Loving The Enemy

“I guess I’ll have to get used to you, you do know how to eat with a knife and fork don’t you? I wouldn’t want you to embarrass us at dinner.” She stood and threw her bag over her shoulder. Wait, the meeting’s over? Who said? “Where are you going?” She looked down at her watch and back up at me.

“We’ve been here for an hour. Unless you’re hiring me to run your company no interview needs be that long. When did you want me to start?” I relaxed tense shoulders that I hadn’t been aware of until now. She wasn’t going to make me wrestle her to the ground to get her to agree. Though I might have enjoyed that.

“Tonight.” I opened my drawer and retrieved my wallet to get the black card that I hardly ever use. “Use this for now until we get you your own. We’re going to a very exclusive premiere and then on to an after party in the Hills.” That should be right up her ally.

“You do know these things usually need advanced notice.” She was halfway to the door.

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I’m more of a last minute kinda guy. Sometimes I might have a set date in mind, but more often than not it could be a last minute deal. Which means Ms. Bronson that I expect you to be available whenever and wherever I please. I think for what I’m paying you that’s more than acceptable.”

“We’ll see.” And with that she was gone.

I smiled like an ass through the rest of the day. It could have something to do with our little back and forth all day long. First I sent her a phone with my numbers programmed in it. Then I texted her what time the car will be there to pick her up this evening. Her only answers in the beginning were little thumbs up emojis. That was until I texted her while she had her head in a sink, her words. At which time she called me and told me in no uncertain terms to stop blowing up the damn phone and let her go about her business unless I wanted her to show up looking like a hag.

Of course I ignored her orders and kept sending her little texts each time I thought of something to do with our new arrangement. It was only as the day wound down and it was time to head home to get ready for the night ahead that I realized I was trying to keep her too preoccupied with me to even think of changing her mind. “Well, there you have it; you’ve lost your fucking mind.” Sniffing after some chick that was the complete opposite of everything you like in a woman.

EMILY

“Relax, he’s just a man. You eat two of them for breakfast on a bad day.” Simone teased as I smoothed down the front of the short black silk dress I’d chosen for tonight for the fourth time. “My palms are sweaty.” I moved onto the curly tendrils of hair at my temples my stylist had chosen for this evening. The rest of my hair was caught in a neat French roll held together by about a hundred pins. Why don’t they ever tell you that you have to pay a hefty price for that beauty? I had to admit it looked great, and as she said, shows of my neck to perfection. Yeah, like Jason Storm was looking at my neck.

From the way he acted this morning and with time to think, I was convinced that he was after something farther south. I’d made the monumental mistake of calling Simone as soon as I left him. Her squeal and I’ll meet you at Alex’s was all I heard before she rang off. Alex was my stylist, someone I had been about to give up in my new sacrifice of downsizing. But since Storm was paying, why not carry on, as I was accustomed to?

I was under the dryer when I realized that what he offered was so much more than a paycheck. If he was going to clothe me, feed me and take care of all my beautification needs, what was so different from the way I lived when daddy was alive. My ‘allowance’ was almost nine grand extra to boot. This was too good to be true. At the back of my mind though, was the elephant in the room.

I’m not too green to know that no man in his right mind would do all this unless he was after something. I’d already established that he wasn’t hatching a plot to cheat me out of everything I thought I owned, so there could be only one reason why he was doing all this. Pussy!

Well I have news for him. He wouldn’t be the first to try to get me into his bed, some with horrific results. I’ve fought off my share of baboons over the years. From the time I had breasts at fifteen to be exact. Though he came off as too cool for such behavior, it was hard to miss that underlying core of steel he wore so well beneath respectable thousand dollar suits.