed and shook my head, feeling slightly woozy from the way my thoughts were spinning around inside my mind.
“Holly, this is a good thing! Shit, it’s actually a great thing,” Jo said excitedly. “Listen to yourself. You’re stressing over this like it’s a bad thing!”
“Jo, it is a bad thing—at least to me. I’m moving, remember? I feel so guilty now, because he made this decision to put me and my feelings before his own billion-dollar company, but I’m leaving.”
I felt like a total ass. To be completely honest, I hadn’t actually expected Alex to make his decision about his prospective endorsement deal with Danny based on the information I had given him. No man had ever put me before his business or career and it certainly hadn’t ever crossed my mind that Alex Westbrooke, a rich, sophisticated, and incredibly handsome playboy, president of his family’s billion-dollar company, would ever be the one to finally do so.
I sucked in my breath and shook my head in a useless attempt to try and clear it.
“Holly, you don’t have to leave. You do know that, right?” Jo pointed out, looking directly into my face as she spoke.
“But I’ve already given my termination notice to the school, and they’ve already found another teacher to fill my position. There’s no way I could go back and just tell them that I changed my mind, and ask them to fire that person just so they can give me my job back,” I explained. I ran my hand over my face to emphasize how stressed out I was feeling over this situation.
Joana took the small glass from my hand, refilled my drink, and handed it back to me.
“Seems like you need this more than I do,” she said half-joking and half-serious.
She looked over at me and winked, allowing a slight smile to form at the corners of her mouth. It was just enough to send me into a fit of giggles. We both started laughing and I rolled my eyes at her.
“Shit, Jo, you always make me laugh—even at the most inappropriate times!” I said, punching her playfully in the arm.
“What the hell are you talking about? It’s never an inappropriate time for a good hard… laugh,” she teased, as she poured herself yet another drink.
“Anyway, what do you think I should I do? I mean, I was so gung ho about moving back down to my hometown but now, with everything that has happened…”
“You’re starting to have second thoughts, aren’t you?” Joana said, interrupting me to finish my sentence. She knew me so well that sometimes it was almost creepy.
“Isn’t life crazy that way, though?” I asked. “Here I am, finally giving up on the idea of finding true love here in the city, and then the seemingly perfect man falls right into my lap when I’m not even looking—just when I’ve already decided to leave this place behind and head back home.”
Chapter 13
Alex
“Perfect,” I said, clasping my hands together with a proud nod.
I had just finished turning my large, spacious condo into a romantic, candlelit date-night atmosphere. I wanted tonight to be especially grand because tonight was the night I was planning to ask Holly to make things between us official.
Honestly, I had never felt so pumped about a romantic interlude in my entire life. For the first time, I finally understood what my parents had been trying to relay to me over the past few years. I finally realized what they meant about finding myself a woman with depth and sincerity. Holly was everything I had never had in a woman before, and I was ready to ask her to be mine. Also, I was going to ask her to stay here in New York—and give her a reason to want to stay.
I truly believed that she was everything that Summer had not been. Summer had never shown such adoration and appreciation for the little things that I used to do for her—unlike Holly, who seemed to be impressed and appreciative of even the smallest romantic gestures.
As I finished putting the final finishing touches on the amorous environment, I heard footsteps making their way down the hall outside toward my door. I had purposely left the door unlocked after calling Holly to invi
te her over for dinner.
She had no idea that I had picked out the perfect red rose bouquet and laid out a path of rose petals from the front door all the way to the dining room table. I had also set red and white candles on the table, which was elegantly and flawlessly set up for dinner for two.
There was a bottle of champagne sitting in the middle of the table between the candles and two wine glasses directly in front of the plates. I had dimmed the lights all the way down to the darkest setting without turning them completely off and I’d set the surround sound to a slow, sultry jazz playlist.
As the sound of the stiletto high heels came closer to the front door, I quickly straightened my tie in the front room mirror and ran my right hand through my hair. I then made my way over to the left side of the dinner table and posed in my new blue silk shirt and Armani slacks. I unbuttoned the top two buttons of my top in order to give my look a little bit of extra sex appeal, just before the doorknob turned and the front door opened.
The huge, happy smile on my face immediately turned into a confused look of surprise and shock when my front door opened and the woman who entered was Alicia Mayfield.
“Alicia?”
“Wow!’ she said as she looked around the room. She had a folder in her hand and that’s when I remembered that my father had told me she’d be bringing over some paperwork on a new prospective client this evening after work.
“Uh, Alicia, I—” I began to say but she cut me off before I could finish.
“When you said you needed more romance in your life, you really weren’t kidding, huh?” she exclaimed as she set the folder down on the small end table near the front door and started walking toward me.
She was wearing a tight, mid-calf-length, thin black dress and a pair of black stilettos. Her long blond hair was pulled back away from her face.
“Well, actually—”
“I mean, you really went all-out and I must say—it’s impressive. Very impressive indeed.” Her tone changed into a seductive one on the last part of her statement and her plump, shimmery glossed lips turned up into a provocative grin.
That’s when it hit me. Back when we’d had our little celebratory drink together in my office and I’d been talking about needing some romance in my life, obviously she had thought that I was referring to her. And right now, she was mistakenly assuming that I had laid out this elaborate romantic dinner atmosphere for her. Oh, shit!
I’ve get to get her out of here before Holly gets here. That was all I could think about, yet nothing solid was coming to mind as to what to say or do to somehow make her realize and understand that she mistaken.
My mind was telling me that I had to hurry up and do something—or at the very least say something. But never having been in a situation quite like this before, I honestly didn’t know exactly what to say or do. It all happened so fucking fast and caught me completely off guard. Also, the situation was unfolding at such a fast pace, that my mind wasn’t able to keep up with everything that was currently taking place. What the fuck what was I supposed to do?
