by Nikki Bella
I nodded.
“Well I met her and one thing led to another and we decided to get married,” he said ending his very short romantic story.
“Doesn’t it seem a bit fast, I mean you met that woman nearly a year ago and now when she suddenly comes back you two decide to tie the knot?” I asked.
“Huh what can I say, I am in love,” says Sam.
“Or delusional and mad,” I reply
I continue to put my stuff back in as Sam looked on.
“Whatever. You wouldn’t know love even if it was staring you right in the face”.
“Point. Because I don’t believe in love,” I reply point blankly.
‘You need to get over Olivia; she broke your heart, met another man and moved on. You need to do that too,” Sam says bringing up the one woman we had vowed to never discuss.
I give him one of looks, which stated, “we are done and I don’t want to talk about this subject anymore”.
“Sure bro, it’s completely up to you,” he says and then sits down on one of the benches, quickly jumping up when realized it’s wet.
“They should have a warning sign or something,” he says, disgusted.
“Anyway the reason why I am here is very obvious, I want you to be the best man at my wedding,” he states as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I give him a quizzical look.
“Yeah okay, just let there be a wedding date first and hopefully a wedding,” I say.
Sam shakes his head, gives me a Nazi salute and heads out of the room.
Weddings and Sam. This has been an ongoing battle.
Every few years, Sam would find the “one”, who he would claim he was madly in love with and that, that was it.
Come a few months later and she was the probably the worst person ever that Sam had ever come across.
But a wedding was a step too far even by Sam’s standard.
He had always talked about it, but had never actually gone ahead with it.
Well there is a first time for everything, I think as I make way out of the gym for a dinner date.
Chapter 18
Alexis
The dark and dangerous stories of Nate Dunlow continued to float around the office.
It seemed like everyone was obsessed with the man who was known for his playboy type lifestyle.
Every morning there seemed news dedicated to him on page 6 to the young CEO who had taken over the family company after the death of his father.
I wonder when he sleeps, after all every next morning there seemed to be some new place he had been seen partying along with a new lady on his hand.
Whatever, it’s not like he would ever be interested in me, and besides I didn’t come here to be the boss’s latest fling.
I just wanted to work and make it past the probationary period and maybe stop with the job hunting for at least a few years.
The work so far had been challenging and kept me so busy that I barely had time to get up from my desk to look around except to pee and eat, when my stomach started growling like a dying whale and needed to be fed.
“So Mike wants you to sit down in one of the meetings today,” Sam told me as soon as I put my handbag down and sat.
“Sure. Who is it?” I asked, obviously curious about this.
“Soderman. They are a new company and they just left their old firm a few months in, business with them. It’s a chance for Dunlow to get their business and get them on board permanently,” she says filling me in.
“Alright”
This could turn out be good, after all meetings this early on hardly happened and more importantly associates were hardly ever asked to be a part of it.
Hadderly comes in and asks me to join in his room.
“So I have decided that you should be present at the Soderman meeting. You know how smaller but new companies work and who have a lot of money to spend”, he says shrugging himself out of his coat.
“They left their last company because they did not how to handle them. Let us make sure that we don’t make the same mistake with them, this time around,” he concludes.
I nod and go back to my seat to read up on Soderman and their business and best how to handle them.
At around 11 in the morning, Hadderly makes his way out of his office and points at me to follow him.
I get up and follow him to a conference room marked B at the end of the hall.
We wait and are pretty soon joined by four men who looked like they had just walked out of one of the most important meeting of their lives and that this was just a courtesy visit to see the “little” people.
The meeting goes more smoothly than I had imagined and the four men seemed to be pretty impressed with the way things had turned out to be.
Just as we were about to close, the man himself Nathaniel Dunlow walked in.
All I could do was stop myself from ogling the man who was a walking talking Greek god with his dark hair and chiseled jaw.
The air was suddenly filled with the perfume he was wearing, and there were not many things I could do to stop myself from constantly staring at the man.
The all powerful walk came to a halt in from of Mike who introduced the man, as if the man needed an introduction.
I mean open any paper in the morning and there his face was plastered for all to see or you could just Google him and you could get everything about him.
I bought myself back to my senses as Mike started talking about the latest acquisition and the plan they had decided to follow through.
“Ms. Strope is the brain behinds this one,” Mike said jolting me back to reality.
He turns around and does an entire top to bottom scan that made my stomach churn, in a good way.
“Well I am glad to see Miss. Strope taking such an active interest in the happenings of the office,” he said in a voice laced with approval.
I continued to look at the LCD next to his head to avoid looking into his steel gray eyes that had not left me since he had walked into the room.
