Page 15 of Bossy Trouble

Georgia’s hesitant question drew me back to the present, and I watched her pale face.

“And what if it was?” I asked, and her face reddened. How adorable. Rather than guilt, I was amused at the whole situation. “Are you going to tell her what you were doing with her boyfriend?”

“Hey, you kissed me!” Her tone was defensive and accusatory all at once, and her expression struck the perfect Georgia balance of bashfulness and feistiness.

“I did,” I admitted. “And to be honest, I want to do it again.”

“You can’t.” She took a step back as if to prevent me from grabbing her. Or prevent herself from leaping into my arms, whichever came first.

“There are not too many things I can’t do,” I told her. “And kissing you is at the very top of the list of things I want to do right now. So it’ll be pretty hard to stop me. Especially when I know you want the same thing.”

She shook her head.

“Don’t try to deny it.” I trailed closer, and she took another step back. “I could practically smell the heat coming off you. I bet if I put my hand under your skirt right now, I would have hot, wet pussy on my fingers.”

“Stop.” She jerked her head again and placed a hand over her chest as though attacked by the words. She turned around too, but not before I saw the pounding in her throat and the way her hand squeezed as they dug into the cavern between her breasts. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“So, then, what do you want to talk about?’ I asked. Hopefully, it was something similarly sex-related because of the inordinate amount of arousal that had been thrumming through me since we kissed…heck, since we met again after all these years.

I wanted another taste of Georgia, and I wanted it badly.

She glanced to the side, where her tote bag was balanced on a stool. Then she whipped back to face me as if suddenly remembering. “We could talk about the loan you’re about to offer me.”

I sighed. What a way to kill the mood. “I already said—”

“Yes, but you didn’t tell me why though,” she insisted, walking toward me. “We haven’t spoken in years, so we’re not technically friends. And my business is solid and was well on the right trajectory before we lost the money. And we can still have that. The plan is still there, and so are the products. Our clientele keeps emailing me, asking for an expansion. The only thing we need now is the funds to get us out of the hole.”

“How did you get in the hole in the first place?” I asked out of curiosity. “Specifics.”

She shook her head. “That’s private company information. I can only disclose that information if you’re seriously considering working with us and not just going to use that to taunt me for your amusement.”

Ah, she knows me so well.

And perhaps that was why I was actually considering her offer despite my better judgment. Or maybe not, because I didn’t know the exact reason why I was considering Georgia’s offer. I’d heard enough emphatic pitches in my day that even the most heart-wrenching stories rarely moved me anymore, but for some reason, I found myself drawn to Georgia’s, and I wanted to ask more questions to give her the chance she was asking for.

“Give me the brief.” I found myself saying, and she practically jumped in her hurry to get out of the room. She was back in under five seconds, handing me the document and talking as she explained the figures and numbers I was looking at.

“We started in March two years ago, launching softly with only a few manufacturers and clients. Our target audience was young, career-driven women who wanted beautiful statement handbags that were classy but wouldn’t cost them an entire arm. College students particularly seemed to love our designs and were key in helping us go viral on social media. Then, last year, our sales tripled, and our profit margins boosted.”

“So where did it go wrong?” I asked, intrigued by her start-up story.

She sighed. “The truth is I trusted the wrong person. Red. His name was Ricardo Mendez, but everyone called him Red. I hired him as our accountant back when we were just a start-up because he came cheap and highly recommended, and we kinda stuck with him out of loyalty, I guess. I mean, he made a few mistakes here and there with our numbers, but overall, we thought he was doing an okay job. But anyway, the long story short was that we grew too quickly, and I needed to take care of everything that was happening in the company. I had a handle on that, but it also meant I wasn’t paying as much attention to the accounts as I should have been and didn’t even notice him siphoning money off of us. Not until it was too late. And now, here we are.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “And where is this Red now?”

“I have no clue. He seems to have fled the country with our money.”

“Damn.”

Georgia cringed. “Yeah. It’s a long and embarrassing story, but my mistake is not the business’s fault, and neither is it the fault of all the hard-working employees we have. It was simply that. A mistake.”

“One that cost you two million dollars.” I glanced down at the sheet, wondering why I felt the sudden urge to find a man called Red and punch him in the face. Georgia said she couldn't find him, but with the right people, I certainly could.

“Yeah,” she said. “So, will you help me?”

The clear answer should have been no.

It was what I should have said, and it wasn’t only because she was someone I considered a friend. It was the business itself, or rather the woman in front of it. While Georgia had certainly been smart and driven enough to start a successful company from the ground up, something not many people could do, she had also singlehandedly nearly sunk the company entirely. And it wasn’t just the problem of her trusting the wrong person. It was why she hadn’t fired him in the first place when she should have after he made the first mistake.

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