Chapter 7

 

Jason

 

Life had suddenly gotten complicated for me. Anna was more than just some girl I wanted to take to bed as if I was the kind of guy who did that anyway. She was smart, funny, and obviously beautiful. But our age difference weighed heavily on me. Not to mention the business deal with her father that could literally explode my entire life if it fell through.

It was beyond clear to me that I wasn’t going to last long with my promise to stay away from Anna. But perhaps I could white knuckle it through some flirting and kissing until things calmed down with the deal with her father.

Three months. I’d promised to have her working with us for three months, and that was also about the time frame I’d figured to ensure the stability of the new business venture with Cook, Sparser, and Conner Buildings.

Three months.

It was such a small time frame, yet as I drove home from dropping Anna off, three months seemed like an excruciatingly long time. Was it even possible for me to turn her down for that long? I couldn’t imagine how I would be able to do it. If I managed to deny my desire for that long, it would be a remarkable accomplishment.

As I pulled into my driveway, I took my phone out and scrolled through my text messages before going inside. Sure enough, there was one from Kevin.

I’d never be able to refuse that. Good luck man. Let me know if we need to ship you overseas for a few months. LOL

I didn’t bother to respond. I certainly couldn’t go traveling overseas with Clyde at home. This was just a test for me. Work was a priority. Taking care of Clyde was a priority. Anna couldn’t be my priority right now.

I quietly made my way into the house so I wouldn’t wake up Rosie or Clyde, but inevitably Clyde heard me. His tiny feet pitter-pattered down the hall after me as I started to close my bedroom door.

“Daddy, you’re home,” he said sweetly so I wouldn’t close the door.

“I am. Did you have a good day with Rosie?”

“Yes!” he said excitedly as I picked him up and put him on the bed. “We ate alligators.”

“What?”

“We ate alligators at the zoo. It was fun. They chomped down on watermelon.”

“Do you mean you saw alligators?”

Clyde lost interest with my questions and rolled back onto my bed. He pulled the covers back on one side and snuggled under them. He had decided we were sleeping together, and I didn’t mind at all.

“I’m tired, Daddy.”

“Me too. Go to sleep, and I’ll be in bed in a minute,” I said as I kissed his forehead and he wrapped his arms around my neck to hold me there. “I’m just taking a shower. I promise I’ll be in bed in ten minutes. Okay, buddy?”

“Okay,” he said softly as his eyes closed and he let his grip around my neck lessen.

For a minute, I stood there looking down on him and was absolutely amazed that he was mine. Of course, he was Elizabeth’s son as well, yet she had moved on with her life. She’d never been the sort of girl that I thought would want to be married and living in the suburbs. I still remembered how surprised I was when she agreed to marry me. My desire to live a stable life grew as we had Clyde, but Elizabeth started to feel trapped.

I firmly believe she loved me and Clyde. I just think her wanderlust was too strong, and she was miserable not being able to fly where she wanted and travel the world. The reality of being a mother was too much for her. I blamed her for a while, but I wouldn’t want her to be tortured by a life she didn’t love.

Life was hard for me as I adjusted to being a full-time father, but I loved it. I loved filling my weekends with swimming lessons and playground visits. I absolutely couldn’t imagine not having Clyde around. My life was richer because he was in it, and that was all that mattered to me.

When I finally crawled into bed, the exhaustion from the night overwhelmed me, and I fell asleep quickly. Clyde and I had a weekend of fun planned, and I needed all the rest I could get.

By morning, Clyde was jumping on me to wake me up. His little feet thrusting into my ribs was the most painful, yet loving wake-up call in the world. I woke up enough to grab him right out of the air and pull him on top of me.

“What are you doing, monkey.” I laughed.

“It’s time to go sailing. I remember Dad. We are going on the boat today.”

“That’s right. Did you have fun doing that last weekend?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, let’s go see if Rosie is up. I’m sure she is tired from running after you all week long.”

