Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
AIDEN
“I’m not ranting at you,” she says. “I’m just trying to understand. Why even invite me here if you’re not going to answer my questions? What game are you playing?”
“I’m not playing any games.” A few stray coats surround us, the fabric rustling when I brush past a rack. Charlotte’s soft waves kiss the tops of her shoulders, leaving her upper back bare. It’s an expanse of silky-looking skin.
And then there’s that green dress and the sides she’s still holding together as tightly as she can.
God, she’s frustrating.
Frustrating because I hadn’t planned on it being her when I agreed to this stupid fucking scheme. It should have been some prim English Literature major—a man perhaps—who primarily reports on business. Not someone with an interest in getting to the heart of issues and finding the real person within.
And definitely not Charlotte.
Her anger is justified. But I’m not about to sell out my family and my private thoughts and feelings just to appease her, so angry she’ll have to remain.
“Yes, you are.” She comes to a stop at the far side of the room and turns to face me. Her cheeks are flushed with color. “You invited me here, insisted I come when I was only supposed to interview you in the car, and for what? To show off your donation? To jerk me around and play these… these… games?”
“I said I’m not playing games.” My voice comes out hoarse. “Now turn around and let me see the zipper.”
She does as I’ve asked, lifting her arm to show me a stretch of bare skin from below her armpit down to her waist.
She’s not wearing a bra.
I guess she wouldn’t have to with that tight-looking corset of a dress. Despite her clutching the front of the dress to her chest, the faintest hint of a curve is visible. And fuck if I don’t perfectly remember the weight and feel of her small tits.
“If you’re ogling me, I swear to god, Aiden?—”
“I’m not,” I say gruffly and reach for the slider. It looks fine, but… it’s on the wrong side of the fastener. Like the teeth of the zipper itself had just burst.
“This is humiliating enough as it is,” she continues, and I can see the quick expansion of her ribs beneath my fingers. She really is angry. “We’ve only danced around the topics that actually matter. I’m starting to think you don’t want this memoir written at all. You give me nothing !”
My fingers brush over her skin on their way to the base of the zipper, and damn it, she’s just as soft as I recall.
“Of course I don’t want this fucking memoir written,” I grind out. The pull tab is tiny and the lighting isn’t great, and she’s so distractingly close and warm.
“ What ?” She turns her head to glare at me.
I focus on the zipper and try to get it closed. “Would you want an entire book dedicated to the worst fucking time of your life? Revisiting the things you’ve spent years trying to bury?”
A faint sound escapes her. It sounds almost like shock, and a bit sympathetic, and I don’t want that. Never that.
But then she shakes her head sharply, and the light-brown waves brush along her shoulders. “Then why did you agree to it? Why sign the contract, and why hire me? Why am I here, Aiden?”
To drive me mad, I think. The zipper catches, and I pull it closed and snug up the side of her dress. But for every inch it draws together, it comes undone again below the slider.
“The zipper is broken,” I say. “The teeth won’t stay shut.”
She twists in an effort to see, and her dress gapes open even more. I catch the solid swell of her breast and look away, toward a gray peacoat hanging right next to my face.
“No way. It can’t be,” she hisses. “This is my only formal gown.”
I look back at her. “I offered to buy you a dress.”
“Which would have been completely unprofessional. But thanks,” she adds, so clearly as a polite afterthought she doesn’t truly mean, it makes me smile.
She narrows her eyes at my expression. “Why did you agree to this, then? The whole memoir if you’re determined to sabotage it?”
“I’m not determined to sabotage it. I’m determined to make it bland and boring,” I say.
She looks like she wants to throw her hands up, but doing that would make her dress fall. She glares at me instead. “That’s the same thing as sabotage! I have a career riding on writing good, well-received, bestselling memoirs. We have to tear up the contract.”
“No,” I say immediately. “We can’t do that.”
Her eyes are so angry they burn. “Oh my god, and why not ? Why are you putting both of us through this if you don’t even want a memoir? Why drag me into this?”
“You are an unfortunate casualty,” I say.
“You did not just say that.”
I blow out a breath. This isn’t what I wanted to talk about tonight, not what I wanted to admit. “The memoir is a trade with the Board. They want a good PR opportunity and a new narrative for the company.”
“And you don’t?” she asks, her eyebrows furrowed. She’s even pretty when she’s fuming.
“No. But in return for my agreement, the Board will greenlight a new acquisition and the project they’ve been dragging their feet on for years.”
“This is a calculated move on your part,” she says. Her arms are still wrapped around her chest.
“Yes, of course it is,” I say gruffly. What else would it be? I’m running a company that employs thousands of people, and it needs to recapture stability. It needs profits, and it needs to get back on track moving forward.
“Well, you’re going to have to find another memoirist.” She looks left and right, and then shakes her head. “Damn it. I should get out of here.”
A hum of voices reaches us from the lobby. The speeches must have wrapped up.
I wrapped up my own as soon as I saw Charlotte leaving her seat.
Not planned. But I saw her hurry through the space with quick steps like she was fleeing, and the remaining platitudes slipped out of my mind. The only thing that mattered was her.
