James
I hadn’t pushed her away so long ago because she wasn’t as rich as I was, which was what I’d let her believe. But she had no idea how this world worked. She had never grown up with the concept that the more money you had the more perfect you had to be.
I wasn’t going to try explaining it to her because she wouldn’t understand it.
“That’s not fair,” I said. “You can’t throw our personal lives into it when it’s all about business.”
She laughed sarcastically. “Personal? How personal are we, exactly? What is this between me and you other than convenience for you because you don’t have to look very far for sex?”
That hit a nerve. I was suddenly furious.
“Don’t you dare,” I said. “You sit here in my office and you have the nerve to imply that I sleep around when we haven’t spoken in years. You have no right.”
“No, you made sure of that, didn’t you?”
I had nothing that I could say to that. How had we gone from Amanda and business to what had happened fifteen years ago?
“Look,” I said. “We’re getting off topic.” I tried very hard to keep my voice calm, to be reasonable despite my anger. “The point is that I trust Amanda. She wouldn’t be my partner if I didn’t. My company is important to me.”
“If it’s that important to you, look at all the options. If you choose oblivion you might lose it all, anyway.” She was brilliant when she was angry. Her voice was matched to mine – calm and collected – but her eyes were dark and churning, spewing fire. Her cheeks rosy pink, the freckles prominent. She was on fire, a phoenix, rising from the ashes. I wanted to take her right here, right now.
If I made a move it would only prove her point that I was after convenient sex. Besides, she wasn’t on my side with this and I wasn’t going to let that slide.
“Just let me deal with the information you give me. Do what you’re asked to do.”
She raised her eyebrows and I expected her to say something more. She didn’t. Instead, she did what I said. She turned her attention back to the papers.
Half of me was relieved. We were moving in a direction, at least. The other half of me wanted her to look back at me with those eyes. She exuded so much strength, especially when she was angry. It was pure poetry just looking at her. I felt that way about everything she did, though. Not just her anger. It had been there the day she’d walked into my office, an apparition. She’d been mesmerizing the night of the Appreciation Event and she’d been just as intoxicating last night, before dinner. I hadn’t even gotten around to the appetizers, because of her irresistibility. There was something about her that was like no one else I’d ever been with.
I knew because I’d tried. I’d gone through all of them, looking for something that resembled Ava. None of them had what she had.
I turned away from her. I would just get myself twisted up in a knot thinking about everything I didn’t have if I kept staring at her. Instead, I looked out of the window and turned my thoughts to Amanda.
She’d been the only woman that had made a mark on the business world with enough flare that men sat up and took notice. When I’d met her, I’d seen potential in her calm, in the way she handled tough situations with ease and she was never intimidated by men and their intimidating routines of measuring dicks.
It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that she was exactly what I needed if I wanted to get my own thing going. I couldn’t do it by myself – my father hadn’t ever believed I could and I’d adopted that view of my life – and she could help me through it.
I’d started my own thing against the advice of all my friends, even Caleb. No one had thought I could do it. And now? Quad Corp was one of the most successful companies in the South. It was thanks largely to Amanda and her tenacity, her business savvy, her ability to put up with me despite my unpredictability. Thanks to her, I’d proven my family and friends all wrong. None of them had believed I could create a company equal in size and worth to what Charlie had taken over from our father.
I had broken the mold and done my own thing instead of becoming one of Charlie’s employees.
I couldn’t throw that all back in Amanda’s face, now. She had taken a risk, too. She had started something with me when she’d known what they’d all said about me. She’d been loyal all the way through. It seemed unfair if I didn’t do the same for her.
Besides, I didn’t want to believe that the one person I’d always been able to trust would stab me in the back like that. Amanda was cold and business-oriented but she couldn’t be that heartless.
Could she?
“You know,” I said after we’d sat together in silence for a while. “It’s not fair of you to bring up that I just want sex from you.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked.
“You know that it’s about more than that. It’s always been more, with you.”
Ava shrugged. Her eyes were still on the pages in front of her. She wasn’t going to make eye-contact with me.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Like you said, we hadn’t spoken in a long time.”
God, this was the one thing I didn’t miss – the way women always managed to twist words until they implied something completely different. This was why I hadn’t settled for anyone.
It was true that I was a womanizer, that I slept around all the time and felt nothing for their feelings. I didn’t want Ava to know that, though. I didn’t want her to see that side of me and lose the bit of respect he still had left for me.
