Chapter Three
"That was incredibly mean, sir."
Arturo looked to his assistant, Sylvia, who was still managing a smile even though what he'd done was supposedly mean.
"I wasn't that bad," he said. "Besides, I offered her back her family's company, didn't I?"
Sylvia smiled, and then shook her head. "Just don't be too hard on her. All she did was tell you to fuck off."
"Right, and now she needs something from me."
"I tell you to fuck off all the time and I need my pay checks from you every two weeks."
"Right, but I'm not trying to get your panties off."
She eyed him in that moment, her head tilted to the side, and it wasn't hard for him to say to himself that she was pretty. Beautiful, even. He had no problems flirting with her, but it had become obvious a long time ago that she was never going to go for it, so their flirting had become more of a fun game he knew he was never going to win.
"Why aren't you trying to get my panties off?"
He raised a brow at her, and then a slow smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
Sylvia raised her hands and stepped back, a big grin on her lips that showed off her perfectly white teeth. "Don't get any ideas. I was just asking."
"I don't know. I guess I've been forgetting. Or I'm just not interested in you anymore." Arturo said. A lame excuse, but he really didn't know what else to tell her.
Sylvia planted her hands on her hips, tapped on of her feet—which he had no idea how she managed to do that wearing high heels—and gave him that look he knew so well. The one that told him she thought he was both full of shit, and being an asshole. "You know, I really don't know why we didn't hook up. That would've been perfect, like every boss and employee romance I've ever read."
"You like reading that stuff?" he asked. "I thought I was paying you to work, not to read."
"You are, but I read sometimes anyway, which reminds me, I have some reading to catch up on."
With a grin and a swift spin in the opposite direction, Sylvia turned to go back to her desk.
Arturo blew out a sharp breath when she was gone.
He liked the flirting game he played with Sylvia. It was made more fun by the fact that there was no risk of having sex with her and ruining the fact that he had an awesome assistant. Also, he would sooner fuck his sister than Sylvia. Not that he had a sister, but still, the point was the same. Playing games was one thing, but actually getting her naked? Now that he knew her and was friends with her?
Pass.
Isla, however...
Arturo moved to the window overlooking the city and the ocean, a city he now practically owned, considering all this shit that had been dumped on him since dear daddy went away.
Was she downstairs right now? Marching out of his building? Walking to her car? Or storming to it, more likely. Despite how hard up for money she claimed to be, every little rich girl stayed a rich girl even when the money got tight. Arturo couldn't imagine her ever using public transportation.
She was probably so amazingly pissed off at him. Just thinking about the angry look on her face was enough to make his cock twitch and his pulse studded, as though he hadn't just fucked Angela in his back office.
That was very interesting.
*****
"How dare he? How fucking dare he?"
Isla stormed around in a circle, unable to hold still while her roommate and best friend, Jane, sat on the leather sofa and ate the ice cream that Isla should have been eating.
She was an ice cream eater when she was upset. Maple walnut with real walnuts inside, but apparently she wasn't just upset, she was beyond pissed. So pissed in fact that she was letting Jane eat all of her pick-me-up ice cream while she vented and raged.
"You should go back there and strangle him or something."
"I should. I really should," Isla said. Her fingers clenched and cramped just imagining herself with her hands wrapped around his thick, strong, muscular looking tanned throat and choking the life out of him.
She probably didn't have the strength in her fingers to choke even a small apology out of him, and that thought just pissed her off even more.
"You know I'm kidding, right?" Jane asked.
"And I also know you're not being nearly as sympathetic as you should be," Isla said, shooting her friend a nasty glare.
She wasn't meaning to be a bitch to Jane. Jane just happened to be the only other person in the room with whom Isla could direct her furiously red rage at.
Seriously, she might actually be seeing red.
That glare, and the anger that came with it, glided right off of jane like water off a duck's ass. She wasn't affected. The girl was too smart and too strangely open and honest about anything and everything to be offended by Isla's snapping.
Of all the friends Isla had ever had, Jane was the only one who didn't pull any passive aggressive gamey bullshit to get what she wanted, and she expected the same.
"Are you sure he's going to do what he said? You should probably get this in writing."
Isla stopped pacing and stared down at Jane. She was pretty sure that, had she been looking into a mirror, her eyes would have been bulging. Her mouth was definitely dropped open.
"You know you can catch flies like that?"
"I'm not going to do what he says!" Isla snapped.
Jane blinked. "Oh, really?"
"No!" Now Isla was mostly being loud and dramatic because she couldn't believe that Jane would assume she would do it.
"Why would you think that?"
Jane, for the first time in a long time, appeared stumped. She shrugged her shoulders, a look of uncertainty appearing on her face now. "I guess I thought you would do it because you literally told me that you were going to do anything you had to to get the company back."
"I'm not going to whore myself out," Isla muttered.
