‘These bozos can help you with that. I have no time right now,’ she said dismissively as she looked at her papers.
Sebastian replied, ‘Oh, I had a meeting with someone at the Embarcadero yesterday and thought I’d drop by to see you guys - say hi.’ Max caught the intense look he gave her. ‘There was is no tamping down the intensity with this guy.’
‘I remembered you cycled, so I was going to invite you to show me the trail near your area. It looked very scenic. I remember Max saying it circled a lake, and your social media was full of pictures of it. So I wanted to experience it firsthand. Will you give me a tour?’ he asked confidently.
Max kept on texting Jeremy regarding their bet. ‘I bet “NO” for this question. She’ll say yes on the second ask.’
‘No way, you think she will say yes? Remember, she’s an investor in this project?’
‘Okay, so we’re betting on her first reaction, right? No, for me. Yes, for you,’ replied Max.
Clara looks Sebastian in the eye. ‘No, I’m busy right now. Max or Jeremy can take you,’ then stares Max and Jeremy down because she knows what they were doing. Max had won this round.
‘You idiots, stop betting on me. I’m going to beat you up!’ Clara texts both of them. They bet on whether she was going to say yes or no again. They knew Sebastian did not look like a man who took no for an answer.
‘I’m betting yes. She will agree to go biking this time.’ He texted even before Sebastian asked the question.
’Please?’ he begged. ‘I drove an hour to get here. How about a few minutes around the area? I won’t bother you after this.’
‘Nice move Sebastian, begging always works.’ Max smiles. Max knew he had the upper hand, and he had an ace up his sleeve. ‘You have nothing on your calendar until after lunch. I checked.’
‘Why don’t you show him around, you know, establish a relationship, so he could sign the contract for his office and the other shipping vessels too, while you’re at it?’ Max said, winking at her, ‘After all, we need to have a good rapport with our clients, don’t we?’
‘Who told you to arrange my schedule for me?’ She said, irritated. He knew she loved riding her bike and having an excuse to do it would always be welcome, but maybe he pushed her too far?
She raised her voice a little. ‘Fine, I’ll go with you,’ he glares at Sebastian, ‘...and get out of my office.
‘You two idiots have work to do. Why are you lounging around here, anyway? Are you getting paid to slack off? Let me give you more things to do. Finish my paperwork for me.’
Max stood up and slapped Jeremy on the back because he won twice today. ‘Okaaaay... Were leaving… have fuuuuun….,’ Max said, grinning.
Jeremy stood up and gestured for her to call if she needed anything. He also gestured, ‘I’m watching you,’ to Sebastian, which made their sister smile.
Eliana, Clara’s assistant, is sitting outside Clara’s door watching the Johnson brothers bound out of there like happy little puppies, shoving and pushing each other. They pretended to close the door but still left a crack so they could listen to the conversation inside.
Max gestured for her to keep quiet, and she just shook her head. The siblings were up to something, and she would learn about it sooner or later, so all she needed to do was wait.
Max could hear their muffled voices. Clara was asking if Sebastian brought his own bike, or if she needed to loan him one. He said he brought his own, but wanted to know if he could leave his clothes in her office after he changed his clothes in the restroom. And this sparked a bright idea in Max’s head.
He opens the door halfway. ‘‘You’re going to a meeting after this, right? Why not use her private shower in her private bedroom? We do it all the time. She has a very good shampoo. It’s the one that rocks your senses,’ Max winks. ‘You know, instead of using the locker room downstairs.’
“There’s nothing wrong with the locker rooms downstairs,” Clara interrupted. Max could see his sister was grinding her teeth and clenching her fists. She was ready to beat him up because of his suggestion, and he was right. As soon as she got hold of a stapler, she threw it at him. But his reflexes were fast, and he expected her to move, so he closed the door before the stapler hit him in the face. His laugh could be heard from the other side of the door.
He peeked back in to pick up her stapler from the floor. ‘I didn’t know your stapler could fly,’ he joked. Max was betting on their relationship, so why not help it move faster, he thought. It was time his sister got serious with someone. Sure, he had a bias towards Sebastian. Only because he liked that Sebastian had established himself in the industry, and there was no possibility of him riding on her coattails.
Max knew that was his queue to get out of there. Now, to annoy the other woman in his life.
‘Are you up for an adventure?’ he texts.
‘Sure,’ she answers
He texted Celine a picture of an Alpaca that says, ‘Wait for me, alpaca my bags.’ That would definitely make her smile, he thought, imagining how she would look like right now.
While Max was busy flirting with Celine, he was receiving threatening messages from Clara, and he was laughing about it. Apparently, his sister wanted to back out of the bike ride. But he knew just the trick to use her ego against her. ‘Do it for the sake of our company. We need this to survive,’ he texted back to guilt her from retracting her acceptance.
