Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
AIDEN
“A life sentence,” she repeats. The sunlight glints off her wavy hair. “Do you see it like that?”
She looks at me like I’m a puzzle piece she needs to make fit. A problem to be solved and a mystery to be unraveled. It’s been a long time since anyone looked at me like that.
I want to talk to her, stupid as it is.
“Not always in a negative way. But it’s not like I can do something else, no. This is it for me.”
“What part of your workday do you enjoy the most?” she asks.
I look away from Charlotte to the crowd of people. The line to the food trucks grow ever longer.
“Strategy meetings,” I say.
It’s the truth, even if the one today had been frustrating. And I do have to give her something, just not enough somethings to string together the kind of salacious memoir the Board wants from me.
“Strategy meetings,” she echoes. “Is that where you plan programming for the next year or two?”
“Yes, among other things. Expansions. New hires. Upcoming projects. Financials. Strategy is at the core of most of our decisions.”
“You like making those long-term decisions.”
“I do.”
She blows out a soft sigh, and my gaze is drawn back to hers. To the slight narrowing of her eyes. “How involved are you with… the various shows you produce?”
“It depends. Most often, I’m not involved at all in the storytelling or production. Only in the big-picture decisions. Which shows to continue, which to ax, which to invest in more.” But I’d rather talk about her. “How do you decide what to keep and what to toss when writing a memoir? You must get more information than you know what to do with.”
“I get a lot, yes. All too often.” She shrugs lightly. “It depends on the story the subject and I want to tell.”
That word makes my lips curve. “The story .”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t memoirs meant to be true?”
“Ah, but whose truth?” she asks. “That’s for one of our future meetings. I’ll give you a few narrative options, and you can choose which one you want me to go with.”
“Narrative options?”
“The hero’s journey, for example. An antihero perspective. The David and Goliath story.” She inclines her head to me, a wry smile on her face. “My guess is you want a hero’s journey. But we’ll see.”
“My journey isn’t heroic,” I mutter. My hand closes around the paper and napkin still in my hand, bundling it all up into a tight ball.
For years, the only thing I’ve fought for is privacy. For me, my mother, and my little sister. Privacy that my dad didn’t afford us when he blew up our entire lives and left us behind.
And here I am, going against just that so I can expand Titan Media. The painful irony of that isn’t lost on me.
I don’t have time for anything else. No space for anything else. Even if the woman by my side is making me want to rethink that.
“Oh?” Charlotte asks. “I would have thought that’s the narrative you wanted. You know, with… the company’s history.”
Yeah.
That’s the narrative the Board wants. They want me to expose my father’s lies and secrets, tell a sob story of how I rescued a business in dire straits, and cleanse the public image of both the studio and the founding family.
The sun is warm on my face. The sounds of the city are loud, and I wish I could ignore them. That there would be the blessed silence of my childhood instead, or of evenings by the ocean and hikes in the mountains.
Charlotte breaks the silence first. “We don’t have to talk about that right away. If you don’t want to.”
I look at her. “Would you want to talk about the greatest shame of your life?”
Her gaze turns flinty. She swallows hard before replying. “No. I don’t usually talk about mine. Even if I’m not the one writing a memoir about myself. You must have had goals with this, right? Rehabilitating your public image? Focus on that, and we’ll get through the hard parts.”
My goal is to get the Board to approve my billion-dollar purchase. The memoir is a painful means to an end.
I nod down to her half-eaten food instead. “We’re almost out of time. You should finish your taco.”
She glances down at it. “You can be pretty demanding sometimes, you know. And good at evading questions.”
The words slip out of her, a trace of annoyance in her tone. I don’t think these are words she wanted to say. They don’t belong in her normally composed, professional dialogue of interviewee and interviewer.
A smile tugs at my lips. “This isn’t my first interview.”
“I’m on your side,” she says. “We both want a truly great book out of this.”
“What’s next on our schedule together?”
She blinks. “Next Monday, during your workout. I’ll be in your home gym.”
That makes me smile. “You’ll be watching me work out?”
“I’ll be asking you questions and taking notes,” she answers sharply.
“Work out with me,” I say with a shrug. “There’s space for two.”
“Why does it feel like you’re less interested in actually letting me get work done?”
“I don’t know, Charlotte. Why does it?”
She narrows her eyes at me, and damn it, I love getting her annoyed. “We shook on being professional.”
“I’m nothing if not professional,” I say. “I haven’t mentioned Utah once.”
“You just did!”
“Oh, did I?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m going to show up with a giant list of questions, and I’m not going to take any diversions or misdirections.”
“Not even if I work out shirtless?” I ask her, grinning. My headache is gone. It might be the Advil, but I think it’s her.
“You’re impossible. Do you conduct other business meetings like this?”
“No. Why don’t you sit in on a few, for your notes?”
Her mouth parts. “Really? You’d be okay with that?”
“Sure. Your NDAs prohibit you from reporting on anything business sensitive, and the Board will have final approval.” I hold out a hand. “You’re not going to finish your taco. You didn’t like it.”
Her eyes flash down to her food, and then back to me. “What makes you think that?”
“You frowned after your first bite.”
“It’s got too many chili peppers,” she admits, her voice a bit sheepish. “I forgot to tell him not to add them, and then it was too late.”
“You could have asked for another one.” My hand is still extended. “Come on, give it to me and I’ll buy you another one.”
“You definitely don’t need to do that. You have to head back inside, you have another meeting?—”
“I can be late.”
“Eric said that you’re never late.” She makes her voice deeper, an imitation. “‘Mr. Hartman values punctuality above all else.’”
I chuckle. “Mr. Hartman also takes the lunches of his employees very seriously.”
“I’m not your employee.”
“Hired freelancer, then. Now here, hand it over.”
“I don’t remember you being this bossy.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Don’t you?”
She blinks rapidly a few times and then puts the taco in my hand. “Fine. Here. And I do have a question… Do I need to contact Eric every time I want to ask you something?” she asks. “I might have questions throughout this process.”
“You want my number?” I ask. The question comes out dry, and just a bit bitter. Damn it.
Charlotte’s eyes widen and then a fierce color races up her cheeks. She looks down. Is she embarrassed about giving me a fake number?
I clear my throat a bit harshly. “You don’t have to contact Eric every time. Here.” I dig into my pocket. Find my wallet and one of my business cards there. It doesn’t have my phone number on it.
But it does have my direct email address.
I hand it to her. “Make sure you write Charlotte in the subject line.”
She looks down at the smooth paper, gripped between her fingers. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the phone number thing. Women blow men off all the time. She must have had her reasons. The desire to ask her about it, to invite more pain in, is on the tip of my tongue.
I bite down on it. We shook on remaining professional.
And as intriguing as she is, I still don’t have time for a relationship. That was the whole reason my last one ended.
She runs a finger over the logo at the top. “CEO of Titan Media,” she murmurs.
There’s something in her voice that I can’t place. She doesn’t sound happy. Like this simple fact is somehow a problem. I open my mouth to ask her something—anything—when my phone rings. Eric. Time’s up.
But despite it all, I wish it wasn’t.