I wasn’t the kind of person that deserved her love. I wasn’t the man for her. She didn’t seem to know that, yet, and I wanted it to stay that way if I could before I let her find it out for herself. Ava was a classy woman and truth be told, I was scum. Money had nothing to do with it.
“Did you ever think about me?” she asked.
I blinked at her. “What?”
“When you told me off. Did you ever miss me?”
I sighed, leaned my head back, closed my eyes.
“What do you want me to say to that?” I asked. I couldn’t see how any of this had a good outcome. If I said yes – because I had missed her everyday of my life, since the moment I’d told her off until the day she’d walked back into my life – everything would blow up. Why, then, hadn’t I come after her when I’d been free of my father when I’d made the choice to go on my own?
She didn’t have to know that I had tried, once, a long time ago, to find her again.
It had been three years after we’d gotten stuck. Charlie had been chosen to carry on the family business the way everyone had expected he would. I had felt rejected and alone. If hadn’t been good enough to do what was expected of me, what stopped me from doing what I wanted? That was my reasoning.
I’d traveled back to Apalachicola. I’d gone to her house only to find out that she had left. Her parents wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone. I hadn’t blamed them, either. There had been nothing left to do – all I’d had of her was a home phone number, an address and a bunch of memories that had kept me going for a while after.
I had given up because there had been nothing else left to do.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll believe you, anyway.”
It stung. I didn’t respond, didn’t know what to say. Yes, I’d told her off. Yes, I’d messed up. I would have to live with that for the rest of my life. Fifteen years had passed and I hadn’t found anyone I wanted as much as I wanted her. Or anyone that I couldn’t have the way I would never be able to have her, apparently.
She wouldn’t trust me. And I didn’t blame her.
“You know what?” I said. “I actually don’t need to sit here, listening to what you have to say about how I did you wrong. I know what I did and I tried to explain myself to you. If you won’t take it, that’s your business. Right now, you’re paid to be here and I’m not interested in discussing anything else other than business.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. She was angry, I could see it, but she didn’t react. She didn’t explode at me. Her eyes were dark and churning, bottomless pits of black, but she turned her attention back to the books one more time.
“You know what?” she said, mimicking me. “I don’t have to sit here doing it either.” She scraped the papers together. “You’re right, I am being paid to work here, but I can do this at the hotel or in Caleb’s office. I don’t have to sit here when I’m obviously such a problem to you.”
She put the papers in her bag and got up.
“I will bring them back later. I have things to go through.”
She turned around and walked out of my office.
I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t like it when she walked away, even more so when she was angry. She had been upset with me at the Appreciation Event. She was angry with me now. It felt like she walked away from me more than she walked toward me. Which didn’t make sense at all.
I groaned and slammed a fist down on my desk. A sharp pain shot into my wrist. I didn’t need the reminder that I could feel. Since she’d come back I had been feeling all too much.
God, wasn’t I going to catch a break? I didn’t need this. I didn’t want this. How was I going to deal with this?
Damn Caleb for bringing her back into my life. Of course, he hadn’t known. And seeing her again… I would have given anything to have that happen again. Caleb wasn’t at fault here. I didn’t even think Ava was. It was all me – I had fucked up years ago and I was doing the same thing now.
What the hell was I going to do to fix this?
I wanted a drink. Badly. A drink and sex. That had always helped to get the tension out of my system. When I was wired and stressed, a good fuck was just what I needed. Some alcohol to take the edge off, and whores.
I couldn’t do that now, though. I didn’t owe Ava anything – I could do what I wanted, as could she – but I didn’t want to sleep with anyone else. I wanted her. I wanted her all the time.
Having her back was great as long as we were okay. When we weren’t – which happened a lot more often than anything else – seeing her again hurt like a bitch. Being with her again and being just as far from her as I’d been when I’d left her was absolute torture.
I got up and paced my office. I looked at the chair where she sat whenever she worked here. I looked back out of the window. The view was pointless. The empty chair grated me. The past lingered like it had happened yesterday and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
I wished I could tell her how I felt about her. I wished I could do something to erase the past and show her that what we had now could be new, could be different.
I didn’t know how to do any of that. All I knew was that if I lost her again, it would rip me apart for good. And it seemed to be inevitable.