Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 55093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
True our set was a close-knit circle where everyone knew each other. Wives lunched together while husbands made deals in the boardroom. I’m sure some of those husbands talked shop with their wives, and probably knew more about what went wrong with the company than I did. I knew that this hurts mother as much as daddy’s death. She so relished being the ‘queen’ and now that she’d lost her crown she was finding it hard to cope.
I spent the next hour reading all about how he came from nothing to be one of the foremost contenders in the business world. I didn’t understand how a software programmer had risen so high and so fast in the industry, but it was obvious that the man had his fingers in a lot of pies. “Quite the little entrepreneur aren’t you?” I sneered at his profile before hitting the image button.
Each picture was of him and a different woman. The little snippets under each said that he never kept one around for long, no more than a couple months at the most. “Dog.” I hid the little blip of jealousy under snark. Why should I care who he sleeps with, or what he does with his life for that matter? Our association was at an end. I had no more need to be in his presence since he’d proved to me once and for all that daddy had indeed sold him the company, lock, stock and barrel.
It was very telling though that the write-ups on him were very superficial. Almost as if at some point after he first came on the scene ten years ago, he’d faded to black. There were pictures of him yes, out and about around the globe, but there was no real substance, only guesses and innuendos. There; someone else had caught on and written a story about the secretive Mr. Storm who kept his private life meticulously protected. I wonder what he thinks about my lifestyle? If he’d ever cared to look.
6
Jason
Two weeks later and I’m still missing a woman that I hardly knew. Since that first day I went digging into her life on the net, I’ve had to talk myself out of spending every free moment doing the same. Things had got so bad that I’d found all the old video footage of her that was out there. I spent many a night studying her, trying in vain to see what it was about her that held me enthralled.
The girl on the screen was a far cry from the one who’d stormed into my office weeks ago. This girl was care free and full of life and light. It was eye opening to see her in that arena, the socialite heiress flitting from party to party, seemingly wild and uninhibited. Maybe it was because I’d seen her in a different light before being exposed to this side of her that I caught it.
I wondered that no one else ever picked up on the difference between her and the other young people surrounding her. Though she was there physically, if you looked close enough you’d see that she wasn’t really a part of whatever was going on. Almost as if she were on the outside looking in. Not, that she wasn’t in the middle of it all; but there was something in the way she held herself, a certain look in her eye. Like she found the whole thing silly and was just going along for the ride.
The girl in my office had strength and smarts, fire. This girl kept that all hidden it seemed. It was hard reconciling the two vastly different personas, and since I didn’t grow up rich and famous, I wasn’t sure if that was the in thing, to pretend to be something you weren’t. But I do know about peer pressure. Somehow I didn’t see the Emily Bronson who stood toe to toe with me and called me an asshole giving into the wishes of others.
“What’s your story butterfly?” Where the hell did that come from? I wasn’t in the habit of giving my women cutesy names. ‘My woman’, what a thought. I hadn’t quite decided if I wanted to go there no matter how my body still reacted to thoughts of her. It was for that very reason, my growing need to be near her, that I was putting it off.
I’ve never let emotion play any part in any relationship I’ve had so far. There was usually a basic attraction of course. But never once have I ‘felt’, not anything more than the need for release anyways. The fact that her face across a screen could get that much out of me gave me pause. I wasn’t in the market for anything heavy. Besides, she was dealing with her own shit right now I’m sure. The word is that she had been a daddy’s girl so I can imagine the excess baggage she’d be carrying now that he’s gone.