Chapter 15: Zach

It’s amazing what I was able to accomplish with the right motivation. Like a no-nonsense, hot woman to impress.

I was up and dressed by six o’clock. By six thirty, I was in my car driving away from my building. When Hailey walked through my office door at five to seven, I was already sitting behind my desk reading the newspaper.

She stopped, clearly surprised. She had a beautiful startled look on her face. All her expressions were beautiful, but the startled face was immensely satisfying.

“You’re here,” she said.

I nodded. “Our meeting is at seven.”

She nodded and closed the door behind her.

“I didn’t expect you to be here already.”

I smiled. “Punctuality and all that, right?”

Hailey nodded and smiled back at me. It was like a break in the clouds, a ray of sunlight when it had been overcast all day. Hailey walked toward my desk, ready to get right down to it. Like always, she was dressed to kill in a black and white dress suit with a pencil skirt that didn’t do her legs justice and a neckline that left too much to the imagination. I knew what she looked like underneath all her clothes, and I yearned to see more of her.

Hailey saw me staring and blushed. “You checking me out?”

I grinned at her, unashamed. “Fuck yeah.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Alright, Mister. Let’s get started, shall we?” Hailey asked, sitting down in her usual seat. Instead of sitting in my chair behind my desk, I sat down on the opposite side next to her. She glanced at me when I sat and swallowed.

Her face was closed again, the blush and her little smile gone. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Was she undressing me like I was her? Damn, I hoped so.

She put her notes on the table and we went through them from the top. Her fingers were long and elegant as she pointed to the bullet points one by one. I tried to keep up, but everything about her turned me on.

“You’ll have to really focus when you talk about this,” Hailey said, discussing a point I was making about anyone being able to start up a small business and make it in the big leagues. “This is the whole point of your speech today – that anyone is important, no matter their social standing. Women are so much more aware of this than you think.”

I nodded. I knew it all already. Hailey didn’t have to coach me on what to say, but if it bought me some time in her presence, I was all for it.

Her eyes were a deep blue and her perfume was subtle, but present. I breathed in deeply to catch her scent. “Are you listening?” Hailey asked as a smile played at the edge of her perfect, pink lips.

I nodded even though I hadn’t heard a word. “Absolutely. There is this place by the coast in Virginia,” I said. “It’s small and secluded – the village itself barely exists. But the views are absolutely incredible. You’ll love it. I want to take you there sometime.”

Hailey sighed and turned her body toward me. “We really need to take care of this speech, Zach. This is important.”

I looked down at the paper where she’d neatly drawn up all the bullet points for me.

“I know what I’m doing, remember. You said so yourself. To my father.”

She nodded. “That’s all well and good, but arrogance and preparation are so much better together than just arrogance alone.”

Her eyes were cold. Weird. The sudden shift threw me off a little.

“It’s just a speech, Hailey.”

She shook her head. “It’s so much more than that.”

I leaned back in my chair. My flirtatious, warm mood was dissipating.

“You sound just like my father.”

Hailey hesitated before she spoke. “He does have a point sometimes, you know.”

I looked at her hard enough that she squirmed. Good. I still called the shots with her.

“Okay,” I said finally. “Let’s finish this, then.” We were going to work, but only because I said so. It wasn’t because I was obeying her demands. I decided I wanted to work, so we would work. Hailey looked a little unbalanced. She looked at me for a moment, trying to decide where I stood, before she finally nodded and turned her attention back to the page. I looked at her profile – her long lashes, her straight nose, her lips.

Finally, I turned my attention to the page too.

When we’d gone over the last bullet point and Hailey insisted I recite my speech for her, we were finally done.

“I’m starving,” I said. “All that talk about empowerment takes a lot out of a guy.”

Hailey packed her notes into her bag.

“Lunch?”

She looked up at me, her hands on her bag.

“Together?”

I nodded. What else?

Hailey shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Something inside me shifted. Why did this woman matter so much? I was usually trying to shake the girls I slept with off my leg, but not her. Fuck, she was probably going to have to do that with me.

