“But you’re the CEO,” Halle said.
“I know, but it’s not like someone is monitoring my every move.” At least, I hoped they weren’t. That would be creepy.
“But what if…” She stood and started pacing. “What if someone happened to see us go off together? What if they think…” She spun on me. “What if they think we’re sleeping together?”
“I doubt anyone saw us,” I said, hoping to allay her fears aswell as my own. “If they had, they would’ve heard us banging on the door.”
“Yeah. And assumed that we werebanging.” Her tone was rife with innuendo and concern.
I sighed. I was fucking it all up. Yet here we were—thanks to my actions—trapped in a stairwell together, and I was compromising Halle’s reputation and integrity. Not to mention my own.
Even though we weren’t sleeping together—now—I still wished we were. I wished for so much more than that where Halle was concerned. But this definitely wasn’t the way to go about it.
I pressed my hands to my thighs and stood. “They aren’t going to assume that.”
“They’re certainly going to assumesomethinghappened. It’s the logical conclusion given…well…” She gestured to me.
Right. Given the fact that she, and everyone else, thought I was a player.
“Given what?” There was an edge to my voice.
I understood that we were judged by our past actions, but we should also have space for transformation. I’d changed—I was still changing and evolving—but no one seemed to want to give me credit for it. Hell, the board—not my siblings, but the other members—seemed to want to lean into my billionaire playboy image. They liked that I was, well, liked.
Sometimes it pissed me off. Not only because I wanted to be valued for my contributions, but because it felt as if they were undermining Graham’s as well. His past few years as CEO had been contentious with the board. They’d been so focused on his reputation as a cold, heartless billionaire that they’d often ignored all the amazing things he’d done for the company, especially at the end.
Graham wasn’t cold or heartless, but I could understand why people had that perception of him. And now that I’dstepped into his role, I was beginning to see just how difficult it could be to change people’s opinion of you. Especially people who had known you a certain way for a long time, like my family. Or even Halle.
It was disheartening, but I liked a challenge. And I wouldn’t easily be deterred.
She gestured to me. “I mean, look at you.”
“What about me?” I asked, unwilling to let it go.
She stepped closer, and I could feel the air thickening with the unspoken tension. If we weren’t careful, we’d suffocate in the stairwell.
“Your skin is flushed.” She lifted her hand as if to touch my face then dropped it. “Your hair is mussed. And your clothes are rumpled.”
I looked down at myself. Oh.Oh.
Maybe that’s what she’d meant by people assuming we’d slept together. Not because of my playboy reputation but because of my current state.
Maybe I was the one jumping to conclusions, not Halle. Maybe she hadn’t meant anything by her comment. She’d literally been making an observation, but I’d taken it as an insult.
“Well, I did climb down ten flights of stairs then back up.”
“Thank you for doing that, by the way.”
“I wish one of the doors had been unlocked.” I sighed. “We’ll just have to wait until the music dies down and start banging on the door.”
Was I happy we were stuck? No. But I’d accepted the fact that there wasn’t much to be done about it. At least for now. Maybe later, after the party had wound down, we’d be able to get someone’s attention, assuming the cleaning staff would be within hearing range of the stairwell.
She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. I lifted my jacket from the railing and placed it over her shoulders.
“Thanks.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. Then she paused, frowned, and removed something from one of them. “Do you often carry around protein bars?”
“These events can be hectic. Now that I’m the CEO, I find even more people making demands on my time. So I try to be prepared in case my meal is interrupted, as it so often is.”
“I can understand that,” she said, handing over the bar. Sometimes I didn’t know how she did it. If I was struggling to find time to eat because of my position in the company, Halle had it even worse. She was a single mom on top of a busy executive.
