Chapter 2
“Sadie,” I bark, walking into the small foyer before my office.
A long way from the high-rise corner office I once occupied in the Bay Area, but who’s keeping track?
Sadie practically jumps out of her seat at the sound of my voice, her platinum blond hair bouncing with movement and the nail file she’s holding goes skidding across her desk.
Zero attempts to hide she was fixing her nails when she should have been working.
What’s new though? I’m convinced Sadie thinks of herself as more ornamental than a government employee. Why she works here is beyond me.
One delicate hand presses against her chest as she blinks up at me with dull, stagnant water-blue eyes.
Sadie takes a few seconds to straighten up, running her hands down the front of the obscenely tight dress and brushing back the loose curls around her face before looking back at me, her gaze switching and toeing the line of predatory.
Every movement is for my benefit and I try not to think of the way it makes my stomach sour.
“Yes, Mr. Archer?”
Whatever she’s doing to her voice only solidifies my bad mood. It’s too high pitched and too soft all at once, and I know it’s fake, her voice isn’t even remotely that annoying when she’s on the phone or talking to literally anyone else in the building.
Maybe this whole show she puts on for me is done absentmindedly? Maybe I’m reading too far into it? Maybe I’m the problem?
But then her hands skate back up her stomach and I have to take back the thoughts immediately. The display is extremely deliberate. What I want to know is what the hell was Dan thinking when he hired her?
“You never sent February’s budget over,” I say, doing my best to remove any sort of emotion from my voice.
Confusion creeps across her face in real time “The budget…” she says slowly, eyebrows pulling together.
“You know what, never mind, I asked Harper to send it over already.”
Sadie’s face pinches at the sound of her name, and I hate that as much as I loathe her voice. “Sorry, Mr. Archer,” she calls out as I turn my back without bothering to respond, leaving to walk the length of City Hall to the Mayor’s office for our meeting.
Dan Hawthorne sits in an overly large leather chair, with reading glasses perched on the end of his nose staring at his computer as I barge in.
“Eyes messing with you old man?” I joke, slipping into the seat across from him.
“Just you wait, you're only a year younger than me. One morning you’ll wake up and realize you can’t see a damn thing unless you hold it a foot from your face.
” He pulls the glasses off his face and tosses them onto the desk.
“Do you have the report?” he asks, holding out one hand and scrubbing the other down his face.
I drop the packet in his waiting palm and then flip mine open to the first page. Dan mimics my movement, and without missing a beat, we dive into the new policies being implemented in Cupid come February first. A standard meeting of a long list of never ending appointments.
One look at my work calendar would send most people into a spiral until they quit on the spot.
Somedays that exact thought crosses my mind too, but it’s nothing compared to the responsibility of being CEO at Archer Enterprises, so I make do.
And it was either City Manager in Cupid, or running one of the non-profits in the Midwest, and I can’t bring myself to fall that low quite yet.
Like clockwork, we’re done within the hour.
“The report was well done, did Sadie put it together?” Dan asks out of nowhere, setting off an internal bell.
Since I’ve been back, he’s brought up Sadie more than anyone else at City Hall.
I’ve gone through three secretaries, and not once did Dan ever bring them up in conversation. I’m not sure he even knew their names.
A disapproving grunt came from my chest. “No, it wasn’t Sadie. Also where did you even find that girl? All her lights are on, but no one's home.”
Dan barks out a laugh, shaking his head as he gathers up his briefcase and computer bag. “She’s the daughter of one of Sherry’s friends from the club. Her father is big in real estate development.”
“Real estate?”
He hums in response.
One thing about Dan is nothing is done by accident. He’s brilliant, but lazy, which is why he never left Cupid. Cupid is as small as it gets, leaving Dan the biggest fish. A big fish that’s been talking a whole lot about plans for the outskirts of town since I showed up.
“I also knew she ticked off a couple of your boxes so I thought it would’ve been a good match.” A downfall of the mayor being one of my longest friends is he thinks he knows me.
“Well you thought wrong, and you have no idea what I even go for. So please for the love of God, don’t try and set me up again.”
He stands from his desk, powering off his computer. “Oh, I know your type. Young, hot, tits big enough to drown in, does that sound about right?”
Okay, maybe he does know, but it feels strange coming out of his mouth when there’s a particular woman in this building who fits that description and it sure as fuck isn’t Sadie.
I shift uncomfortably on my feet before following him out of his office.
“Come on, man, you’ve been single for how many years? Why not give her a chance?” he says before lowering his voice “It’s got to be better than paying for it.”
“I don’t pay for sex, dick.”
He halts me with a look. “You don’t belong to Midnights?”