-=- Clara’s secretary called her brothers to come to her office for lunch as she laid the food on the table, but there was nobody in the office, and she did not know if Clara came back from her bike ride, so she left. Max and Jeremy came in laughing. They were teasing each other and betting on Clara again. They were trying to guess where they would find the two CEOs, and what they would be doing. Yeah, it was a bit mean to bet on their sister, but they had nothing else to do at the moment, and her love life was the hottest news right now. Their plan was to catch them, ‘making out,’ they both said in unison as they barged into her bedroom. When they saw Sebastian with his arms wrapped around Clara, they high-fived. But when the couple never pulled apart, it seemed lik
Every time he closes his eyes, he can see Celine’s teasing smile when they flirted that night. And then that guy Dante showed up the next day. It showed him she was no pushover. He liked that she was feisty and asked him to leave, which meant she had a fire in her, and he wanted to see it burn brighter. He wants to be the person who made her fire shine. ‘I wonder how she is in bed? I hope she’s as equally responsive.’ He was getting a hard-on just thinking about kissing her, having her in between the sheets, under hi--‘Sir, please return your seat and your tray back in its upright position. We are ready to land.’ The flight attendant interrupted Max’s sexy daydream, alerting him to how close he was to seeing the object of his fantasies. He adjusts himself before doing what the attendant instructed. He can’t scare his fellow passengers by sporting a boner.
-=-Celine was nervous. This was their first official date. After that disastrous night at the club. Then followed by the equally unpleasant lunch. Even she wouldn’t want to go out with her. It seemed like trouble followed her wherever she went. And just to prove her point, the zipper of the flowy Sunday dress she was going to wear broke apart, leaving her with no option but to ditch the dress and look through her closet for another one.She tried to pretend not to care about this date. It wasn’t a big deal, just another regular date. That’s what she said to herself, but she knew she wanted it to be special. There was something about Max that drew her to him. Actually, it was their group. The siblings looked like a very fun group to be with. With their ages being close together, she envied that they looked like they were each other's bes
Now she understood why the hostess bothered her. It was because Max was smiling at them as they walked toward him. Celine hoped his smile was only for her, and it seemed the hostess felt the same way. ‘Is she seriously competing with me?’She stared Max straight in the eye, testing to see if he was going to break contact and look at the blonde bombshell coming toward him, but he never strayed. He had passed her test. It seemed that he only had eyes for her. ‘For now.’ her evil conscience taunted her. ‘He’s only looking at you because of what you’re wearing.’She was wearing a simple dark blue A-line dress with butterfly sleeves and a deep V neckline that led down to gold buttons on the front of her dress and stopped at her knees. It would look simple if someone else wore it, but on Celine, Max thought she looked s
After dinner, Max invited her to walk around the outdoor shopping area that surrounded the ‘V.’ There were little gift shops, cafes, ice creams parlors, and restaurants that littered the area to entice people to relax and go shopping.The food they ate didn’t really satisfy their hunger, so they stopped at a cafe to have some cake and coffee for him, a milkshake for her. The atmosphere at the cafe was more relaxed, probably due to the fact that it was a more open environment, and there was less expectation to act more sophisticated and classy because the cafe was more casual. Which lightened the mood a bit until Max started running his hand up and down her arm while they were talking about mundane stuff.She was so aware of how his thumb was lazily caressing her arm, giving her goosebumps, and the nerve endings from her arm were just igniting
Celine kept refusing her friends, but they kept begging and dragging her to the bar so they could ask her about her date. They knew he wasn’t from the area, or they would have heard about him already. Most of the time she could stand mingling with the women who talk about nothing but fashion and the latest shopping sprees, but these women that spotted her were the ones she called “the vultures.” They were prey animals that loved criticizing and making fun of people who were not up to their level, and right now, Max was on their radar.These women always knew what was happening in town and would disseminate news as fast as their fingers could type on their phones. Celine would have gladly not have associated with them. But she learned that it was always better to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.She tried not to be a
He probably wouldn’t even know how to tell the sign that what he was feeling was more than lust, even if it hit him in the face. He had long denied the fact that he wanted to fall in love, that he wanted to feel that all-consuming feeling his friends go through when they say they found the woman of their dreams.It was all relative to how rich you are and if your parents are still alive. Orphans do not get the same liberties regular people with families do. In this society, people from the upper class reject orphans. For them, orphans are not good people worth marrying, they have shady pasts. They are without direction and their blood should never mix with the tainted orphan blood. It did not matter how successful a person was, the stigma was loud and clear.What people don’t realize is some people are orphans even if they have parents. If one
He took a quick shower so she wouldn’t have to wait, and he was afraid that she would leave and opt to wait for him downstairs, so he was a bit disappointed when he was right. Max thought she left when he didn’t see her on the bed, so he pulled out his clothes from the closet and wiped his body down with the towel from his waist, leaving him naked as Celine watched from the window. He was drying his hair when he heard a gasp and his brown, surprised eyes found another set by the window. Celine turned away and laughed nervously. ‘I’m sorry, I thought you left.’ Max hurriedly slipped on his clothes to make it less awkward. ‘Oh, well, I’m still here,’ she replied. ‘Did you like what you saw?’ whispering in