Clyde held my hand as we walked out to the kitchen where I heard Rosie moving around and cooking something. As we rounded the corner, I saw she had made us an omelet and was in the middle of filling a cooler for us to take on the sailboat.

“I’ve made peanut butter and jelly, plus some fun extras,” she said as she zipped the cooler.

“Thank you so much. You don’t have to stay. I know your family misses you, so please head home. Thank you again for coming over last night.”

“No problem. You know I’d do anything for you guys.”

“I promise things will calm down soon.”

“I know, soon this little man is going to be in a regular school,” Rosie said as she squeezed Clyde’s cheeks. “You’ll get to play with your friends all day long and not just part of the day. Won’t that be so much fun?”

“Yes. I can’t wait to be in kindergarten.”

“Me too.” I laughed at his excitement. “Okay, really. Take off. Spend some time with your family. I’m going to make sure and include something extra for you this month. You really are a lifesaver.”

“Mr. Hartley, you are already paying me plenty. You don’t need to add anything extra,” Rosie protested.

“Get going,” I said as I showed her the door.

“I’m going, I’m going. You boys enjoy your weekend.”

“You too,” I said as I held the door open.

“Wait,” Clyde yelled as he ran toward Rosie and gave her a gigantic hug. “I see you after the weekend.”

Rosie hugged Clyde for a minute and then hurried off to her car so she could go home. Clyde and I stayed in the doorway and waved to her until I smelled something on the stove burning and had to close the door and hurry over.

“That stinks,” Clyde said.

“I think this is not good.” I laughed as I held up the black bacon in the pan. “We don’t need bacon anyways.”

“Yeah, we don’t need it.”

We sat down together and shared our omelet before heading out to the water for our sailing lesson. I’d wanted to learn to sail for years and finally just paid for private lessons so Clyde could come with me. He was a natural on the water and really did fantastic at listening and staying where he was supposed to, but of course, I had a hi-tech life jacket on him at all times as well.

Our day flew by as we got to the boat and did an hour of lessons and then another two hours of practicing what I’d learned. The sky was picturesque blue without a cloud to be seen, and we soaked in the calmness of the water as we sailed around the lake.

“You two look like you were meant to be sailors,” Paul, our instructor said.

“I’m going to be a businessman,” Clyde announced, just to clarify that he didn’t want to be a sailor.

“You can be anything you want to be, buddy,” I said as I pulled him onto my lap.

We ate our lunch while we floated around the water, and Paul even let us go over our allotted time. It was a perfect day, one that would have been fun to share with someone like Clyde’s mother. She would have loved the adventure of learning to sail.

Most of the time I wasn’t lonely, but every now and then I missed that family interaction that we used to have—the fun of laughing with someone else while you are enjoying a day together. I wasn’t about to bring random women around Clyde, though, so I hadn’t had the opportunity to share a day like this with anyone else since Elizabeth.

It was a nearly perfect afternoon. One that was special for both Clyde and me.

 

***

 

Going back to work on Monday was always hard. I was pulled between the fun of being a full-time father on the weekends and the responsibility of running my business on the weekdays. I kissed Clyde as Rosie took him for their day together and I headed into the office.

I’d successfully made it through the weekend without thinking of Anna. Well, maybe I thought of her a few times, but mostly I managed to keep her out of my mind. But as I walked off the elevator and toward my office, I saw her sitting at her desk, and she was a vision of beauty.

Her long blonde hair was pulled back and pinned into her one of her signature updos. It looked intricately done, and I imagined it took her a long time to get it just like that. She wore a white and black dress that had distinctive blocks of color which accented her figure while also keeping everything covered up.

“Good morning, Mister Hartley,” Anna said as she looked up slightly from her work.

Her voice was husky and seductive with a vibrating rasp that echoed through my body. If I’d hoped we could go back to ignoring each other and pretending nothing had happened between us, I was one hundred percent wrong. There was no way I could keep looking at her and not remember what she felt like in my arms on that dance floor.

