Chapter 5 Ryder
Ryder
Multiple scotches later, my inhibitions are loose, but I’m sober as a judge.
Charlie and Lee are dancing up a storm in a gay bar on Davie Street.
I can’t stop watching or wanting her. It’s like an obsession.
I’d have left a long time ago, but seeing her beaming smile makes it worth being hit on every five seconds.
She used to smile like that when I took her sailing.
I press the gold sailboat pendant I got for her as a gift and keep it in my pocket as a good luck charm.
Another sweaty male slides in close to me, brushing his arm against mine. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asks.
I could say no and send him away, but then another one would fill his place.
“No, but thanks. That’s kind of you.” I try not to be a jerk, unsure what the etiquette is here.
I’ve never agreed to go clubbing with Lee before.
He’s my employee, and I keep it professional unless it’s with a rubbish politician trying to destroy the environment.
But Lee won’t be my employee after tonight, and I’m not thrilled about telling him that.
I’m fond of the little dude, and I’d keep him on as a personal assistant just to have him around.
Lee is talented, however, and I doubt booking my flights and ordering me takeout from his West End apartment would satisfy him. He also needs social interaction.
The guy beside me doesn’t leave. He’s trying to make conversation. “So, what brings you here?”
“My assistant and my fixer. We had a thing years ago, and I guess I never got over her. So here I am.” What the hell? Just let it all out, Ryder. It doesn’t matter, my life is going to hell anyway. And tomorrow, I’ll have zero responsibilities to hide who I am.
“Good for you, man. Going for what you want.” He clinks his beer to mine.
“I’m not going for anything, truthfully. I’m just buying time.”
“Have you told her how you feel?” the guy asks.
“God, no. We haven’t seen each other for years, and now she’s cleaning up my mess.
Not exactly sexy.” Not to mention the merger her father did with mine that left her family with nothing.
It was just business, and if it wasn’t my father, it could have been someone else.
Charlie’s father put himself in a precarious position and though my father has morals, he wasn’t in the business of giving money away.
However, it made me angry that he let the Gibbons drown when he had the means to help them.
It was the reason I stopped calling Charlie. Guilt.
“You never know. Maybe she has rescuer syndrome.”
“Ha. Maybe.”
I watch Charlie dance, wondering if there was something I could have done back then, and how I could make the past up to her.
She lets another side of herself loose. Her beautiful big smile takes over the room as she throws her head back, dancing with Lee.
It’s a side of her I don’t remember seeing too often outside of on the water.
She was always serious. Charlie spent all her energy fixing up other people’s messes.
Did that make her a candidate for rescuer syndrome?
God knows I need rescuing. But she needs rescuing, too, because I find it hard to believe she smiles like that very often.
The song ends, and Charlie and Lee walk through the crowd toward me. Lee hugs one guy they were dancing with, and Charlie bites her lip before making her way toward me.
“I’m calling it a night,” Charlie says.
“Wait, what? Let me take you home,” I say.
“My hotel is only a few blocks away. It’s a busy street.” She reaches for her purse on the bar I was guarding for her. “Don’t forget, I need that contract.”
The new CEO. “I already have it.” I wasn’t lying. The deal was already done. I knew it wouldn’t be hard, but her curiosity was the only thing keeping her talking to me.
“Good. Have you forwarded it to my assistant?”
“I sent it to you. You’re the only one I trust with it.” I reach for her hand, and I’m not sure why. Our fingers brush, and my tips tingle. She doesn’t pull away. She only looks at me doe-eyed.
Her mouth drops open, and she stammers. “I should go.”
I look over my shoulder and see Lee’s rear end leaving out the front door of the club, his arm wrapped around another male.
“Let me take you.” I trace my fingertips across her hand. I remember seeing her in the waiting room of Dad’s office in the penthouse tower before he moved headquarters to Toronto. My mind drifts back.
Her father and my father were in daily discussions about the merger.
We went to high school together, but she was in a younger class and hung out with a different crowd.
It was those days in the waiting room that I noticed her studying alone on a beautiful summer day when the rest of the kids were having pool parties and drinking.
Feeling bad for her, I brought her an iced cappuccino, and her eyes lit up.
“Thanks,” she said, and I lifted the glasses off her face.
“What are you doing?”
“I was just curious what you looked like.” Her cheeks turned crimson. And that’s when I noticed her. The striking moonstone eyes, flawless skin, and delicate features. She was beautiful, and I couldn’t understand why she wanted to hide that behind the glasses with her nose in a book.
“Why?”
“You’re always hiding behind something.”
“Am not.” She placed her glasses back on and closed her eyes. “Then why don’t you come out of your shell?” Why have I never seen you before?
“My dad says we could lose everything, and I need to make sure I have an excellent education because I might need to take care of myself one day. This city is expensive.”
I laughed like I wasn’t part of the problem.
Like my father wouldn’t crush her father in that merger if given the chance.
I already knew her father’s small real estate company had more debt on it than value, so if they got out of their situation with even half a shirt, they’d be lucky.
“You have your whole life to worry about that. This weekend, you should try to have some fun. I’m taking you to a party at my house.
My parents will be in France, and my brother and I can’t leave for a few more weeks. Our nanny lets us do whatever we want.”
“Aren’t you old for a nanny?”
I tilted my head. “Yeah, but they’ve been with us forever, and my parents don’t have the heart to let them go.”
“So, you have more than one?”
She showed up at the party without the glasses in a short black dress with tassels and blew me away.
I kissed her. She read to me. We talked all night.
I took her sailing, and we went swimming off the rocks behind my parents’ mansion in the summer, and I taught her to snowboard in the winter.
When I begged my dad to take it easy on her family, he said there was nothing he could do.
Their merger involved creating a start-up in a new corporation with Charlie’s dad’s real estate holdings, but when it failed to receive its building permit, the company went flat.
The Alexanders would continue to thrive, but the Gibbons lost their shirt.
He was savvier, and the Gibbons were vulnerable.
I begged him to fix the situation, to refinance, but he didn’t listen to me.
He said he needed to focus on other assets, like Charlie and her family weren’t more than assets.
The land still sits in the Alexander portfolio.
I never spoke to him during our summer vacation in the South of France.
And I never texted Charlie after I took her virginity, and we had a soul-destroying love affair because the guilt was killing me.
When I finally came to my senses and reached out to her, it was too late.
The damage was done, and she didn’t answer my texts.
I almost forget we’re in a bar on Davie Street, and I’m waiting for her answer, hoping she’ll let me walk her home.