Cinder's Wolf: A Shifter Retelling of Cinderella (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 2) (15 page)

Cynthia: Rex… We haven’t met before, have we?

Rex: Get in the car, and find out.

Before she could change her mind, Cynthia ducked into the car. “Rex?” Her voice sounded breathy with need, even to her own ears, and she blushed so hard her cheeks stung as if they had been sunburned. But she needn’t have worried.

Rex wasn’t there.

As the door shut behind her, Cynthia saw that instead of Rex in the seat next to her, there was a high-heeled shoe. Her high-heeled shoe. The one she had
thrown
into Central Park. Next to it was a handwritten note. Cynthia snatched it, leaving her shoe. The tangibility of the paper was refreshing in her hands after all the texting. Scrawled on it in elegant cursive was the following:

This is twice now, Princess.

The car rocked forward, and all the breath whooshed out of Cynthia’s lungs. The paper bag filled with the sushi fell to the matted floor of the car.

“Seatbelt, please, Ms. Cinders.”

“What?” Cynthia looked up, still in shock.

The driver put on the turn signal and stared at her pointedly. Even Rex’s employees were bossy.

She put on the seatbelt, the stiff fabric cutting across her shoulder. On her back, the leather of the seats cushioned her as smoothly and richly as butter.

Rex was the same guy from the woods.
I knew it
. But what did that mean? It had to be just a coincidence. But why didn’t he mention it before?

Outside, the cars seem to part before theirs, which for New York traffic was a rarity. Rex’s car was probably blessed with whatever voodoo magic he had that made people so tractable.

Even me.

Cynthia turned over the note in her hand, tracing the calligraphic loops of Rex’s script.

Especially me.

Cynthia grabbed her phone from her lap and debated calling him, but she decided on just sending another text. There was something undeniable about the way Rex spoke that made her not just think of sex, but also to feel it. In her skin. In between her thighs. Cynthia re-crossed her legs, moving from crossing at the ankles to one leg directly on top of the other. As if that would help.

Cynthia: What does this mean?

Rex: It means we’ve met before.

Cynthia: No, I know that. But…

Rex: But what, Princess?

Even though Rex wasn’t here, the car smelled like him. Cynthia exhaled in frustration, as if she could expel Rex from her nostrils.

Cynthia: Why didn’t you tell me yourself?

Rex: I wanted to give you time to think.

Cynthia: I can think with you around…

Rex: I know that sometimes I can be… overbearing.

She smiled at the understatement. Her lungs felt like they were filled with champagne. Bubbly. She couldn’t even process the city whizzing by outside of her window, let alone the truth Rex had just dropped on her.

Cynthia: Have you been stalking me since we met?

Rex: No.

Cynthia: Rex…

Rex had the kind of name that demanded to be spoken, to be felt on the lips, so as she typed it out, she couldn’t help but mouth it. There were so many emotions contained in each syllable.

Cynthia put her phone down for a moment, looking out the window. Her eyes narrowed in surprise at what she saw. The metal skyscrapers had given way to the older, stony neo-classical facades of Wall Street proper. But it wasn’t until they rolled to a stop that Cynthia realized exactly where the driver was taking her, and she began to laugh aloud in relief and disbelief. “Of course he took me here,” she muttered.

Outside in large, engraved letters on one of the skyscrapers was a familiar company name.

Rom Investing.

A
glacier
of ice bobbed in the dark amber liquid of Rex’s Manhattan as one of his twenty-dollar Maraschino cherries sent thick tendrils of inky, sour juice seeping into the stiff alcohol. The after-hours drink looked out of place on the custom-made glass-topped conference table. With a tap, the whole surface would turn into a touchscreen able to video chat any of his other branches across the world. But Rex didn’t need to call Tokyo at the moment.

What he needed was to help his mate fix her company and her life without trying to take over either, a challenge for a normal human male, let alone a billionaire with an inner wolf who had no other desire than to take Cynthia into the woods somewhere and mate with her until they forgot their responsibilities.

