Rush: A Second Chance Romance

by Ellen Lane

  When she opened the door for him, Vlad merely looked at her curiously. “My apologies, but have we met before?”

  She merely grinned at him, her smile lighting up an already pretty face. “I’m Charlotte Gardner, Mr. Kensley - the architect on your project. You were supposed to have an escort from the airport, but they got caught in traffic, and I was in the neighborhood. Sorry if I cut off whatever you planned to say back there. I got a little over excited.”

  Charlotte Gardner.

  She was Charlotte Gardner?

  When Vlad’s father had mentioned an avant-garde, up-and-coming Californian architect, he had imagined a middle-aged woman dressed like a seventies hippie. Charlotte Garner seemed to be the very antithesis of this mental image. While she wasn’t a conventional, exotic model beauty, she was breathtakingly beautiful in her own way. Vladimir found himself strangely transfixed by the pattern of freckles painted across her bare throat and the vee of her cleavage - though he knew his thoughts were far from appropriate. One would think that an architect, someone constantly bent over a drawing table, would wear their hair up - or at least keep it from their face. Charlotte seemed to revel in the disorder of her curls - and Vlad had to admit, it certainly only added to her wild allure.

  “That’s...quite alright.” He found himself answering cautiously. “I suppose I should be glad you came to my rescue.”

  “Rescue?” Charlotte arched a brow as if the very notion offended her. “No, Mr. Kensley. I just came to make sure you got to the city alright. And now, here you are.” She gestured to the inside of the Mercedes with a small wry smirk. “I’d say my job is done.”

  She had a very smart mouth and it occurred to Vlad that her attitude suited her appearance. “Well, Ms. Gardner, thank you for your help.”

  “Please, call me Charlotte.” She stepped onto the curb and away from the car, giving him space to get in. “We will be working together from tomorrow, won’t we?”

  She was right. As he hadn’t expected to meet her like this, Vlad had almost forgotten that he was supposed to have a meeting with her at nine the following morning. He would be seeing her again sooner rather than later - and for some reason, the fact gave him a little thrill that he couldn’t explain.

  “I suppose we will. Until tomorrow then, Charlotte.” Nodding his head respectfully, Vlad grabbed his valise and slipped into the car. When Charlotte shut the door behind him, he found himself frowning. He didn’t very much like the way she treated him like a man that needed everything done for him - if anything at all, he should have seen her back to her car.

  Even if that had been impossible with the media chasing him like they were.

  Damn.

  Vlad realized that he had been so caught up in the unfamiliar that Charlotte had completely controlled their first interaction - his father had always taught him that when dealing with new clients, it was always important to gain the upper hand as quickly as possible - not so you could look down on the other party, but so that you could dictate the terms of the engagement.

  Charlotte’s unexpected presence had shocked him so that he hadn’t thought about it - he had been too busy counting her freckles.

  He expelled a long breath, suppressing a groan.

  What the hell was wrong with him? Vlad knew what he liked in a woman, on the few occasions that he deemed to sleep with one, and Charlotte Garner was not it. Even after just one meeting, he could tell that she was the opposite of a poised, impeccably coiffed, meticulously polite woman of high society.

  And yet...there was something ridiculously drawing about all that hair and that wicked little smile - as if she knew something that he didn’t.

  He would have to be on his guard. After all, their meeting hadn’t been official. It wasn’t too late, Vlad reminded himself, for him to dictate the rules of engagement. He just had to be on top of his game the next day. He wouldn’t let Charlotte Gardner surprise him again.

  **

  Charlotte chose to have dinner herself that night. She knew that Lila was supposed to be home around seven, so she purposefully skived off to one of her favorite sushi joints for a bit of privacy and indulged with a bottle or two of sake as she reviewed what had happened that afternoon.

  She met her employer.

  Charlotte had expected to have rather strong impressions of the man slotted to be the next CEO of Kensley enterprises. After all, she knew that she liked his father. Jackson Kensley was a force of nature - he controlled his empire with an iron fist without being cruel, and he was as honest as he was opinionated when it came to what he believed would take his company in the right direction.