“Morning, Anna. Did you have a good weekend?” I asked as I stood in my doorway.

“Yes, it was excellent. How about you?”

“Mine was lots of fun. Clyde and I had a great time,” I said and inched a little further into my office. “I’ve got a ton of stuff to do today, so I won’t be around much. But email me if you have any questions on the project.”

“Will do,” she said with a big smile, and I quickly went into my office and closed the door.

For the next three hours, I basically stayed held up in my office like I was some sort of prisoner. I didn’t want to have to talk to Anna, or look at her, or smell her delicious perfume. I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t strong enough, and I knew it.

When Kevin called me on my cell phone instead of the office line, I answered it immediately.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“In my office. Where are you?”

“I haven’t seen you all day. What’s going on? I didn’t even know you were here,” he said as I heard him opening his office door. “I’m coming to see you.”

“Be careful. She’s out there,” I joked as we hung up.

I heard Kevin making small talk with Anna before knocking on my door. He didn’t wait for me to answer and instead just let himself in. He shut the door behind him and quickly moved over toward my desk.

“Did you sleep with her?” he said quietly so he was sure Anna couldn’t hear us.

“No,” I protested as if I hadn’t thought about it a million times.

“What’s going on then, why are you hiding in here?”

“I can’t take it. Look at her. She’s beautiful. I’m going to cave. I know it. I took her home and literally couldn’t keep my hands off her. I can’t just ignore her while she’s here. We shouldn’t have hired her. You shouldn’t have pushed me to hire her. This is all your fault,” I said as I threw my hands up in the air. I was joking, sort of. Obviously, it wasn’t Kevin’s fault that I was so damn attracted to Anna. But Kevin was the one who underestimated my ability to stay away from her, and for that, I totally blamed him.

“Why don’t you work from home or go to Edward’s office and work from there? You can still give her jobs via text or email. Just keep your physical body away from her,” Kevin suggested.

“Yeah, that would probably be a good idea...”

“But?” Kevin asked as he waited for me to add a reason why neither of those ideas would work.

“Well, I don’t want to work from home since Clyde and Rosie are spending more time there. And I don’t really want to hang out with Edward or Marcus over at their company.”

“And you really like flirting with Anna and don’t want to leave her here all alone,” Kevin teased.

“Shit, I do like looking at her.”

“How about you simply avoid her as much as possible? Just stay busy. Instead of taking three months to do our changes to the new company, let’s try and get everything done in two months. That will give you and Anna plenty of work and keep you both busy so you wouldn’t even have the time to worry about anything else. Come on man, it’s only eleven weeks. You can do anything for eleven weeks.”

“She’s working here for eleven more weeks?” I said a little shocked at the number.

“Yes, we agreed to three months for her internship.”

“Wow, okay… yeah… that’s eleven weeks left. Shit,” I said as I ran my fingers through my hair. “That’s a really long time.”

“Well, you could take another approach, but I can’t condone it.”

“What?”

“Just sleep with her already. You’re obsessing about it, and you’ll probably forget all about her after it’s over. Just make sure she’s okay with being just friends, and the two of you can screw like rabbits for all I care.”

“Somehow I feel like you don’t mean any of what you just said.”

“Of course, I don’t!” Kevin yelled. “You’re now her boss. Her dad is a primary figure in the new company we just dumped millions of dollars into. You are not sleeping with this girl right now. That’s all there is to it.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to sleep with her,” I repeated almost to myself. “I’ll just work harder while I’m here. I’ll stay so busy it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s my boy.”

“I’ve just got to have the right mindset about this. We could conceivably be financially out of this company in eleven weeks. She could be done with her internship too. Then none of it will matter, and we can have all the fun we want.”

“Exactly. Just finish our analysis of the best way for Cook, Sparser, and Conner Buildings to start making money. We will get everything rolling with the changes and train staff on the upkeep. You and I will be out of this in no time, and then you can have your hot little blonde.”

