by Claire Angel
Even after the talk I had with Sarah, it seemed like we just kept missing each other all day. All week I tried to carve out some time for us to spend together, but something always came up. It was usually on Sarah’s side and I was starting to think that she really didn't want to see what else could happen between us. That saddened me more than anything else, because I was sure it was going to be great.
When Friday came around, I was actually looking forward to the conference. It was one of those things that I usually dreaded, but not this time around, because I was going to be able to spend time with Sarah.
She had been working diligently to get the perfect presentation together. I had seen her working on it all week, so now she was going to have no reason to stay away from me. Now everything was just as it should be, and we were finally going to get to spend some time together. I don't know when it became all I could think about, but at some point, Sarah had taken over in my mind and I was convinced the only way that I was going to get it back, was for us to finally spend some quality time together.
I saw her out at the end of the afternoon. We were all going to meet at the airstrip around eight. I just wanted to make sure that she had everything that she needed. It did occur to me that I could ask the same of all of the other interns, but I didn't care enough, to even seem like I cared. I certainly wasn't worried about the rest of them, just Sarah.
“I see that you're ready to take off for the day.”
“I am. I just need to run home and grab a few things before we get on the plane. You know that I've never actually flown before.”
“I find that hard to believe”
“My family always would take other forms of transportation for me. We actually took a cruise ship to Europe one time, because I was afraid to fly. Me and my mom took the ship and we met everyone else when we got there. It has actually been a bit of hassle. I've always been afraid of flying.”
“Do you want to go some other way? I mean I guess we could drive or something.”
I had never really thought about other forms of transportation. Flying had always been a way to go. It was faster and quicker and a lot more comfortable. There was no other alternative, as far as I was concerned. If Sarah was going to be in business like she should be, she was going to have to get over this flying thing. I can't think of a week that I haven't had to fly somewhere for a quick meeting.
“This is just something that I'm going to have to get over. Besides, you should see me with directions. I am horrible at them and I would never find Chicago. If I was going to drive, I would have had to leave hours ago. I am going to do this, I’m determined it won’t hold me back anymore.”
I admired her determination and it only made her look even more beautiful in my mind. She was trying so hard to be confident, but if I looked closely, her hands were clasped together so hard that I could see her white knuckles.
“Well I'm glad that you're ready to get over your fears. The best way to do that, is to face them. I used to be afraid of talking in front of people. I dreaded it every time I had to do it, but now it's just a normal occurrence.”
I don't usually tell people any of my vulnerabilities, because I wanted them to believe that I didn't have any. I needed people to look up to me for strength and confidence. If I did not know what the hell was going on, how were they expected to follow me?
“You must have been very good at beating your fear. I would never have imagined that you were afraid of anything, Richard. You’ve always seemed larger than life to me.”
“I am human like everyone else. I have fears too. Or I used to have. But you can't let fear get to you. You just have to face all your fears. You know that it's safer and quicker in a plane...”
“Trust me, I've heard that a time or two, and it doesn't make me feel any better. I don't know why people think that it would. I know that I have to get over this, so I will get on the plane finally, but I'm probably going to drink a little bit on the way. I think I should warn you now.”
“That doesn't sound too bad. It might do you some good to relax a little bit. You have been working your butt off since you got here. I wish all of my employees worked like you. I would get a lot more done in a day and we would all make a lot more money.”
She blushed a little bit at the compliment and I think that was my favorite color on her, that light blush when she was embarrassed. It made me glow inside, warming me up. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her for a moment.
“I need to get going, if I am going to be on time for the flight. I know how you feel about being on time. I will see you in a couple of hours. Maybe you can help keep me calm during the flight? I know that I'm going to need it.”
Considering who else was going with us, I figured that I was going to be one of the only friendly faces there. The interns had really taken to the competition part of it, and it was like a war zone between them. The tension was high and if I would have had a second plane, I would have made them fly with themselves.
She took off again and I felt like she was running away, but once again she had a good reason. I don't think I was ever going to really know what was going on in Sarah’s mind. She kept so much to herself. She was so different than the women that I was used to dating, that sometimes I didn't know what was next. If it was any other women, I would already have them underneath me in a bed somewhere. I would have already been able to push them out of my mind and moved on to the next one. But I couldn't do any of those things with Sarah. For one reason or another, she was just different.
***
I was at the airstrip waiting and Sarah was one of the last people to get on. She was steadily looking my way, but she went and sat in one of the seats on the back. I was trying my best to get her attention, but Amber was yammering on next to me. I wasn’t listening. I was paying attention to Sarah too much, to care about what she was going to say.
Sarah got up and went to the restroom. It wasn’t until I realized that Amber had stopped talking, that she was getting up. I was trying to talk to Charles that was on the other side of me, but my eyes kept flicking to Amber. I knew that she had something against Sarah, and I knew that something was up.
