11. Byron
11
BYRON
D amnit.
I did not text Meg for any other reason than to make sure she had found her way to the library.
But if I was worried about my sexual prowess suffering any after-effects from the violent attack the other night, I need worry no more. Three times in two hours I was confronted with a burgeoning arousal.
The first time was when Meg sassed me in her office.
The second was when she so boldly described the burger she was having for lunch, a stimulating visual if you were inclined to be turned on by a sex goddess wolfing down her food.
The third and most baffling time was while exchanging texts with her. A simple conversation, really, to the innocent bystander.
But I’m here to tell you that nothing about that conversation was innocent. And this was a new thing for me. Being tantalized by words…words creating their own web of seduction.
Maybe it was because they were coming from Meg, but every sentence felt like a wave of temptation I had to battle. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she was a master at witty backchat.
It was a whole new world opening up for me, being so fascinated while exchanging a few simple texts with a woman—in this case, the feisty minx herself.
What made the situation so untenable were the circumstances.
It wasn’t just about me and my whims anymore. For once, I had to set aside my own priorities and put something else above myself, and that was the Belmont Trust.
The new role of CEO was handed to me on a silver platter, but the role wasn’t something to be taken lightly.
I knew that to succeed, it would require determination, focus, and an unrelenting commitment. If I fucked up, there would be no second chances. I would have confirmed my brother’s worst fear — that I was a failure after all.
The stakes were too high.
It was just my luck that the one and only woman I found fascinating happened to be the one I now had to work with in my new role as CEO.
All things considered, it was a good thing Andy returned to my office when he did because my text conversation with Meg had nowhere to lead but a very cold shower, lasting five minutes at the very least.
Then, before Andy and I could continue, one of his phones rang, and the way he snapped into action immediately told me it was Roman on the other end.
I realized Roman had simply continued working upstairs instead of resting. I heard through the grapevine that he had forbidden any staff to go near his apartment. Everything was left exactly as it had been the night Isabel left.
Again, that kind of all-consuming love was an enigma to me, and I was beginning to think the cons of feeling that kind of love outweighed the pros by a large margin.
Andy’s side of the conversation with Roman was brief, him saying "yes" five times before he wrapped it up with a simple, “I’ll get on it now.”
What struck me, though, was how effortlessly Andy abandoned our discussion as if he couldn’t be bothered taking me seriously. Leaving me with the distinct impression that he didn’t believe I was actually going to follow through with the job. The lack of respect was almost palpable.
Despite my growing frustration, I forced myself to suck it up.
“I’ve got to go,” Andy blurted, his tone urgent. “Roman needs me. We’ll pick this up tomorrow, maybe. I’ll call Meg and handle her questions over the phone.”
Call me petty, but I was relieved he and Meg weren’t having lunch anymore, and I also couldn’t resist setting him straight. “It’s fine. I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied for the time being. And I’m pretty sure I can pick things up as I go along. This business runs in my blood, I’m a Belmont, after all.”
And that was exactly what I did. As soon as Andy left, I immersed myself in the work. Time seemed to blur, and before I knew it, a couple of hours had passed.
A soft knock on my door interrupted my focus, and in walked a young woman pushing a silver cart laden with plates of food, each covered with a gleaming dome.
“Hello, I’m Sophia,” she said shyly, in a heavy Italian accent. “I bring your lunch, Mr. Belmont.”
I stood up from my desk, offering her a smile. “Hi, Sophia. Please, just call me Byron.”
She nodded, unsure, as if trying to figure out the next step. “I go now, Mr. Belmont. I’ll get the cart later.”
I sighed. “Thank you, Sophia.”
I lifted the domes to inspect the food. The first one revealed a burger, and it looked like Meg’s lunch had been delivered alongside mine.
That presented quite a dilemma. Should I call Sophia back to take Meg her lunch, or should I brave the sacred territory of our secret passage and deliver it myself?
Normally, I wasn’t one to linger over decisions. I made them quickly, but this had me wobbling long enough for Sophia to get out of earshot. It seemed I was on my own.
I resisted the temptation to invite Meg to have lunch together. Absolutely no good could come of that. At the very least, I should first figure out how to handle this thing I felt towards her.
I couldn’t even put a name to it—infatuation? Was I smitten? What started as something mildly odd had quickly spiraled into something completely bizarre.
My only conclusion was that maybe escaping death had made me more susceptible, but I rejected that notion as quickly as it emerged.