“It’s a plan then,” I said with a newfound sense of confidence in my ability to resist the temptation that I felt around Anna. “As long as nothing goes wrong with our plan for their company.” I laughed.

Kevin didn’t laugh, though. Something always went wrong. Typically, it was manageable and nothing that would change the course of our projects, but you never knew what was around the next corner in our line of business.

“Are you two decent in there,” Anna said as she knocked on the door.

“Come in.” I laughed. “We aren’t decent, though.”

“I’m not done analyzing those documents yet, but since I have you two both here, I did want to show you something,” Anna said as she brought her tablet and placed it in front of us. “None of their projects have been profitable from the last ten that I’ve looked at.”

She handed the tablet to me, and Kevin came over and looked at it. From the spreadsheet she had, it looked like her father’s company had lost nearly ten million dollars over the last three years.

“How could this be?” Kevin asked. “We analyzed the books before the bid.”

“They have money,” Anna said. “They have lots of it from old deals, but from their current projects, it looks like they are losing money on everything they are building. They are bidding low so they can get the gigs, but then always going over budget and eating the difference.”

“Why?” Kevin wondered aloud, and Anna answered.

“I’m not sure, and I admit I really don’t know this business very well, but I believe my father is trying to get companies to hire them for second jobs. I’ve overheard him saying he has to build a level of respect before he can make a profit from the companies.”

“They already have respect,” Kevin said grumpily. “They would still win the bids if they put in reasonable quotes. People trust them. They basically have lost millions of dollars for no reason.”

“I’m just telling you what I think it is. You probably should talk to my dad,” Anna said as she backed away from us and toward the door.

“I think you’re right,” I added. “Your father doesn’t understand marketing today or the consumers in his industry. Big businesses love to take lowball bids, but they will always take the lowest bid from the best contractor. I think I will have to go talk to him.”

“Do you want me to keep working through these files?” Anna asked.

“Yes, we need the full picture. I’m going to send over the numbers that our accountant did before we made our deal. It might help you understand their numbers as well.”

“Sounds good,” she said and went back toward her desk.

“Hey, Anna,” I hollered, and she peeked her head around the corner. “You did a really great job on this.”

“Thank you,” she said with a sweet smile and then closed the door behind her.

“You did a good job on this, kiss, kiss, kiss,” Kevin teased. “Why don’t you buy her a cupcake and give her a trophy?” he continued.

“Oh, come on. She did a good job. Can’t I just tell her that?”

“I’m just messing with you.”

When Kevin left my office, I couldn’t stop myself from going out and talking to Anna. It was as if a force was pulling me toward her and nothing I did could hold me back. “Thanks for showing me this,” I said and handed her the tablet. “It is really good work. You seem like you were made for this business.”

“Thanks, Mister Hartley,” she said in that damn seductive voice again.

“You’re teasing me,” I said as I called her out. “You said you’d behave at work.”

“Oh, this is me behaving,” she said while she smiled up at me.

I seriously doubted this was Anna behaving. Everything about the way she was looking at me screamed seduction. She licked her lips and uncrossed and re-crossed her legs as she leaned back in her chair. It was as if she wanted me to take her right there.

“No, you’re not,” I said softly.

“Maybe you should bring me into your office so we can talk about it?”

For a second, I thought about it. I considered saying yes and having my way with her, but she was teasing me. She was taunting me to see if I could resist her, and I had to win this game. “No, like I said before, I’m really busy today. But thank you for your hard work,” I said and then headed down the hall toward the front desk secretary. I couldn’t stay at the office another minute. I wasn’t sure where I was going or how I was going to get any work done, but I knew if I stayed in my office I was definitely bringing Anna in there and playing with her. “I’m going to be out for a bit, so please forward my calls to my cell,” I told Zelda and then scurried out and away from the building as quickly as I could.