Grasping the cold tumbler, he downed half of it in a single gulp.

He wouldn’t even think about the worst-case scenario—that Cynthia might decide to run away again. Without her, the fraying of their bond would resign him to life of insanity—and a short one at that.

Rex rattled the ice in his half-empty glass and drank the rest.

The double glass doors etched with the simple serif type logo of his company parted soundlessly. Before looking, he knew the intruder wasn’t his mate from the smell. Pressed flowers and apples.

A young black woman with long extensions hiding her face entered. Her body had the same curves Cynthia’s did, but that was where similarities ended. Like most, she didn’t meet his eye. In the three years he had employed Rose, she almost never did. He would’ve thought it was the usual respectful unease most humans had around him, except the tips of her dark ears glowed pink. “Don says that Ms. Cinders has arrived,” she said breathily.

Ignoring the woman’s crush had been effortless before Cynthia, but now her girlish desire for him just reminded him of the difficulties he was having with his real mate. “You can leave now, Rose” he snapped.

Rose shuffled backward, not turning her back on him, as if he were actually royalty. “Oh, of course, sir. I’m sorry—”

He waved a close-fingered hand. It wasn’t like him to lose control so easily. “It’s fine. Just let Ms. Cinders know I’m in the conference room.”

Rex checked his reflection in the table, trying to calm his usually perfectly styled hair. The front pieces seemed to stick up just to spite him. Or maybe it was a side effect of letting his wolf out. Gods, he was turning into his lumberjack of a brother. What next, would he start wearing flannel?

Rex’s stomach turned from nerves, and he was glad he had put his mate in charge of food. When he tried to think about eating, all he could imagine was game with its fur still on, and that would be a brilliant way to start rebuilding trust.

The doors swung open once more. On his leg, his matemark flared up along with his pulse.

Fuck
.

Cynthia’s perfume rode in on a brush of air from the outside office. His eyes instinctively shut as he savored it.

“Hi.”

Rex opened his eyes. Cynthia stood in front of him, wearing the same ensemble of blouse and professional slacks she had on earlier. Was it his imagination or was there was at least one extra button undone? Her hair was down.

“Hello, Cynthia.” He raised his empty glass and drawled more gutturally than he meant to, “Welcome to Rom Investing.”

Her ever-so-kissable mouth quirked in the cousin of a smirk. “Do you always drink at work?”

“I’m not here as an investor of Rom Investing.” He shrugged and set the glass down with a clink. “Just as an interested friend.” He held out his hands, open palmed.

She shook her head, her smile giving away to her usual expression of pursed lips. “Uh-huh. So we’re just friends now?”

He cleared his throat, surprised by the possessive deepness lingering in his voice. “We’re far more than that, Princess.”

She shifted on the soles of her flats. Funny, after her ribbon-y heels at the ball and extravagant gown, he pegged her as a girl who wouldn’t go out in anything less than three inches. Then again, it was hard to clean in impractical footwear.

He tipped the glass toward her with his index finger, the ice clinking. “Would you like one?”

“Sure,” she said, preoccupied with taking in the office. A messier male might’ve worried about her finding it wanting, but Rex demanded order in all things. His office was the rule, not the exception.

“I like this.” She tapped the desk. “Teleconference, right? I have one of these on my visualization board.”

“Visualization board?” As she trailed one finger thoughtfully over the desk, Rex couldn’t keep his eyes from running up the length of her arm to her shoulder. His wolf seemed to believe that if he stared hard enough, he could burn away her clothing.

Goose bumps rose just above her wrist. “I’ll need that drink if I’m going to tell you about my hopes and dreams, Rex West.”

It was his turn to shiver. Gods, the way she had said his name. “Of course.”

Rex pushed off from the desk and strode to the mini-bar. The ritual of preparing the drink calmed him, and as he finished slicing the orange, he decided to make a second for himself too. This time, he went easy on the whiskey. They were drunk enough on the bond as it was.

