Hating Him Wanting Him : A Contemporary Romance Collection Read online

  11

  Mia

  Taking the elevator up to the top floor of the building was bad enough, you could almost feel the thing sway slightly with the wind. But on top of that, I had been mid-project when I was pulled out, told to leave everything where it was, and escorted up to the CEO by security. I didn’t realize they were security until we were in the elevator and I saw their guns under their jackets, but nonetheless.

  “Do you guys normally escort people up to see the CEO?” I asked.

  One of the guards glanced over. “We’ve had some security issues over the last five months, since the company hit the papers with its growth. We’re here just to keep you and everyone else safe.”

  I nodded. “Oh. Okay, thanks.”

  When we finally made it to the top, the doors slid open and the guard pointed to the end of the hall. That’s his office, the secretary will handle it from here.”

  “Thanks guys,” I replied with a sweet smile.

  I walked quietly down the hall, trying not to look into the offices along the way. They were all the big wigs of the company, most of them on the phone with their doors open. The guy from the bar that Lily had gone home with stepped out of the office I was heading toward, standing in front of the name plate. I could only assume it was his office, there weren’t any left.

  “Hey,” Connor said excitedly shaking my hand. “Good to see you again.”

  “Mhmm, you too,” I replied, realizing Connor was a big wig too.

  He grinned with his groomed hair and nice smile. “Tell Lily I said what’s up.”

  I choked back a laugh remembering the state she was in when she came back from his place. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear it.”

  “Ms. Crosswell?” a friendly voice said from inside.

  I stepped in with my hands crossed in front of me, thankful I had worn a cute outfit and heels that day. “Yes ma’am. That’s me.”

  The woman was older, a kind smile, and a look that let you know she was tough, she didn’t let anyone step at her, not even the upper echelon of the company. “Oh, excellent. You can go on in, Mr. Lagrange will see you now.”

  My mouth opened to say thank you but everything froze in place. “I’m sorry, did you say Lagrange? As in…”

  “The Lagrange Empire?” she said happily. “Mhmm. Evan is Mr. Lagrange’s son. I worked for his father for twenty years and then when things shifted, I came over here.”

  I was trying so desperately to keep the look of utter shock and dismay from my face. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that out of all the companies in the world I ended up at the one owned by my family’s biggest rival. The son of the man that acted like my father’s friend and then tricked him out of the biggest real estate investment in his life. And even then, he wouldn’t admit he did it. Instead he played with my father, knowing he had far more money than him, and kept the legal battles tied up so long, my father finally had to bow out in order to not completely bankrupt us.

  The boy I played with as a child, the one that saw me once at a party when we were in our teens and snubbed me because he knew who I was. This boy was now my boss, and not just that, the guy I had been fantasizing about since I met him at the bar. You are so stupid! God, this is terrible.

  “Are you alright, sweetie?” the secretary asked. “It’s perfectly natural to be nervous when you meet the owner of a company this big. But I promise you, just like his father, Evan is sweet and kind. He’s a grade A boss. There are a lot of people that have come here to work with him after hearing how in touch with his employees he tries to stay. There is nothing to be worried about.”

  “Mmhmm, is that so?” I said, staring at the back of his door. “I heard all those things about him too, it was one of the things that pushed me to apply here first after college.”

  Stupid. How could you not have finished your research on this company. It was probably right there!

  “Oh, good. Then you should be thrilled to get to talk to him,” she smiled, motioning for the door.

  Everything that I had planned for, everything I had tried to get away from was standing on the other side of that door. My father would be losing his mind right now if he knew who I worked for. Even he didn’t take the time to research it. Not that it shocked me, he hadn’t been the most put together person for quite a while. Nonetheless, I felt like a traitor standing there in his office.

  Then I realized something. That whole time, all through college, I had specifically focused on learning as much as I could without my father’s influence for a reason. Not because there weren’t amazing attributes about my father that I didn’t want to incorporate, but because I wanted my own life. I wanted my own future. All of this had been for me. It may not be the person I thought it would, but that job was not forever, and the past needed to stay in the past.?I cant work out what youre saying here There was no way I could let this family rivalry continue to thwart everything in our lives. Evan’s father did what he did years ago to get under my father’s skin and he’s still winning today. I won’t let him continue to win by taking this opportunity away from me.

  Of course, there’s the other side of things. I might not have been standing there for good reasons at all. In fact, I might have been standing there because Evan finally found out who I was, what my last name was, or what my last name used to be. He might have become enraged, thinking I was some sort of corporate spy here to sabotage his company for revenge. Maybe that was why the guards brought me up. Maybe that was why everyone seemed so robotically nice to me.

  Wait a minute…maybe they were robots.

  Get it together Mia, you’re starting to lose it.