"You're not a virgin," Jane said. "And there's got to be a better word for it if the thing you're getting in exchange would be millions of dollars back."
"Not helping. So not helping," Isla said, groaning the words as though they pained her to speak them. They almost did.
"And I wouldn't be getting a check or anything, just granddaddy's business back."
He hadn't been doing so well since Arturo's father, sneaking, asshole, bastard that he was, had swooped in and pressured him into making a deal to sell.
Isla knew her grandfather. She knew how proud of the business was. The man was a self made millionaire, the kind of man who had insisted that his children work at McDonalds when they were teenagers and save up their own damned money if they wanted cars at sixteen. The sort of man who had refused to full pay for college and universities, and had once again insisted that his children work part time to get through their schooling without incurring any debt.
Isla's mother had told her that her grandfather had even threatened to charge his children rent if they wanted to stay beyond the age of eighteen for more than a month.
Isla had been brought up pretty much the same way.
It had been a contrast between her parents. Her mother had come from money and yet still understood the value of a dollar, and of hard work, while Isla's father had also come from money and wanted to shower his little princess with everything.
Looking back, Isla had very nearly turned into a bratty shit head as a child over it. One of her big regrets was listening to her parents fight over money, even though they were financially well off, they still fought, and to this day Isla felt guilty about that.
Even though she logically knew that she, as a little girl, could not have been responsible for all the fighting and late nights yelling, she still felt guilty..
Isla had been something of a princess growing up, but at the same time, her mother made sure she always went out to get a summer job.
One summer working at a fast food restaurant, dealing with grease burns and bitchy mothers and their squad of screaming kids demanding food, was enough for her to know that she never wanted to work there.
So, in the years that followed, she'd worked in one of her grandfather's boutiques.
Every year in the summer, she would work, and put away half of her check for school, and after school, she did the same thing just to help out, having gotten a better idea of just how damned impressive it was that her grandfather had started such a lucrative business and thrived.
Also, Isla had to admit, she loved working in an upscale store that sold lacy lingerie, body creams, perfumes, and even some jewellery. The perks were always great.
Then she had met Arturo.
Isla clenched her jaw just thinking about it. She hadn't known who he was, but she'd suspected he was a man there on behalf of Vincenzio Calendri, scouting out the location to determine if the place was profitable.
Isla had been so angry, so offended by his even being there, pretending to be just some guy who was shopping for his girlfriend or something.
She'd been placing the new panties in their proper positions, from the largest sizes, to a small that was so small she would never be able to fit her ass inside of them, as she watched him.
She'd been keeping her eyes on him, sure, but only because she'd been trying to explode his head with her mind or something. She hadn't been constantly checking him out.
Though he had looked pretty good in that suit. And his hair tied back had given him an almost exotic appeal. She'd been honestly shocked when he'd spoken to her, that he hadn't had an Italian accent.
Fuck! Why couldn't she have known who he was? She would have still turned down his offer to go out, and to have sex, but she would have been nicer about it.
She definitely wouldn't have told him to go and fuck himself. That was a solid mistake.
"You still with me? You're spacing out again," Jane said.
"I'm still here," Isla replied, trying to put herself back into her present problem, and how she could possibly get out of it.
"You're biting your nails, too."
Isla immediately dropped her hand away from her mouth. Shit. She couldn't afford to her her nails done at the salon anymore, and it was such a pain in the ass doing her nails herself.
She stared down at the chipped color, then looked to Jane.
"Janey," she whined.
"Don't cry to me, you're the one who did it," Jane said, smiling and taking another bite of Isla's ice cream.
"But you do it so much better than me."
Jane had a small case that was filled with polishes. She wasn't a collector—and Isla had met enough of those to know that they did exist—but she was good with nails. The woman loved to do nail art and gave herself manicures all the time, like it was no big deal.
On her real nails, too. She didn't do fakes.
Isla's real nails were too brittle and broke too damned easily. She needed to her nails done, otherwise they would be so short and sad looking.
"I think you need to focus on what you're going to do about your little problem before you worry about your nails," Jane said.
"I can't eat ice cream and hide in my room?"
"Not with the time limit he gave you. Sorry sweetie, but you're going to have to decide what to do about this."
Jane only ever called her sweetie, when she was serious about something.
"I already said that I wasn't doing it," Isla said.
Jane just gave her one of her trademark long, hard stares. The woman's bullshit detector was going off. "Then why do I get the sense that you're still thinking about it."
Isla blew out a hard breath. "Your perceptiveness gets to be really damned irritating sometimes, you know that, right?"
"I do," Jane said, and she took another bite of Isla's ice cream.
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End of Chapter Three! Comments and suggestions are always welcome to help improve the story :3 Please vote with the little star at the bottom, or the heart if you're using the new After Dark Wattpad app.
Next chapter is up tomorrow, thanks!
~Mandy