  But when it came to Vladimir Kensley...she had no idea what she thought.

  The rational conclusion was that it was too soon to tell. She had spent perhaps ten minutes in the man’s presence, and that much only by chance. Charlotte had, in fact, been at the airport in order to pick up a friend of Lila’s who didn’t have a ride back to her house. The younger woman had decided to take a taxi, even though Charlotte had insisted that she didn’t mind driving her, and the redhead ended up stranded at the airport. Well, stranded was a strong word. She had decided to stay to people watch. Airports were fantastic places for activities like people watching - one could see cultures and ethnicities from all over the world in one place. That, and some of the most interesting people in LA seemed to hang out around the airport- from bums to artists.

  She hadn’t planned on being there when Kensley’s plane got in, but she couldn’t have ignored it if she tried. The entire airport had cranked into high gear, and everyone on shift in the shops and restaurants wanted to take their lunch hour in a bid to see the man.

  Unlike the rest of the Kensley family, Vladimir Kensley was infamous for his avoidance of the media. According to rumors, he liked to let his work do the talking more than any boasting he might put forth- which explained why he liked to keep himself sequestered behind closed doors. Of course, everyone wanted a good look at him.

  Including her. Charlotte told herself that she had an excuse - she was going to be working with the man and this would provide a good opportunity for her to size him up. The few pictures she’d seen of him were hazy and unfocused, and considering his reputation, she had imagined him to be a pencil-necked, ingratiating businessman obsessed with his father’s legacy.

  On her assumptions about his physical appearance, at least, she had been completely wrong.

  Vladimir Kensley was pretty damn attractive - and that was an understatement. Close to six and a half feet tall, with dark hair combed back carefully from his brow and piercing blue eyes, he wore a perpetually perturbed look that was surprisingly sexy with his unusually full mouth. He was the first man Charlotte had ever seen who could make a suit look so sinful. It had to have been tailored for him - the way it fit his broad shoulders and narrow waist perfectly. It also did nothing to hide what she was sure had to be decidedly anti-pencil neck body beneath his clothes.

  It was, therefore, understandable that she’d been shocked to see such an obviously imposing man hesitate in the face of the media. It had taken her a moment to remember that this was the man who didn’t like cameras - though she had no idea why, as the cameras had to love him. Them and half of the world’s female population.

  He didn’t look scared, per say - merely as if the last thing he wanted on earth was to talk to a group of ravenous reporters after what had to have been an ass-long flight from the east coast- and on that, she could commiserate.

  Perhaps that was why she had stepped in.

  Charlotte had known as she did it that she was overstepping her boundaries - that, no doubt, Vladimir Kensley could just as easily have walked away from the crowd of reporters without her help - but something had drawn her to cover for him. It was easy when she could spout the answers to most of the questions reporters asked off the top of her head as if they were child’s play. She could feel Kensley’s eyes on her the whole time, and seriously hoped that he wouldn’t fire her for doing so
mething so completely beyond her job description.

  But he hadn’t even known who she was.

  It made a certain type of sense. She hardly expected her father to have sent Jackson Kensley a picture of her - he would have been proud that she had been selected for her skill alone, and hardly considered looks important. It was the kind of thing a female applicant might have done on her own, but that she could give two shits about.

  Even when she revealed herself Kensley hadn’t seemed angry. Or, maybe he had and she simply hadn’t noticed. Certainly, Charlotte had been more than a little absorbed in the way that he talked. Though the young woman knew from her father that Jackson Kensley’s five sons were all adopted, four of them from different countries, she had expected that decades stateside might have exhausted most of their foreign distinctions - on that case, she had also been wrong. Vladimir Kensley spoke his perfect, refined English with the slightest Russian accent - clipped vowels and elongated consonants, and damned if she didn’t find it sexy as hell.

