"I own this place. I have to be here sometimes."
I stumbled back slightly at his words. He owned this place?
"But you have my word that I won't be with any other woman during the time we are indulging in whatever this is between us. The question is do you believe me?"
I studied him a moment, but ultimately, I didn’t have much choice. Even now while we were at odds, my body tingled to be touched by him again. "Yeah, I believe you."
He held up his drink. "Should we toast on it?"
I clinked my glass with his and then we both drank the rest of our drinks. Nerves skittered down my spine, but I couldn't be sure if it was excitement or terror.
With our deal brokered, I decided it was time for me to go home.
"Can I see you home?" he asked when I told him I needed to leave.
I studied him for a moment. My opinion of the situation is that we would just be fuck buddies, but his request sounded awfully a lot like something a gentleman would do.
"I have my car here. I can drive home."
"I’ll walk you to your car then."
Of course part of me wanted to fight him on that. I didn’t need an escort. But that was just the contrarian he brought out of me. I’d accused him earlier in the day of fighting with me just to fight with me. I realized I had that same instinct with him as well.
"Sure. I'm up the street."
As we walked out, he said a few words to people and to others he nodded or waved, and I realized that all the signs that he was the owner of the bar and restaurant were there the other night when he brought me here for dinner.
"So, along with working for Strong Incorporated, you have your own restaurant and club?" I asked when we finally got out the door and away from the noise.
"I started these before I really came into the company business. It's my grandmother's wish that all her grandsons get involved in the business. You know how Gran is. None of us would ever say no to her."
"Except Noah," I said.
"Well Noah pretends that he's not coming in, but it's only a matter of time."
I suspected that he was right. Not that I knew Noah well at all, but I knew what Kellie and Andi had said about him. And of course, I was aware of the influence their grandmother had on the family. Despite Hunter's difficult personality, one thing I could respect about him and the rest of the Strong family was how loyal and dedicated he was to the family and his grandmother.
13
Hunter
It felt very strange to leave Natalie at her car last night. How many women had I fucked and then walked them to their car, said goodbye, and hadn't ever really thought about them again? But as I helped Natalie into her car, I had the strange desire to ask her to stay and have another drink with me now that we were in a place where now that every word out of her mouth wasn’t something snarky, I was interested in sitting and talking with her. I didn't understand what that meant, but I did know that it scared the hell out of me. So instead of asking her to stay or a drink, or to go home with me, I helped her into her car and watched as she drove off.
The next day was a meeting with the marketing team where they would review with me everything that they come up with, as well as our data on the marketing that we were currently running. It was the first meeting Natalie would sit in on and when she came in, I had a desire to make her feel comfortable, while at the same time, I worried that any special attention would give away the fact that I had fucked her, twice. Not that it was anybody's business, but the corporation did have a rule about people in superior positions fraternizing with the staff. Then again, Ryan seemed to shoot that rule all to hell by hooking up with Kellie. Course maybe it was considered okay now as they were married and expecting a child.
Dammit! Why was this getting so complicated?
She came in wearing a classic dark pencil skirt, but her shirt was the brightest color yellow that I'd ever seen. I almost made a joke about covering my eyes from being blinded by it, but I decided that our banter, which, as it turned out, seemed to be a type of foreplay, was better saved for private.
She glanced at me, giving me her signature smirk but then turned to the other members of the team. I wondered if she was feeling a little bit awkward like I was.
I called the meeting to order, taking a seat at the head of the conference table. Gavin sat to my right, and next to him sat Natalie.
We went through all the current plans that were running looking at the data and deciding on any changes we felt we might need to make to improve our ROI. Then we went on to the launch of the European line.
For some reason Gavin took the lead, perhaps because he'd been here for a while and Natalie was new. I sat and listened as he reviewed the sketches and the copy. For the most part it looked like what we'd been working on before, which made me wonder if Natalie had changed her mind and decided to do things my way, or maybe Gavin talked her out of her ideas.
Natalie didn't seem like the type of person that me and especially not Gavin, could sway in her ideas, but then I realized he was probably just softening me up. Or maybe he wanted the contrast to what we’d been doing versus what Natalie was doing because he pulled out her sketches and lay them in front of me.