“Well we need to get going, we have a business lunch to get to,” one of the men in a dark blue suit said, hoping to get out of the conversation that had reached its standstill.
The four men walk out with Mike accompanying them to the elevator.
Dunlow lingers back for a while before parting the room with a smile.
Chapter 19
Nathaniel
The meeting with Soderman was far from my mind.
The only thing that was on my mind at the moment was Ms. Strope.
Even though this had been only the second time that I had seen her, today I had the chance to look at her from top to bottom.
The boys in the break room had been right, she was not your pretty with the big beautiful eyes and blonde hair but she had an air about herself, with her dark brown hair and the right amount of legs at least that is what I could figure out so far from the look I had at her.
I needed her.
I needed a way to have her around me.
Mrs. Stroman’s warning rang in my head about dragging the newest face into my bed.
Screw that. I am the boss, I can do whatever I want which included me dragging anybody into my bed as I pleased.
Keeping that in my mind, I walked straight up to Stacy who was busy talking on the phone.
Looking at the urgency on my face, she excused the person on the other end and looked at me.
“Tomorrow I need a follow up meeting with Mike about the Soderman account,” I say in one breath.
“Weren’t you just with him, Sam said Mike was meeting them today for a potential signup deal,” she said looking confused.
“Yes I was, but I am talking about a follow up with him,” I said hoping she wouldn’t divulge more into my sudden interest in Mike’s work.
“Sure. Anything else?”
“Yeah, and make sure whoever worked on this with Mark should be with him the next time he comes for the follow up,” I say.
Stacy gives me a nod and makes a note on a post it.
I go to my office to attend a stream of calls that I had been ignoring for the past couple of days.
Life of a CEO.
There were a few drinks invite, which I thought was best to decline keeping in mind the people who had invited me, wanted nothing much to do but get a few pictures with me and call me up for a favor when needed.
I sigh as my thoughts turn back to Alexis.
I needed a night with her.
Chapter 20
Alexis
“You know you need a night out”, Jess says as soon as I enter the apartment.
“Jess I have literally just walked in and you want me to go out again?” I ask her while plopping down myself on the sofa and kicking off my heels.
Christ I needed a new pair, this one had reached its limit and had started to give me blisters.
“Well yeah, all you ever do is go to work, come back from work and sleep,” she says pulling her hair in a bun.
“Well I need a bath, not just sit in the tub for a few minutes, but like a long ass one where I just go to sleep in one bath,” I say already imagining the long relaxing bath that was awaiting me.
“We never go out anymore, at least under Jeremey you were fun,” Jess reminds me of the man who had made his life mission to hit on me.
I slide further down on the couch as the day’s events hit me.
Jess meanwhile finished getting ready and heads out of the door.
‘Friday, we are going out. No excuses,” she says finality before closing the door behind her and heading for the bar.
Jess never had the work to pay her bills kind of problem.
She had the looks and mostly she used those to her advantage.
If she wanted she could have easily landed herself a guy and would never have to worry about money ever in her life, but sadly she had no interest in guys and that had resulted her in being disowned by her parents at the age of 18.
After years of estranged relations between Jess and her parents, last year they had come together.
They didn’t exactly shower her with welcome back to the family money, but they didn’t exactly throw her out on the street either.
But Jess being Jess had not easily swayed in the sudden love shown by her parents.
Turned out, her parents were under the impression that maybe the years apart had knocked some sense into her, it hadn’t.
She still liked girls and she still liked to party every other weekend and still not have a college degree.
Her motto in life was, “if you can’t drain it, it ain’t worth it”.
This had been working pretty well for her so far.
I turn my thoughts away from Jess and her lively life and turned my thoughts to Dunlow.
The man himself was a piece of art.
No wonder he had all the ladies in the office swooning over him.
I will not let that man overpower me.
Jeremey had been more than enough. All he wanted was to dick around with me and then brag about it like he did with the others.
Well no sir, I was not going to let that happen to me. I went there for work and work is all I wanted to do.
And that is exactly the same reason I came to Dunlow, to work.
No man was going to stop me from making it pass the probation period and getting permanently hired in one of the most sought after companies in New York City.
I break out of my day dreaming and head for the bath that I had been anticipating all day.
Chapter 21
Nathaniel
“Mike wants to see you after 12 today,” Stacy informs me as soon as I step off the elevator.
“Jesus woman, let me breathe,” the woman sometimes was too much for me to handle.
She makes a face and tries to keep up with me.
“Soderman is having lunch today with him, they are finalizing everything and Halifax has decided he will accept your invitation only if he gets invited to the mayor’s ball this time around,” she says in one breath.
I stare at her if she had gone mad.
The mayor’s ball held every June for whatever disease was popular at that time was one of the most sought after event, maybe even more than the Met Gala.