It was a less than comfortable feeling.

She hesitated again. She was making a very decided effort to choose her words carefully. She was hesitant around me now. I didn’t like it. “I have a lot to do today. I still need to get back to my office and take care of these files.” She patted her bag.

“Do it after lunch. You’re allowed to take a break.”

“Don’t you have a lot of work to do as well? We were away for a week. It’s a lot of catching up to do for the both of us.”

“Hailey,” I said, interrupting her excuses. “Everyone has to eat. Come and eat with me.”

Hailey opened her mouth to protest again, but she’d run out of excuses and she couldn’t deny it. She closed her mouth again and nodded, clearly defeated.

I smiled and walked toward the door, holding it open for her. “Wow. That was hard.”

She gave me a look. “Just the lunch room, not a restaurant or anything,” she said. “It’s not a date.”

“Of course, not,” I said, following her. “It just makes sense to eat together, seeing that we both need to do it.” Did my father tell her to back off? Was he seriously meddling in my shit to that degree?

Hailey rolled her eyes at me. She was irritated. Did she know how much I wanted to kiss her when she did that? I wanted to be with her and I’d won this round. Hailey was coming to lunch with me.

We made our way up to the lunch room and sat down at a corner table with three seats. I ordered coffee. Hailey asked for water. When the bottle arrived, I poured some into her glass and she took a sip before putting the glass back down again.

I thought back to the first time we’d been here together. What a contrast compared to how things were now. Back then, I didn’t want her here – I thought she was the devil herself, sent to make my life a living hell. So much had changed since then. Now, I wanted to be here with her. I wanted her involved in my business.

“What are you having?” I asked.

Hailey glanced over the lunch card on our table that held the specials for the day.

“I’ll have the bacon and blue cheese salad.”

I raised my brows at her. “You don’t need to eat a salad.”

“I want to.”

I’d wanted to get her something grand to eat. I didn’t argue with her, though. If she wanted salad, then fine. I ordered a steak with pepper sauce and fries instead of the vegetables of the day.

“This makes me think of Element 47,” I said.

Hailey frowned. “This is nothing like Element 47. That was a five-star restaurant. This place is nice, but it’s a lunch room.”

“I meant us being here together,” I said.

Hailey looked down at the table and fiddled with her fork. I watched her. She was as shut down as she had been the first day we’d worked together. I couldn’t reach her no matter what I did.

“I think we should go back there,” I said. “Even if it is just for the food.”

“That’s the second time today you’ve mentioned going away again. We just got back.” She glanced up, her eyes stormy with too many emotions.

I nodded. “I know, but it feels stuffy here all of a sudden. I don’t like it. Not at all.”

I watched her face intently. She didn’t give anything away. She didn’t respond to what I’d said, either.

“Thank you for being early this morning,” she said. “I’m glad that you’re taking your work seriously.”

I looked around the lunch room. There weren’t many employees around. Most of the tables were empty.

“Surely, you know that it’s for you?”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were so dark they were almost a midnight blue. Dark and cold and unreadable.

“None of this is for me,” she said. “The Company relies on you, not me.”

“What’s the deal with making everything about work right now? We’re at lunch. Can we take a few minutes off from punching the clock?”

The words came out a lot snappier than I meant them, but I was starting to lose my patience. That morning, I was so eager to see Hailey. Now that we were back in Denver, she didn’t want to hang out socially and I knew that there would be press watching my every move, so she couldn’t be anything other than my PR rep. But, we could still spend time together during working hours. I was under the impression that she was a partner, an equal, not just a contractor hired by my father.

Hailey looked at me, her lips pursed together, her anger bubbling just below the surface.

“No. We can’t,” she barked back, not at all looking like the woman I had started to fall for up in Aspen.

“What’s up with you?” I asked. “I mean, I know what we talked about when we came back, but it’s like you’re not even here. You’re completely unreachable.”

Hailey looked around too. I didn’t know what she was thinking and it was driving me crazy.