  If I could have slapped myself on the cheek at that moment, I would have. I’d gone from excited to thinking that the Lagrange family had built an army of robot warriors and they were on the other side ready to call me out for being my father’s daughter. Even amongst the heaviest of the battling I don’t think it was evil robot worthy? Doesnt make sense. I really needed to get out more and stop watching so much television late at night. If he had found out, I’ll tell him the truth and be done with it. If he believed me, good, if not that’s fine too. I’ll find another place to go.

  Either way, I had to face him, I was standing at his doorstep and it was starting to get weird. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was about to get fired. That would be an awkward conversation with everyone involved. And it would be the first time I’d ever been rejected by someone or something, ever. It would be a lesson learned that was for sure. I took a deep breath and reached out, grasping the handle of the door and pushing inward.

  With all of my bravery I stepped into the large office and glanced around. It was huge with glass windows all across the front, beautiful dark furniture, a sitting area, and of course the most expensive designer stuff on the market. What really caught my eye were the pictures of Evan and his father, standing side by side. When looking at them that way, I couldn’t help but see the resemblance.

  “I hate that picture,” Evan’s familiar voice echoed from my left.

  Just the deep tones of his voice soothed me. I clasped my hands together and turned toward him, putting on a smile. “Why is that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t like my hair. It looks ridiculous. And my father was pinching my elbow. I felt like I was going to have some royal photos done. It was terrible.”

  I laughed halfheartedly. He put his hands out and smiled. “I’m sorry that you had to figure out who I was this way.”

  “What do you mean?” My heart began to beat faster.

  He chuckled. “You know, the guy you spent hours with at a bar while our friends ditched us.”

  I let out a deep breath and a laugh. “Oh, it’s alright. I never asked what you did, I don’t think.”

  “And I didn’t either,” he replied with that smile that made my knees weak.

  As if he could read my mind, he put his hand out, leading me to one of the chairs in front of the desk. He sat down behind it
and stretched his arms wide. There didn’t seem to be any robots hiding in the wings, no security ready to take me away. In fact, it seemed like he didn’t have a clue who I was. He acted like he hadn’t even looked at my file. It was strange. So, if I wasn’t fired, and he didn’t have a clue who I was, what was I doing here?

  “How are you liking everything down in innovation?” he asked.

  “It’s great,” I smiled. “Just like I thought it would be, though I can’t seem to get through any projects without something else coming up.”

  “That’s really not the normal way here,” he said.

  I crossed my legs. “Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps saying.”

  He chuckled. “Actually, there is one project that I know for a fact you won’t be called off of. I sent your mockup to the client in California and before I could send any of the others, he called to tell me that he was blown away by your concept. He wants you.”

  My mouth dropped slightly open. “He…really?”

  “Yes!” Evan laughed with a smile. “It was brilliant, Mia. It was leagues above anyone else’s design and it not only set the client up but it set us up for long term financial gain with him, which is exactly what we needed. We didn’t really want a one-timer coming through, but for the price he was willing to pay how could we turn it down?”

  “Well, I assume to acquire the patent for it, he probably offered somewhere in the ballpark of your company’s net worth. Which would ultimately only be fifteen percent of his for a system that would run the entire thing,” I said, stopping abruptly when I realized I was rattling on.

  “How…how did you?” he asked.

  I had to think fast. “I learned it in business theory. It’s one of the oldest tricks. Most companies don’t haggle or argue because your doubling your worth. It was a shot in the dark really, I was hoping I was right.”

  He smiled again, easing my stress. “Maybe I shouldn’t have slept through that class.”

  We both laughed into a small silence before he spoke up again. “So, we leave tomorrow for California. You will be in charge of the entire project. My attendance was also requested, so there we go, we’ll have plenty of time for more squirrel stories from college.”

  I laughed loudly, feeling my cheeks warm. “I’m sorry, that was the alcohol.”

  He grinned and stood, putting his hand out. “Mia, or I guess Ms.…what is your last name?”

  It was in that moment I realized he didn’t have a clue who I was, and my last name, being my mother’s maiden wouldn’t even begin to give it away. That was the best thing that could have happened for me in that moment.

  “Crosswell,” I said, shaking his hand. “But please, just call me Mia.”

  12

  Evan

  The car came to a slow stop on the hot black asphalt. I had been at that private airport a hundred times in my life, but for some reason, on that day, I was nervous. Maybe it was the gig, or maybe it was Mia, but either way, I wasn’t quite feeling like myself. The driver opened my door and I stood, buttoning my jacket as the wind whipped against me. It was a cool breeze with hints of the heat from the ground. The airport always seemed ten degrees hotter than anywhere else.

  The staff from the plane came out to greet me, pulling my luggage from the trunk of the car. I took my carry-on bag and slung it over my shoulder as the head flight attendant approached carrying a clipboard. “Morning Mr. Lagrange. We have the plane fueled and ready for takeoff. Breakfast will be served once we’re at cruising altitude but we have coffee hot and ready for you and your guest.”

  “Is she here yet?” I asked.