While these thoughts were going on in my head, Alicia made her way over to where I was standing. She was saying something but I didn’t hear whatever it was. Just as I was about to open my mouth to try and clear up the misunderstanding, her black dress slid down to the floor and she wrapped her arms around me and pressed her lips against mine.
Chapter 14
Holly
I didn’t know what to expect as I made my way over to Alex’s condo. He had told me that he wanted to have a nice, relaxing dinner and that he was going to prepare the dinner for me himself. I hadn’t thought that rich handsome guys like him even knew how to cook, so of course, my curiosity was piqued by his offer.
I told him that I would be there around eight but that I may end up running just a little bit late because I had a huge stack of homework papers and unit tests that I had to finish grading before I left the house.
My body was still on fire from the last hot, passionate night we’d shared, and I really was looking forward to another.
Alex truly was absolutely amazing in bed and the thought that he may want to get serious with someone like me made my heart just about ready to leap out of my chest! I mean, I knew I was a decent looking woman and I had a pretty good sense of style and a good head on my shoulders, but I was nothing like those stick-figure women in the fashion magazines with their too-perfect-to-be-real huge fake tits, shinier-than-the-sun blond hair, and blemish-free skin. You know, the kind of women that wealthy, handsome men usually wanted.
To be honest, I was still having a hard time believing that someone like Alex could actually be serious about someone like me. Still, the thought that he just might be the real deal made my heart skip a beat and made butterflies start dancing around in my belly. I put an extra skip in my step as I made my way down the long hallway toward his door.
I gave my hair one last flip and licked my lips seductively as I placed my hand on the doorknob and turned it.
“Alex, I’m here!” I said sweetly as I opened the door and stepped inside the front room. What I saw made my jaw hit the fucking floor. My heart sank like a rock.
A blond woman with a perfect Barbie doll body and the longest legs I’ve ever seen was in her sexy little thin bra and panty set had her arms wrapped around my Alex. My Alex. Her black dress was in a heap on the floor below her stiletto-clad feet. Her breasts were up against his chest and her lips were pressed to his.
When the two of them heard me walk in, she quickly turned around to face the front door, and Alex’s mouth dropped open almost as wide as mine had.
It seemed like time slowed down and everything was moving in slow motion. In that quick moment, which couldn’t have been more than just a few seconds, it felt like an eternity. I couldn’t even speak because my mouth refused to move, and I couldn’t even move because my legs refused to budge. I just stood there like an idiot in the doorway, frozen in an awkward silence.
“Who’s that?” the blonde suddenly said, removing her arms from around Alex’s neck.
When she finally spoke, it was like her words broke the awkward silence in the room and my body was instantly snapped back into the reality of the situation. I turned around on my heels and started running as fast as I could back down the long hallway toward the elevator. My eyes were quickly filling with tears and I didn’t want to give either of them the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
“Holly!” Alex called out to me as I reached the elevator and pressed the button, frantically, over and over again. “Holly, wait!”
The elevator door opened and I hurried inside, immediately pressing the “L” button, causing the doors to start closing. I could hear his footsteps coming down the hall. But it was too late. The elevator doors had closed and I already was on my way back down to the lobby.
The tears filled my eyes and overflowed as the elevator dropped down toward the bottom floor. As they ran down my cheeks I sobbed silently, wiping the salty streams with my hands. I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. But the worst part about was that it didn’t make any sense at all to me. Why would he call me and invite me over to dinner just to do something like that?
Maybe that was how rich playboys rolled. Maybe they played games with regular Janes like me. That woman in her underwear looked just like one of those blonde-haired, blue-eyed Barbie doll bimbos that I always saw in the magazines in the check-out aisles. Maybe that really was what he preferred. Maybe I really was just a fling, just something—or someone—to do, to pass the time with until he found what he really wanted.
Who fucking knows. The elevator doors finally opened up on the lobby. I raced out the front door of the high-rise building and ran to my car as fast as I could. When I got to my car, I started it up and sped out of the parking garage. My tears were still falling down my cheeks as I drove down the street toward my apartment.
My cell phone started to ring almost immediately. I didn’t want to check it but my curiosity e
ventually got the best of me. While sitting at a red light, I reached into the outer pocket of my large leather purse and pulled my phone out. Looking at the LCD screen, I saw that it was Alex’s number and I immediately pressed the button to send it to voicemail.
After I got back to my apartment, I speed dialed Joana’s number on video chat. I really needed someone to talk to and she was the only person I trusted right now. Thankfully, she answered the call on the third ring. Joana was always there for me whenever I needed her.
“Hey, girl, what’s up?” she answered cheerfully.
Her face instantly appeared on my LCD screen. She was all dolled up like she was getting ready to go out on the town—again. Sometimes I envied her free-spirited, doesn’t-give-a-fuck-about-anything attitude—especially in times like these.
“Oh, Jo, you’ll never believed what just happened,” I said, holding back my sobs.
“Oh, my God, Holly. Are you crying? What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Jo, he was there with another woman! Alex was with another woman!”
Chapter 15
Alex
“Damn it!” I shouted at my empty apartment.
I had just tried calling Holly’s phone for the umpteenth time and my calls were still going directly to her voicemail. I must have called her at least five times last night after she’d left my condo, and then I’d called her at least another six or seven more times today. I hated talking to answering machines and voicemail prompts, but I didn’t know what else I was going to be able to do since she refused to pick up the goddamned phone and actually talk to me—or at least fucking listen to what I had to say.
