“Does it have anything to do with Nick?” My annoyance is heard in my tone. I don’t pay my staff well because my empire deserves the best. I do it in anticipation I’ll be awarded their utmost loyalty.
Hugo darts his eyes from the road to me before shaking his head. It fills me with relief, but it doesn’t wholly slacken my worry.
“Isabelle?”
He slumps low in his chair, then scrubs at the stubble on his chin, but not a word seeps from his lips. It infuriates me more than our almost head-on collision. “I requested Hunter to forward any information he unearths about Isabelle directly to me.”
“And he’s doing as requested.” Hugo grips the steering wheel in a white-knuckled hold before he releases it with a breathy sentence, “If you don’t trust us, Isaac, why the fuck are we working for you?”
“I trust you.” The firmness in my jaw tightens when even I hear the deceit in my voice. “I just need to maintain control,” I mutter, speaking truthfully for the first time in a long time.
When you’re a sick child, you don’t crave the same things other children do. I didn’t care about the latest trend or the highest-selling fad. I wanted to make it through the day without puking my guts up and to show the bullies in the playground my waif-thin exterior was concealing a warrior inside.
The day I went into remission, I set out to achieve those goals. It happened almost instantaneously with me taking control of my life. I’ve struggled to hand over the reins ever since.
“This isn’t about power, Isaac. We’re more than happy for you to keep it,” Hugo assures, his tone as smooth and unwavering as the tires of my Mercedes rolling over the asphalt. “We just want to ensure we’re giving you facts instead of half-assed assumptions. You’d do the same for us, wouldn’t you?”
I understand what he’s saying, and I appreciate it, but I’m still struggling. “How long will it be before you have answers for me?”
Hugo signals to turn right before straying his eyes from the road to me. “Depends. When is your second date with Izzy?”
I can’t hold back the smirk his jeering tone demands, so I let it free. It doesn’t give Hugo the answer he’s seeking, but since it tapers my urge to kill him by a morsel, he accepts it. It’s very much on par with his personality. He knows all my weaknesses, but instead of exploiting them to his advantage, he pretends they don’t exist.
Silence commands the rest of our twenty-minute trip. It isn’t awkward. Hugo and I just aren’t men of many words. There are far better things we can do with the time than undertake idle chit-chat. Such as me endeavoring to work out why my intuition is still warning me to remain cautious when it comes to Isabelle.
She initially denied my request when I suggested that we meet at the bakery tomorrow, but nothing but disappointment reflected out of her beautiful chocolate eyes when I abandoned her in the alleyway.
There’s only one time I’ve been confronted with such contrasting emotions. It caused the death of my girlfriend and shaped my life from there onout. Up until six weeks ago, I would have said it was a virtuous manipulation that had me addicted to becoming stronger. Only now am I realizing loneliness is the poverty of success.
It’s a somber intensifying revelation, but it also allows clarity to form.
As much as I want Isabelle, I’d rather not have her at all than the small fragments I’ve been forcing out of her since our flight. As disclosed in the washroom while thirty thousand feet in the air, it’s all or nothing. I’m too dominant to accept any less and too assertive to consider a different outcome, so you can only imagine my frustration when my arrival at Harlow’s Scrumptious Haven the following day sees me dining alone.
My father always said, ‘We create our own heartbreaks through unreachable expectations.’ I couldn’t fathom what he meant until now. I hate losing, but the emotions it evokes are worse since I volunteered to play a game I swore I’d never field again.
I stop adjusting my coat’s collar to keep the rain off my neck when Harlow shouts my name. When I spin around to face her, she waves her hand at the fishbowl of business cards she suggested Iplace my card in when I arrived. If my name is drawn, I’ll be the lucky winner of a month’s worth of unlimited coffee. “You forgot to place your cell number on the back of your card. How will I reach you if you win?”
“My business number is on the front of the card.”
She acts ignorant to my snapped timbre. “You own a nightclub, and I wake up at ass-crack o’clock to bake. Our schedules don’t mesh. I’m sleeping when you’re awake, and you’re asleep when everyone else isawake.” After hitting me witha frisky wink, shedigsmy card out of the stack like she’s been eyeing it the past hour,steps around the almost empty bakery counter, thenheads my way. She’s prettier than I first gave her credit for. The kindness in her eyes assures me of this, much less her smile when she says, “Put your cell phone number on the back. Who knows, it could help you find the pot of gold under the rainbow you’re seeking.”
“I don’tseekluck. Iearnit.”
Her eye roll dramatically decreases my guess of her age, which I originally pinned at around the same age as me. Now I’m leaning toward her being a couple of years younger. “Just sign the damn card before I smack you into next week.” She cocks her hip as a blistering smile stretches across her face. “Don’t let the flour-dusted nose fool you. Beneath this wholesome face is a ton of wickedness.”
Wholesome?That isn’t a word I’d ever use to describe her. She’s gotspunk, so much so, I’m certain I know her objective even with the secrets in her eyes locked up tighter than a prison.
After accepting the pen she’s holding out, I place my private cell phone number onto the back of my business card. Although I could keep it simple, I’ll never be known for being humble.
Harlow’s grin turns blinding when I hand her back my personally inscribed card. “When you stop denying what your body wants,” she reads off the card. “Nice.”
After hitting me with anotherbrazen wink, she spins away from me, thensaunters to the counter, where she stores my card in the cash register like it’s far more valuable than the handful of measly notes she has stuffed inside.
Her response has me hopeful not all my shrewdness dissipated when Isabelle crashed into me. It merely got sucked in a vortex not even a man as domineering as me could control.
Emotions are uncontrollable, and when it comes to Isabelle, mine are all over the place.
8
