Hot CEO: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Charlize Starr

  “It’s time for you to grow up,” I’d told him sternly the next afternoon when he’d gotten in from the festival. “You’re nearly thirty years old. This bullshit has got to stop.” Calvin had still been bleary-eyed from the night before but had had a drink in hand anyway.

  “What bullshit?” he’d asked, glaring at me, defiant as always.

  “You know what I mean, and I’m done with it,” I said, raising my voice at him. “I’m done cleaning up after you. The company can’t keep pouring out money to cover your tracks, and Dad can’t keep watching you do this. The man’s going to have a heart attack one of these days, and it’s going to be your fault.”

  “Fuck you,” Calvin had spat at me, voice lower and sharper than usual in these fights we’d been having more and more lately. He took a long gulp and then threw his whiskey glass at my head. It shattered just behind my ear, streaking the wall with liquid. “Honestly, go to hell, Jacob. Dad’s fine, but you want to talk about dead parents? Do you really want to go there? Then we should talk about how maybe you should have died instead of Mom.”

  He’d stormed out after that, leaving me stunned. It’s true that when she was alive, our mother had a soft spot for Calvin, had indulged him, but it was his own behavior that had driven a wedge between him and Dad. I always knew that Calvin resented how much of the company Dad had trusted me with. It had only grown when I’d revitalized our barrel-aging process, speeding up our time and allowing us to grow into a billion-dollar international player. I knew he resented that, being a few years older than him, I was set to inherit those billions of dollars and the whole company. I knew he resented not being allowed to get us deals with his partying. He used to say that I might have known how to make whiskey, but he knew how to drink it and how to speak the language of nightlife, which he thought was even more important. He always thought that should have counted more in Dad’s eyes.

  I had no idea he resented me that deeply. I thought we were still a team, if often a dysfunctional one. He is my brother, and it is a family business after all. I had no idea he hated me so much – that he was angry with me all the time instead of only the times we were fighting.

  And that was all before the attempts on my life started.

  Frustrated, I toss the magazine into my fireplace. I stand up, pacing around my cabin, wanting to do something to alleviate the feeling. Wishing I could go somewhere or talk to someone, if only for the distraction.

  Mia. I think I want to talk to Mia.

  I don’t have an excuse to call her, no apologies or dry cleaning or chocolate concerns, but I want to talk to her. I think hearing her voice will calm me down from the way my thoughts of Calvin have my blood boiling. I don’t have a reason to call her, but I want to call her, and I decide that maybe that’s reason enough. Our talk yesterday had turned into something as mundane as how I had fixed up several things around the cabin to make them functional, so I don’t think she’ll mind hearing from me. I check the time and see she should surely be off work by now, so I decide to go for it.

  She answers on the first ring, and the sound of her voice lifts my spirits instantly.

  “Hey there. You change your mind about that chocolate?” she asks, laughing a little.

  “I’m still deciding,” I say, grinning and sitting back down like her voice has defused me.

  “We’re making some new varieties next week, flavors of the season, if you want to hold out,” Mia says.

  “Tempting. Tell me all about them?” I ask, settling in.

  Mia laughs again and then tells me each and every new combination of chocolate being made, and then about her day: getting her new house set up and a phone call she’d had from a city friend who still can’t believe she moved away. Before I know it, we’ve been on the phone for over an hour, and I just want to keep talking, to keep the conversation with Mia going.

  Even though I know I shouldn’t take the risk, I want whatever this is, what's happening with Mia to continue.

  Chapter Seven - Mia

  I’ve been in town for three weeks, and every day for the last two of them, I’ve talked to Jacob. Jacob has somehow become an important part of my new life here. I don’t know how it’s happened so fast, or why one of us has found a reason to call the other every day, but I’m so thrilled it has. The conversations keep getting longer, too. Longer and more personal, and Jacob seems to be easing into them. At first, he’d been so awkward and so unsure on the phone, and while he still can be occasionally, he seems much more at ease lately. I think, or I hope, anyway, that I’m putting him at ease. I like the idea of that, of Jacob feeling like he can really open up to me.

