Page 11 of Dirty Little Secret, Baby
"So losing the weight was for nothing, you mean?" I ask, blowing my nose.
"No, that's not what I mean. Sorry if I put it in such a complicated way. I just mean you're beautiful and men are into you, period. But some of them are real assholes, and it doesn't matter if you're short and curvy or tall and slim."
"Maybe you're right," I say.
"When will you be here, sweetie? Let's go get coffee, you tell me everything, and you'll see that in a week the world will look completely different. You'll never have to think about this Alex again. I'll make sure of it."
"Thank you," I whisper, wipe the tears from my face, and feel lucky to have such a good friend. She's right. It wasn't pretty, but he's not worth staying sad over. I should just forget him.
Chapter 4
Alex
One year later
"Sir, I had your suit from the dry cleaner's delivered directly to your home," Eric, my personal assistant, informs me as he pokes his head through the door. "You know, for the charity gala at your house tomorrow?" he adds, apparently having seen the blank look on my face.
"Great, Eric. That will be all for now," I reply, and Eric nods, closes the door behind him, and leaves me alone in my office.
For a moment, my eyes linger on the door, and I wonder why it never occurred to me to hire a male assistant sooner. Far fewer problems. I used to go through female assistants like some people go through underwear. And why? Because I enjoyedseducing them, but things always got complicated at the office afterward. Not a single woman could understand that it was just about the pleasure. They always thought I'd fallen in love with them or something.
But then there was the other woman: Beth.
Tomorrow, it will have been a year to the day, and maybe it's because of her that I've had absolutely nothing to do with the preparations for the charity gala this year, leaving everything to my assistant. I trust Eric; he's been with me for almost a year now too. It's not the first charity gala he's organized for me, and he knows how much events like these bore me.
What really gets to me is the fact that, a year later, I'm still thinking about Beth. And I even still know her name. Normally, I forget the names first, followed shortly after by the face. But with her? I don't know why, but she seems to have made herself at home in a strange corner of my brain.
Still, the sex was... nice.
Although, isnicethe right word for a woman who has multiple orgasms under me from my touch, the sight of which makes me come too, and who can still give me a hard-on behind my desk today just from thinking about it?
Damn it, I really need to get laid again. It's been way too long. It might sound strange, but it seems I've somehow become picky. Not that I have anything against one-night stands. On the contrary. But the sex just seems... ordinary, most of the time...nothing special. Almost as if that little flower girl set some kind ofbenchmark. A standard against which I measure everything else.
The word doesn't really fit, but it just came to mind because I have a benchmark analysis on the monitor in front of me that a department head sent over, one I've been waiting on for a long time.
"That's ridiculous," I tell myself, trying to shake off these jumbled thoughts. That's in the past. If I keep this up, I'll be thinking about her all day tomorrow. And that can't happen.
At least the benchmark analysis offers a small distraction, albeit an unexpected one. One of my department heads prepared the quarterly figures for me and went way overboard with the PowerPoint animations. I'll have to remind him at the next meeting that I'm not interested in flying pictures and little lightning flashes on the slides. Why do some people still think that's modern?
The numbers themselves aren't bad. On the contrary, the profit is excellent. But as I like to say, the trend... it's pointing downward. And that pisses me off. Especially because of the column added at the end of the slide—a benchmark against Jake's company, which has definitely become my biggest competitor over the last year, snatching a lucrative store location or two and even some talented employees from under my nose.
And that's something I absolutely can't stand. Not only did he learn the ropes of the business from me, but our conversationshave also become more and more insolent. He seems to think he's the hottest shit on the goddamn planet.
On the other hand, I've heard that my ex-assistant, Dilara, is also driving him up the wall. I'm sure he's already fucked her since she started working for him right after I fired her. I, for one, am still glad I never touched her, even though I entertained the thought more than once back then. But Beth, the flower girl, changed everything.
Admittedly, I was pretty annoyed at first that Dilara went to work for Jake. But apparently, she's managed to scare off some important business partners with her unpleasant attitude. Maybe Jake would be even more successful without her, and I'm convinced he only keeps her around because she rubs his dick between her big tits during their late-night overtime and... no, that's too disgusting. I don't even want to imagine it.
And there my mind drifts again. To that evening a year ago, or rather, the morning after, when Dilara was suddenly standing by my bed, shaking me, and I at first had no idea what was happening.
I saw Beth next to me, still fast asleep. The sun wasn't even up yet, and I remembered what we'd done all night. Shit. Just thinking about it is giving me a hard-on again.
Anyway, Dilara had said something about an emergency, that I should get ready and drive to the office. I keep asking myself why I didn't ask what kind of emergency it was, since we work in the food industry, after all. My company has numerous locations allover the country; we offer the best burgers and a bunch of other meals that Americans love. So what emergency could possibly justify a trip to the office in the early morning, on a Sunday no less?
As it turned out, it was about my helicopter again. It hadn't received landing clearance after a team of mechanics had finally gotten it in the air. Due to a fuel shortage, it had landed—of all places—on the roof of Jake's recently acquired tower on 42nd Street. He was furious, of course, raving on the phone and threatening to blow the whole thing up into some overblown press event with the headline:Rodgers Crash-Lands. Jake's Burgers Helps Where It Can.
It was basically a trivial matter, but I knew how customers think. They'd favor Jake's place for the next few weeks simply because of a headline and a few pictures. So I made the problem go away and called in a favor Jake still owed me. At least the guy had a shred of decency left. That settled the matter. But Jake said that now nothing would stop him from poaching my employees and locations, because we were even.
I thought it was nonsense at the time, but he's been true to his threat, and that annoys me just as much as the fact that I didn't need to leave the house to handle the incident. I could have taken the call from the edge of my bed and then, with Beth...
