Chapter Six

Troy

I hated Mondays. They were completely and utterly useless to my life. I was either not mentally capable of getting into the swing of things, or still hungover from a weekend of complete debauchery. Either way, it was a running unsaid rule in my office that I didn’t allow Monday meetings unless they were strictly okayed by me in enough advance notice that I knew what I was walking into when I got into work. Thankfully there was nothing scheduled that morning, but that didn’t keep my eyes on the ball.

I hadn’t really even had a crazy weekend. In fact, on the scale of things it was extremely lame. I had landed zero women when I was out, feeling off of my game for some reason. Then on Sunday I was so out of it that I laid around on the couch in my boxers all day watching whatever sports recaps there were and falling asleep in the middle of the day. At first, I thought maybe I was getting sick, but I knew that I hadn’t caught anything; I was just off of my game, bigtime. I tried to fix it on Sunday night but by the time I was done showering, all I wanted to do was go to bed.

Whether it was Monday or not, I had to get through the day, and I needed to try to make it somewhat worthwhile. I took in a deep breath and hauled myself up in the chair. I opened my laptop and pulled up my email, knowing there was more than enough in there to keep me busy long into the day. I opened the first one and typed back a response, feeling confident in my abilities after pressing the send button. However, after the second and third ones I found that I was unable to concentrate in any way.

I sat back in my chair again and ran my hands up and down my face, groaning. I reached up and slammed my laptop shut, figuring that this was completely pointless; there was no way that I was going to be able to focus. I turned my chair back and forth, looking up at the ceiling and wondering how long I had been sitting there. I looked at my watch, and moaned, realizing that I had only been sitting there for about, oh, twenty minutes at the most. At this pace I was going to go crazy before I got any work done.

Mondays were normally distracting, yes, but this was worse than it had ever been. I knew exactly what the problem was, but I was having a really hard time admitting it to myself. My mind was completely somewhere else, thinking about someone else. Melinda, to be exact. There hadn’t been a woman in my life that kept my mind occupied like that, ever. I had never sat in this chair, unable to do my work, because I was so obsessed with a woman. I didn’t know what was happening to me, and even worse than that, I didn’t dislike it in any way, except maybe my inability to concentrate.

I leaned back and just let her take over my mind for a minute, figuring that if I let her in, then maybe I would be able to get it out of my system. Running across my mind was Melinda’s beautiful smile, her hair shimmering in the lights, and her absolutely perfect fair skin. Her curves were to die for, and I imagined myself wrapping my hands around her tiny waist. She was so incredibly sexy and so amazingly confident that any man would be a fool to not immediately fall for her. Just the way she looked at me, biting her bottom lip, made my dick twitch.

That night we had talked, laughed, joked, and flirted longer than I had with any woman for a long time. I actually, and this blew my mind too, talked a little about myself, my company, and my personal time away from work. That was always a huge no, no in my game, but I just couldn’t seem to help myself. Then, at the end of the night, she turned me down. Harshly, I might add. That alone would have been enough for me to walk away and forget about any other woman on this planet, possibly even disliking her intensely for that final jibe at me being only number two. But not Melinda. It was like she had crawled into my head and just wouldn’t let go. It was driving me absolutely crazy.

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, letting my visions of her float away. I knew they wouldn’t be gone for long, and when they came back I would be right where I was ten minutes before. The reality of the situation was, I needed to figure out how to see her, how to get her to notice me again. I knew that I had left an impression with her. The question was, how did I grab ahold of that and push it right where I wanted it to go? I needed a plan, something I wasn’t used to having, but this girl was different than any other.

Just as I started to run things through my mind, there was a knock at the door and my intercom went off at the same time. I shook my head, trying to pull myself out of my own thoughts and back to the office. What was that lecture I’d just given my staff the other day about being at the top of their games?

“Mr. Wallace, your vice president is here,” she said.

“Thank you,” I replied.

I walked over to the door, pulling it open. Chance was standing there leaning against the doorframe, waiting for me. He stood up and smiled, shaking my hand.

“Chance,” I said. “Please, come in. I didn’t realize that you were back from Cincinnati already.”

