“You misjudged me, Beverley. You thought I was competing with you or that I was like all the other guys I hung out with. Well, you were wrong,” I told her and she looked at me with her large green eyes. Her face had softened, she wasn’t as defensive against me any more.
“You didn’t give me any reason to doubt my judgement,” she said.
“What? Because I dated cheerleaders?” I asked with a laugh and she shrugged her shoulders.
“Yeah, too many of them. And now, after we’ve been out of college…you’ve had the reputation for dating models and actresses. Nobody would have thought that you could be attracted to someone like me,” she said. She was still nervous, but that could be because of how she was laying her heart bare.
I leaned towards her desk, still on my chair and arched an eyebrow at her.
“You mean someone attractive, and intelligent and successful like you? Yeah, sure, what’s there to like,” I said and finally, Beverley was smiling. Just a soft grin that made the sides of her lips rise up but that was enough. She had no idea how I truly felt about her and it was baffling that she thought so little of herself.
“Well, one thing I’m not is successful. At least not as compared to you or what I thought I’d be able to achieve,” she said and I shook my head.
“You’re wrong, Beverley. You focused on your product, on your technical skills while I spent time on my business, to finding investors. Which is why I think that we’d make a great team,” I said and looked deep into her eyes. I wanted her to see me, to truly see me and trust me.
“So, you do want me to come and work with you?” she asked and I nodded.
“Yes, I do. We just have to find a way to make this work on both a professional and personal level,” I told her and she was blushing again.
We were looking at each other, till she drew her gaze away from me and tucked in some of her hair behind her ears.
“I never thought that someone like you could like me. Not in this way at least…like actually be attracted to me,” she said and I stood up from my chair and walked over to her. Beverley craned her neck to look up at me and I pressed my forefinger on her lips.
“I don’t want you to talk that way, Beverley, please. You don’t know how special you are. What you do to me and how you’ve always inspired me to work harder. I’ve always wanted to live up to you. This was never a competition for me, rather I wanted to prove myself to you,” I said and she stood up from her chair.
Silently, she placed her head on my shirt. A few buttons were missing now, from the force with which she had ripped my shirt off my body earlier. I cradled her in my arms and swung her gently from side to side. I had never experienced this raw tenderness before, this feeling of being able to hold a woman in my arms and not worry about what she wanted from me. I was willing to give Beverley whatever she wanted.
Her arms had wound around my mid-riff as she pressed herself closer to me. We had been standing there like that for a relatively long time. I could sense that she was thinking as well, just like my own mind was racing with thoughts. Finally, she raised her head and looked up at me.
I smiled when I saw her face, still ruddy on the cheeks but bright and excited. For the first time, Beverley looked truly happy and I couldn’t believe that I’d caused it.
“When can I start?” she asked and I smiled wide.
“So you’ve accepted my offer?” I said and she nodded her head.
“I want to work with you and I want to be with you, Grant,” she added in a quiet voice and I lowered my face to kiss her on her lips again.
Chapter 23
Beverley
Eight months later
I didn’t walk to work any more, so when I looked at my watch and it was seven already; I wondered where Grant was. We usually left the office together. We worked on different floors. I had my office space with Susan, John and Sasha while he still worked from his own. Usually at six thirty, Grant buzzed me on the intercom and asked me what time I would be finished. This evening, he hadn’t and I pressed the button to reach him.
Instead of Grant, his secretary answered the call.
“He’s already left the office, Ms Wade,” she said and I had my brows crossed. In the past eight months, since I started working at Lonex, Grant had never left without calling me first.
“Is he coming back?” I asked her and she sounded nervous, like she didn’t want to come between a quarreling couple and she definitely didn’t want to betray her boss.
“I’m not sure, Ms Wade. He didn’t leave a note,” she said.
“No problem. I’ll get a hold of him on his personal phone. Thanks,” I said to her, as politely as possible and hung up the phone.
I hadn’t been paying attention to the time, but I would have heard him calling if he had. This was unlike him, and also made me wonder if something had happened.
The past eight months had been a whirlwind of exper