Charmed

I bend down and pick up the big notepad she left behind. I make a mental note to have my assistant get the rest of this cleaned up.

“I need a shower,” I tell Andrew as he opens my car door. “I’m canceling my meeting.” I slide into the car, pull out my phone and send a text to my assistant about the change of plans. Andrew hops into the driver seat.

“You’re really not going to your meeting?” Our eyes lock for a moment in the rearview mirror. I know what he’s thinking. I never miss a meeting. I never miss anything when it comes to work. It’s how I’ve been since I came back home after my father’s death. He’d left the company a mess. It was drowning and it had taken a few years to not only pull it back but make sure no one knew what he’d done. Especially my mother. I don’t want her to know the wreckage he caused and left behind. Nor do I want her to know I have a feeling it’s why my father had a heart attack. Too much pressure.

I never understood the drive to keep making more and more money. If I could have, I would have walked away from all of it after my father died, but the company wasn’t in a place to be sold. Not to mention if I’d just outright shut it down, thousands would be without a job. I needed to clean up the mess. The mess was now cleaned, but still here I was working day and night. I’d even gone with the plans my father had for this building.

It wouldn’t take me long to run home and jump in the shower and just invite Senator Jones over to my house for a drink instead of meeting him at the Alibi Room. We have a standing meeting there every month.

I scratch his back with money and he makes sure I always get what I want when I ask. When you have as much money as I do no one seems to stand in your way.

Though Charlie wasn’t like everyone else. The little spitfire threw paint at me. Even after she knew who I was. I’d seen her reaction to my name on her pretty face when Andrew said it. The Shade name wasn’t only known in Colorado but all around the world as a result of our hotel business. It was a name associated with luxury and decadence.

“I have other things that need to be taken care of. More important.” I pick up the notepad Charlie left behind, running my hand over the binding of it before flipping it open. I pause when I see the Shade building. It was what she was painting. I flip through the pages and see she’s painted it many times. Each picture is as perfect as the last. Jesus, she’s talented.

“Important like a tiny, light-haired hellion?” I hear the teasing note in Andrew’s voice, but I ignore it.

“Something like that,” I mutter. She is tiny. Worry for her starts to creep up my spine. Maybe I should have tried to push through the crowd to find her, though I’m pretty sure it was a lost cause.

I don’t like the idea of her running around the city by herself. She’s small and precious. The glare she shot me before she launched her paint at me has me questioning the precious part, though.

No, she is precious. She just has some fire to her, which has my cock’s full attention. No one in my life has ever dared treat me the way she did, especially after knowing who I was.

I’m easily three times bigger than her. She stomped on my foot and shoved me, catching me off guard. I was more pissed that she fell. She could have hurt herself. Maybe she did. My worry only grows that she might do something like that again to someone who doesn’t have the same intentions with her as I do.

I pause for a moment. What are my intentions? Make her mine, repeats through my mind over and over again.

“Drive faster,” I tell Andrew, knowing he likely won’t. He’s always about safety. I’d fire him if he wasn’t so damn good at his job, along with being my closest friend. I know everything he says to me is truth, not what I want to hear.

“Your phone,” Andrew says, pulling me from my worried thoughts about Charlie. I hadn’t even heard it ring. I see my assistant’s number flash across the screen. I ignore the call.

“Not going to answer that?” Andrew asks. The phone rings again. I clear it, then shoot him a text to stop calling unless it’s about the email I’m waiting for about the man on the float.

I slide my phone back into my pocket. “You sure you’re all right?” Andrew asks.