by McAdams, Amy
“A builder?” I asked.
“No. He is also a project manager for large construction company.”
“Same job as me?” I question.
He nods and then smiles. “Would you like to meet him?”
“No,” I react bluntly.
Again, his eyes fall to the table full of disappointment, “Oh.”
“Look… I’m sorry but it’s too much too soon. Maybe one day soon I’ll meet him.”
“Ok,” he nods. “But you do work in the same industry. Maybe you’ll come across him?”
“I doubt it. It’s a big industry.”
But as it happens, the industry is not big enough…
Chapter Seven
The mouths of every girl in the office dropped on Wednesday morning.
An unknown man swayed into the office, asked politely to talk to my boss and then disappeared into an eager discussion with him in his office.
The man was as perfect as someone could have molded a man.
“Who was that?” I asked the receptionist in our office quietly.
“Um…” it took her dreamy eyes a moment to refocus, “He said he was working on an office building across the road from your stadium.”
“Oh, right. I had heard about that building.”
“Hopefully, you get to have a few discussions with him. I’m sure you could even invite me into those discussions. You know, just to take notes,” she smiled.
“He was quite nice to look at,” I smile at her.
“Hmmm… that handsome face, his tall, broad body, and his dashing eyes…” she started daydreaming.
“Snap out of it,” I smiled. “He’s just a man.”
“I bet he’s all man too,” she giggled.
“I bet,” I replied as I went back into my office.
As I sat there in my office, I could see the man talking and making all kinds of gestures, like he was a peacock ready for mating.
After a couple of moments, he finished talking to my boss and walked over to my office.
“Hi there,” he said as he entered through the door. “I heard you’re the person to talk to for the new project under development - the sports stadium.”
Oh wow.
He looked even more handsome in up close.
His eyes were a piercing blue, his tanned skin glowing with health, and his physique was strong enough to be a quarterback at a football game… yum.
“Yes, that’s right. How may I help you?”
“Firstly, I should introduce myself – My name is Blake Carson,” he grinned with a cheeky smile.
“Hi Blake. Clara,” I hold out my hand to shake his.
“Yes… I can see a touch of your father in those eyes.”
“My father?” I questioned in surprise.
He grinned again, “I should elaborate. Your father is my stepfather. After my father died, he raised me as his own.”
“At least he raised one child,” I scoffed back.
Damn.
Why do all the good men have to come with complications?
“Oh, he did mention that you might be a bit touchy about that subject.”
“Touchy? If someone disappeared from your life to raise someone else, you may be a little touchy too.”
“My apologizes. Sorry, Clara.”
“It’s not your fault, Blake.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you Clara. I have heard a lot about you.”
I didn’t want to listen to that sort of thing anymore.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” I tried to change the conversation.
I turned my back to him, appearing to look to the window over something in the distance…but all I wanted is for him to leave the office and leave me be.
“C’mon, don’t be so feisty now. I came here in peace,” he said, laughing again—a gesture that got to my nerves.
“And what do you want?”
“I run a construction firm that will build an office right next to your stadium, so I came here to discuss about the feasibility of our two projects being built next to each other. I don’t want to create any inconvenience; that’s why I came here to ask first,” he answered while coming even closer to me and closing the door behind him.
He wasn’t going to leave anytime soon, and I was already fed up with his heritage.
“I don’t see why your project should be my concern here. Everyone should deal with their own things,” I said, thinking it was going to make him leave.
But he was a quite insistent fellow.
“So whose assistant are you for this project? Because I can see it’s a quiet morning and the man in charge is probably on the way. Who should I expect to talk to in future discussions?” he asked, trying to mock my qualities, probably…or maybe he was as ignorant as he looked.
“Are you kidding me?!” I turned and looked at him.
Apparently the noise could be heard through the glass walls of the office, because almost everybody turned around to look.
They probably thought we’re fighting already.
“The man in charge? What is wrong with me? If my boss told you I’m the project manager for the project, it means I am. And stop acting like a jerk because I’m not in the mood for your failing charm, really.”
With his mouth to his ears, he laughed at my indignation.
“Don’t get me wrong, but so far I’ve never met a woman capable of such complex tasks—if you know what I mean. Usually, project manger of a large-scale construction is a man’s job because women are more preoccupied of destroying things and shopping than building sports stadiums. It’s just like that.”
“And that gives you the right to tag every woman as a shopping zombie and nothing more? Do you think yourself smarter than me? I’m afraid you are so far from the truth you can barely see it. So please stop insulting my intellect before I throw you out my building!” I replied, seeing that he’s even ruder to me.
No matter how intelligent my remarks were, he definitely was a prick—the type of man who thinks he’s the navel of the whole world and the best at everything.
