Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Logan
W hat the hell was that?
Seriously. My heart is pounding as I stare at the door with my jaw hanging open.
That woman…
Amber Fletcher.
She just left without looking back. She tossed a wink over her shoulder, like this is her office and I’m the one who was intruding.
I’ve never met anyone like her. She burst into my life with a suitcase, a smirk, and zero boundaries.
And it shook me to my core.
I start to get this twitchy, panicky feeling now that she’s gone. I need to see her again. I need those stunning hazel eyes back on me, judging me, goading me, demanding me to be better.
I want more of her sharp tongue. I want it to lash me—verbally and physically.
I want her.
I’m rattled. Too rattled to think straight.
She got under my skin in less than five minutes.
No. She got into my bloodstream. Into my soul. I feel the obsession taking over like a drug—instant, addictive, and already coursing through my veins.
It’s been a long time since someone has talked to me like that.
Has challenged me like that.
I’m a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I dominate any boardroom I’m in. I strike the fear of god into anyone who shows up late to a meeting. I am the master of this place.
But apparently, Miss Amber Fletcher didn’t get the memo. She didn’t care one single bit.
And I liked it.
It made me feel… human.
It’s lonely at the top. Heavy is the crown. Those are sayings I’ve heard over the years, but you don’t really understand them until you live it.
I’m always at work, so I’m only ever surrounded by people who see me as the boss. As someone to obey. To fear.
But not Amber. She didn’t fear me at all.
And she didn’t see me as a CEO. She saw me as a man. A man who was being awfully mean to her sister.
And the thought of her seeing me in that negative way has my hands shaking.
“Fuck,” I mutter as I rush out the door with my pulse racing.
I hurry down the hall and catch up to her near the elevators.
She’s just standing there, rolling her suitcase back and forth as she stares at my huge gold-plated sign with a look of disgust on her gorgeous face.
Seeing her staggers me. It feels like a hand is gripping my soul.
She’s the type of beauty you could stare at every day for decades and never get tired of.
Ten years of admiring her and you could still find something new, like the adorable faint freckles across the ridge of her nose and upper cheeks, or the captivating way her chin tilts up just a little bit when she grins, or the way her long curved lashes can bring a man to his knees.
I swallow hard as I drag my eyes down her luscious body from her army green tank top, low-rise jeans, down to her scuffed-up Converse sneakers.
She looks like she could be the girl next door.
She’s so different from the prim and proper women I’m constantly surrounded by with all of their expensive high heels, pencil skirts, and crisp blouses.
Amber looks like she could play baseball with the guys and then give you a kiss under the bleachers.
Just the thought of those soft tempting lips touching mine has me breathless. It has me desperate to get her eyes back on me.
“Amber,” I call out as I make my way over to her.
She turns slowly. Casually. Like she knew I’d come after her.
Of course, she did.
But of course, I would. We belong together. There’s no other way to explain the storm brewing in my chest.
“You got me all wrong,” I say with a crack in my voice.
Her mouth curls up in amusement as she tilts her head to the side. “Oh, do tell. This I gotta hear.”
“You said I work my employees too hard,” I say as I approach, feeling shaky all over. “But you don’t understand. I don’t take this responsibility lightly.”
Her eyebrow raises skeptically, that sexy grin still on her succulent lips.
“All of these people that you think I torture,” I say, keeping my eyes fixated on her, “they rely on me. They have kids, mortgages, sick parents. I know their stories. All of them.”
I know the elevator will be here soon to take her out of my life, so I talk fast.
“I’m trying to save a department right now,” I continue.
“It’s underperforming and everyone wants me to shut it down, including your sister, but I can’t.
That’s thirty-three people I’d have to let go.
Thirty-three people who would lose their income.
It’s costing me an ungodly amount of money, but I’m keeping it open. For them.”
She lets out a low breath as she watches me.
“Just so you don’t think I’m a total monster,” I whisper, dropping my eyes.
I hate making layoffs. I refuse to do it unless absolutely necessary.
I still remember when I was nine years old. Sleeping in the backseat of a Toyota Camry with a wet winter jacket for a blanket. My mom crying quietly behind the wheel.
I can’t do that to my people. I won’t.
“I’ve seen what it looks like when someone loses everything.”
Her expression softens, and I hate how that hits. That look—gentle, kind, pitying. Like she’s just found a dent in the armor I spend every damn day polishing.
The elevator opens with a ding, but she doesn’t move.
“Are you going inside?” I ask, desperately hoping she doesn’t.
“Another one will come along,” she says as it closes. “You bought yourself a couple of minutes.”
For the first time today, I smile. She smiles back and the sight is staggering. I nearly lose my balance.
