CEO'd By Him Complete Series Box Set

by Nella Tyler

  “Yeah. He’s been pretty open about it,” Tyler said. “You’ll notice we have maybe two people of color in the office, and they work shipping. He’s always griping because he thinks that black people are freeloaders. He’s basically a shitty person in every respect.”

  I couldn’t believe this. I’d had my suspicions, sure, but I had hoped that Tyler would disprove them and cast away any chance that my father could be even slightly racist. I hoped that I had just been thinking things up. Now I felt sick to my stomach. This, coupled with what he’d said about my mother… “How has no one sued him for that? You’re not allowed to not hire someone for a certain job because of their race.”

  “You can in Florida,” Tyler said. “Well, sort of. You can hire or fire someone without telling them why.”

  I rubbed my forehead. Tyler didn’t know that Briella was black and I decided it would be best now not to let him know. I didn’t trust him to keep a serious secret, and I further didn’t want to find out whether or not he was racist, too. “I don’t get it. How could he be openly racist for years and I didn’t notice? That’s something obvious.”

  Tyler snorted. “Um, yeah, except you never noticed when Dad did something obvious. You put him on a pedestal, remember? Always thought that he wanted what was best for us, always thought we had to do shit for the company, and you never questioned him very much. You’ll notice Dad and I don’t talk anymore. I figured out a while ago that the guy isn’t a saint.”

  It was my own fault. Tyler was right; I’d put my father on a pedestal that he didn’t deserve to go on and refused to see any fault in him. If I saw fault in him, it would mean everything about my life was wrong. My job, my house, what I was doing, it was all corrupt and wrong. It was founded on a shitty person, and I couldn’t ethically take it.

  That was the situation, though. “Shit.”

  Tyler stayed over for a few more minutes, talking more specifically about why he was mad at the office lately. Mostly it had to do with bullshit assignments that I could tell that Dad had assigned to keep him busy. Now, though, I had a much harder time sympathizing with Dad, thinking about what Tyler had just told me. Now it seemed I could remember incidents where Dad had said something derogatory or made a comment that rubbed me the wrong way. He wasn’t flagrant in his racism. He didn’t spout racial slurs or enact hate crimes or anything. But that didn’t make his racism any more tolerable.

  When Tyler left, I stood around my kitchen, wondering what the hell I was going to do now. I wanted to see Briella again. That was still on my mind, of course; how could it not be? I’d never spent a night with someone like that before. I’d had sex, sure, but my sexual experiences had been largely obligatory, with maybe one or two drunken fun exceptions.

  And it wasn’t likely that Briella wanted to see me. I couldn’t shake the way she’d taken off immediately after the fact. I wasn’t sure if I should have stayed with her longer before getting up to clean up, or whether I should have talked to her more. I should have said something, but I hadn’t been able to think of anything to say.

  What she’d said reverberated in my brain. ‘Thanks for everything.’ Not only was it an incredibly lame thing to say to someone immediately after sex, but it wasn’t like her at all. Briella was confident, if nothing else.

  Still, knowing that there was a chance she didn’t want anything to do with me, I wanted to see her again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Briella

  When I woke up, I could hear Nina snoring, and I decided not to disturb her. She’d been asleep when I came home last night, and I didn’t want to talk to her yet about what I’d done.

  I’d been so excited to do sleep with him. I’d been so excited to finally sleep with Dexter, and to spend time with him, and to have a no-consequences fling over vacation. It seemed now that that had been a foolish goal from the start, and I nearly felt sick waking up to know that I’d left him so abruptly. I didn’t even come up with a good excuse.

  But God, it had been a good night. The food alone had been fantastic, and I would have probably been genuinely happy we’d left off after dinner. But my mind kept replaying the way he held me, the way he took me without making me feel secondary in the process.

  “I’m fucking hungover,” Nina groaned next to me. I rolled my eyes and wondered if she had any crazy stories about sleeping with someone, too. I doubted it. I’d witnessed her the morning after a particularly rough night, and she looked more composed now than she had then.

  “Let’s get breakfast, then.”

  “Fuck. I don’t want to move.”

  “Then don’t move.” I got out of bed and pulled on some clean clothes. “But I’m going to get breakfast.

  “Wait, wait, I want to come.” Nina got out of bed. After a few minutes of stumbling around and trying to get ourselves looking more or less in order, we started heading down to the hotel lobby for breakfast and coffee.

  “Tell me about last night,” Nina asked. She hadn’t spoken until she’d had a full cup of coffee, and I’d already finished most of my breakfast.

  “Well, I went over to his house. He made some food, he gave me a tour of the house—”

  “His house is big enough for a tour?”

  “Yeah.” I shook my head at how ridiculous that was. “Yeah, it is, and it’s fucking beautiful. Anyway, we walked around and had some wine and I, um, I sort of slept with him.” I said the last three words as I tilted my mug up to my face to quiet the confession.

  “Excuse me?” Nina slammed her mug down on the table. “You did what?”

  “Shut up, people are gonna hear.”