  I think I might even be falling for him.

  I know that’s ridiculous. I’ve only seen him in person once, and that hadn’t gone well. It feels crazy, how much I like him, how much I think about him during my day, how much I want to tell him things, hear him laugh, listen to his voice. I wish I could see him in person again or that he would offer to meet up or even take me out. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be the same in person.

  I call Jacob as soon as I’m done at the shop, locking the door for the evening and heading home. “Hi,” I say into the phone, a little breathless from a cold wind that hits me as I turn down the street.

  “Are you okay?” Jacob asks. His concern makes me smile more than it probably should.

  “Just cold,” I say, “it’s windy out tonight.”

  “Not up here,” Jacob says, chuckling. “The trees block it, I suppose. Are you headed straight home?”

  “I am,” I confirm, thinking about Jacob’s cabin. I know he’s up in the mountains somewhere, but I don’t actually even know how high or how remote he is.

  “Good,” Jacob says.

  “Good?” I echo.

  “That you won’t be out in the cold,” Jacob clarifies, still a touch awkward. I’ve come to find his gruffness incredibly charming.

  “Only while I walk,” I agree. “I’ve got a furnace and a blanket waiting for me.”

  “Sounds nice,” Jacob says, then pauses. Although I can’t see him, I feel like he might be shaking his head. “How was your day?”

  “Busy but absolutely wonderful,” I say. “How was yours?”

  “Neither busy nor wonderful,” Jacob says, making me laugh just a little.

  “Oh no. What happened?” I ask.

  “Eh, just family politics,” Jacob says as another gust of wind makes me shiver. I shake my head. I can’t imagine what it would be like to work so closely with your family that way. I’m sure it would drive you a bit out of your mind at times. My mother teaches second grade, my father is a car mechanic, and my sister is a stay-at-home mom to a nephew I’ve only seen a handful of times. We’re a get-together-on-holidays-and-that’s-about-it sort of family now that my grandparents are gone. Being in business with them seems like it would be an impossible task.

  “More secret recipes?” I ask, teasing a little, hoping to make Jacob laugh. I’m delighted when he does.

  “Still just the one,” he responds.

  “Is it really lost forever? No one knows it?” I ask, shivering. I’m glad I’ll be home in a few blocks. Jacob’s right; it’s much too cold to be out.

  “Not a soul. At the time, he was the most popular man on the mountain. People would come for miles and miles around for his whiskey. They say during the Civil War, some people even hid flasks of it in their uniforms to use for cleaning wounds or to steal a sip of liquid courage before going into battle. I don’t know if there’s any truth to that or if it’s all legend. But it was his whole life after he moved here, although he never told my great-grandfather the recipe. He died before my grandfather was old enough to ask for it. Grandpa always said his greatest regret was that he never got it written down,” Jacob says.

  “That’s one really closely-guarded secret,” I say, fascinated.

  “They say he kept it on him, wrote it down, and carried it with him at all times, but no one has ever found it. If it ever even
existed, he was probably buried with it,” Jacob says.

  “Not even his wife knew?” I ask, letting myself into my house and breathing a sigh of relief when the warm air washes over me.

  “If she did, she never told anyone. She never even talked about it at all, apparently,” Jacob says.

  “My grandmother liked to say she had a secret recipe, too,” I say, smiling to myself.

  “For chocolate?” Jacob asks, his voice warming me just as much as the little radiator near my couch.

  “Yes, she used to swear it was top secret, that she could never tell anyone,” I say, laughing. “I used to find the bags of grocery store chocolate chips in the garbage when I was talking the trash out at her house, so I knew she was just melting them down, but I used to wheedle her for the secret anyway. My grandfather never gave her up even after she died. Can you believe it? He’d swear up and down there really was a family secret.”