It was Miss Belfiore herself who had left an impression. A lasting one, at that.
Then, another idea came to me.
What if I gave this some time to play out? I liked her, and by now, I was sure the sight of me didn’t exactly repulse her. We were both in the same boat, being in over our heads in our new jobs, and we were both determined to make a success of the challenge.
So, what if for once in my life I didn’t approach this like a potential sexcapade and rather a good working relationship with plenty of room to expand into something more later on.
You know, behave like a grown-up.
Sure we had an undeniable spark, but that didn’t mean I had to act on it like a horny asshat with only one thing on his mind.
Besides, in my world, real friends were hard to come by. Not for a second did I ever think someone wanted to be friends with me for me. Rather, the Belmont name was a gigantic magnet for fake friends.
Meg, on the other hand, was not going out on a limb to get into my or Roman’s favor because our name was Belmont, so I assumed a friendship with her was earned in the good old-fashioned way.
I was proud of myself for reasoning like a decent man. This was definitely a departure for me from my usual modus operandi, and yes, it didn’t feel half bad.
The first thing was to take Meg her lunch and apologize for taking the text conversation to a place that might have left her with the wrong impression.
Even if she was matching my banter word for word, it was still inappropriate for me to encourage it, considering the position I held.
I removed my food from the cart and wheeled the cart with Meg’s lunch toward her office via the secret passage. Her door was open in a crack, and just as I was about to knock, her phone rang from inside.
A man’s voice came through the speakerphone.
“Hey sexy girl.”
There was a smile in Meg’s voice when she replied. “Hi sexy boy.”
For some inexplicable reason, my heartburn started acting up again.
Sexy Boy continued. “Yo, so check this out! Friday night is some bigwig bash at Silver Spoon, and I’m bartending. What say I put your name on the VIP list. Drinks and dinner on the house, and then maybe after we go home and play.”
He sounded like a pudding head.
Heat crept into my face, which I blamed on the heartburn. I wanted to storm into her office and tell “Sexy Boy” Meg was way out of his league. What would a woman like Meg do with a dimwit like that?
Not to overstate the obvious, but this was the singular strangest reaction I’ve ever had to a situation of this nature. I couldn’t remember ever giving a damn if a woman I was sleeping with dated someone else, let alone a woman I’d only admired from a distance.
The more I thought about it, the more disgusted I became with Old Byron.
Now I found myself listening in on a conversation that had nothing to do with me, and I wanted her to outright reject him and tell him she had more important things to do than hang out with him at Silver Spoon.
A place, by the way, owned by me. A little venture I invested in a few weeks ago because I wanted to show Roman I could run a successful business after all.
That was before the turning-over-a-new-leaf thing.
Not that I had anything to do with the day-to-day running of things, because I left it in other more capable hands than mine. But it belonged to me, and me alone.
“Got to get back to you on that,” Meg said finally. “But put my name on the VIP list anyway. And this time, get it right? It’s Meg Belfiore, not Maria B.”
Sexy Boy dufus then gave the most obnoxious laugh I’d ever heard. “Oh riiiight. That was my bad. You still gotta spank my ass cheeks blood red for that one, right?”
I couldn’t take it anymore. Leaving the cart outside her door, I strode back to my office, texting her as I went.
Me: Your lunch was delivered to my office. I left it outside the passage door.
Her reply came a draggy twenty seconds later.
Meg: Thanks. No delivering it to my desk though? Tsk tsk.
This hollow feeling I had in my stomach didn’t allow for a witty clapback. Instead, I kept it cordial, not inviting any more banter.
Me: I’ll let Nelson know, so it doesn’t happen again.
Three dots appeared and then disappeared. I couldn’t help but wonder what Meg decided not to text.
My only recourse was diving back into the real world, giving all my attention to work, and not getting tangled up in a situation that was too complicated to navigate.
Who was I fooling anyway? Sure, I’d be happy to be friends with Meg. For now. But why did it bother me so much to hear her set up a date with another man? Confusing, to say the least.
If there was ever a time I needed to talk to my shrink, it was now. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by feelings I didn’t know how to handle, when not long ago, I’d have been perfectly content being an asshole and not giving a damn.
It became obvious that being a good guy wasn’t necessarily the easy path I thought it would be. I dialed Dr. Libby Philips's number, hoping she'd be in a forgiving mood and consider bygones as, well, bygones.
I prayed she could see that the guy who once seduced her just to avoid being psychobabbled to death wasn’t the same one now desperately seeking her sage advice.