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Rylee submitted her resignation and signed a Cease and Desist agreement to never contact me again except through my lawyers. She’ll finish out the week. Even if her crime does follow her around for a while, I have no doubt she’ll land on her feet. She’s wily enough to bend the system in her favor. Which is fine with me as long as she’s doing it far away from us.
Noah posted a press release on the company website that addressed the circulating rumors. Since then, we’ve had more than 17,000 new subscribers.
Done and dusted, so it would seem.
I insisted Tex stay by my side during most of the meetings. She takes the edge off my fury. Without her gentle insistence, I would never have agreed to be so lenient with Rylee, but I can agree that the compassion my Texan girl radiates has made the proceedings much smoother. First of all, she cracked the case. Second, if it had been just myself and my three brothers dealing with Rylee, somewhere down the road we probably would have regretted ruining her life and possibly throttling her.
According to Tex, our Karma has remained intact.
I watch her now, her long hair loose over her shoulders. The curves of her body under her dress. Even here in the boardroom, with its dark wood, steel-rimmed windows and hard lines, she looks so soft. So outrageously beautiful. She glows with health and sunlight, like she absorbed all that Texan sun and carries it inside her, lighting up the overcast room.
Without the fiasco hanging over our heads anymore, I feel like I can see more clearly. She’s not just gorgeous and sexy as fuck, she’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Everything I never thought to wish for, because I was too busy working.
She’s the most exquisite thing I’ve ever seen, inside and out. I’m not just obsessed with her, I’m in love with her. Absolutely, ridiculously head over heels. I want her in my life for the rest of time. I want to wake up with her every morning and to wrap myself around her beauty every night. She doesn’t look real, she’s so stunning.
She catches me watching her and smiles lightly. She stands, excusing herself from the table. “I’ll head back down to the office now,” she says. “Evan said we have a team meeting at four.”
Every eye in the room is glued to her. Alexander has stuck with us today, more for moral support than anything. Colton and Noah are seated on the other side of the huge table, flanked by our lawyers as we go through the last of the paperwork.
I’m tempted to lunge at them all as they take in the perfection of her. Mine. I need her to know that. I need the whole fucking world to know that. The sooner I get a ring on her finger, the better.
“Wait for me downstairs,” I tell her. “I’ll come get you.”
She doesn’t answer, and I’m fully aware that she’s wary of the office rumors. Outside this boardroom, no one knows about us yet and I get the feeling she wants to keep it that way.
I have other plans.
“Great work today, Dusty,” Noah tells her. “If it wasn’t for you, we might not have dodged the Rylee bullet so easily. I’m recommending to the CEO that we move you into a more senior role. There was also a reward for information about the accusation, which we’ll make sure you get.”
“I just did what anyone would have done,” she says, her face lightly pink under the scrutiny.
“Not necessarily,” Colton points out. “Not everyone would have chosen to be honest when they had something to lose.”
“I could never have kept that from you all. You needed to know the truth.”
“We owe you one and it’s a doozy, Dusty Rose.” Noah’s sincerity gets my attention. But he’s right.
Watching her leave without following her requires a Herculean effort. You’ll see her in an hour, you asshole. I don’t know if it’s because I want to make up for lost time, with all the failed attempts at past relationships. Or if I’m just being a clingy bastard because she completely lights up every room. It’s cheesy as fuck to even think it but she does: she lights up my life.
Already, it’s unbearable to imagine my future without her. I realize that maybe I never felt even the tiniest glimmer of love for anyone else because she’s the one I’ve been waiting for all along.
Even now, as she sends me one more quiet glance before closing the door behind her, the storm clouds outside the windows seem to darken. Without her, my mood instantly goes surly.
“Only a few more things to go through here, Ace,” jokes Noah. “Then you can chase after her.”
“Ace is whipped,” laughs Colton.
He’s not fucking wrong. “Let’s get this over with.”
32
I’ve barely sat down in my chair for the team meeting when Lacey leans in close. “Is it true? You’re fucking the CEO?”
“What?” How the hell did she find out? “Of course not.”
But then I remember that Rylee was dismissed an hour or so before I left the boardroom, to begin cleaning out her desk. I might have saved her from prison time, but she’s also out of a job and has been thoroughly dissed by the guy she thought was the love of her life. As a last gasp, maybe she decided to take one last stab at me.
“He’s hot as fuck, I’ll give you that much,” Lacey whispers. “But Cash Maddox? He’s a total prick. Everyone knows that. And your boss. Girl, you’re playing with fire.”