He turned with both glasses and held one out to her. “Good enough?”

She reached for the drink.

He stepped back. “Ah, ah. I want to get to know you, remember? Hopes and dreams first, Princess.”

“Don’t call me princess.” With her round, cherubic features, she couldn’t ever really look scary, but her blue eyes were sharp and cold as the ice still left in his glass.

He lowered his chin to chest. “All right then. Hopes and dreams, Cynthia Cinders.”

The way he said her name had the same effect on her that she had on him. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed hard, as if that would stop the red blush bursting out on her cheeks.

He placed the glass into her still-open hand. “Now, tell me about this visualization board of yours.”
Her fingers closed slowly around the cup, but her voice was even. “One day, I’m going to have an office bigger than this, and,” she broke, tilting her head with the tender promise of a smile, “a table as nice as this one. Among other things.”

“Like?”

“Like the biggest cleaning and organizing company in the USA.”

“How do you visualize that?”

When some people talked about topics that were important to them, they looked away, but the more Cynthia blushed, the more fiercely she met his gaze. “Our logo on a building just as big as yours.”

“If that’s what you want.” He brought his glass up to his lips and took a slow sip, enjoying the way the acid of the orange stung his tongue, reminding him of her kisses. “I have no doubt you’ll get it.” He wanted her to know what he’d look like as he gazed up from between her thighs.
Put that on your board, Princess.

“Well…” She exhaled out of her nose, pulling a small, pink flash drive out of her pocket. “I have to fix my current mess before I dream up any more. Do you have somewhere I can plug this in so we can talk shop?”

Halfway through the sip, he flipped open the mirrored-plastic cover on the desk, which hid a USB port.

“First the hidden fingerprint scanner and now this? Do you have a fetish for covering things up, Rex West?” She inserted the flash drive with a click, and a corner of the conference table lit up.

“Covers are just protection. I’m sure you can understand the desire to keep dirt from getting in places it shouldn’t be.”

The documents on the drive expanded, illuminating a quarter of the table with spreadsheets, an infographic showing her business model, and plenty of word documents.

“All right,” she said. “I’ve got to admit this is pretty cool.”

He allowed himself a twitch of a smirk. “Thank you. Now.” He tapped once on the spreadsheet, and it grew in size, dominating the glass panel. “This is last month’s gross revenue, right? Talk to me about it.”

Tentatively, Cynthia pushed her thumb against the spreadsheet, zooming into the first column. “So this month, Boxes & Broom has netted almost 100,000 dollars in sales and has added over a hundred new customers.”

“All good news.” The endless row of numbers was almost enough to keep him from thinking about how close his mate’s curvy body was.
“Except…” Cynthia swiped right to the next column, which was bright red, “with salaries, and other expenses, we’ve also spent about $120,000.”

“Losing money isn’t bad. Turning a profit right away can mean you’re not reinvesting in the company.”

“That would be right, except we’re not growing exponentially.” Cynthia scrolled out and shifted to focus on their subscriber numbers. Next to the table was a bar graph for number of customers added each month. It sloped gently, but depressingly downward. Worse was the graph next to it for customer retention.

“Any clue what’s tanking growth?”

Cynthia swiped to the results of the latest survey they ran on their customers. “Of the clients that left, eighty percent said it was because of price.”

“What are your fixed costs?” Rex asked.

Cynthia flipped over to her expense reports, and Rex scanned them.

There was good news and bad.

The good news was that Boxes & Broom’s fixed costs such as rent, supplies, and some of the strategic partnerships they’d had to pony up cash to acquire could be easily mitigated by growing faster. The bad news was that they were paying their employees too much, and the problem was it wouldn’t matter how fast they grew, they’d always need to hire more people to keep up with demand. The best news was that solution to Cynthia’s problem was simple. Slash salaries. If Cynthia were the CEO of a company he’d invested in, he’d tell her to do just that, with the assurance that if she didn’t, he’d withdraw his investment.