No one’s ever gotten under my skin like she has.
“I can call the car.”
“No need,” she says and pushes past me. She stumbles on her heels in the dimness, and I reach out to steady her.
My hand lands on the bare skin of her back, exposed by the gaping dress.
“Charlotte,” I say.
“I read the contract thoroughly beforehand,” she says sharply. Her eyes meet mine, and damn if a shiver of arousal doesn’t rush down my spine, right alongside my frustration. “I am allowed to break it if the interview subject substantially hinders my efforts. It’s just in the fine print, but it states that if I’m not given adequate resources, I can break it.”
“What qualifies as adequate resources?” I ask. “Want us to battle that out in the courts?”
Her eyes narrow. “You’d do that?”
“I don’t think I’d have to. Don’t you think your editor will just replace you with another memoirist? Your publishing house wants this memoir just as much as my Board does.”
“Because they think they’re getting the scoop!” she says. “When what they’re actually getting is a noncooperative, evasive, frustrating, occasionally rude CEO with no interest in sharing even his favorite color.”
“Blue,” I say.
Her mouth tightens, like she’s trying to hold back an expletive. But then it bursts open. “Damn it.”
I shrug out of my suit jacket and hold it up for her.
She stares at it as if it’s a weapon.
“Until we get to the car,” I say.
“I can’t walk around in your suit jacket.”
“Do we have much of a choice?” I ask dryly and look down at her dress, still only held up by her hands. “Or do you want to risk flashing all the good men and women out there?”
She turns with a muttered curse. “Don’t look,” she instructs me, and I look away. I feel her slip into the arms of my jacket but keep my gaze firmly on one of the beige walls.
“Don’t call your editor.”
“I can’t work like this,” she says. “I refuse.”
“You never struck me as someone who backs down from a challenge, Chaos.”
She turns so quickly that her hair hits my still hovering hand from when I held the jacket out to her. “I don’t,” she says. “I just know a losing battle when I see one.”
“That sounds like giving up.” I’m being an ass. An ass in a way I rarely am. At least not since I was a bored and rich teenager. Needling and needling and not saying the right thing like I always have to otherwise.
I’ve never watched my tongue around Charlotte the way I should.
She’s a dangerous creature, standing there with my suit jacket wrapped tightly around her chest. It’s too large on her, the sleeves covering her hands.
She looks delicious.
“You,” she says, her eyes blazing, “are playing games. Even if you’re calling them something else. And I don’t like that. So if you think I’m giving up? That’s fine. But I know what I deserve, and it’s not this.”
Charlotte is going to walk away.
And I know I don’t want this memoir written. I don’t want secrets exposed. I don’t want family trauma reexamined and read by thousands of people. I don’t want new Business Digest articles with clickbait titles.
But I know I don’t want her to walk out, either.
She’s fascinating. Complicated. Intelligent. Our little sparring matches have been the most fun I’ve had in months.
“You don’t like games, then. But how about a deal?” I ask.
She crosses her arms over her chest. “What kind of deal?”
“You want me to answer all of your questions,” I say. “Then, you’ll have to respond to the same ones.”
Her eyes widen. “What?”
“For every answer I give, you give me one, too. It’s only fair that I get to know you just as thoroughly as you’ll be getting to know me.”
“You can’t be serious. I’m not the one who is being written about, and I bet you’re not even interested.”
I lean closer. “Is that a bet you’re really willing to make?”
Her teeth dig into her lower lip for a second. “Why?”
“Why not?” I ask. “Maybe I don’t want to be the only one baring my life to scrutiny.”
She shakes her head slowly, a humorless smile on her lips. “Right. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?”
“That’s right.”
“I think I’m willing to go deep,” she says, her voice holding a warning. “This memoir is important to my career.”
“There’s one caveat, of course.”
Her eyes narrow. “Of course there is. What?”
“I get final approval before you deliver the first draft to the Board.”
“You’ll ax everything I’ll write.”
“No. I promise to be fair. Convince me that you can write this and do it justice. Make me want to expose all the personal stuff and send it to my Board and publication.”
I see it in her eyes. A spark of defiance, hidden amid the frustration. From the start, she’s seemed like a woman who likes to be challenged. Who likes people with a bit of a bite.
“I have a counter caveat,” she says.
The voices out in the lobby are growing louder. “Tell me.”
“If you don’t approve the memoir, you’ll need to explain it to my editor. I want it noted why you’re not satisfied, and for you to directly admit that it’s too personal.”
She’s hedging her bets. A grin flashes across my lips, there and gone again. “Clever.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I would never.” It’s the honest truth. I hold out my hand. “Do we have a deal, Charlotte Gray?”
Her eyes meet mine with obvious vehemence. But then she slips her slim hand in mine, her skin warm.
We shake once.
“We have a deal,” she says. “And I’ll hold you to it, Hartman.”
My lips curve, and it’s not entirely with joy. “I’m counting on it. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You want more access?” I lean in closer. “You’ll move into my guest room.”