SOME CRAZY COINCIDNECES

Some Crazy Coincidences

Kristen smoothened the imaginary wrinkles from her black skirt, she hoped that she looked as official as she wanted to. She was pretty nervous that morning as she was about to present a project to her father’s would-be partners. Kristen had purposefully added a lot of makeup to her face so that she would look older and hopefully, more professional.

“You will do good Kris,” her father assured her as they both walked into the high-rise building. Her father was a man who hardly dished out praise and even though she knew he loved her to bits, he barely said the actual words. And so she treasured the words her father said, holding them close to her heart, smiling as her high-heeled shoes made clicks on the tiled floor.

She would do well, if her father said so, then it would be so, she assured herself.

Tremont Realtors was a huge company, and she didn’t need to have a degree in Business Administration to know that it meant good business for her father. Not that her father owned a small business or anything, Indiana Hotels was built from scratch by her father, and it was quite a miracle that it had grown so much over the small space of  thirty years since he opened his first hotel. 

His own father was a second son of a very traditional business man. Her grandfather had left his entire wealth to his first son and left her father and his other siblings to fend for themselves. 

Her father had taken the initiative and the contacts he got from working for his father and ended up building a hotel and naming it after his twin sister who had died of cancer when they were younger. The business had grown in leaps and bounds as he already had some funds and some connections to boot.

In a few years, he expanded to Europe and other parts of the world. A few years back, he expressed his interest to delve into the real estate business, hence the reason why he wanted to partner with Tremont Realtors, who had also begun to buy some hotels. The partnership would be very beneficial to both parties. 

They needed the connections of Clayton Tremont, alongside some of their lands, they needed someone who had been in the hotel management market for long enough, and it also seemed that they needed some money. They could solve each other’s problems; all Kristen had to do was convince them.

“Oh Kristen, I think I may have forgotten something in the car,” her father said as they stopped in front of the elevator, bringing her out of her thoughts.

“Oh, you should send Pat to get it,” Kristen said, referring to Patrick, one of their very huge bodyguards.

“He wouldn’t know where I kept it, and it is very important, I will get it and come to the conference room to meet you,” her father assured her, before he started going out of the building, Patrick at his heel.

Kristen just sighed at how stubborn her father was, she could bet that Patrick would know where the thing was, and he probably just wanted to go there because he wanted to prove to her that he was still strong when the truth was that, he wasn’t.

Well, there was nothing she could do about it, she thought as she stepped into the elevator with Owen, the other bodyguard and a cherry looking worker who seemed to be a PRO.

The cherry looking woman, who was very light skinned with freckles splattered all over her face and strawberry blonde hair pulled into a bun had ushered them into the building and was telling her how great Tremont Realtors were and how she would enjoy her stay.

Kristen loved her energy, it was bubbly and it also helped to calm her nerves. She would have given the woman more than a tight smile of appreciation but she was scared that if she opened her mouth, even for a minute all she planned to say would just fly out. It wasn’t a very logical fear, but nevertheless it was there and she couldn’t help it.

The cherry looking lady didn’t take her lack of replies as a hint to keep quiet, but it rather seemed to spur her on as she continued talking and talking. Kristen could tell that Owen would be half frustrated with the woman’s talks by then. From the corner of their eye, she could see the cherry looking woman still smiling as she talked.

“What’s your name?” Kristen blurted out, stopping the almost redhead mid sentence. She didn’t even know why she asked, but the elevator ride seemed like it was going to last forever and she had to say something.

“My name?” The talkative PRO asked, placing her slender hand on her chest. She actually looked surprised that Kristen was talking to her.

“Yes,” Kristen clarified.

“My name is Charity, but you can call me Cherry,” she said and Kristen’s breath hitched.

Fuck! What were the odds?

It was so scary that she had been referring to her as the cherry-looking lady in her head and her name was actually Cherry.

“Wow!” She managed to say, nodding her head. 

Kristen was grateful when the elevator dinged and the doors finally opened, she could not stand another awkward half conversation. She dashed out of the elevator as fast as she could and collided with a mass of solid muscle.

“Sorry,” she said and she was suddenly reminded of the insufferable fool that she had collided with the week before at the dinner.

A thought immediately passed through her mind and Kristen began to earnestly pray that he was not the one that she had run into. It seemed that God loved her because as he raised her head, a more masculine face with a soft look was staring down at her.

“It’s okay, just be careful okay,” the muscled man said, his hands were on her shoulders as he was steadying her. Her eyes followed his hand and his hand was covered with ink. His voice was low and rugged, but the tone in which he used it, was nothing arrogant or bullying.

He looked like he belonged in a wrestling ring rather than an office, the suit seemed to be too small on him, and he didn’t seem to be uncomfortable, unlike someone else who looked like he was born into the world wearing a suit.

“I will,” Kristen replied, smiling. It seemed like she had luck in meeting good looking men those days, first the arrogant ingrate and then the unusual looking business man.

“I have to get going...” He said, dragging the end of the sentence, as though he wanted her to complete it with her name.