But that hardline approach wouldn’t work here. Rex scratched at the side of his face. Would he have to control both his wolf and human instincts now? He didn’t think he could wrangle two at once.

Rex leaned over behind Cynthia, their hands touching briefly on the cool glass of the table as he swiped to another document containing yet another line of numbers. “What about this?”

Cynthia stiffened against him. “That’s the wages of our staff. Payroll.”

Rex patted the bottom numbers with two fingers. “You’re paying them above going rates now, if the math I just did in my head is correct.” Which it always was.

“Lowering salaries is not an option,” Cynthia said, low and firm.

Rex sighed, needing to take two steps back. The answer to all of their problems was so obvious and she couldn’t see it.
Wouldn’t see it
, he corrected himself.

He ran a hand through his hair, for the first time happy that he made it wilder by the time he was done. He had to let out his frustration somehow. “What’s the business model then? Is there anywhere else to cut?”

“Hold on.” Cynthia folded her lips together, humming in concentration as she sifted through the documents. It was an expression he had never seen on a woman’s face before; well not one who he was romantically interested in. She was totally engrossed in something that wasn’t him or her reflection. Really, it was a shame he had wasted so much time casually dating models when he could’ve had this.

Slowly, his frown gentled.

“Here!” Cynthia’s index and thumb spread outward, bringing forward Boxes & Broom’s business model illustrated in a cute infographic. It began with a cartoon couple in a messy house before branching into three directions. “Cleaning, Organizing, and Cleaning and Organizing.” Below each branch were listed the costs to the company, the price the company charged the consumer, and the percentage of consumers who picked each given path.

One number stood out.

Cleaning & Organizing. It had by far the highest cost to the company and the lowest profit. Worse, it was the biggest path on the screen. Below the couple skipping merrily down to another cleaner house, was listed, “Sixty percent of customers choose to have Boxes & Broom both clean and organize their house.”

At the very top was a newly written pitch to highlight this fact,

With most cleaning services, you have to organize your house or apartment before the cleaner comes. If you don’t, the cleaner spends all of their time moving knickknacks, and then you’re left with dirty windows, rugs that don’t get vacuumed, or worse. Hire Boxes & Broom, and we’ll clean and tidy your house.

“Doing both is a good competitive advantage,” Rex said. “I don’t know of any other cleaning services like this.”

“But…?” Cynthia cut in.

“But…” Rex exhaled through his nose. How could he put this delicately? “It does require personnel who can both clean and organize, and the rates you’re paying those personnel are too high.”
Cynthia took in a sharp breath, the healthy glow his nearness brought to her cheeks fading like a snuffed-out candle. “You’re right.” She brought her hands together into a fist so tight, he worried she might cut off circulation to her fingers. “But I’m not going to be a company that pays people a wage they can’t live on in this city.”

“If you don’t change something, you’ll be a company that can’t pay anyone anything at all. You have two months. At best. You’re running out of time.”

Cynthia pivoted. With the way her hands flew to her hips, she clearly had a comeback ready to hurl at him, but she stopped before opening her mouth, her hands falling to her sides. “Time…”

“Cynthia?” he asked tentatively. Perhaps overwhelmed by her lack of sleep, she had finally snapped.

She stepped closer. “You,” she pointed at him, “just gave me a great idea.” Hunger twinkled in her expanding pupils.

He truly hoped she wasn’t going to kiss him. If she did that, he wouldn’t be able to stop from ripping off that tantalizing blouse and sucking on each of her nipples while he pressed a finger inside of her, rocking his palm against her clit until she came. And that was just the beginning of his wolf’s plans for his mate.

“Cynthia,” he growled.

She whirled back to the table, typing madly for a minute, tucking a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear every few seconds when it got in her eyes. “Yes, it works.”