  But other than his innate good looks and the way he spoke, Charlotte found she didn’t get much more from Kensley. She considered herself a pretty good judge of character - she had known from the first night that Lila met Benny that he was going to be good for her. But Vladimir was hard to read. He seemed a bit...distant. Perfectly polite, but…. noncommittal.

  At least, that was her first impression. Who knew what was going to happen the next day? To be honest, the most she could hope for was that he approved of the plan just as much as his father and allowed her the creative freedom she craved. Everything else was less important by far.

  It was childish, Charlotte argued with herself, to want the man to actually like her. If anything, men like Vladimir Kensley were less inclined than most to like people like her. Charlotte was fully aware that she could be a handful at the best of times, but she could take care of herself. She didn’t need anyone’s approval.

  But she wanted Kensley’s.

  She must be losing her mind.

  The thought was enough to make her order another bottle of sake as she considered her scallop sashimi. Her entire career hinged on her ability to handle this job properly. Whether Kensley liked her or not, the important thing was that she didn’t fuck it up.

  **

  It took a lot to make Charlotte nervous. She had given presentations where she was certain people would think her out of her mind. She had shown her designs to her coworkers without certainty that they would remain hers, and she had been laughed at in her fair sure of her architecture courses - but she had never felt the way she did upon waking the morning of her first official meeting with Vladimir Kensley.

  She had barely slept the night before, despite her three bottles of sake, and she trudged into the kitchen half-awake, her stomach in knots.

  At the sight of her, Lila’s eyes widened in surprise. “Lottie! What’s up with you? You look awful.”

  The redhead shot her a thin smile. “Thanks.” She made a beeline for the coffee maker without hesitation, pouring herself a cup of the strong black brew. She drank so fast that it burned her tongue and she winced, doing her best to ignore it. By the time she was finished, Lila stood before her with a pronounced frown.

  “I just brewed that. You’re insane.”

  “Not insane,” Charlotte nitpicked, pouring herself another cup, “Just exhausted.”

  “You didn’t get any sleep?” Lila asked, her eyes narrowing in worry.

  “Do I ever get any?” Charlotte’s bona fide method of misdirection was cracking jokes - but if there was ever someone to consistently see through her shenanigans, it was Lila.

  “You usually don’t wake up looking half-dead. Tell me what’s wrong.” Charlotte sighed, sipping at her second cup of coffee more slowly. She was loathed to admit the source of her discomfort to anyone, but she knew Lila would only pester her until she came clean. Taking a deep breath, she spilled the beans.

  “I have my meeting with Vladimir Kensley in two hours.” Lila merely stared at her, unblinking, as she processed this tidbit of information. A long beat of silence passed between them before the blonde replied with a single word.

  “So?”

  Charlotte merely gawked at her. “So? What do you mean ‘so’? This is Vladimir Kensley we’re talking about. I could only be higher up on the totem pole if I were meeting Jackson Kensley himself.”

  Lila merely sighed, running a hand through her blonde waves. “Haven’t you known this was coming for three or four weeks?”

  That gave Charlotte pause. She certainly had. The moment the date was cemented for Vladimir’s arrival, she had known. She’d had more than ample time to prepare. “Well, I-”

  “And you haven’t been nervous this whole time. Why the sudden change of heart?” Lila’s eyes only narrowed further at her next question. “This isn’t like you. I can count on one hand the few people you’ve met who intimidate you, and one of them is your dad, so...what’s up, Lottie?

  Fuck. She was caught.

  How was she supposed to explain that she’d been up for half the night worrying about what Vladimir would think about her plans? After all, it had already been decided that she was going to be the architect. It wasn’t as if the son could override the father...but there was something more than that. For some unexplainable reason, Charlotte found herself wanting nothing more than to wipe that faintly disinterested look off Vladimir Kensley’s face. She wanted his shock, his admiration and... God knew what else.

  It wasn’t a feeling she was familiar with. She, who had spent most of her life adamantly refusing to care what other people thought of her. She ran a hand through her tangled red curls before blowing out a breath.

