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He gives his little pep talk and walks around the room, giving praise and suggestions, and there aren’t any humiliations today, thankfully. I’m a little surprised that he doesn’t say something to me about our project, but I guess he saves that for when things are finished rather than things that are in progress.
Then he walks back to his office, and I turn to my teammates, all of whom are devout Emery worshippers, and I hear Brandon mutter, “I can’t wait for him to see this when it’s done.”
Me neither. It has nothing to do with having him praise me, though. I want to be known as the woman who broke the mold in ChitChat advertising. I want to cement myself as necessary here.
My team gawks and whispers to themselves as I get to work. We need to get the scripts finished and decide on little details like makeup. I want to spend as little time here as possible.
But when I walk into my office, a jolt of surprise hits me. Instead of the empty desk that I normally walk into, there’s a book sitting on it. An old book.
And next to it is a tiny silver object.
I approach the desk, almost like the book is a snake ready to bite me. I see the title of the book, Beauty and the Beast, and I frown. Who here would know that’s my favorite book?
Flipping open the cover, I stare down at the date. This book is almost two hundred years old. My heart races as I run my finger over the ink that was put on this page before the Civil War. There was no electricity. No cars. This is a relic of a different time.
It wasn’t written about those things, though.
There are hundreds of fairy tales, but this is the only one that captured me. Like Beast, I’ve been cursed. Forever bound to dream of a man that doesn’t exist, I’ve never been satisfied with any of the men I’ve met. It’s probably the reason I fell in love with romance books.
Beast was perfect. Ferocious and filled with primal need, he understood passion in a way no real man does. Yet, the man in him holds that passion back, never laying a hand on Belle even though he was desperate for her. In fact, he even let her leave, regardless of the fact it would likely kill him. He simply couldn’t imagine her hating him or experiencing a moment of pain. He was a romance hero in the truest sense.
But I think Belle fucked it all up.
She loved Beast, but she didn’t love the animalistic side of him. She didn’t dream of having him ravage her, of begging him to show her just how much he needed her. That’s the part I’m cursed with. I don’t want Beast to turn back into a human, to become civilized all the time and become just another rich guy. I want him to break the collar of restraint and show me exactly how much he wants me.
And that is why I don’t do well with relationships. How could anyone live up to those standards?
I close the book, afraid to hurt the treasure that I never imagined having. “Who bought this for me?” I mutter. Nobody here knows it’s my favorite book, but more than that, it’s not like finding a two hundred year old book is easy. Even with a huge bank account like most of the people working here, I doubt many people in the office could have located a seller since I started working here.
Then I look down at the shiny little piece of metal I saw when I walked into the office. A thimble.
There’s only one person who would leave a thimble, but I’m surprised by it. It’s cute, something I would imagine a boyfriend would do if he were trying to impress me. Not something a man like Emery Brooks would do. Buying an expensive book wouldn’t be a problem for him, but the effort to find out my favorite? The cleverness to get the thimble?
He’s so focused on business and that damned reputation of his that every time something outside of those two subjects comes up, it’s a surprise. Like finding the breadcrumbs leading to the real Emery.
And my heart skips a beat as I realize what it means.
He wouldn’t do this for one of his one-night-stands. But Emery doesn’t do relationships. He only has one-night-stands.
I don’t dare touch the book. I’ll be buying a case for it to keep the dust off it after work today, and then I’ll have to research how to care for a book like this. It’s something I’m more than happy to do. This is a piece of history, one of only a few hundred or thousand copies remaining that are this old, and I’ll do my part to make sure that it remains in just as good of condition as I’ve received it.
But there’s something I need to do now. I need to find out why exactly Emery Brooks gave me a treasure, and I need to understand what he expects to come of it. A man does not give a woman a treasure without expecting something in return.
Chapter 13
Emery
I can’t take my eyes off the idea room after the morning meeting. Normally, I’d have reports to go through and sales numbers to consider, but this morning, there’s only one thing on my mind. Madison Carter.
And how she’s going to react to my gift.
That damn book was harder to get my hands on than I’d expected. Usually, I call my finder up, and he gets back to me in an hour with a seller, but this time it took almost thirty-six hours. I was terrified he wouldn’t find it. He finally convinced someone to part with the thing for a hundred thousand dollars, an astronomical price for a fucking book, but the time frame was so short, I didn’t have any other options..
It’s a tiny price to make amends with Madison. I’ve never needed to impress a woman or buy her affection with gifts, but she’s different. She’s infected me, and no matter how hard I try to think about other things, even other women, my mind always goes back to her.
I listened to the translation of the original Beauty and the Beast three times this weekend on audio instead of going out with Noah and Dante. Finding out why Madison loves that particular book so much was more important to me.
I’m thinking about that when Madison’s office door opens and quickly closes. As she steps into the idea room, her eyes go directly to me. Our gaze meets across the office, and no amount of movement will draw either of our attention.