  “Well, it sounds like your grandmother and my great-great-grandfather would have gotten along quite well,” Jacob says, laughing too.

  “I’m sure they would’ve,” I agree. “They could’ve thrown the most delicious get-togethers with their recipes.”

  “It’s probably good they lived at different times, actually, or they might have gotten along so well that you and I wouldn’t be talking now,” Jacob says in a way that I can’t tell if it’s an attempt at flirtatiousness or just his general edge of awkwardness. I laugh again and flush a little anyway.

  “My grandmother was really pretty when she was young,” I say, thinking of the old pictures I’ve seen of my grandparents, barely more than teenagers the day they’d eloped.

  “I’m sure she was,” Jacob says. “You must take after her.” He pauses and coughs, clearing his throat. “I mean, I’m sure you must. In a lot of ways.”

  “I like to think so,” I say, flushed again at Jacob’s stumble. I’m almost sure that was him calling me pretty, too. “What about your great-great-grandfather? Any pictures?”

  “Only when he was older,” Jacob says. “I’ve never seen a picture of him younger than seventy, so I assume he came out of the womb with wrinkles and a full head of gray hair.”

  “I’ll bet he was handsome,” I say, thinking of Jacob’s face on a man from well over a century ago.

  Jacob laughs again, and this one sounds just a little nervous. “You think so?” he asks.

  “Oh, yes,” I say, pulling a blanket over myself on the couch and grinning. “A big strong mountain man with a top-secret recipe for amazing whiskey? A man of mystery and good business sense? I’ll bet he had half the girls in town fighting over him. Wanting him to – would it have been called courting back then?”

  “In some places it still is,” Jacob says, chuckling awkwardly, “but yes, I think it would have been.”

  “Then they all wanted him to court them,” I say. “I can just see the girls lining up at his door with home-baked pies and batting eyelashes.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Jacob says, laughing again, more at ease this time.

  If he was half as handsome as you are, I’m sure I’m spot-on, I almost think about adding, but I’m not sure I’m ready to test the waters just yet. Still, there’s a lightness in Jacob’s voice I haven’t heard before for the rest of the conversation, a teasing banter between us that makes me fall asleep thinking of whiskey and courting and handsome Civil War mountain men as I do.

  Jacob would have made for a fine mountain man legend, I think to myself, smiling as I consider it. I think I would’ve wanted to be the first girl in line at his door if I had lived back then myself.

  Chapter Eight - Jacob

  The last thing I should be doing right now is pursuing a relationship. How can I? I don’t even feel safe getting groceries. I certainly can’t take Mia out the way I’d like to. I’m still looking over my shoulder all the time, waiting for the next “accident” that feels all too intentional.

  I know I’m just being paranoid, but in the weeks following that last big fight with Calvin, it had happened three times. There hadn’t been anything I could prove, and I still can’t, but it had all seemed like far too much to be a coincidence.

  First, there had been the scaffolding at one of our warehouses that had come apart and toppled with me on top of it just as soon as I’d reached the top. Sure, it was old and needed work. It was just old, I’d told myself at the time. But it had also fallen right when I was on it and the first time I’d been in that warehouse in months as part of a trip that had been planned weeks in advance. Luckily, I had grabbed a shelving unit and pulled myself to a ladder on the other end of the wall or my limbs might have been just as shattered at the scaffolding bits.

  Then there had been the incident with my car, a fault in my brake line that had sent me squealing towards an overpass, unsure if I’d stop in time. The mechanic had said it looked like the brake line had worn out. Maybe it had. I’m sure it had. That sort of damage can happen at any time. It causes accidents every day. But I’d just gotten the car inspected, complete with new brakes, earlier that year. I usually left the car locked in my garage, but Calvin has broken into my house drunk more than once in the past, and I know he has so-called friends who are capable of much worse.

