Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“Oh, um, good. I wasn’t expecting to fly first class. Thank you very much. You didn’t need to do that. I’m pretty small, so it’s not really necessary.”
She opened the door to a conference room with million-dollar views of Chicago and probably the river below.
“Holy shit,” I murmured under my breath. The receptionist laughed and moved around behind me.
“Yeah, kind of amazing, right? I take it for granted until someone comes in here and gasps. Would you like some coffee, tea, water, soda…?”
“Oh, uh… yeah, water please. If you don’t mind.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the view as I moved closer to the windows.
I heard a deeper voice come from the direction of the doors. A familiar voice, one that lit up every nerve in my body and made me want to melt into a puddle right here on the immaculate carpet.
“Did I hear Cal Wilde call himself small?” Worth asked. “Because this must be an imposter. The Cal I know would never do such a thing.”
I spun around to drink him in. Screw the view of the river. This was the view I wanted.
“Not true,” I said. “I said not to ever underestimate small people.”
He didn’t look quite as vibrant as before. He looked paler and thinner, but maybe it was the lack of sun and surf. I wondered if he’d been overworking again.
The receptionist laid out a water bottle in front of the seat with the best view and quietly left the room, closing the door with a muffled click. As soon as the doors closed, the interior glass walls and doors turned opaque.
“Ooh, fancy,” I said. “Where was that technology when I was making out in the back seat of my sister’s Honda Accord with Lew Taggart and the cops showed up?”
We were separated by the giant wooden table. It would have been awkward to shuttle around it just to shake hands or hug or whatever. But I couldn’t help myself.
I raced around the end of the table and slammed into him, hugging him as hard as I could and inhaling the Tom Ford scent of him.
His arms came around me just as tightly, and his entire body seemed to sag with relief.
“Hi,” I said into the side of his neck.
“God, you feel good,” he breathed.
We stayed pressed together like that for a long time, long enough for my soft emotions to be outvoted by my hard dick. As soon as I thought I might start humping him, I pulled back and took a deep breath to compose myself. I was here for a reason, and it wasn’t to beg for his naked body on mine.
As much as I wished for that.
“Thank you for arranging this,” I said briskly, moving over to take my seat. I expected Erik would be walking in at any moment, and I didn’t want his first impression to be a giant Worth-boner. “I really appreciate it. You didn’t have to fly me here. I could have talked to Erik over Zoom or something. Or Southwest always runs last-minute deals from Dallas to Chicago. I could have gotten one for like a hundred bucks.”
I was rambling, in part so he wouldn’t say goodbye yet and wander back to his own office where I was sure plenty of important work awaited him.
He moved to the seat next to me and sat down. “If you’d done it over Zoom, I wouldn’t have been able to ask you to dinner.”
My heart leapt. “Oh? Well. That’s… true, I guess.”
We stared at each other. The laugh lines next to his eyes begged me to trace them with my fingers. The tiny wayward curl of his dark hair over his ear demanded my touch. The strong, veined hands he clasped together on the table in front of him…
“… won’t be coming. It’s just the two of us.”
I blinked up at him, aware that my perusal of his person had perhaps taken me to another mental place and away from paying attention to his words. “Huh?”
His smile was indulgent. “Erik isn’t coming to the meeting. If you’d like to meet with him after I’ve gone over some things, then I can arrange for it, but I wanted to meet with you first.”
I’d come to Chicago to meet with Erik. If I wasn’t meeting with him, did that mean Worth had changed his mind about helping me? If so, why had he gone to the trouble of flying me here? “I don’t understand. He was going to help me apply for the grants I need to start my program.”
He reached for a thick portfolio next to him on the table and slid it closer. “You won’t need those grants to start your program. Let me show you what I’ve done.”
He opened the portfolio and slid out some documents. “The Spinnaker Foundation was created as a charitable trust. It now owns the Campside Cove property and all of the assets associated with it, including the fleet of Sunfish, Lasers, and Hobie Cats.” As he pulled out more legal paperwork including deeds and surveys of the lakeside acreage that was as familiar to me as my own face, I felt all the blood leave my body.