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“Very good,” I say, waving my hand to dismiss him. Before he goes, he drops the papers with an outline of the process in front of me. All the words blur and wobble on the page. I should be shocked, or outraged even. But I’m not.
I’m mostly numb.
“He does have a point,” says Nicholas, glancing over the dense legalese. “It would be a tidy solution.”
“Yeah.”
“Aiden, are you all right?” Nicholas asks, and I nod even though he almost definitely knows it’s a lie. He stands up and squeezes my shoulder. “It may seem ridiculous, but I suggest you think about it. It could work very well in our favor.”
As he walks off, presumably to discuss the legality of the idea further, I shake my hands to try and stop the tingling numbness. Think about it? I’m not going to be able to think of anything else except the image of Candice in a white dress, her pretty blond hair done up to frame her gorgeous face.
They’re all going to try and persuade me, but I won’t need pushing at all. I let her get away once. I won’t be that stupid this time. And I’m going to do everything to prove it to her.
CHAPTER16
CANDICE
I’ve barely slept in days. Every morning, I come into the office to new voicemails from Aiden, begging me to listen to his proposals, to hear him out. I delete them before I even listen. And every night, I go home and toss and turn and sleep fitfully, drifting in and out of dreams of yelling at him, slamming a door in his face. Being held in his arms.
It’s all very disturbing. I don’t understand why he won’t leave us alone. Isn’t it obvious that I’m not interested?
“Rough night?” asks Kelly with a raised eyebrow as I yawn again. We’re meeting in my office, an informal kind of catch-up where we can be honest about reality without bringing anyone else down. And reality isn’t looking too pretty lately.
I blink and shake my head to try and expel the sleepiness. “Sorry. I’m tired. I am listening, I promise. Spreading the reach of our advertising?”
“Yes,” she says, leaning forward in her chair to stare at me, her dark brown eyes boring knowing holes into me. “Maybe we should do this another time, though. What’s on your mind?”
Closing my eyes, I sigh hard, frowning with the most contempt I can muster. “Fletcher Tech.”
“Still? You told me you turned their offer down.”
Kelly isn’t exactly happy that I told Aiden no. And she’s right, from a purely rational point of view. The boost that being part of Fletcher Tech would bring would save us. Honestly, neither of us are quite sure how much longer the company can keep hanging on without a radical shift. Yes, we’re finding success and growing, but hosting webpages and creating advertising and paying the staff, these things all take a toll on the account.
And the returns we’re getting aren’t as great as we want or need them to be.
I throw up my hands, exasperated. “I did! But he keeps calling.”
“And you keep ignoring him?”
She has a wicked glint in her eye, like she’s drawing conclusions about the situation that are way off the mark. Knowing her, she’s off in some farfetched romantic delusion, when this is nothing like that at all. Aiden is an annoying toad who can’t take rejection.
“Yes. I haven’t even listened to his messages. I don’t want to know.”
“You never know what you might be missing,” she says, her double entendre not even remotely subtle.
Before I can completely put any wrong ideas she might have to bed, a sharp rap on the door interrupts us. “Come in,” I call, straightening up in my chair to look more presentable.
Danna steps into the room — my secretary. She’s a stern woman who wears a style of glasses that ages her twenty years. I’m actually not one hundred percent sure how old she is, but her constantly furrowed brow and sucked-lemon expression put her anywhere between thirty-five and sixty.
Today, however, she’s departing from her usual grumpiness and greets us with a weirdly conspiratorial smile. “Sorry to interrupt, Ms. Metcalf, but you didn’t plan to meet with anyone today, did you?”
I frown, a sudden panic descending that I’ve forgotten something important. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“There’s a young man at the desk for you. Says he won’t leave until he’s spoken to the CEO.”
“Tell him I’ll be there in a moment.”
Danna nods and shuts the door behind her. I have a nasty sensation that I’m not going to like this. Kelly grins up at me, her eyes gleaming with suspicion.