But then again Met Gala had its own charm and host of celebs that attended it.
The mayor’s ball was a whole different ball game altogether.
Anybody who was rich enough to donate anything from 25k to above wanted to be a part of the event.
For men it was a chance to mingle with other likeminded fellows and spend some time with their mistresses without the fear of being discovered by their wives.
For the women it was a chance to compare their clothes and talk about who was sleeping with whom.
“And why does Halifax want to attend the mayor’s ball? He doesn’t even live here,” I pointed out the obvious flaw in his request.
“Halifax is not interested in attending the ball, it’s his daughter. She’s going to be in New York at that time. And what better way to get her social standard up a notch than to attend one of the prestigious events around the city,” she says.
“See what you can do about it,” I say, not interested at all.
“I just want my meeting with Halifax done”.
I get to my office and get on with the day’s task which included Skype meetings with Japanese investors.
Fucking Japs, have more money than they need, still won’t put it to good use.
At somewhere after 12, Stacy’s voice floats through the intercom, informing me of Mike’s arrival.
What does Mike want at this hour?
And then I remember, I had asked for him when he gets done with his meeting with Soderman.
As Mike walks in, he is accompanied by none other than Alexis Strope.
I had been right to every last detail. She had the legs and the body that were enough to drive anyone mad.
As Mike sits down and starts going over the details of the meeting with Sodermam, all I could think about what I could do with Alexis.
She was just the right amount of sexy.
With her dark brown hair worn in loose curls and the eyes that had a hint of green flecked with gold, she was like the perfect woman you would happily show to your mom and screw in the bedroom at the same time.
As Mike continued to drone on, I continued to look at Alexis.
She was trying her best to avoid my gaze but you don’t get to that so easily.
“So Ms. Strope what do you think about our latest client,” I asked cutting Mike who had started off a rant about numbers.
“I think we work hard enough to keep them happy, maybe they won’t ditch us like their previous ones,” I say as a matter of factly.
“Well then I guess we will have to take better care of them won’t we,” I say to her pointedly.
She looks at me and then looks away at Mike who still hadn’t gotten around being cut off by me.
“Well I better be off, lots to do,” Mike says after the awkward silence hung out in the room for longer than it should have.
“Ms. Strope please stay, behind. I would like to have a word with you,” I say to Alexis who was already halfway out of her chair.
As Mike makes his way out of the door, I turn to look around at Alexis who seemed like she did not want to be here.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I ask her.
“What?”
“It’s a simple enough question, are you with someone or not?” I asked her perching myself on the edge of my table.
“That is none of your concern, sir,” Alexis replied, putting the emphasis on the word sir.
“Well it is, I don’t want any meathead coming after me, for going after his girlfriend,” I say, speaking from experience.
“And what makes you think I’m interested in you?” she asks half getting up.
“I don’t, I just get what I want, and this time around it happens to be you. So I ask again, do you have so
meone?”
“And again like I said, it is none of your concern who I sleep with”.
Alexis gets up from the chair and heads for the door.
“If you think you can get away with trying to sleep with me, let me tell you something, you aren’t. You might get away with sleeping with whoever you want, sadly buddy it isn’t happening this time around,” she says and walks out of the door with a flick of her hair.
I grin to myself.
Challenge accepted.
Chapter 22
Alexis
If it was anything, working at Dunlow was a dream, come true.
Everything and everyone was so professional that at times, I felt I was out of place.
Sure I was just a girl out of Michigan and New York was still relatively new to me, but I had worked in other firms before joining Dunlow, still every time I walked into the huge glass building of Dunlow Enterprises, it left me in awe.
The work had been intense and full of challenges and kept me on my toes, but it’s learning new things every day that kept me coming back each day.
It had been a few weeks since I had started working at Dunlow and if there was one thing I had noticed as common in every place that I had worked in was; office gossip.
Be it a small form or a huge one with a fancy glass office, no one was safe from any of it.
The surfer boy and the leggy blonde who I had seen thrashing around like a pair of eels in a car a few days ago, were officially dating and spent every break they got down in the employees parking making out.
Meanwhile, others were not so lucky.
Some were still trying to score and had so far come up empty handed.
I on the other hand, was not so sure.
Dunlow’s last lunch stop over and the attempt to just straight forward ask me if I had a boyfriend or not and then preceding to ask me had left me avoiding that man at all cost.
He on the other hand had made it his own little personal game for pastime in the office, where he would have me attend almost every meeting that he had with Dunlow.
He also had started coming up to the eighth floor to have meetings with clients, something which he would never do before, according to Mike’s secretary who, in my opinion led the entire office gossip and rumors club.