7. Byron
7
BYRON
I hobbled to my new office, trying to ignore the pain flooding my limbs. A nurse was on standby to douse me with drugs, but so far, I had successfully resisted caving to a pain-numbing shot.
Something told me I’d need all my wits to deal with this day.
The first stop would be to hand Meg Belfiore her flash drive, and hopefully, she had dialed down her hatred for me by now.
Not likely in the thirty minutes since she’d left for her office, but I was holding on to that one percent chance.
My only goal was to create a harmonious working atmosphere for the short time Meg was required to be here at Belmont Manor. Surely Roman wouldn’t demand she keep coming to the estate after she spilled where Isabel was hiding out.
And then whatever meetings we needed to have after that could be conducted via Zoom.
I had it perfectly planned out.
What I didn’t count on was this gooey, hot feeling filling me from my feet up to the top of my head when I stopped in the doorway to her office and saw her again.
Sitting behind her desk, shoes casually kicked off, classic rock humming in the background, and her fingers flying over the MacBook's keyboard at blinding speed.
Whatever order she had tried to put to her hair this morning proved to be in vain as her black tresses slowly started to surrender to the humidity, compliments of the North Atlantic Sea. Messy curls were springing to life, framing her sultry face, with the big melt-in-your-mouth chocolate brown eyes, and a full, lush mouth created for sinning and begging to be kissed.
I silently chided myself. This reckless wonder I had for Meg needed to stop.
Perhaps it was residual shock from the attack landing me in the hospital that was making me react like a pubescent boy experiencing his first crush.
Maybe delusion was a side effect of the slight concussion I had suffered, who knew.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, she cut me a savage look where I stood frozen in the doorway, leaning on my cane. It was a look that made it clear her loathing for me was still very much alive and kicking.
“Okay, you’re staring and it’s freaking me out. Can I help you?” she said as she continued typing.
I was downright panicky that one woman could have me scrambling for a defense to my standing there like a blubbering fool ogling her.
After some consideration, I carefully picked my words. “Oh…hi…uhm…”
She stopped typing, her mouth twisting into a mocking pout as she stared me down.
A painful silence ensued, during which I gave myself a quick pep talk. I needed to establish dominance and gain some kind of control over the situation. Soon, I would be the new CEO, someone to revere, and right now, I appeared to be as fierce as a Shetland pony in a petting zoo.
“So, Miss Belfiore,” I attempted in a light yet extremely confident manner.
And did she budge? Oh, you’d better believe she didn’t. Not an inch.
“Wow, you remembered to pronounce my name correctly,” she said. “Most people don’t, or can’t. So, you have that going for you.”
I studied her for a long beat. If you stripped away the sass…you’d probably discover even more sass.
But I held my own. This was not my hill to die on.
“I’m not most people,” I said, casually stalking her desk. “And the sooner you realize that, the better.”
I won’t lie, it was a challenge to keep from groaning in pain, but I made it to the front of her desk. “Listen, I know you hate me, and I understand there’s very little I can do to change that. But since we’re stuck working together, we should probably call a truce and make the best of a bad situation for as long as you work at the estate. What do you say?”
She stared at me like I was speaking in tongues.
“You think I hate you?” she asked. “I don’t hate you. You’d know if I hated you. Ask that blow-up doll with her inflated lips who you had pinned against a wall, ready to do the horizontal mambo…what’s her name again? Candy, Cuckoo…oh wait Celeste. Ask her how I deal with people I hate.”
And with that, she continued banging away at the keyboard as if she had nothing more to say.
My jaw hit the ground, my pain summarily put on the back burner. “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
Meg stopped typing again and emitted the sigh that could be heard ‘round the world. “I know about you and Celeste, sunshine. There’s a pic floating around of you two getting it on at a party while her septuagenarian husband was out of town trying to make a buck to keep the Manolo Blahnik’s on her feet.”
Of course. The party at Celeste Van Buren’s house. That whole thing had come back to bite me in the ass, over and over again.
And now, yet again.
“Not that I owe you any explanation, but I have never slept with Celeste, not that she hasn’t tried her best. I know there are rumors abound, but even as an asshole I drew the line at having sex with that woman.”
Meg bit her bottom lip, her eyes narrowing like she was trying to spot a lighthouse in the deep fog. “Next, you’re going to tell me the pic was just a joke. Do you see all women as gullible, or is it just me you consider dumb enough to fall for your lies?”
“You may be many things, but you’re not dumb,” I said testily. “But if you allow me, I can clarify this picture you say is floating around. Which also happens to be the reason I got beat up like a punching bag, if you must know.”
“Fine, but then we’ll circle back to the many things I am, but not dumb , because that sounds kind of like an insult in disguise,” she said with an acerbic little smile.
The sigh that escaped me took a bit of my soul with it. “It’s not an insult in disguise. That’s just your active imagination making you see things that don’t exist.”
“Sure,” she quipped. “Whatever makes you feel better about yourself.”
Why did I suffer the need to explain myself to her? Oh, I’ll tell you why…because for some unknown reason, the blood that was supposed to supply my brain with oxygen was heading south, and suddenly I was fighting an irrational desire to throw this cane aside and kiss Meg.
It was an interesting concept considering the pain I was in, rendering me absolutely useless should I even manage to get her to partake in said kiss.
“We were a bunch of drunk, spoiled rich assholes playing some sick version of truth-or-dare at a party,” I explained feverishly. “The dare was to kiss Celeste. I couldn’t even get myself to kiss her mouth, so whatever you were looking at was me compromising by pecking her neck.”