  “Bri, I’m so proud of you!” Nina looked like she was about to jump over the table and start hugging me. I’d expected a reaction like this from her, but it didn’t make my stomach turn any less. Something still felt wrong. She paused and frowned. “Wait. If you slept with him last night, what the hell are you doing back at the hotel?”

  “I came back home.”

  “Briella!” Nina rarely used my full name, and she threw her head back in her exasperation with me. “The hell you mean, you came home? Was he really bad?”

  “No, he was really good,” I said. I buried my face in my hands. “He was really, really good, and I panicked. Like, I can’t just walk away from him. He got me all excited about seeing him again, and I didn’t wanna just leave.”

  “You’re not just leaving. You have a few more days.”

  “But then I’ll have to leave.”

  “So, worry about it then!” Nina reached across the table to grab my head in her hands. “Bri, you have been putting up with some second-rate shitbag for three goddamn years. Finally you got a boy who’s treating you like you’re worth something. Maybe it’s not true love or happily ever after but you deserve to enjoy yourself!”

  I stared at her and wanted to plop my face back into my food. “Isn’t that unfair?”

  “Does he know that you’re just visiting?”

  I nodded.

  “Then you both know what’s at stake. You need to have as much fun as you can while you’re here. When you leave, you can worry about all that sentimental shit, like whether he’s the one for you or whatever. But that doesn’t matter right now. Now you’re having a good time.”

  I took a deep breath. She was right. We were both consenting adults fully aware of the situation. He knew that I was a tourist; it wasn’t like I was stringing him along under the guise of being interested in a long-term relationship. We were both just having our fun, and that meant that this could still be non-consequential.

  Besides, there was still time left before I went home. While I got dressed for the day, I thought about the full days between now and when I went back to Houston. I’d get sucked back up into my mundane life and trying to get on my feet. With my ex-boyfriend out of the picture, it was going to be a slow, painful struggle to rebuild my life.

  I would regret it if I didn’t live it up in Florida as best as I could.

  Somehow,
I wasn’t sure how, my wandering around in the city had landed me in Dexter’s neighborhood. It was near the beach, and I’d been walking near the beach, and I remembered where his house had been. I walked up to the sprawling estate and considered the worst case scenario.

  We fall in love, maybe, or he hates me. Equally terrible things. Both of them could be solved with time, which would be forcibly put between us anyway.

  I deserved to be irresponsible for once.

  I knocked on the front door, and when Dexter opened it, I was almost hurt by how surprised he looked to see me there. I wanted to apologize for barging out on him like I had.

  “I didn’t think you were coming back,” Dexter said.

  I smiled at him. “I wanted to see you again before I leave on Sunday.”

  Dexter raised his eyebrows, and I didn’t correct him on how he interpreted ‘see you again.’ Doubtlessly, I wanted to sleep with him again. It was only figuring out what excuse we would come up with to see each other.

  “Would you like to do something tomorrow?” he asked.

  I nodded. That would be best; it would give me the rest of today with Nina, and my brain enough time to decide whether or not I was going to back out of all of this before I could do something stupid. I thought of something and pulled a receipt out of my pocket, grabbing a pen from my purse. I wrote my private cell phone number down and handed it to him.

  “Call this,” I said. “And then I won’t have to come by your house anymore.” I still wasn’t sure how I’d managed to wander so far on my walk, but I was glad that I had.

  Dexter smiled and took the paper from me. “So I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled and started to step away from my door before he leaned forward and kissed my cheek.

  “All right.” He closed the door.

  I stood there for a second, a bit surprised at the kiss on my cheek. I’d missed those tiny displays of affection that came out during the intimate moments of a relationship. The kindness that came from a relationship—that’s what I felt in that small kiss on my cheek. It made me worry for a moment that perhaps we’d ventured into emotional attachment.

  I thought back to my conversation with Nina and remembered how confident I’d felt then, saying that I deserved this. I took a deep breath and grinned. I could do this. Without a doubt, I could do this, and it was going to be fun.

  In all honesty, I hadn’t been so excited to spend time with a man in a long time.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dexter

  I spent a long time getting dressed because I couldn’t determine exactly what to wear. I wanted to wear something nicer than what I’d worn on the first date, but I didn’t want to go overboard either. When I finally did decide on something to wear, I took a few moments to mentally prepare myself for the task at hand.

  I hadn’t expected her to come back. When I went most of the day Friday without hearing from her, I’d fully expected that she’d simply vanished, and I’d nearly come to terms with that. Now she wanted to see me again, and I could only assume that she meant sex. I genuinely wanted to spend time with her, though. The sex was phenomenal, of course, but her company was just as delightful to keep.

  And this didn’t mean that she wasn’t going back on Sunday. She’d told me herself that she was going back on Sunday anyway. That meant that the attachment I’d built up was probably unhealthy and likely to end in some kind of torment. Maybe she could see me for a week and not build a need, a relationship, but I had already devoted too much of my thoughts to her.

  When I arrived at the hotel, I knew it was already too late to go back. I could step out now and watch her leave, but I’d kick myself in the head every day for the rest of my life for letting her go so easily.

  I went up to her room and knocked on the door. Nina answered it, grinning widely. I imagined she’d probably had something to do with Briella coming around in the first place. Why Nina cared so much that Briella and I were involved was beyond me.