I don’t answer.
“Exactly. You’re sitting on a fucking fortune, I’ll never understand why you pay to belong to a club when you can get any woman you want.”
I’m not about to stand around and spell out all my kinks for him, but I have reasons. For one, I pay a membership fee because once I’m inside those doors, my fortune has nothing to do with why women are with me. Most of the time, at least.
“Have a good night, Archer. And don’t work too hard, it's not like you’ll get a raise and we both know you don't need it.”
“I won’t,” I call after him and watch as he walks out of the glass front doors as a desolate winter sky blocks any sliver of sun.
January is cruel but what’s worse is being heir to an almost billion dollar company, losing your position, only to be exiled somewhere you never wanted to come back to so you can’t cause problems.
Cupid’s small, so small that someone with my…
proclivities would have a hell of time finding the right outlet.
Women here only seem to want the same thing—a husband, two-point-five kids, and a golden retriever.
Then I showed up, and all the unwed women ages nineteen to twenty-four seem to be everywhere I go with dollar signs in their eyes when they look at me.
Luckily, Midnights is situated between my last penthouse residence in the Bay Area and my much less conspicuous house on the outskirts of Cupid, so continuing my membership was an easy decision.
It’s far enough away and the monthly fee is more than the median household income here, so it’s doubtful I’d run into anyone I know at the club.
Even if my schedule only opened up to where I go every few weeks it’s still better than nothing. I have an outlet, and none of the women expect me to call afterwards.
My phone chimes and as I reach for it in my pocket I turn and head back to my office. The mayor might be able to leave at the same decent time every day but that’s a life I know nothing about.
As if she has a direct line to my thoughts, Maxine's name pops up with a message.
tomorrow night’s open house, be there at 9
No ‘do you have plans’, no ‘hi’ or ‘how have you been?’ but I wouldn’t expect anything else from Maxine.
What if I said I have plans? Then what?
don’t be a brat
Ahhh, but brats are your favorite.
I can practically hear the sigh heave from her chest through the phone. Maxine and I have been friends since college, and if there comes a time one of us isn’t poking fun at the other, it’s probably because one of us is dead.
You haven’t been here since before Christmas which was also the last time I saw you in general
I’ve been busy. For being such a small town, Cupid somehow takes up all my time.
Tomorrow night, be here at 9. I’m trying out a new anonymous event for the open house. Your mask was delivered to your house this afternoon and there’s no reason for you to really say no
If you missed me you could have just said so.
9 o’clock, Nolan
Fine, see you then.
I slip my phone back into my pocket and look up as the sound of heels clicking against the tile floor catch my attention.
Dark hair ripples along Harper’s back as she walks down the hall in front of me.
Every step she takes pulls me further and further into a hypnotic sort of trance.
One that is impossible to escape, not that I want to.
There are lists longer than I’ll ever be able to read that spell out what constitutes a terrible person.
There’s the standard stuff—murder, people who steal candy from kids, grown men in crocs at the beach, the usual, and I’m about ninety-percent sure the images flowing through my head of my friend's daughter are on that list as well.
Harper stops at the water fountain, and like the greedy bastard I am, I stop moving so I can let my mind wander while I watch her.
She bends at the waist and someone hits the slow motion button on my life.
Water flows from the spout as she dips her head until it splashes against her pouty red painted lips.
One of her hands holds all of her hair to the side to avoid it falling into the basin and I can’t help but fantasize what it would be like to wrap it around my fist.
Can I wrap it around once or twice? If I thrust into her, what kind of noises will she make? Tiny whimpers of pleasure, or loud gasps that echo across the room?
If I told her how many times I’ve stopped to watch the way her tight skirts stretch over her round ass as she bends over and how it makes my hand itch to strike the soft flesh I know is underneath, would she blush, or cry out for more? Or both?
I hope if I ever find out, it’s both.
God, I would do unfathomable things to get Harper Hawthorne bare and writhing underneath me. But instead I watch her from afar because there are a million boxes on why I shouldn’t want her and every single one of them is checked.
Harper wipes away the drops of water that fell onto her chin with slow precision as she stands, too quick for me to react. She turns and locks eyes with me because I’m too focused on her to remember that I shouldn’t be staring.
Even from this distance, I can see her brows scrunch together, and her dark eyes dart around to figure out why I’m hanging around in the middle of the hallway.
I feel like a schoolboy, unable to control my desires when I’m near her.
So I do the only thing I can think of, I turn on my heel without a word and walk in the opposite direction.
Maybe Maxine is right, I’ll never tell her that, but it's been too long and maybe I did need to go to Midnights.