“Are you really worried about the antics of the interns?”
We hadn’t talked too much about Sarah. He’d asked a couple of times, what had changed, but there was still a part of me that was trying my best to keep it to myself. He was my best friend, and I still didn’t want to talk about her, not even with him.
“Not really, but that one in particular, is a problem.”
Charles shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s not that bad. Wicked smart, but she spends most of her time gossiping.”
“That’s never a good thing in an office of people.”
He was about to say something, but then we both stopped and watched her take out some papers from Sarah’s briefcase.
“See, my point is proven.”
“You know that you can’t get in the middle of it. You never have before.”
He was right, of course. Charles was so valuable to me, because he saw things the other way. The difference was though, he was usually the one to add empathy to my thought process. He wasn't usually the one to tell me to use my head, not my heart. I didn't usually have to have anybody to tell me that.
The problem was, that I did not want to just let it go. It wasn't hard to figure out what Amber was doing. She had taken Sarah’s presentation. The one that she had been working all week and that she was going to present at the conference. It was one of the major milestones for any intern in the beginning. It would be a problem that I knew I could easily fix right now. I could grab the presentation out of Amber's hands and give it back to Sarah. Then everything will be right with the world. But Charles was right. I could not interfere.
“I didn't say that I was going to, but it's good to know everything about the situation. It would seem like not everything is how it first appears. Not when it comes to Amber.”
He just kin
d of agreed with me, but I could tell that he wanted to know more.
“Are you going to tell me why this one is different? Why do you even care? We have witnessed far worse things and then hired those same people. You like them ruthless.”
“Honestly, as soon as I figure it out, I will tell you myself. I don't know what it is about her. I would like to think that there is a reason that she feels different to me, but hell if I know what it is.”
“Are you sure you really even want her? You don’t even know Sarah. Haven’t known her but a couple of weeks, from what I can tell.”
“I have actually wanted her for several years now. Ever since she was a freshman at the University, and I met her for the first time after a speech. There's always been something about her and getting to know her has made that feeling grow stronger. I figured that I would be over her by now. I'm over everyone else almost immediately.”
Charles didn't answer right away, and I can imagine that he was shocked by my words. It wasn't every day that I admitted to anyone, that I'd fallen for someone. It was so hard for me to admit it to myself. But here I was, pining for a girl I still couldn’t have, trying to figure out why I felt this way.
More than that, I felt protective of her. It wasn’t something that I had experienced for anyone outside of my family before. I wanted to make everything better for her. I even wanted to fix the mean girl Amber problem.
“Just be careful Richard. This can turn sideways for you very quickly. With your status, money, the fact that you have so many followers on social media, the last thing you need to walk into is a controversy. They don't turn out well for you and you know it. It wouldn’t be the first time either.”
Charles had reminded me of a sexual harassment suit that I got my first year with the company. My father had died and for a few years, I let my mother take care of everything with the business. I never wanted to walk in his footsteps, but after my mother got ill as well from the long hours, I knew that it was time to step up. I had gotten too close with one of my assistants, and the next thing I know, she was trying to get millions out of the company.
“Yolanda did get a little bit of money out of the company, as much as she wanted. It wasn’t much though.”
“She should never have gotten a dime. You need to look elsewhere for your love life.”
“That’s hard to do, considering that I am here all of the time. But when I do have time, I try to keep it out of the company. And you damn well know that. Yolanda was one time.”
“And now Sarah?”
I sighed out loud, letting him know how disgusted I was with this line of thinking.
“What if she turns out to be just like the other one?”
“Honestly. Even if I had to pay Sarah as much as I paid Yolanda, it would still be worth it. That's how badly I want her. And please mind your words before you speak something about Sarah.”
Charles just shook his head as he understood the warning hidden in my words. He knew I could be dangerous at times. If anybody would have told me the same thing, I probably would have thrown him or her out the window. But with Charles it was different. And somewhere I knew he cared for me. But when it was about Sarah, I was being very protective about her, I still did not know why. I couldn’t concentrate at all. That woman was doing absolutely nothing and yet here I was losing my freaking mind over her.
Was I crazy for wanting her, no matter what the cost was?
Chapter 11
Sarah
I got back from the bathroom and the plane was in the air. And as always Richard was checking out each part of my body with those lustful eyes. This always had made me nervous. I didn't have to use the bathroom, but for a moment, I thought I was going to get sick. So, I stayed in there for several moments and the feeling of light headedness finally went away. I don't know what I was thinking, getting on this plane. I should have done anything else. I could have agreed to drive the night before and I would have been there with everyone else.
The whole idea of facing my fears had been a good one. I wanted nothing more than to think that I could just do it. I was going to have to get used to it, so I might as well start. That was what I was thinking when I made the plan, but as I made my way back to the seat in the back, I was wondering if I was thinking about it all the wrong way.
