“Welcome back, sir,” he says, and I stare. The man is calling Lyle sir? Is Lyle management? “Brandon’s report about the alliance with Tech Square Inc. has been delivered to your desk.”
I feel like my world is falling away.
“Thank you,” Lyle says with a sharp nod. “Do we have any word from the new suppliers?”
“They said they’ll call this afternoon,” the young man says as the two of them begin to walk to the building.
There’s an odd roaring in my ears. Lyle is talking about the alliance between my company and this one. Lyle is overseeing supplies. Lyle is being deferred to as though he’s someone very powerful.
I suddenly remember something my father once said about the son of the previous owners of Energy Plus Co.
“Barely out of his thirties! He just grins charmingly at everyone and gets his own way. He has no clue how to handle a business, none. He’s barely older than you!”
I back away, turn and flee. It’s too much. I need to think.
I need to work out what’s going on.
Chapter Eleven
Lyle
I whistle as I enter my office. I feel like I’m on top of the world, and the only dark spot in my mood, right now, is my worry about Amanda. She should be at the doctor about now. I hope it’s all going well. The doctor I booked her in with is one that Alicia recommended.
I glance at my phone, as I have done every ten minutes for the last hour. Still no word from Amanda. Is she still at the doctor? Or maybe they did end up taking blood tests, which means there’ll be no answer for a few days, anyway.
I have the vague thought that I could maybe swing an answer by tomorrow, but I stamp down on that idea. I don’t want to use my power in that way, especially when I haven’t even told Amanda that I’m capable of doing something like that.
I check my phone again. Still nothing.
I really hope everything is going well. In the scant two weeks that I’ve been seeing Amanda, I can’t help but feel that she has become everything to me. All I want is to see her smile, and I want to be wherever she is. In the short time that I’ve known her, she has become a very large part of my world, a part that I want to hold onto for as long as I can.
My smile drops. How much longer will that be, though? I’m lying to her, and that fact is weighing on me with every day that goes by. I haven’t told her who I am. I had begun psyching myself up to do so during our last date, but then she fell ill and I was never able to take her to my home and show her just what I own and who I am.
“I know that look; you’re thinking about Amanda, aren’t you?”
I look up. Alicia is standing in the doorway, some folders in her arms, her eyebrows
raised.
“Yeah,” I admit. “What do I do?”
“Have you tried telling her the truth?” Alicia asks wryly.
Alicia’s tongue has gotten sharper as the days have gone by, telling me with certainty that she is unimpressed by my hesitance. Once it became clear that Amanda was not a spy for Energy Plus Co. and that she hadn’t slept with me to try and make the deal better, Alicia feels that I should have told her the truth.
But I haven’t, out of my own cowardice than anything else.
“It’s going to get too late if you keep holding it off, you know,” Alicia comments as she walks into the office. “Eventually, she’ll be so mad that you hid the truth for all this time that she won’t even remember to be mad that you’re meant to be her enemy.”
“Unless she doesn’t realize that I knew who she was,” I say, but it’s a dismal hope.
“Impossible,” Alicia shoots down immediately. “You said she’s been talking your ear off about the deal with Energy Plus Co. She knows that you know she’s been here, at least.”
“Yeah,” I sigh.
I lean back in my chair. Too much, in the last two weeks my thoughts have been taken up by Amanda. It’s getting to the point that my work is beginning to suffer for it. If I don’t solve this situation soon, more than my relationship with Amanda could end up falling down around my ears.
“I’ll tell her,” I say. “I just need to make sure she’s okay, first.”