  The attendant, smiling, looked up and pointed her pen at a car coming to a stop. The driver opened the door for Mia and my stomach flip-flopped inside of me as she stepped out. It had to be the heat getting to me, there was no other explanation for the way I was acting. None. I couldn’t even get any words out. As she stepped out of the car, she put her hand up, holding down a wide brimmed blue hat. Her blue and white polka dot dress pressed against her thin and curved body, the thin belt around her waist accentuating her hips.

  Like a movie star, a pair of wide brim glasses sat perched on her nose, and her cheeks were rosy. She looked absolutely adorable, especially when she pulled her carry-on bag out and it had a large cat on the front holding a fish in its mouth. It was a cartoon, like something you would buy from a comic convention. It was large enough to hold her laptop and the rest of her luggage was retrieved by the attendants.

  I walked up and she put out her hand, shaking it firmly. She seemed stiffer than she had been the day before. I smiled and put my hand out, showing her the way to the steps. “Have you flown on a private jet before?”

  She smirked. “Believe it or not, Mr. Lagrange, not every low level employee you have comes from the slums, scraping to get by.”

  She was oddly spicy toward me, but I liked it. It was feisty and almost playful. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from but in reality, I really didn’t care. I liked assertive women and she was the perfect mixture of confident and graceful all wrapped into one. Besides the bag on her shoulder, I didn’t see a single hint of that nerdy girl from the bar. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  “I like your hat,” I complimented. “You don’t see many women wearing them in the US. I always thought it? was the best part of European fashion.”

  Lowering her glasses, she folded them and put them in her bag. “Thanks. My mother has quite the collection, and I tend to steal them from time to time. This one’s mine though. The Princess of Monaco gave it to me as a gift when I was 21.”

  With that she turned and walked up the steps, leaving me slightly speechless. The Princess? Gave her a gift? Who in the world was Mia Crosswell? Actually, it really didn’t matter, I liked her, she was brilliant, and I had a feeling we were going to make one hell of a team. When we boarded, we took our seats, across from each other, with a small table between us. The attendant immediately made us coffee and brought it over.

  “As I tell Mr. Lagrange every time we take off, please hold onto your coffee until we hit cruising altitude. It can be a little slippery at an angle.” The attendant grinned as Mia gave her a kind smile.

  When the doors were shut, the noise? dissipated quite a bit. “So, tell me. Are you excited about this project? It’s a huge undertaking but I saw the presentation notes you sent me last night. They were fantastic.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, taking off her hat and setting it in the seat next to her.

  Her hair cascaded down around her face, a different look than any of the times I’d seen her before. It glistened and billowed softly around her face, and the curls at the bottom bounced slightly. She took one hand and twirled the right side around her fingers, pushing it back behind her ear. It was almost mesmerizing and I had to pull myself away when she glanced up at me.

  “So,” she said, pulling out her laptop. “I think we should take these couple of hours and go over everything with the project. That way, you are aware of the entirety of it, and then you can fill me in on the rest of the process.”

  “Alright, let’s do it,” I replied excitedly.

  I sat listening to her talk about her system and the tech that would be introduced with it. She explained that the system and hardware themselves would be the clients, but the intellectual property, the technological know-how would remain with the company. “To appease the client if he’s one to read the fine print, which I assume he is, there’s a two-year hold on any production of technology using that intellectual property unless it has nothing to do with manufacturing. So, for example, you could not break the tech apart and create simple pieces to sell to manufacturing plants, but you could create a new line of cell phones with it.”

  “Perfect,” I replied.

  “So, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. “What happens after the system and hardware are installed?”

  I took a deep breath, nodding my head. “Good question. So, we will be there through the in
stallation and initial upload. Then, his quality team who is learning all about the system as we speak, will take over with testing for bugs, inefficiencies, etc. You are held on retainer for three years with the client. Meaning, as long as you work for us, he can call you up to come help on site with any issues they cannot manage. They are aware that implementing an untested software comes with serious challenges.”

  “Oh good,” she replied in relief. “That’s great. I was worried that no one would touch on that subject. I did do a full scan of the software two days ago to check for any major system failures but in theory, it all seems fine. We’ll see more when it all is set up and functioning on a large scale. But its good when the miniature version works. It’s much more intricate and you are pushing the components way harder.”

  She was so interesting to listen to. She was incredibly well-educated and, not just that, but intelligent as hell. It was really sexy, I had to admit it. We talked all the way to California, mostly about the project with a couple semi-personal things thrown in, but nothing earth shattering. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was like I had known her in my past. Maybe it was a past life, or maybe it was just the tipsy version of her I had met at the bar that night. Either way, it made me feel comfortable around her and in my world, feeling comfortable around someone was very hard to come by.

  “Do you want to work in innovation for a long time or are you looking to move on?” I asked, eating a bite of strawberry.

  She shrugged. “My goals are to really dig in, work innovation for five or six years. Enough time to understand the processes, and then look to move up or out, whatever the options are at that time.”