Now, I was rethinking everything. As much as I wanted to believe that I could get over this fear, I was starting to doubt that I could. All I did was feel nauseous and panicky. I needed to focus on something else. I had been late and ended up getting the furthest seat away from him. Amber was sitting next to him. I don’t know why but I felt so jealous seeing her this close to Richard. Even though I knew how I felt about Amber and had promised to help me out.
She caught my eye for a moment and gave me this mischievous smile that made me want to slap her. As much as my father's words had resonated with me before, obviously he had never had to work with somebody like Amber and her squad. If he had, he would have given me helpful pointers on how to get rid of her myself. That would have certainly done better than talking about bad peace.
I needed something to take my mind off of things for a moment and then I realized that I should be working on my presentation. I had been working on it all week, but this was the final few hours and I wanted to make sure that everything was perfect. It was going to determine my place in the company later, or if I was going to have one at all.
Going into the briefcase, I knew that the presentation was right on top. Triple and quadruple checked it before I got to the tarmac. But now it wasn't there and there was an immediate sense of panic they went through me. Where was it? It was right here just a few minutes ago.
I tried to calm myself down, concluding that there was no way that it wasn’t here. It had to be. It had been in the bag before I got on the plane, so it had to be here somewhere. I took everything out and went through it twice, looking into the bag like there was some hidden compartment that led to Narnia that had surely taken it. What else could it be?
Alarms were going off in my head and all I could imagine was what I was going to do when I got to the conference. I would be expected to have a presentation, with facts and the PowerPoint. I still had the PowerPoint because it was on my computer, but I needed the rest of it. I needed the narrative that I had spent almost a week going over. That was something I couldn’t as easily fabricate again, certainly not in the time before the conference started.
I was so concerned with the idea of not having the presentation for the conference, that I didn’t worry about my fear of flying the rest of the way. Before I knew it, the plane had landed. For some reason, now that was the worst thing that could happen. I was going to have to tell Richard that I wasn't going to be able to do the presentation. He was going to be disappointed and I think that was the worst part of it all. Of everything that could happen; I didn't want him to lose faith with me. I felt like he already did.
***
“I am sorry that I didn't get back to you Sarah. How was your flight?”
I tried to smile, but it felt like it was strained, even in the best of the situation. I didn't know how to respond to it. It had been one of the worst ninety minutes of my life. But I wasn't even worried about the flying part. It was everything else that was making me sick to my stomach.
“It was fine.”
“Are you sure? You sure don't look like you're okay.”
I waved him off and told him that it was no big deal. He didn't need to know about it just yet. Truth was, I don't know how I was going to tell him about the missing presentation. I hated excuses and I didn’t want to dole them out, especially not to Richard. I wasn't even sure how I had failed, just that I had.
“It’s fine really.”
“Are you sure that there isn’t something going on? You know that you can talk to me.”
“You’re my boss Richard. I’m fine.”
I don’t know why I was getting bitchy with him. It certainly
wasn’t going to help when I had to tell him about the presentation, but it was out, and I was walking away. I was letting it all get to me and I knew that it wasn’t going to end well. It never did, when I let my emotions control me.
I needed that drink now. The one that I had warned Richard about. We had a few hours before we were going to the conference, so I will be able to get a few in, before I had to spill my guts about the presentation. I kept hoping that it would be in the suitcase that I had packed. I was praying for it and I was anxious to get upstairs, to see if that was the case.
One thing that I was ever so grateful for when we got to the hotel, was the fact that we all had our own room. I don’t know if I was going to be able to deal with anymore sharing with the other interns. They were on my last nerve and with the way I was feeling, I would have used my dad’s card to secure my own space. But I didn’t have to. It was all taken care of for me and I was very thankful for that.
When I got in the room, I tore my suitcase apart and didn’t find anything that I was looking for. As much as I wanted to believe that it was all going to work out, the optimism was for no reason. It wasn’t going to work out. I was going to have to go see Richard and tell him that I had failed. It was hard to even say it in my mind. Now what?
Taking a shower and getting dressed, I calmed myself enough to go to Richard’s room. I was just going to come out with it. I knew that he was going to be mad, and rightly so, but I wasn’t going to let it break me. I knew that I’d done everything I could to make it happen. I wasn’t sure what stopped it, but it didn’t matter. None of it did anymore.
I knocked on the door and the sound was so loud, vibrating in my ears. My heartrate was up, and I felt like I was waiting for the principal. It was not a good feeling and all romantic inclinations were going to be pushed out the window.
“Come in.”
I opened the door and saw the reflection of Richard in the mirror. The towel was haphazardly cinched on his waist, but it was hanging rather low and I had to tear my eyes away from the sight. The hard muscles rippled as he turned around. I counted abs, before I was able to drag my eyes upwards, with heat moving to my face.