Chapter Six
Oliver
Emil Perkins sits across from me this time, but it’s not in the VIP lounge. The raised ceilings and gothic chair railing in the boardroom contradict the impossibly intimate feeling that surrounds us.
This could be the swift end of a professional relationship I’ve spent nearly a decade cultivating.
Because of a woman I should have left alone.
I had one job on this tour.
To maintain order.
Instead, I welcomed chaos in the form of his only daughter sprawled shirtless across a national headline, and this year’s hottest punk rock poster boy, Onyx Barringer, staring down her half naked torso.
“You will give no more excuses, Zitrone!” He barks through the phone, leaving no room for argument.
I listen involuntarily, since he chose to take this call during our meeting. The one he called after this morning’s press hit his radar.
I run through excuses in my mind while he argues with the only person possibly in worse for this than me.
“I have sacrificed everything to make sure you have the world before you, and you drag my name through the mud like a common Schlampe. Are you trying to become your mother, Zitrone?” He quiets, listening.
To her.
I fiddle with a hangnail on my thumb, counting the blue streaks in his paperweight, anything I can to mask the thoughts of his daughter’s ripe, red backside beneath my palm.
She only acted out because I rejected her, and that guilt advances upon me as his lecture drags on.
“I love you, Lemondrop. This is why I do this. Why I must send you away. I have friends at Oxford. They have agreed to accelerate an Executive MBA. You will take your place by my side in the company in one year’s time.”
The air is swept from my lungs with the words Lemondrop and send you away, but I don’t think hers was. The scowl my boss wears as his fist comes down against the table tells me whatever Lemon replied with, was not an amicable agreement.
His eyes widen as his stare meets mine, and even if he isn’t addressing me, I pin it to myself. It’s my fault she did this. If I hadn’t rejected her, she’d have been in my booth, with me.
“Mein Vater would have worked me in his steel Fabrik had I behaved this way! Enjoy your last night of freedom, Tochterchen.”
His face hasn’t relaxed. He hasn’t spoken.
I clench my fists in the silence that follows, rolling through the things I overheard.
Lemon is being sent to Oxford for a master’s?
Can he do that?
I guess when you’re a billionaire, you can. No mind that there’s test scores and hard-working students fighting for a place on waitlists in the very program she’ll buy her way into.
What was Lemon’s GPA? One look, and you wonder if she finished high school. Probably went to some fancy rich kid Montessori or—
“I do not care what you want, Zitrone! Do you hear what I say? You will study hard and work! Or perhaps you wish to have a husband?” He waits, eyes directly glued to mine. “I did not think so,” he says.
Somewhere beneath the possibly audible thumping of my heart, I feel an instant relief knowing she won’t belong to someone else. Someone who isn’t me, even if I shouldn’t.
I drop my gaze, Mr. Perkins winning the staring contest neither of us knew we were in.
Or maybe he did know. He reminds me of his daughter that way, purple irises that can’t be natural yet somehow are, beguiling beauty masking a scorching anger that blazes from nowhere and everywhere all at once, right from their hearts.
He ends the call and slams his phone against the table, heaving a sigh before surprising the hell out of me. Two glasses and a bottle of brandy are brought in from the hall. “A drink.”
I eye the glass. Flashes of last night reflect in the amber liquid.
And now he’s sending her away.
All for the games I helped her play.
“They drank tequila from her navel,” I finally say, eyes widening because I have no idea why that’s the first thing that came to my mind in front of her father, of all people. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Nicht Schlimm.” He waves me off. “No worries. Nash—er, Oliver. May I call you that?”
“Of course. And I’m sorry about…” I drop my gaze to the tabloid.
“I have known you for years, Oliver. You are not to blame. Prost!” He raises his glass and nods to mine. “My daughter, she is…
“A lot,” I offer, understanding his inability to put to words just what Lemon Perkins truly is.
So much more than language can comprehend.
Abstract enough for art, but so fluid she’d drip right off the canvas if you tried to paint her.
She’d never sit long enough, anyhow. “My daughter, Bryar…she’s also a lot. ”
My mind circles to Mrs. Kempling and her imminent termination.
