Small Town Love

"Sir, I have that paperwork you wanted faxed over from legal." Vince Griffin looked up from his mountain of paperwork and nodded at his faithful secretary. Patricia had been hired on when Vince had started his small company twelve years ago and she was one of the few employees who had remained with him through the rough times to see the company grow into the multi-million dollar success it was today.

Vince was proud of his development company. He had started it at the age of twenty using money he had saved all by himself and over the years he had never once gone to his rich family for financial help. He had built up and earned every single thing he saw around him. Though he never could have done any of that without Patricia.

"Thanks, just lay them on my desk." he replied with a sigh as he leaned back in his chair. Patricia's black heels clicked across the polished tiles and she tossed the manilla folder on top of the mountain of files already there to be looked over.

"You look like you could use a vacation." she stated as she slid her pen behind her ear. Vince shook his head as she sat on the corner of his desk.

"I wouldn't know what that is."

"It's this handy little thing where a person takes time away from work and simply relaxes. Drinks some drinks on a beach somewhere, gets laid, you know the important things in life." Patricia replied with a smile and a shrug. Vince ran his hand through his thick black hair and shook his head.

"You are something else." he stated and she smiled. His secretary was close to fifty years old. She had the face of a much younger woman thanks to the invention of botox and her brown hair showed no gray because she helped keep the salon in business. She was nearly six feet tall and her figure made Popeye's love interest, Olive Oyl, look obese. She had professionally tanned skin, a flawless complexion, brown eyes, the kind of perfect smile only money can buy and she was the one and only person who always called him on his crap. He could never pull anything over on her.

"Vince, you are thirty-two years old and you have never once taken a vacation or partied or been a normal man! All you do is work, work, work. I know that you don't like it when our personal lives come into a conversation but I simply think that's because you don't have one and you're terribly jealous when you hear about my cougar escapades. Hell, you wouldn't even take Amy from legal out on a date and I've never seen a woman work so hard to stuff her breasts into a push up bra just to get a man's attention." Patricia said matter of factly as she picked up his clear glass paperweight and rolled it between her hands.

"If you worked in any other office and spoke that way to your boss you'd be fired." he informed her with a glare. "And Amy from legal is twenty years old." Vince added dryly as he picked up a file and began to look through it.

"Last time I checked twenty was legal." Patricia teased with a wink. Vince rolled his eyes.

"You need to be getting back to work." he ordered. "I don't pay you to sit around and criticize my life." She smiled as she sat the paperweight back down on his desk.

"You would actually have to have a life in order for me to criticize it." she reminded him and then she laughed at his scowl.

"Okay, okay, I'm leaving. Remember you have that meeting with Pascal at four." Vince looked at the clock and saw it was already three.

"Thanks for the reminder." he stated and Patricia waved her hand as she hopped from his desk and her heels clicked out of the room.

Vince sighed as he looked through the file in his hands. Though he'd been told he was good looking with his strong jaw, straight nose, firm lips, green eyes, thick black hair and the athletic build he'd managed to maintain since his days as a high school quarterback, he didn't have the time nor the urge for dating. Truth be told he hadn't had a serious girlfriend since high school and hadn't been on a date in a good ten years. While most men were out sowing wild oats, Vince had been busy building a company and now that he was rich and successful he figured that's all women would want from him and he had no interest in any woman like that. Work was what he had and this company was what he loved.