Page 11 of Summoned by the CEO (Curvy for Keeps)

“Fuck you,” I snarl, my anger directed at the anonymous asshole who wrote that news report. “Iunderstand him! He’s my man, and I understand him. I understand him, and I love him. I love you, Archer. I love you, and I’m coming to you. Don’t die on me, Archer. Just hang on, baby. Hang on for your butterfly. I’ve found my wings, and I’m gonna fly to you as fast as the wind will carry my stubborn, stupid ass.”

8

ARCHER

“It’s not just stubborn, it’s fucking stupid!” comes the angry whisper as I slip in and out of consciousness, hovering between life and death.

It’s one of my lawyers talking on the phone. I thought phones were banned in the ICU. Maybe he’s talking to himself. Maybe he’s talking to me. Fuck, maybe I’m dead and this is just my consciousness breaking into pieces, being liquidated just like Archer Industries probably is right now.

I feel a wave of despair go through me as I think back over the past month. The worst month of my life. A month of pining for a woman I know is mine but won’t accept that simple fucking fact. So many times I almost lost my patience, almost lost control, got so damned close to storming over to her apartment, kicking down her door, telling her that time was up and if she couldn’t come to terms with the truth, then I was gonna remind her of the damned truth.

But I held back, reminding myself that I’d decided to show her that I could yield to her just like I dominated her. I’d wanted to show her I could step back, control my temper, control my possessiveness, control my nature and let her find her wings.

“Find her wings,” I mutter in my delirium as pain shoots through my limbs, agony racks my body. I hear my heartrate monitor beeping up a storm, and I close my eyes and wonder if maybe this plane crash is my fault, if the decision I made to let Angie walk away a month ago is what changed our fate, sent our destiny down a different path, stole our forever because I didn’t have the balls to take what I knew was mine, lock it up and throw away the fucking key.

“Heinsistedon flying right through the snowstorm,” my lawyer is barking over the phone. “Dismissed his pilots and took the smaller plane so he could fly himself. Some meeting about some deal. Apparently Aran Archer doesn’t miss meetings for the weather. He thinks he’s stronger than Mother Nature. Now a billion dollar company is going down in flames along with that plane. Madness. Sheer madness.”

“Can we keep the volume down, please?” I snap at the company lawyer. “I’m trying to die in peace here.”

My lawyer almost faints when he realizes I just everything he said. I grin when I see him squirm. But then I sigh when I realize that I’m on my deathbed and the only person in the room is the company lawyer. Is this really how it ends?

“No,” comes her voice from the doorway, and I almostdodie when I realize it’s Angie. Wait,isit Angie or am I imagining it? Is this real?

“No,” comes her voice again, and suddenly I feel myself being pulled back from the edge of life and death. Pulled back from darkness to light. Pulled back by my fate. Pulled back by our shared destiny, the promise of our forever. “Nobody’s dying. But if I ever hear you speak about Mister Archer like that again, yourcareeris dead. Understood?”

I blink at the sight of Angie in all her curvy glory, dressed in blue jeans and a red sweater, her pretty face as red as that sweater as she just unloads on my poor lawyer in a way that makes me laugh so hard it hurts. Like really hurts, considering I’m broken in more places than they can fix in one surgery.

The lawyer scurries out of the room, and Angie steps all the way inside and closes the door behind her. I see the shock register on her face when she takes in the sight of me wrapped and bandaged, tubes and wires sticking into me and coming out of me, machines and scanners beeping and ticking like they’re counting down to my death.

“Just a scratch,” I say, trying to smile as I see Angie bite her lip to hold back the tears. I haven’t looked at myself in a mirror yet, but her expression is as good as a mirror. It’s bad. Really fucking bad.

“Clearly just a scratch,” she whispers, slowly coming over to me even though I can tell she wants to fling herself on me and kiss me back to life, back to our forever. “You’ll be back at the office Monday?”

“Yeah,” I say, grinning even though I know my jaw is partly wired shut. “Hold my calls till then.”

She smiles too, wiping tears from her eyes as she carefully takes my hand in hers. My one hand that isn’t broken. “I’m not your damned secretary, you know.”

“No?” I say as her touch sends a warmth through me that I know comes from our connection, from our bond, from our love. “Then what are you?”

“I’m yours,” she says softly, squeezing my hand just enough to tell me that she’s been through a month of hell too, that she’s been staring at her phone just like I have, wondering if we lost our chance at happiness by not seizing it a month ago. “That’s what I am, Archer. Yours. Your anything and everything. Your woman. Your floozy. Your everything. Yours, plain and simple. I knew it the first day we met, but I was too . . . toosensibleto accept it, to give in to an impulse so strong it scared me.”

I nod, squeezing her hand as I feel my strength return like her touch is a drug, a magic potion, maybe just pure magic. “Are you scared now?” I ask.

“Terrified,” she whispers. “Terrified that I caused this by not trusting my instincts, not trustingyourinstincts.”

I grunt as the pain returns for a moment. “Well, my instincts had me fly into a snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains. So I wouldn’t go trusting them too much.”

“Yeah, I saw the news reports,” she says. “What the hell were you thinking, Archer?”

I take a breath and take in the sight of her face, the face of an angel, the face of my reason to live. “Maybe I had a death wish,” I murmur, tightening my broken jaw and looking away. “I thought I’d lost you. Lost what I knew was mine. At the time I decided I needed to give you the space you asked for, the time you asked for. I needed to show you that I could dominate but also submit, that I wouldn’t just overwhelm you in a relationship, that we could be equals, that my queen sits on a throne right next to mine.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I know it went against the control freak that you are. I could see that a part of you wanted to lock me away in a room until I came around.” She blinks and smiles. “I’m kidding. But you know what I mean.”

“Kidding? That’s pretty accurate, actually. In fact I have a safe-room adjoining my office. It’s equipped for a stay of up to a month. Safer than a vault. I absolutely would have locked you up in there. But then I gave in to this new-fangled women’s-lib nonsense. Apparently a woman now has a choice or some shit like that? Fucking millenials.”

She digs her nails into my hand and tries to pull away, but I grab her by the wrist and hold her in place.

“You really are a relic from like the 1950s,” she whispers as I see goosebumps break on her smooth forearm. “I seriously should have taken the Plan B pill.”

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