“Yeah, I flew in this morning,” he said, sitting down.

I had known Chance since college, and when my best friend and I had started this business, we’d known we would need to get to a point where we could offer Chance the vice president position. As soon as our company hit the stock market, we went right to him. He was working as an upper executive for a technology company, but we were able to pull him away really fast. He had been there ever since, rolling with the punches, helping us through the trenches, all the way up to right now, when he’d come back from a long conference weekend in Ohio. He had actually gone in my place because I hated stuff like that so much.

I walked over and sat down behind my desk, pulling my hands behind my head. Even in those minutes sitting with Chase, I was thinking about Melinda. I shook the thoughts from my mind and leaned in.

“How was the conference?”

“Boring as hell,” he laughed. “But I made some good contacts. I brought back these three clients. I need you to okay these workups. They’re a bit of a stretch on what we usually do, but I couldn’t say no.”

“How was your weekend?”

“Fucking terrible,” I chuckled. “I didn’t really do anything except that party on Thursday that Cartucci threw.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard something about that. Some new hotshot Junior VP was put into place,” he said. “I heard she’s smokin’, and a force to be reckoned with.”

“You could say that,” I muttered.

“You know her?”

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Just met her briefly, that’s all.”

“Well, maybe we should do the same. I could use a hot chick to bust my balls,” he laughed.

She had definitely busted mine, I thought, mind drifting again to her final punch before sashaying away.

I looked down at the files, went through each one and signed, then handed them back. Chance and I talked a bit more and then he left for lunch. It was nice having a distraction, but I wasn’t going to lie, Chance was kind of an asshole, and that coming from me was a huge statement. I loved his business tactics, but we had never been that close, and he had a bit of an issue keeping his hands to himself with the ladies.

When the door was shut, I looked down and opened my computer back up. Now that I was remembering how Chance handled things, and how the world of the boys’ club was looking at this girl, I realized a more eased approach might be more appropriate. I didn’t want her to think I was just another sleaze ball trying to get into her pants. No, I needed to play this cool and collected, easing my way in with little gestures to show her I was actually serious about getting to know her.

I started typing, taking different notes of the ideas I had floating around in my mind. OCD? Yeah. But that was how my brain worked. As I read the different meaning behind the gestures I was thinking, I ended up crossing out all but one. That one happened to be the most generic and most boring choice of them all. I didn’t know if an uncreative gesture was going to do it for this girl, but then I thought about the way she viewed her work ethics, the way her dress was sexy but modest at the same time, and how she kept her sarcasm just on the edge. This girl screamed traditional in every sense of the word. That had honestly never before seemed appealing.

I made several different phone calls before settling on the perfect thing. I knew that this was going to be the right move, and started to feel really good about the choice I had made. It had never occurred to me that I might actually be good at this whole romancing the woman thing, but it was weirdly enjoyable. Or maybe this girl had gotten in deeper than I realized at the beginning. When I was done, I leaned back in my chair and stared at the screen. This was absolutely perfect.

If I had read Melinda right during our time at the bar, she would be completely blown away by this gesture. She wasn’t expecting me to lower myself to chasing after her, so when she got her gift, she would be shocked and touched by it. I could tell this girl wanted someone to romance her, someone to pull her from her zombified view of the world and open her eyes to the fact that there was much more out there than just slaving away at the office. She didn’t know but somewhere in her mind she was begging for a man to treat her like she was a queen, a man who would distract her from the climb she was constantly struggling with. Hopefully, I was just that man.

I closed my computer and glanced up at my secretary, who was looking at her cellphone and smiling. I knew by the look on her face that it a man on the other line. I smiled and chuckled to myself, realizing that I had overthought this whole scenario. Women, when it came down to it, no matter how tough, how abrasive, or how determined, were all the same in the end. They all wanted that love, that romance, and to feel completely and utterly wanted. Melinda might be a hard nut to crack, but I knew that if I played at that deep-down desire long enough, she just might open up enough for me to swoop right in.

At the end of the day, she was just a woman, and I was just a man. Strip away our titles, our luxuries, and our friends, and we were two people on the same side. I just needed to get her to see that with her own eyes.