“Zach. What happened in Aspen was great, but it must stay in Aspen. You know that.”

The food arrived. I picked a fry from the side of my plate and stuck it in my mouth. “Yep.”

“We agreed that nothing could happen between us. Not anymore.”

“Yeah. We did. My bad.” I nodded. We had agreed on that, I just didn’t think it would be so hard. I hadn’t thought she would take it so seriously. Finding out it was my fucking fault that she was clamming up wasn’t helping my mood much.

“We have to go back to the way it was before Aspen.” She leaned back and crossed her arms over her ample chest.

“What if I don’t want to?” I asked. “I kind of liked what happened in Aspen.”

“That’s not up to you, is it?” she asked, but it wasn’t a question. It was a statement. “You’re not the only one calling the shots here.”

Anger burned in my stomach. Was this chick really shutting me down? After the week we’d spent together?

“Don’t start with that,” I said. “Neither of us are calling the shots. It’s my father who hired you.”

She shook her head again. “That’s not what this is about and you know it. We can’t be together, okay?” Her voice was rising. It sliced through the quiet atmosphere of the dining room. Hailey realized it the same time I did and she looked around to see if anyone heard her. The few people that were dining around us were absorbed in their own conversations.

“This is for the business,” she said, her voice lower now.

My anger boiled over.

“Why the hell is it always about the business? My whole life is governed by this damn Company. I might as well give up everything I am and become a corporate drone like my father, where my whole life becomes this and I have nothing unique that defines me.”

Hailey kept quiet, her eyes large and her lips pursed. I couldn’t tell if she was angry too, or just weary of me. I didn’t care. I was furious. I was sick and tired of feeling like the only thing that mattered in this world was the company.

“This is all about the choices you make, Zach,” she said.

“Don’t tell me what life is about,” I snapped. “You don’t get to do that.”

Hailey jolted as if I’d said something horrible. My words had an impact on her that I didn’t understand.

“I’m not trying to. I’m simply here because your father thinks you need my guidance.”

“Well, I don’t,” I said. “I’m a grown ass man. Period.”

Hailey paled a little. She put her knife and fork together on the plate even though she’d barely eaten.

“You know what, Zach? No one gives a shit about what you want. This is bigger than that. You can’t always snap your fingers and expect to get what you want. Your money has led you to believe that you can change the way things are.”

“You’re pushing it, Hailey,” I growled. No one talked to me like that. I didn’t care who she was.

“You know what, Zach? I am pushing it, because that’s my job and I don’t even care if you don’t like it because there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing you can do about any of it. You didn’t hire me, so you can’t fire me and you can’t change the fact that you have to smile and wave when your father asks you to. Unless you want to turn your back on your mother’s legacy.”

I gaped at her, searching for words. She was spectacular in her anger, like a cat with her claws out. Her eyes were blazing, her body tense and poised, ready to strike. I had never seen anything as mesmerizing as she was when she really lost her cool.

What the fuck just happened?

“Don’t,” I said, my voice far away. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know how to win this fight. She was the only person I gave a damn about recently and she was attacking me – in the fucking cafeteria in front of a group of employees.

Hailey stood up and grabbed her handbag. “Don’t what?”

I swallowed hard. Decision time. Fuck.

“Don’t go,” I whispered roughly, knowing that I had to let her walk if she wanted to. I wasn’t ever going to be a needy motherfucker. Not ever.

I had left so many women in my life that I lost count, but I had never been left by one before. Maybe, if I hadn’t cared so much, it wouldn’t have been that bad, but this was the one woman I had started to care about. It made the whole thing worse. It made it feel real. It didn’t feel so much like a game anymore.

I looked around. No one was looking at us. It was like nothing even happened, which was about as accurate as the rest of my relationship – or whatever it had been – with Hailey.

It was like it had never happened.

“Sorry. I can’t do this.” She turned and walked off, leaving me staring after her.

“Then don’t,” I mumbled and picked up my fork. Lust was better than whatever the fuck I was falling into. Plain and simple.