In some ways, it felt as if we had picked up straight from where we had left off. And in other ways, it was as if I was speaking with a total stranger.
But either way, I loved it.
And I hated myself for it.
“So, what is the immediate timeline? What’s the first thing I need to accomplish?” I asked.
I looked up at Brett as I chewed on a piece of broccoli, watching as his eyes danced across my face.
“Your first order of business is to acclimate to this environment. I still have to pull on two investors and raise the capital before we can talk about making steps to expand. For now, keep familiarizing yourself with everything. You’ll need that knowledge once I call on you for help,” he said.
There was that word again. A word I would have never heard him throw around in college. Help. It rolled off his tongue so easily, and yet he had such a hard time accepting it, or even speaking about it, when the two of us were together.
“Help,” I said.
“You’re really stuck on that word, aren’t you?” Brett asked.
“Just making sure I’m hearing you correctly.”
Maybe some things did change after all.
4
Brett
Lunch with Olivia a couple of days ago had gone splendidly. Not only were we able to get menial work shit out of the way, but we were able to talk personally a little bit as well. And holy hell, did she look exactly the same. A little plumper in some areas, but still in all the right ones. Her breasts had swelled perfectly, filling out her broad shoulders. Her waist dipped in with those fucking pencil skirts she was apparently going to be wearing around the damn office building. Her heels accented the length of her curvy legs, making her calves flex and rounding out an ass I couldn’t stop staring at. And her hair. Holy shit, her hair was still long and curly, just like I had always enjoyed it. She kept it pinned up, the curls fluttering over the top of her head. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed her hair out of her face. It gave me the best glimpse of her deep blue eyes and her apple-peaked cheeks and her flushed skin whenever she came into my office.
What I wouldn’t give to bend her over my damn desk.
That wasn’t the only thing that shocked me about our lunch, though. It was surprisingly easy to talk with her. It was like things between us had somehow smoothed over. Hell, it seemed as if things between us were better than the last time we had seen one another. I had to admit, I missed her. There was a part of her I always carried with me. A part of her caring nature that had rubbed off on me. A caring part of her I couldn’t shake within my soul. We had been two opposite beings back in college on a crash course for each other. And when we collided, a bit of her broke off into my lap. A piece of her pierced my heart and made its home there, forever altering the way I saw the world around me.
I still wanted money. But it wasn’t the only thing I wanted any longer. Not for years now.
I pressed down on my intercom button. “Katherine?”
“Yes, Mr. Greyson?”
“Can you come in here for a second. I want to discuss the Halloween party with you.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll be in there in a second,” she said.
My assistant was only part-time, a college girl getting her business degree who wanted the experience. I paid her, of course. I didn’t believe in unpaid internships; I had plenty of those fuckers in college. Absolute bullshit, and I didn’t learn a damn thing from them. I paid her and I taught her. I owed her at least that. Many of my colleagues were still of the belief that women had no place in running companies. They had no place on corporate or investment boards. That their minds had no place in a “man’s world.”
But the fiercest competitors I had in my field were women. The smartest individuals and the savviest with their money I’d ever met were women. If anything, women were to be feared. Admired. Taken on as partners if a company like mine wanted to stay afloat. It was how I trimmed down my investor list as I waited for Katherine to come into my office. Out of the twenty names my board threw at me, only four of them were women.
And I’d meet with all four of them face-to-face before choosing which two would be the newest members of my board.
“Sorry about that, sir. I was speaking with Miss Masters.”
My head whipped up. “You were speaking with Olivia?”
“Mhm. She came up asking a question about some of the software. Nothing big or anything.”