“Oh, no need for violence here, darling. We are peaceful people,” he said.
“Please don’t call me that. I’m not your darling. You can call anyone you want like that except me. I don’t need your lame compliments.”
“Okay, I believe you if you say you’re in charge. No need for debate on the subject. I didn’t mean to upset you, but you have to understand my surprise…you look so feeble, like a little flower that needs constant watering and protection,” he added to his already sexist discourse, as if his only plan that day was to get to my nerves.
“Yeah right, let me worry about my feebleness. Don’t you have anything else to do rather than sitting here and keeping me from working? I really have important stuff to do!” I said to him while showing him the door, suggesting for him to leave at once before I gave him my foot up his ass!
“Are going to get violent with me now? You’re quite a catch, young lady - clever and badass. Didn’t you consider becoming a bodyguard? You’d earn a lot of money from it,” he again laughed at my attitude.
“Get out of my office, before I call security, who’ll throw your ass right in the middle of the street,” I said, hitting the office table with my right fist. “Out!”
“Sorry for being rude, but I just couldn’t help myself,” he argued. “It happens to me all the time when I meet a pretty lady: my ego gets the best of me, and sometimes I act irresponsibly and hurt people. Forgive me.”
As he apologized, I stood there looking at him without saying a word.
All I wanted to see was his humiliation, his surrender in front of me!
I had to admit that his replies were very witty, even if at times they were quite arrogant and harming.
He was intelligent and had a born instinct like an alpha lion in the wilderness.
“Apologies accepted. But the next time you try the same shit with me, you have to know I won’t be as court
eous as this time,” I replied, trying to be a badass as he called me previously. “Now that we cleared things out,” I added, “Can you tell me what exactly you need from me, because you haven’t come here just to say hi.”
“Well, the reason I came here is the sewage system in the area. We don’t have its blueprint due to some past issues we had with the city hall, and I was wondering if you could help me with it before we start our project. I want to see its distribution in relation to your stadium and with the other nearby buildings in the area.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I replied. “But we have an authorization for the project, and all our documents are procured through legal ways. I don’t know if what you’re asking me is legal, and I don’t want to get in trouble for something I don’t fully know. After all, I’m not a part of it,” I told him, looking straight into his eyes and talking with a serious voice…the voice of a professional project manager that knows what she’s doing!
“Oh come on. Don’t worry, I just want to have a look over them; I don’t want to get you in trouble. Just want to see if it’s worth it. I don’t want to lose a lot of time fighting for those authorizations and then finding out after months of labor that the sewage system is physically impossible. I’d lose a lot of money, and it would mean disaster for my firm. So if you could please help me with this one, I’d completely be in your debt,” he said in a humble voice.
“Well if that’s the case, I believe I can help you. But you’ll have to do your studying right here in my office, because I can’t risk you duplicating the blueprints no matter how nice and sweet you might appear now. This is the only way I can help you, so take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it,” he smiled.
“Do you work as a project manager there?” I asked as I went to search for those documents in one of my drawers in the back of the office.
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“I own the business.”
“You own ‘B.R Construction’? But that’s a billion dollar company? And you don’t look older than thirty?” I asked in surprise.
“Your father raised me well,” he shrugs.
“What? But the ‘B.R Construction’ is many years old – how did you come to own it?”
“I started my own construction company when I was eighteen and we were building during the boom economic period. We landed a few good deals and then I had a lot of money, so I just starting buying other construction companies.”
“You just started buying other companies?”
“It’s like a game really. It’s like one giant game of Monopoly. But I still like to be involved in the larger projects that we take on.”
Wow.
My stepbrother happened to be a billionaire.
And super-successful.
And oh so handsome…
But still a prick.
“Those files?” Blake pressed.
“Oh yes…”
As I bent over to look for the files, I could see from the corner of my eye how he stared at my ass.
“Have you finished?” I asked him while returning with the documents.
“Finish with what?” he asked with an innocent face, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
“Staring at my ass. Is my booty nice enough to catch your attention?” I said with an arrogant voice.
I had the upper hand now, and it was time for me to act bossy.
“Please excuse me, I didn’t do it on purpose. My eyes just slipped toward that direction and—”
“C’mon, don’t be silly,” I replied. “A man has the right to look wherever he wants to. And if a nice booty is in the way of his eyes, there’s nothing wrong with it…even if looking is the last thing they are going to do.”
With that, I could see him swallow, being obviously cornered.
As he took the blueprints from my hand, he stood there speechless, analyzing them for a couple of moments.
I tried to find something to do because he was completely caught up with the schematics.
Soon enough, he was finished with them and handed the papers back to me.
