“We are. I sit in the CEO chair, but we own everything fifty-fifty. That company wouldn’t be what it is today had it not been for your cousin. But don’t tell him I told you that. It’ll go to his head.”
“Trust me, I know what you’re talking about. You pay him any compliment and he’ll bring it up in every conversation for the next month.”
“So he does that to you, too?” he asked.
“Yep. He’s always done it. So I deliver his compliments a little underhanded. If I think he’s done a good job, I don’t tell him that. I say something like ‘it’s better than what you did last week’.”
“Ah, so you throw shade.”
“For a man in his thirties, you sure do talk like a millennial,” I said.
“I have to. We market heavily to that crowd. If I’m not hip with the lingo, we sink.”
“Now you sound like a dad,” I said, giggling.
A comfortable silence settled on us and I could feel his eyes taking me in. He was a powerful force, that much I was figuring out. I looked up at him and found a grin creeping across his cheeks. Like he knew a secret I didn’t and was waiting for me to figure something out.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Carter said.
“No really. What is it?”
“Just a fleeting thought.”
“Do I even wan
na know?” I asked.
“Maybe some other time,” he said.
I felt a blush tint my cheeks, though I wasn’t sure why I was blushing. I cleared my throat and stood up, desperate to put some space between us. He was magnetic, and I was falling prey to his field. I felt like a spaceship being helplessly dragged into a planet’s gravitational pull. I cleared my throat and smiled down at him, then watched as he stood to his feet.
I would never get over how tall this man really was.
“Let me walk you to the door,” Carter said.
Then his hand fell onto the small of my back.
He escorted me all the way to my car and watched as I drove away. It wasn’t until I turned onto the main road that I felt like I could breathe. The tension in that house! Hopefully it wasn’t only me who could feel it.
I got to my apartment and was shocked to find all of my furniture in its place, and I smiled as I walked over to my couch.
I flopped down onto it and closed my eyes, reveling in how comfortable it was.
Though I had to admit, it did feel a little emptier than I remembered.
Six
Carter
Over the next few weeks, my company made leaps and bounds. Marshall Marketing became Marshall-Nudel Marketing, and we were in the process of revamping Nudel Marketing’s main building in Germany to turn it into our headquarters. The price had been paid, Nudel Marketing had been downsized to our specifications, and I had sent Logan over to Germany to train the staff left in the new techniques we were going to use. It had been a whirlwind over the past six weeks, but a great deal of weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
And things were wonderful with the kids.
Natasha was there every morning at five thirty. She had the kids eating breakfast by the time I came downstairs and always had a black coffee waiting for me with an apple. Her and the kids were off to school around the same time I left for work, and she was there every evening when I came home. She always had some form of dinner cooked, whether she cooked it herself or ordered out. And she always had a pitcher of that wonderful lemonade in the refrigerator for us to drink.
She had become part of our family, and we were all better for it.