She looks me up and down, although there’s no sarcasm or witty comments this time. Just eyes full of curiosity. Like she’s seeing me—not the CEO, not the suit—but the man underneath it.
I swallow hard as her eyes come back to mine.
“When you put it like that,” she says quietly. “It doesn’t seem as draconian. Maybe you aren’t a total monster.”
“Thank you?”
She puts her hand on her hip and looks at me, and for the first time, I see the resemblance between her and her sister Willow. I’ve seen Willow give people that exact same look countless times.
“So, what do you do for fun, Logan Strickland? Or is this it?” She gestures around at the empty office. “Staring down spreadsheets alone at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night in a three-thousand-dollar suit. Living the dream.”
“Fun?”
“Yeah,” she says nibbling her bottom lip. “Fun. Has it been that long? Do you remember what fun is?”
I sigh. “It has been a while. I’m too busy for fun.”
She shakes her head like she can’t quite believe that someone as pathetic as me exists.
“Excuse my bluntness,” she says, “but you strike me as someone who has more money than they could possibly spend in a hundred lifetimes.”
I do. It keeps piling up in my account and I never really have time to spend it. I invest it, but that just gives me more money I don’t know what to do with.
Something tells me this woman wouldn’t be impressed if she looked at my bank account.
She seems like she couldn’t care less if I was a billionaire, which I am, or if I was dead broke, which I’m definitely not.
To her, my worth as a person has nothing to do with my net worth.
That’s a big change from the people I’m normally surrounded by.
“I do okay,” I admit.
“So, you have enough money to have any experience you’d like, in a city where you can do pretty much anything, and all you do is work? Do I have that right?”
I swallow hard. “It’s not all bad. I did let loose earlier.”
She leans in with a scandalous grin. “Do tell.”
“I had a cupcake. Well, a bite of a cupcake.”
Her face falls like I just told her I kick puppies. “ One bite of a cupcake? Who doesn’t finish a cupcake?”
I just stare at her.
“What, was it someone’s birthday or something?”
“Yeah.”
She looks around with her arms up. “Where are the decorations?”
“We don’t do that around here.”
“Right,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “Because balloons wouldn’t be businessey enough. Whose birthday was it anyway? Did you reward them by letting them leave at eight o’clock?”
I tense. Just for a second.
But she notices.
“Wait… it’s your birthday, isn’t it?”
I go still.
“Oh my god. It’s your birthday . And you’re still working! You’ve been here all day. Alone. Working. On your birthday?”
“I like working,” I mutter.
“On your birthday?! ”
I let out a long sigh. “It’s just a day.”
Shit. I shouldn’t have said that. Her hazel eyes go all wide and crazy.
“It’s not just a day . It’s your birth day.
The day Logan Strickland burst into this world and graced the universe with his presence.
It’s the first day you took a breath. The first day your mother smiled at you.
The first day some lucky doctor smacked your cute little tush.
If that’s not worth celebrating, then what the hell is? ”
I can’t help but smile as I watch this girl. We couldn’t possibly think any differently, but for some reason, I’m inexplicably drawn to her. I can’t look away.
“We’re going out,” she says, reaching forward and tapping the elevator button continuously with her finger. “We’re celebrating.”
“We are?” I say, my smile turning into a grin.
“It’s your birthday,” she says. “We’re in New York. We’re friends. We’re going out.”
“We’re friends?”
She looks at me and gives me a firm nod. “I’ve decided it. Sorry, but you don’t get a say.”
If I had a say, we’d be more than friends. I do have a lot to say on the matter, but for now, I’ll take what I can get.
“You don’t have to—” I start.
“I know,” she says, tossing a glance over her shoulder. “I want to.”
And just like that, she’s in charge.
The elevator doors open and she steps in like she owns the damn building, her suitcase rolling behind her with a cheerful little squeak.
She’s so confident. So sure of herself. There’s no hesitation even though she just arrived in this city. It’s like dragging strange men out into the night is just another thing she does between breaking and entering and feline medication schedules.
I wonder if she knows she just tilted my life on its axis. That she’s shaken me to my core.
“Coming, Mr. Birthday Boy?” she asks as she holds the door open.
“I like that better than your last nickname for me.”
“You have three seconds to join me or we’re back to Mr. Cranky Pants.”
I grin as I step in.
Like it was even a choice.
I’d follow this amazing woman anywhere. I’d do whatever she asked.
She’s got her hooks in me and there’s no going back now.
The doors close and she looks up at me with a smile so stunning, I forget how to breathe. “Next stop, the best night of your life.”
I have no doubt about that.
It already is.