Page 2 of His Perfect Woman

“What brought all of this on, anyway?” I groaned. “Why now?”

“I guess a number of your pissed off flings and ex-girlfriends all got together and started blabbing to the media.” He shook his head. “You know better. You should have been spending that time and energy securing a future wife, not getting laid. You don’t have to want it, you just need to appease the public...and potential clients and partners...and your mother. Well, really—everyone.”

I stood and paced in front of the large view of the city that spread out behind my desk. What I should have done didn’t make much of a difference now. The press was having a field day with this, and short of a mail-order bride, I didn’t know where to even begin with the damage control to fix it all.

But what Jack didn’t know was that I had a very big reason for not nailing down the picture-perfect marriage. I think part of me always wanted to remain available...just in case she ever wanted to be more than friends.

The one that got away. The only woman I had ever thought of as anything more than a fling or a one-night stand. My high school crush. My “perfect woman.”

It wasn’t just Jack who was clueless about how I’d felt about her back then. How I still felt about her, even though I had been keeping my distance ever since we launched Heartstring. My siblings didn’t know either. More importantly, she had no idea how I felt. I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn’t have the balls to tell her how I felt, back then or now.

“I’ll fix this,” I decided out loud, knowing that dwelling on that old, hopeless scenario wasn’t going to help me now.

I hadn’t talked to her in months and I hadn’t seen her in two years...maybe longer. Even if we still talked every day, I was no more willing to confess my feelings for her now than I was back in high school or college.

“How?” He gaped, joining me on his feet. He marched over to the bar cart and helped himself to the bourbon I had set out, although the tone and mood for uncorking it was now, suddenly, nothing like what I had anticipated.

“In today’s market, this is the kind of thing that brings a company down,” he fretted, pouring two glasses. “Everything can be great on paper, but one viral social media scandal and it’s all over. And this one is especially ripe for disaster. People are already looking for any excuse to be skeptical about love and relationships, anything to talk them out of spending the extra money on our service. This is the only push they need to help them make up their minds, and not in our favor.”

“I get it. I said I’ll fix it. I don’t know how yet, but I will. We’ve come too far to let this drag us under.”

He didn’t seem convinced. We sat and sipped our drinks in silence while I tried to wrap my head around the fact that I had run out of time. I couldn’t keep waiting around for her anymore. I had to find a woman to marry to save my business or let my family down—just like my dad had. And for what? So I could pine over some woman it was never going to happen with?

I had humiliated myself enough by falling for someone who didn’t feel the same, and even if she did...I was too much of a coward to find out. I wasn’t going to make things worse by clinging to it, disappointing everyone around me and letting our company go up in flames in sacrifice.

It was time for me to find a wife, and it wasn’t going to be her. The end. My new mantra—to be repeated however many times it took to get it through my thick skull.

1

Victoria

“After you,” Trent said, stepping gallantly aside to wave me into the revolving doors of the building.

I smiled back at him standing there—tall, proud, and confident with his perfectly styled golden hair and green eyes. I wondered if he was nervous on the inside, or if he really was as certain as he appeared to be on the outside.

This was basically a job interview for him, if the meeting went well. I knew I’d be a wreck internally if I was in his shoes, but maybe that was just part of being a professional woman. Men were so used to landing everything they wanted, or at least walking into it with a certain naive arrogance that made them think they would.

“Why thank you.” I humored him, but we both knew that it was me paving his way into that building. I didn’t know if his need to still be the one in charge was defensive, or if I was just paranoid about how men viewed me and my position of power. Maybe I just didn’t like it when men held the door for me—especially when it was a revolving one that opened itself.

I had never been to the headquarters before, though I’d heard about it through the news and mutual acquaintances. We made our way to the elevator and up to the main floor, where I let the secretary know we had arrived for our morning appointment.

She nodded, motioning for us to sit. “Camille will be right with you.”

But we didn’t have time to take our seats before Camille’s familiar face appeared around the corner. She flashed us a tight smile. I’d always had a sneaking suspicion that she didn’t like me ever since high school.

“It’s so good to see you,” I offered.

She looked me up and down, smirking at my stilettos. She wore much more comfortable kitten heels, but still looked chic and fashionable. “I hear you’ve been doing well for yourself, Victoria.”

“It looks like you have, too,” I replied, looking around the lavish lobby and rows of offices sitting just beyond the glass doors she came in through.

“You do what you have to do,” she murmured, turning her gaze to Trent—the reason we were standing in front of each other again. “Is this the guy you’ve been raving about?”

“Trent Maddox, this is Camille.”

They smiled and shook hands before she spun on her heels and took off towards the workroom floor, waving for us to follow along. She was exactly how I remembered her—uptight, shrewd, and the type of serious that wasted no time. Most things seemed frivolous to her, including small talk and a lot of other various social niceties. If it wasn’t for her family’s money and her frighteningly good looks, she wouldn’t have been very popular, or even tolerable to most, in high school.

“So, you’ve got a lot of experience with investors?” she asked Trent as we walked.

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