Uncontrollable Bachelor (Bachelor Tower Series), стр. 3

“Won’t be any different today,” came her voice over the intercom.

I pressed the button. “If you’re not busy enough, I’m sure I can find plenty more for you to do.”

Her annoying, high-pitched laugh echoed through my office. “I was just thinking”

“Don’t. Just do as I asked, and we will both be happy.” Unless she was about to inform me the Bachelor Towers just called with a vacancy, there was no chance of a smile crossing my face.

“Smile already. I have great news for you,” she said her voice filled with over exaggerated enthusiasm.

I rolled my eyes, dreading the bullshit that I was about to hear. “Make it quick.”

“I have a friend. You have to talk to her. She’s the”

“I’m not interested in being hooked up with any of your friends.” Betsy was always hinting that I needed someone in my life and to settle down like her. I feel bad for Betsy’s husband. He probably never gets a word in. And I can only imagine what her friends are like, too. Hell no. All a woman would be right now is a distraction I don’t need. I pressed the disconnect button and she buzzed again.

“What the fuck!” I ignored it and opened my laptop. No matter how good she was, if Betsy started pestering me with needless things, I might need to reconsider her employment status.

As I keyed in my password, there was a quick knock and the door briskly opened. That pissed me off all over again.

“You really want me to fire you today, don’t you?” I snarled.

Betsy said, “I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say, but if you would just let me finish you might be glad you did.”

I highly doubted it, but it didn’t seem like I was going to get anything productive done until I heard her out. “Don’t bother sitting, because I have work to do. I’ll give you thirty seconds.” That was more than I wanted.

Betsy grinned in victory and I growled internally. Fuck.

“My friend is the daughter of someone who works with the Bachelor Towers.”

That wasn’t anything important. Hell, the person who delivered the US mail at the office was the same person who delivered to the towers. Neither was going to get me in. “Thanks. Now can I get to work?”

“You don’t understand. Her father handles all the vendors that go there. I mean, from the cleaning staff to all the food that gets delivered to the restaurant. Nothing goes in without his stamp of approval,” Betsy explained. “So, if anyone was thinking about moving out, he would be the person coordinating everything.”

I hadn’t considered that. Of course, there was no reason why he would divulge such information to me. It would most definitely cost him his job if he did.

“Thanks. Now if you don’t mind”

“You don’t understand. She lives with him. When he comes home, he talks about work and then maybe if you’re lucky, she’ll talk to you about it, too,” Betsy grinned. “Of course, you might need to be a bit nicer to her than you are to me. She’s not as…thick-skinned as I am.”

“You want me to do what? Ask this woman to dinner and hope she wants to spend the night talking about her father?”

“Yes, kind of.”

“I don’t know any woman who’d ever do that.” If I did, I would’ve ended the date early and found company elsewhere. What Betsy was proposing wasn’t a horrendous idea, but if I thought I was an asshole now, dating someone to get close to her father wasn’t going to help improve my reputation. Besides, it would take time to earn her father’s trust. Move too fast and her father would hate me anyway. Too slow and I could probably have gotten the same information elsewhere.

“Thanks. Not interested.” I looked back at my laptop, but she continued.

“I guess it’s for the best. Shannon isn’t like me at all. You might scare her with all your barking and snapping,” Betsy said, and sighed.

“Shannon?” I asked. It was a name he hadn’t heard in a very long time and one that had been hard to forget. No way could it be the same person. And if it was, her father would never share any information with me. If he despised me back then, he’d probably want to throttle me now.

The thought of getting back at that old man appealed to me, but I wasn’t sure I could use Shannon to do it. Not after what she’d once meant to me.

“Her name is Shannon Hamel, but I doubt you two run in the same circles. She’s not in the business world,” she explained.

My gut twisted in a knot. It was her. The last time I’d seen Shannon was the night her father threw me out of his house after I asked permission to marry her. Granted, Ralph Hamel had made a few good points -- we were too young and I wasn’t financially able to support a family, but there was a hell of a lot more to it. Ralph said that no amount of money would ever make me good enough for Shannon. He had said I had no drive, no ambition. I’ve spent my life trying to prove how fucking wrong he was. I’ve achieved riches and power beyond what Ralph probably ever would. I could easily throw his words back in his face. But as time went by, I realized Ralph had done me a favor. If I had married Shannon all those years ago, I wouldn’t be where I am now. It was Ralph’s “no” that made me who I am.

“You aren’t saying anything. Does this mean I’m fired, or do you want her number?” Betsy asked.

“What is Shannon doing living with her father?” I asked, and immediately regretted it.

“She just returned from overseas a few days ago.”

“Where was she?” I couldn’t believe I was actually asking Betsy to continue this conversation. Part of me needed to