  When an entire wall filing cabinet unit had crashed onto my desk just two days later, only missing me because I’d gotten up to refill my coffee, I couldn’t shake the feeling anymore. They were all things that could be accidents. All things that would have looked like freak accidents had they actually killed me. Like really convenient, tragic, random accidents. And I just couldn’t get that fight that Sunday afternoon out of my head every time one happened. It looked like Calvin was carrying his threat through and it wasn’t just something he’d said in anger. Like maybe he really had wanted me dead.

  I knew I was talking crazy, thinking like that. Of course, they’d been freak accidents and nothing more, just a string of bad luck on top of my terrible year thus far with the company and the music festival PR debacle. But I’d decided I need to leave to get some space. I thought if I left, Calvin might see some sense and stop his behavior. I didn’t want to turn my suspicions over to the police. I didn’t really have anything to go on other than a hunch and a childish shouting match, and most likely all I’d end up doing would be hurting my father and making things with Calvin so much worse, accusing him of trying to do something as outlandish as conspire to commit murder against his own brother. I shuddered to think of what he’d tell those magazine interviewers, the PR mess I’d have to clean up for the company if I made a scene and it turned out to be nothing. If anything, the paranoia was surely a sign I needed time away from the company to let the whole situation fizzle out and hope Calvin would finally start to grow up a little in the interim without me to lean on.

  So, I’d told everyone I was taking a leave from the company and finally, finally going on that months-long backpacking trip my friend Todd had wanted us to take since college. Todd lives off the grid, no social media, no real contact with a lot of people other than the ones he meets on his world travels, so I knew he’d be a safe cover story. No one would be expecting me to be posting Facebook pictures of the exotic sights I was seeing if I were with Todd, and I’d hoped the absence would be enough of a statement to Calvin about how serious I was about being done with his behavior.

  I told my father that work was starting to make me so stressed that I was getting anxiety and I needed the time away for my mental health. I didn’t tell him anything about Calvin.

  I’m hard on myself now, thinking about how I should have handled it differently, but I’m not sure how I could have done so. I don’t know how a confrontation wouldn’t end with one or both of us getting hurt over what’s probably nothing, and I don’t know how involving anyone else wouldn’t destroy the family and maybe the whole company. I can’t imagine what the press would make of a brother-versus-brother episode of violence. I don’t want to imagine it.

  But the interviews Calvin has given since I
left make it clear he hasn’t let it go, and it’s frustrating me more with each one. Little jabs about me to the press, some of them almost sounding like threats, are made constantly. Comments like, Well, Julia, I think everyone can agree that I’m the future of whiskey or we’ve shaved off some of the dead weight around here lately are played off as jokes, but that I can’t help but think are meant for me. Like he knows I might be reading them and he wants me to know he’s still after me.

  It’s not fair to Mia to bring her into a situation like that. Not only can I not take her out or even see her – it could be dangerous for her, too. I’m sure if Calvin knew I was seeing somebody, it would make Mia a target. I can’t subject her to that.

  But I can’t get her off my mind.

  Lately, I feel like Mia is all I can think about. Like she’s in my thoughts all the time no matter what I’m focusing on. Talking to her is my favorite part of every day. It’s been giving me something to look forward to, to fill my days here in this cabin that’s getting lonelier the longer I’m away. It’s starting to feel more like a stakeout than a mental-health retreat.

  Maybe there is some way to talk to my brother and just end this so I can date Mia. So, I can stop hiding and things at the company can finally go back to normal, or at least however normal a day with Calvin around could ever be.

  I know I should wait until I know what that answer is before I take things any farther with Mia, but I don’t want things to stop.

  Chapter Nine - Mia

  Friends of mine have said I’m too bold with men – that when it comes to dating, I should be subtler, play it coy, and wait for the man to make the first move. I’ve always been bad at that. I like to be pursued and chased as much as the next girl, but I also hate playing games. I like to know what a man is thinking, and I’ve found that too much holding back and playing it coy just leads to miscommunications or lost connections. Besides, I’ve never been afraid to say what’s on my mind or ask for what I want.