“Kristen,” she said, stretching out her hand for a handshake as she asked,

“And you are?”

“Thomas, but you can call me Tommy,” he said, a boyish grin appearing on his face as he took her hand, but instead of shaking it as a businessman would, he lifted her fingers to his lips and left a lingering kiss. She stared at his muscles as he walked into the elevator, his hair promising of a second meeting.

“Wow,” she muttered out loud, again. It seemed that her life was about to get a whole lot interesting.      

                                            

Kristen watched as the conference room was filled with more and more men, all wearing what looked like identical suits. Her heart was pounding strongly against her ribcage and it seemed that at any moment her heart would burst out of her chest wall. If she said she was scared it would be an understatement, she was terrified to the core. 

Even the secretaries were men, she was the only woman in the seemingly sexist conference room and her father was not even there to calm her down. She was not really worried that he was hurt because Patrick was with him and if anything did happen, he would have called her immediately and so for that her mind was at rest.

She had been looking all over for Thomas who preferred to be called Tommy even though he looked absolutely nothing like a Tommy bear. In a bid to calm down, she had resulted into tapping her pen furiously on the glass table but had stopped when the scary-looking man at her side had sent a grandfatherly glare.

“I am sorry we are late, but we can start now,” a booming voice that sounded like the tattooed stranger said. She turned with the rest of the room and let her eyes rest on Clayton Tremont, her father and surprisingly the arrogant bastard from the party.

What the fuck is he doing here? She asked herself, knowing it was a foolish question as she would not be able to answer it.

Seeing the stranger’s arrogant face brought out buried feelings of anger; she was pissed with her father as he had annoyed her once again, by pushing her aside when he was discussing business with his fellow associates just because she was a girl, she was also a bit tipsy from all the alcohol she had taken out of anger.

And she had been stumbling like everyone else in the party, her vision inhibited by her half drunken state and she walked straight into a very handsome man and grinded her heel into his foot. 

She could swear on her life that it was an accident, a grave mistake that she had made and at first, she was actually sorry. But her guilt only lasted until the bastard opened his mouth. It was then that she knew she shouldn’t have been sorry at all; he didn’t deserve it, not one bit.

He just acted like it was normal for her to do that because she was a girl, he reminded her of her father in that aspect and that was something that she didn’t like.

She had felt like she should use her heel to hit his stoic head, but that would only prove him right. When he walked out on her, it took all of her willpower not to march to him and tell him her mind.

After he left, she had been so angry that she was replaying the entire situation in her mind over and over again, trying to figure out why he would talk to her like that. By the end of all of that, she has discovered that he was simply an ass, at least that was what Brea, her best friend said.

It had not occurred to her that there was a possibility that she could actually meet with him again and that he could be one of her father’s business partners.

She had barely gotten a look at him in the party, she was too annoyed, but looking at him in daylight, she could tell that he was pretty, too pretty to be a boy. He had the rugged blonde hair that girls would die for, his skin was white, but not nearly as pale as the Cherry’s, not as tan and Thomas’s either. It was just in between.

 He had blue eyes and that was all she could tell as he stood a bit far from her, he had a straight nose, but his lips, his lips were pink and cupid shaped like a girls, they weren’t too full, but that was the most feminine feature about him, his lips looked like they were calling for a kiss, inviting people around from every gender to have a taste.

His lips that had seemed so glorious before thinned into a sneer as he noticed that he was looking at her. For a moment Kristen wondered what was wrong with her, did she not look good. Why on Earth did he look at her like trash?

 Maybe he didn’t do women, she thought and ended her thoughts right there. She needed to prepare her mind for the presentation, she didn’t care if the arrogant bastard was gay or not.

Clayton Tremont sat down, the arrogant bastard surprisingly sat down beside him and her father too. She figured that the meeting would start, but they seemed to be waiting for someone.

She was almost falling asleep when the doors to the conference room opened yet again, revealing the muscles and inked stranger stalked in.

“You’re right on time Tommy,” The arrogant bastard said, his voice hard and mocking, but that didn’t seem to affect Tommy who just took his seat on the only empty chair close to her father.

“None of your business Adrian,” Tommy replied and the pretty boy rolled his eyes.

Adrian, that was his name, she noted.

“Adrian will take over the meeting today and I will just watch,” Clayton Tremont said. The wheels in Kristen’s head were already turning; she had deduced that both Tommy and Adrian were Clayton’s sons.

Interesting

“Thank you father,” Adrian said, confirming her earlier suspicions. “My brother has taken enough of our time, and I would like for us to kick off immediately. Presentation by Kristen Lancaster,” he continued, reading from his iPod, before looking up, probably looking for the said Kristen.

Kristen’s heart had started beating rapidly from the moment her name was mentioned. Shakily, she stood up from her seat and his eyes met hers. She could see that curiosity that was in his blue eyes was replaced by boredom. Kristen didn’t know why but that irked her to no end.

He had not even heard anything she had to offer and he was already writing her off, it seemed like he felt she could not pull it off.

With renewed courage and the desire to prove him wrong, she made her way to the conference table, ready to give her all.