“And feeling up her boobs.”
“I had to make it look real.”
“If it got you knocked around like a humanpinata because of that, I’d say you succeeded in making it look super real. Congrats. I hope it was a lesson learned.”
The pain was steadily clawing for my attention again, and it was my cue to get away from Miss Belfiore before my rising blood pressure worsened my state.
“I can’t remember asking for all this judgmental bullshit,” I said.
A smile lit up her face. “I know, it’s on the house!”
And suddenly, it felt like a thousand daggers were stabbing at my insides all at once. I nearly doubled over, my cane the only thing keeping me afloat. My ears were ringing, and the room became a blur.
But at the same time, I heard the distant voice of what seemed like a VERY concerned Meg.
“Holy shit, you’ve gone white as the damn wall! Are you okay? Should I call someone? I didn’t mean to upset you like this…”
Why was I basking so eagerly in the smidgen of sympathy coating her voice? My reaction to Meg was getting too weird, and I was not emotionally equipped to deal with it right now.
I simply had to get myself together. And for that to happen, I needed to get away from her. As far away as I could.
“I’m fine,” I said with as much bravado as I could muster and slipped the one flash drive onto her desk. “This is from Roman. He’s out for the day. If you have any questions, ask his assistant Andy.”
I didn’t wait for an acknowledgment and left the way I came in, feeling her gaze following me every painful step of the way.
Once inside my office, I couldn’t get my shirt off quickly enough to apply pain relief cream to my battered body. If that wasn’t going to help, the pain meds weren’t completely off the table.
The only trouble was rubbing some of the cream on my back where the one steroid-inflated thug created an ugly patchwork of second-degree hematomas.
And as I was trying to do that, my thoughts circled back to Celeste Van Buren.
That picture taken at her party, was done by design and without my knowledge. I had no doubt she started the rumor about us sleeping together because Celeste was nothing if not overly ambitious.
The plan was to attach herself to the next wealthy bachelor before her current husband got wind that he was basically just a stepping stone for her into the exclusive world of billionaires.
Roman was her ultimate objective, being that he was soon to be president and chairman of the Belmont Trust. But she had about as much chance of gaining Roman’s affections as a tarantula had for a warm cuddle on a chilly night.
Me, I was her alternative choice, as if it was even a choice she would have.
I saw through her plan from the first day we met, but being the conniving jerk that I used to be, I kept her on the line for nothing else but gossip and getting info on pretty socialites.
And now you’re probably curious why I never slept with Celeste. Come closer, and I’ll tell you.
For all the rumors about me sleeping with any woman who had a pulse…well, they were not entirely true. I’d plenty of indiscretions, too many to count, but I still had some standards, believe it or not.
My criteria were pretty basic, and for me to pencil a woman in for a few hours of fun, she had to adhere to at least a couple of these attributes… Charm, wit, basic conversational skills, and someone who didn’t consider a celery stick and romaine lettuce as the ultimate food pyramid.
A nice derriere was a definite plus.
And yes, I liked a woman on more, let’s say the shapely side, sue me. In my world before now those kinds of women were as scarce as hen’s teeth because calories were the mortal enemy when you had to squeeze into a slinky Vera Wang evening dress.
However, what these women didn’t understand was that the brain was composed of fat, and specific kinds of fats were crucial for optimal brain function, development, and maintaining healthy cell membranes.
In addition, a voluptuous woman was nicer to the touch and a lot more fun to engage in conversation with because their brain was not starving for Omega-3 fatty acids. So there was that.
If you guessed that Celeste didn’t make the grade, you’d be correct. In fact, it was quite the wide gulf between my criteria and someone resembling a cold, hard mannequin with the personality of Cruella de Vil.
Meg Belfiore, on the other hand…
For one thing, nothing about her was fake. As far as I could tell, every feature was the same one given to her in the assembly line before she was born.
Charm and wit came to her naturally…all of which I figured out during our short albeit revealing, introduction.
I considered myself a connoisseur at reading people, so no one could convince me Miss Belfiore wasn’t loaded with charisma and a healthy dose of sass. In short, I gathered, she’d be terrific company in and out of bed.
Also, at a fair guess, Meg had an aversion to celery sticks and knew how to enjoy a good meal.
And now, just thinking about her biting down on a juicy piece of steak caused a raging ball of fire to pool at the base of my spine.
I swiftly wiped that thought from my mind. No good could come of me having fantasies about a woman who hated my guts and who I was supposed to work with in close proximity.
It had become incredibly important that Meg reveal to Roman where Isabel was. The sooner Meg did that, the sooner she could work from her home and not at Belmont Manor, and the better it would be for my mental (and carnal) health.
For all the acrobatic contortions I was twisting myself into, this pain-relieving cream wasn’t getting where it was needed most on my back.
With a second to spare before I called a nurse to help me out, the side door in my office (which I was honestly completely unaware of until now) burst open, and a barefoot Meg marched in holding out what I supposed was the flash drive I’d handed to her.
“You gave me the wrong flash drive…” she grumbled impatiently. “I sure don’t need to know about—”
I straightened out in a snap, still trying to figure out where the hell she came from when I caught her staring at my naked chest.
Her mouth fell slightly open, and for once, it seemed the sassy Miss Belfiore was at a loss for words. And in that very second, there didn’t seem to be too much hate for me trapped in her gaze.