It feels good to be back home after a month out of the country. Some people buy houses on the cheap and flip them for a profit, but that’s small time shit, as far as I’m concerned. I flip businesses, corporations, fortune 500 companies--the sky's the limit. I buy them out, gut them, and then streamline the infrastructure, reorganize the customer experience, and increase productivity. I can make a powerhouse out of a flop, and I’ve been doing it for fifteen years. It has made me billions, sure, but that’s not what I’m after. It never has been.

Doing what I do is a fucking addiction, and it’s the only thing in the world powerful enough to get me to leave my daughter for weeks at a time. I spend many nights laying awake, wondering how I can say I love her more than anything and not feel like a fraud, because I know as soon as the next conquest presents itself, I’ll jump on it. My actions might contradict my words, but there it is… I love my daughter more than anything, but even that’s not enough to squelch my addiction to success.

I tell myself this was my last trip. This time I’ll stop and stay home for good, that I’ll work on fixing the damage the divorce caused. I’ll spend more time with Sophie and my mom. I’ll be a new man.

I scoff as I toss my bag into the back of the car I had sent to the private airport. New year, same promises. At least the irony isn’t lost on me. I’m the best in the world at fixing failing businesses, and yet I still haven’t fixed my failing home life.

I just hope the new live-in caretaker I hired this time is better than the last few have been. Firing the live-in caretaker has also become something of a ritual when I come back from business deals. Part of it is seeing that my daughter, Sophie, hates their guts. Another part is whatever list of complaints my mother has compiled about them. Maybe the biggest part is just wanting to get rid of the reminder that I left again. It lets me pretend for a few weeks or months that I’m a good father and son, one that would never put anything before his family.

I wanted my daughter to have something close to a normal life after the divorce, so I moved us to the suburbs of Jacksonville, Florida. She goes to a regular elementary school and has normal friends. When I divorced Julianne five years ago, she refused to be involved in Sophie’s life, with the exception that she decided to have her house built only about twenty minutes away from ours.

I stop at Toby’s on my way home. It’s a little family owned grocery store just a few miles from my house. I want to grab ingredients to cook Sophie’s favorite dinner when I get home--fried salmon patties with macaroni and cheese. It’s still before noon, and there’s hardly anyone in the store at this hour. I’m reaching for the last box of macaroni and cheese when my hand brushes against a woman’s smooth skin. I look up, not realizing someone was in the same aisle.

“S-sorry,” the woman stutters.

She has light brown hair and the eyes to match. She has thick lashes that frame the most perfect, innocent doe-like eyes I’ve ever seen. If that wasn’t enough, there’s a hint of something mischievous and sexual behind them, like she could be the proper little preacher’s daughter in the open and a devil between the sheets. Breathtaking. I’ve heard the word and read it in books before. I’ve always thought it was just something someone thought up because it sounded good. But the breath literally slips from my lungs at the sight of her. It’s not because she’s the most textbook beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, either. It’s because she carries so much passion in those big, light brown eyes. So much, in fact, that I feel like I know her from one glance.

“Sorry?” I ask, smirking. “You will be if you don’t drop that box.”

Her almond eyes widen slightly and her lips part.

Fuck. I can’t tell if I’ve just been buried in my business for too long, or if this woman really is the most perfect blend of sweet and sexy I’ve ever seen. She wears glasses, conservative clothes, and has her makeup done in a natural, understated way. But no amount of conservative clothing can hide the full curve of her hips or the swell of her tits against the cardigan she has on.

I’m particularly drawn to her neck. It’s long, like a dancers, and she wears a thin necklace that rests just inside her clavicle, pulsing faintly with her heartbeat.

She sets the box back on the shelf. “I had better--” she starts to say, grabbing her cart to move on.

I place a hand on her cart, meeting her eyes. “This is a small town. Why haven’t I seen you before?”

Her fingertips go to the necklace, touching it as if it offers her some kind of protection. It’s a thick heart with hinges, maybe the kind that holds a picture inside. “I’m new here.”

I take a step closer to her, but not out of any deliberate thought or purpose. I just feel a compulsion to be closer to this woman. To breathe her in. To touch her. “Let me show you the sights, then,” I say.

She shakes her head, looking down. “I have work.”

“When do you get off?” I ask.

“Excuse me?” she asks, eyebrows drawing down. “I hardly think that’s appropri--”

“Off work…” I say slowly, feeling the corner of my mouth pull up in a smile.

Her cheeks redden and she covers her eyes in the most adorable way, like if I can’t see her, the embarrassment will pass faster. “I think I’m just going to go drive this cart off a cliff now,” she groans.

“Bad news, sweetheart. We’re in Florida. Closest thing you’ll find to a cliff around here is the pothole on State Road Thirteen.”

She laughs, biting her lip as she looks up at me. “Okay, fine. I’ll go drive my shopping cart around until an alligator gets me. Is that better?”

I chuckle. “Better. Yes. So, when do you get off?” I ask.

She swallows, giving me a glare of warning for teasing her. “My job is kind of an all day sort of thing. I don’t really get much time off.”

“Your boss sounds like an asshole,” I say.

“I haven’t met him.”

“Fuck him then,” I say. “I’ll come by tonight and show you around.”

The humor leaves her face and she pushes the cart a little, forcing me to step aside. Her voice is cold now. “I can’t risk losing my job. I really need to go,” she says over her shoulder, leaving me standing by the macaroni and cheese box, wondering if I’ll ever see her again.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out to see I have a new voicemail. Fuck. Only a handful of people have my private line, and only one of them would ever leave a voicemail. I don’t want to ruin my first day back listening to it. Not yet.