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He was going to focus his energies on making sure no harm came to his grandfather. None what so ever. The doorman nodded to Antonio as he entered the marble lobby of his building. “Good afternoon, sir.”
Antonio absentmindedly nodded back while taking out his smartphone. He couldn’t wait until he got upstairs to his suite. There was something he had to Google and fast. As he entered the private area where his own personal elevator would bring him to his penthouse waited, he moved his fingers fast across the screen in the search box and typed in “Lucy Shillerton, Toronto, CEO.”
And sure enough, hundreds of sites popped up. He tried to see if she was on Facebook or LinkedIn. He went to her Facebook page to see if she had left it open for anyone to see who was on the system. Since he’d already logged in he should have no trouble if it was not private. Sure enough, there she was. She posted a beautiful photo for her profile picture yet it was not recent. The photo looked as if it was a few years old. Maybe from her college days. There was that reaction again. The cloth covering his groin area grew snug. Why on earth did that girl have that kind of effect on him? This was all too crazy. He wasn’t looking her up to stalk her. He was trying to see if he could see her Friends list to see if she knew Shelly, his grandfather’s new fiancée. Lucy had 127 friends and most of them were women. He scanned her page to see if she was one of those women who took selfies of themselves posing in sexy photos. None. Good. She wasn't a complete tart.
Why was he even going there? This was about business. This was about keeping his grandfather safe from scammers after his fortune. After all, his grandfather had made some Top 100 Wealthiest billionaire list some time this year, so it was only natural he would be concerned about gold diggers popping out from under rocks to be with him.
His grandfather’s last wife used him while she had her own boyfriend on the side. It was no wonder Antonio did not trust the not-so-fair feminine gender. All his life he’d seen them claw after his family’s money, fame and fortune. The sprawling estate north of Toronto hosted some of the finest parties—his father bequeathed him that home. But his parents had a bitter divorce and Antonio himself was hurt one too many time by opportunists. That was why he swore he would never marry. He would let his girlfriends know up front that it could never be anything more than physical and that was that. Sex but no love suited his lifestyle just fine, thank you very much.
Antonio entered his suite before long and continued to glance at the screen of his phone looking at any evidence or useful information he could find on Lucy. Who was she? What were her interests? He quickly scanned her likes, her friends list again, the type of quotes she posted on her wall and the type of stuff she in fact posted. The more he wanted to find something about her to dislike the harder it was. How on earth could he hate this woman?
One of her shared quotes caught his eye: "It’s not about who is real to your face…It’s about who stays real behind your back!”
Antonio’s gut clenched. He didn’t know why he reacted to that post but he did. He’d known all too long how much he could trust very few people. And that post really grabbed him. He was utterly amazed at the fact that Ms. Lucy Shillerton loved that quote enough to post it on her page.
Again, he was always assessing people. What you choose to like and post says a lot about you as a person. He thought Lucy was going to have only pinups of hot looking men or crazy, self-serving tenets but no, Lucy seemed different. She was a woman who thought deep. Antonio couldn’t argue with that. But it meant he would have to tighten up his game plan. She seemed like a woman who wouldn’t change her mind that easily with what he had to say. Still, he was going to do what he had to do. Whether or not he liked her. Business was business and his grandfather was his business and she’d better not go through with her plan to give him a heart-attack-inducing wedding to the gold-digging girlfriend he’d found ... or else.
Antonio powered down his phone and attached it to his charger in the kitchen before grabbing a drink from the fridge and heading to the solarium. He sat down on his patio chair and scanned the gorgeous Toronto skyline with all the skyscrapers and the lake nearby. The sun was setting and the sky was a reddish hue now mixed with blue. He leaned back and took a swig of his lager. He should be out with his cousin Lucas winding down at one of the exclusive clubs in the city for guys like them. But then that would be a distraction he didn’t want right now. His mind was on one subject. And it killed him inside to think about it.