I liked her about as much as a fish, but a nanny is hard to come by when you have four children and one of them is terrifying.
She can handle my thirteen-year-old no better than the others could.
Perhaps no one can, another reason I need this promotion to take me back home.
Mr. Perkins leans in, red cherub cheeks at the ends of his smile, despite the tabloid still sitting at the corner of his desk burning holes in my mind because she’s on it. “That is right! I forgot you are a father. Not many men in our industry settle down, you know.”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m pleased for our meeting. The role of Acquisitions Manager is a shareholding position, is it not?”
He straightens, leaning back in his chair as he assesses me.
His nine-thousand-dollar watch shines from the reflection of the lamp above our heads, and I inhale sharply, hoping he can’t tell what an imposter I am.
That I’m just a widowed father, lucky enough to have made it this far in his company when I had very few credentials for the industry.
That the eighteen-carat gold Van Cleef & Arpels on his wrist is worth the next three years of the twins’ dance classes or a hundred cases of Poppy’s essential acrylic paint pens.
“And I suppose you have ideas for this position, should it be offered you?” He narrows his eyes inquisitively. It feels like he’s testing me, but something tells me I could pass his test, too.
“I do.” I lean closer, heart pounding for other reasons now.
I can lead if given a shot.
It’s time to shoot.
“Eight years managing your tours has revealed to me a need for reallocation of budget.”
Saying it feels like a mountain has been moved. My thoughts, my plans, my ideas, in the ears of someone who can do something with them.
He raises a brow. “Continue.”
“There are things we’re spending too much on that are hardly necessities for success, and other areas where spending is so limited we barely meet coding standards. I can help there, if you’ll trust me for the job.”
I let out the quietest exhale, gripping to maintain the confidence and assuredness he seeks. I can see it in his eyes, the look of a predator, discerning whether I’m a threat or worthy as an adversary.
“Sir, if you’ll—”
“I made my decision months ago.” He extends his hand. “I’d like to see you by my side, Oliver.”
A colossal weight is lifted from me, Atlas shifting entire masses of land from bruised shoulders, held up for too long by strings of a deceased puppeteer.
I stand, grinning from ear to ear and gripping his hand in both of mine.
“Thank you, Mr. Perkins. You will not regret your decision, I can promise you that. We’ll raise company earnings higher than ever before. ”
“I believe you.” He grins, holding up his glass. “To Perkins Global, and a new era of earnings.”
“To the future!” I clank my glass to his.
We drink and plot the next quarter’s projections with more enthusiasm than I recall feeling in a long time, but his eyes flick to his phone every few seconds, vibrations of incoming texts and calls, all from a flashing yellow screen he switches off.
I need no explanation to know the woman calling him is the same one I can’t seem to wipe from my thoughts.
“Your Bryar,” he sighs, massaging his brow, “what is she like? I try so hard with my Zitrone—eh, sorry, the old tongue slips when I’ve had a few of these.
” He shoves his brandy away and shakes his head.
“I worry she is like her mother. She will go on her next adventure and never return. Nothing satisfies her.”
“I’ve noticed that about her,” I start, but I quickly shut myself up when he studies me. I shouldn’t notice anything about his daughter.
“I know you tried to stop the…” he motions to the tabloid, shaking his head, “whatever that was. I have full confidence that you, my most trusted employee, had nothing to do with her…call for help or whatever this newest charade is.” He pours another brandy, seemingly no longer concerned with his Denglisch, the German English mix I’ve heard Lemon flit between in the presence of her father.
It’s comforting.
Why the hell is it comforting?
Mr. Perkins clears his throat, and my eyes snap to his. It’s only then I realize they’d been trained on the tabloid for God knows how long.
On the image of his daughter.
The lamp above reflects on a thin silver band wrapped around his finger. He brushes it with his thumb, and guilt spikes that I no longer wear mine. The truth is, I didn’t want to see it shining there when my hand is wrapped around my cock thinking of another.
Of my boss’s goddamned daughter.
“Did…did she leave? Your wife?”