Page 7 of Completely Captivated
Aaron Rivers wasn’t one of those attainable goals.
“He may be funny, but he’s not the only one.You’re funny if you think I can’t see through you, Christa Lanes.You definitely like him, and he seems to be into you too.Now, if you’d just let himget intoyou…if you know what I mean.”
Christa lowered her head and covered her forehead with her hand.She shook her head and chuckled at her best friend.“Did you defrost the meat for lunch like I asked you to?”
“You know, C, you should’ve asked that hunk about lunch meat before he left.”
“This is why I can’t have anything nice.”
Take A Chance
May
“Ireally hate my job.”Aaron checked his calendar for the day and instantly wanted to throw his laptop out the high-rise window.A meeting with his brother and a potential client covered most of his day.Since the client was a major player in the fashion industry, Lance would be even more overbearing and demanding than usual.
Every attempt to concentrate on the headshots in front of him resulted in more frustration.None of them met his expectations.The problem, he realized, was he couldn’t focus on anything remotely work related.His mind was on a certain beautiful young lady who’d captured his eye and wouldn’t get out of his mind.
Over the past four weeks, he’d spent every weekday morning and evening in The Sweet Spot, working his way into her life before he officially asked her for a date.She’d greeted him with a welcoming smile every time he walked through the door.Their flirty banter increased with every visit, giving him hope she wouldn’t turn him down flat.
That morning, he’d arrived earlier than usual and stayed longer than he should have.
“Here, take this with you.”She’d approached him with a large coffee in a to-go cup.“You look like you could use an extra dose of energy this morning.”
“Thank you, gorgeous.More energy would be great, but I’d love it even more if you’d find a way to get me out of work today.Care to play hooky with me?”
“So tempting.”
“Say the word, and I’m all yours.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, trying to hide the smile threatening to claim her face.“While I’d love to play hooky with you, I have a lot of work to do today myself.Rain check?”
“Rain check.Sunny day check.Cloudy day check.Twenty-four-hour check.Whatever you want.”He opened the door and took a step outside the shop before turning back to her.“I’ll be back for more energy later this evening,”
“You know where to find me.”
His only thought as he left, already running late for work, was she was worth the time, the shit his brother would give him, and anything else he had to endure.Those few minutes with her had become the highlight of his days.
She was a breath of fresh, genuine air in his world of fake, plastic cover models.When he first became an agent, he was all about wining and dining the “hopefulones,” as he’d dubbed them.The women who were encouraged by family and friends to take that leap into the big world of professional modeling, but when compared with a real model, they had no chance of ever gracing the cover of anything.
But giving them just a glimmer of hope made them more pliable, like putty in his hands, and he could do whatever he wanted with them.They were all too willing to use sex to get ahead, and he was all too willing to oblige them.With the sex, that is—not with getting ahead in the modeling world.He had his own reputation to uphold.He brought the best talent to the table, and that skill earned his company more contracts and more money.
His ladykiller reputation preceded him, and he’d made no attempts to hide it.By this way of thinking, the “hopeful ones”knew what they were getting into and knew the gamble they were taking.As with any risk, there were winners, and there were losers.He had been one of the definite winners in that industry, hustling to make his business name one that was instantly recognized.
But Christa was completely different from any of the women he’d ever been around.Spending time with her had been the most fun he’d had with a woman in many years, and he hated to end it.He thoroughly enjoyed their conversations and how well they got along.Just the thought of being stuck in his office all day turned his stomach.
Being a multimillionaire had once been his ultimate life goal.He’d attained that and so much more.But, he started questioning whether one could have a midlife crisis at the ripe old age of twenty-seven.
Working with his older brother, four years his senior, was wise financially, but had turned out to be a terrible decision on a personal level.Aaron’s every move was closely scrutinized.Lance criticized him every chance he got, especially about all the models he’d slept with, and how Aaron was going to screw up one day and get one of them pregnant.Aaron felt trapped in a world he was no longer interested in—dating and representing models, working with his brother, and doing the nine-to-five grind.He’d gained nothing from it but a terrible reputation, a long line of “hopeful ones” he had no interest in, and the uneasy feeling that the light at the end of the tunnel was actually a speeding locomotive bearing down on him.
The buzzing of his phone signaled yet another meeting he had to attend, another client in which he had no interest in helping.A meeting with yet another account that needed a specific look, a specific body type, and a specific edge to make the marketing ads stand out from the rest of the industry.They’d expect his undivided attention, just like every other client did.He’d personally sort through hundreds of headshots to find that exquisite needle in a haystack.It didn’t matter who this meeting was with, how much they paid, or what they were looking for—every damn meeting was the same.
“Aaron, Lance wanted me to remind you that you have an eleven o’clock meeting in his office,” Barbara, Lance’s secretary, said over Aaron’s office intercom.
It wasn’t Barbara’s fault that Lance was such an asshole.Aaron tempered his reply so he didn’t come across curt with her.