  Reluctantly, she told Lila what had happened the previous day, watching her friend’s eyes go wide as she relayed the story of how she’d run into him at the airport. “So... what?” Lila finally demanded when she finished. “You snatch the man from the claws of reporters and... then what? No thank you? No acknowledgement?”

  “Oh, he thanked me. He was polite as fuck - no chance of him skipping that.”

  Crossing her bare arms over her chest, Lila eyed her quizzically. “Then why are you losing sleep over it?”

  Charlotte groaned, setting her coffee cup on the counter a moment before she leaned against it herself. “I have no fucking clue. I should be excited. The project is going to start soon - the biggest project of my entire career…”

  “Has the younger Kensley seen your plans yet?” At Lila’s question, Charlotte froze. Damn. How did the blonde get so good at getting to the very heart of her insecurities? It was uncanny.

  Charlotte swallowed thickly, knowing she was digging her own grave. “No. Jackson was pretty insistent that he not see them until he got to LA.”

  A pregnant pause hovered between them a moment before Lila responded with a soft, knowing. “Ah.”

  Somehow, it irked Charlotte more than if her friend had lectured her. “Don’t ‘ah’ me. What is that supposed to mean? I’d rather you get all huffy than ‘ah’ me.” She glared at the shorter girl - a move that would have cowed many. Lila, however, only offered her a small smile.

  “You like him.”

  Charlotte immediately turned scarlet, the color clashing with her vivid hair. “What the hell!? Lila, I don’t even know him!”

  “Right. And the fact that you don’t, and his opinion obviously matters to you, is a dead giveaway. You think he’s cute.”

  That was the understatement of the century. Charlotte didn’t know a woman alive who would call Vladimir Kensley cute. He was undeniably masculine in every way that counted - even if he wasn’t a man splashed all over the tabloids with a new woman on his arm every week. Maybe it had something to do with that strange, detached manner of his…

  “He’s my boss,” Charlotte decided to rebut diplomatically. “I can’t think he’s cute. At least not now.”

  “Right,” Lila replied, hoisting herself onto the counter to swing her legs casually. “
As if not being allowed to actually ever stopped someone from thinking something.”

  Charlotte scowled at her. She was too clever for her own good - that was probably why she was her best friend. “In the end, it doesn’t matter what I think here, Lila. It’s what I need; and I need this job to go well if anything is supposed to come after it.”

  “And it will, Lottie.” This seemed to be the point Lila had been getting at the entire time, as her face split into a brilliant smile. “I’ve never known you to let anything to get in the way of your job - regardless of how cute he is.”

  Even as she smiled, Charlotte winced. “God, please stop calling him cute. He’s well over six-feet and breathtaking. I’ve never seen someone so mouthwatering in my life.” Lila laughed, shaking her head so her blonde locks spilled over her shoulders.

  “Well, in that case, I think it might do you some good to be mouthwatering right back.”

  Charlotte merely stared at her, completely perplexed. “You’re not telling me to seduce him?”

  “Oh God no,” Lila stuck her tongue out. “I want you to keep your job as much as you do, Lotte. What I’m saying is that it always boosts my confidence if I go before intimidating people feeling intimidating myself. Catch my drift?”

  It took Charlotte a good five seconds or so to realize what her friend was suggesting. Once she did, she eyed her with no small amount of reticence. “You do know that looking intimidating isn’t my forte? It’s the cray that sends everyone running for the hills.”

  Lila merely chuckled. “I think, my dear Lottie, that you underestimate those killer pins and glorious figure.”

  Killer pins? Glorious figure? Surely, Lila had been reading too much Cosmopolitan.

  Within the hour, however, Charlotte came to realize just how serious her friend was. Lila insisted that she pull out all the stops, taking a shower and primping, taming her hair into a single braid down her back and struggling into a black pencil skirt and button up. When Charlotte slipped on a pair of heels and gazed into the mirror, she was slightly taken aback.