“Thank you very much for helping me,” he said nicely, smiling at the same time. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to repay you for what you did.”
As he prepared to leave my office and attend whatever business he might have that day, strangely, I started regretting the fact he was leaving.
I didn’t plan it to happen nor had a logical explanation for it…because that 180-degree switch of his personality baffled me already.
“You’re welcome,” I replied, trying to keep the nice tone we established in the latter moments of our conversation. “I never back down from helping people who are nice to me,” I then added to make him remember what an ass he’d been at the beginning of our meeting.
“Ah, by the way…what’s your favorite meal?” he asked out of the blue as he headed for the elevator.
“Why are you asking me? What has this to do with the blueprints?”
“Nothing,” he grinned. “Just for future reference.”
I couldn’t care less for his reasons so I replied politely, “Pork dumplings.”
“Thank you,” he smiled as he walked out the door.
Damn it.
Why is life so complicated?
Chapter Eight
On Friday evening, as usual, I was inspecting and calculating long after everyone had left.
I was sitting there all by myself, looking over and over the schematics—because I wanted to run like a Swiss clock—when I heard a knock on the door.
“Oh my…please help me. I hope they’re not burglars. And I can barely fight,” I said through my teeth.
But after a couple moments of silence, I heard Blake’s voice.
“Hey, Clara, are you there? I come to you in peace,” he said beyond the locked door.
Hearing his voice, I got a feeling of relief.
Hesitantly, I opened the door.
“C’mon, girl, why are you sitting here all by yourself locked in this tiny office? The world outside is so much fun. What are you doing here?” he asked, smiling as if he had just won the lottery.
His attitude was quite suspicious.
With a serious voice I told him, “Can’t you see I’m working? I have something very important to finish before the weekend comes. It’s something that requests no further delaying…so if you’d excuse me, I have work to do!”
Then I went back to my business before he could throw me another smile.
“Work, work, work…is that all a girl could say this beautiful night? Life is so much more than that. You’ll get old working and realize you wasted your time on this world. C’mon, have some fun with me. It won’t hurt anyone!”
“Please understand that I have to finish this before midnight. Do you understand English? I just can’t delay these things anymore…my boss is already pressuring me to get this done.”
“Hmm…then let me help you finish what you’re working on, then you and I can have fun without worry. Just you and me,” he said as he pulled a chair and moved closer to me, looking at the files I was working on.
He was paying attention and even gave me interesting ideas and solutions—after all, he’s the head of a major construction firm.
He analyzed all the files with me, and in less than an hour we finished my complex task.
I was so happy because on my own I think I would have lost at least three or four hours, and there was nothing I hated more than having white nights at work.
And before I knew it, I was starting to enjoy his company too.
And he smells so nice…
This courteous Blake was someone I’d definitely work with.
He even helped me gather the files and all the things on my desk and on the floor because it was a mess over there—it always happens like that when I work.
As I bent over to place the files into their drawer, he looked at me with courage this time…
> “That ass is even nicer than the last time,” he said, looking at my booty with hungry eyes, the way a hungry wolf looks at the poor sheep.
“So?” I replied. “What’re you going to do about that? I’m telling you my ass looks great at any time of any day!”
“Is that so?” He left his coat on the desk then came toward me, grabbing my ass with his left hand while with the right grabbed my tits directly through my small cleavage.
“What are you doing?” I asked, blushing like a little tomato. “Take your hands off me.”
I tried to resist his dashing looks…
Chapter Nine
Blake wouldn’t listen to what I was saying, and my body seemed to resonate on the same frequency.
“I’m not doing anything that you don’t want me to do,” he said. “C’mon, give your mind some rest. Can’t you see your body is burning already? Let it be, let it into my hands…’cause I know what to do with it.”
He started kissing my neck from behind my back while rubbing my ass and breasts with his hands.
This alpha bad boy attitude made me want him even more.
I knew that resisting was futile…
He threw away everything that was left on the desk and then undressed me piece by piece, kissing and caressing continuously.
Each kiss was like an explosion of emotion dancing on my skin.
I felt alive.
“Damn how hot you are, and this booty…a man would say you’re a porn star and not an architect!” he said while kissing my back slowly and sensually.
He was so gentle, and his overrated self-confidence was matched by his seductive skill.
“Wait,” I stopped him.
“What?”
“We can’t do this. You’re my stepbrother, remember?”
“Not really,” he whispered in my ear. “But I can be if that works for you, little sister.”
As he said those words, a chill went through me.
I felt so bad.
So naughty.
But so hot!
“Say it again,” I whispered in his ear.
“You’re so hot, little sister,” he kissed my neck again.
Oh…