  “Hey, you.” Nina kept herself in the doorway. “Bri’s still getting ready.”

  “Do you want me to come back later?”

  “Nope. You stay where you are.” The way she looked me over never ceased to make me feel uncomfortable, but I knew it was mostly in jest. “I’m glad that you two are going out tonight. Although I am short a wingman.”

  “A wingman?”

  “Yeah. Bri’s my wingman. When you go to new places you can say anything you want about yourself, as long as someone with you can back you up,” Nina said.

  “Ignore her!” Briella called.

  I laughed. I highly, highly doubted that Briella had lied about anything she’d told me about herself. If that were the case, she could have pretended to be from an incredibly affluent family or something. Instead, she’d been honest because she’d been kind enough to know that it wouldn’t make a difference to me. “You should try The Amelie. A lot of single guys there.”

  “Maybe. Oh, you know what? Do you have a brother?” Nina asked.

  I could see Briella emerging from the bedroom behind her. “That’s enough!” she called.

  “I do,” I said. “He’s a few years younger than me.” This was hilarious, and I wanted to keep this banter up. Besides, if Tyler somehow found out that I hadn’t even attempted to get him a date, he’d probably kill me in my sleep.

  “Do you think he’s into—” Nina was cut off by Briella forcibly pushing past her.

  “That’s enough, that’s enough; good night, Nina, have a good time.” Briella stepped out of the room and abruptly closed the door in her friend’s face.

  I was still grinning.

  “Do not encourage her,” Briella stated, jabbing my chest with her finger.

  I raised my hands in mock surrender. “I won’t,” I said. She stepped back, and I noticed that she’d put together yet another beautiful outfit. “You look stunning.”

  “So do you,” she returned. She took my arm in her hand. “So, where are we off to?”

  Her carefree nature made it easy to get to the restaurant without feeling that sense of panic and impending worry over the situation we were in. The jokes she made, the light tone she took, it all suggested that maybe we’d both made up that she was a tourist. Maybe there was no world outside the one that we inhabited at that moment.

  I’d made reservations at a restaurant right on the ocean, with a nearby pier. We got seats outside since it was warm but not uncomfortable, and somehow the mosquitoes that usually plagued Florida’s outdoors knew better than to intrude on our date.

  “You know, I think I’d just about kill you if you set Nina up with your brother,” Briella said.

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Really? That bad?”

  “Well, I’m sure your brother is fine. But Nina’s insufferable when she’s happy.” Briella shook her head and laughed. “I didn’t mean that. I meant with a man.”

  I grinned, knowing exactly what she’d meant to say. “I know. In all fairness, I don’t think she’d like my brother one bit.”

  “Really? Isn’t he just like you, but a few years younger?” Briella gave me a cheeky grin, and I shook my head.

  “The opposite of me, almost. He got a music degree in college and couldn’t get a job after, so he decided to be a solo artist, and when that crapped out our father had to give him a job at the firm. Which was a surprise to me, but he does… he does an okay job, I guess. Spends most of his money on parties, though.” It occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn’t be divulging my brother’s life story to someone he didn’t know, but what did it matter? She would be gone in a few days, anyway.

  “You’ve never blown a ton of money on extravagant parties?” Briella tilted her head to the side.

  “Only once,” I said. “Coming into college, I met some people and wanted them to like me. It did not work very well.”

  “People are assholes,” she agreed. “But what do you do with your free time, if you’re not partying like in all the shitty billio
naire movies?”

  I laughed at her acknowledgment of the stereotype. I didn’t spend my free time doing lines of cocaine off strippers—I had things to do and people to talk to. “I don’t know. I work, mostly. If I’m not at work, I’ll go to the gym. Cook. That’s really about it.”

  “You’re a workaholic,” she declared, like a doctor giving a long-awaited diagnosis.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I guess I kind of am. But it makes my dad happy.”

  After we ate, we walked out onto the pier to get some air and see the sun fall over the ocean. Her heels clicked quietly on the wood, and I made sure to warn her before any slats or dips in the pier came up.

  “My dad hates when I work too much,” Briella said. “I used to think it was a sexist thing, like he needed someone to be taking care of me to feel good. But I think it’s just that he worries about the stress.”

  That confused me. “Does he think you can’t handle the stress?”

  “Well, my family has a pretty lengthy history of stress-induced medical problems,” Briella said. “It’s how they think my mother died, from too much stress. Heart complications and all.”

  I squeezed her hand and came to a stop. We’d reached the end of the pier, and here we could stand and just let the wind and moonlight wash over us now that the sun had gone down. I thought about what she’d said about her mother. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head. “It was a really, really long time ago. I barely remember. I just keep the medical history, you know?” She shook her head again and bit her lip. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up something so heavy.”

  But I understood. “No, um…no, I understand,” I said. I thought of my mother, what little I remembered of her, and the way that it had felt when she died. Even if I hadn’t been around her often, I’d still very much loved her as my mother. I didn’t feel comfortable telling her about her, not yet. I still hadn’t talked to anyone besides Tyler about it.