Chapter 4

Tristan Aguilar twirled in the leather boss chair at the head of the table in the conference. With his hand struck beneath his jawline, he watched the PowerPoint presentation ahead of him with the barest attention. He had come in here thinking this proposal was going to wow him as they had said. Only to get him bored barely five minutes into it.

“And that is how we intend to capture the attention of the public.”

Thank goodness the woman finally stopped talking.

All done, and waiting for his comment and approval, the head of Marketing turned to look at Tristan with a smug smile on her face.

He scoffed. What was that he saw? Satisfaction? He tilted his head to look at the people sitting around him. They actually looked impressed. Five seconds later, they were on their feet with a standing ovation for the woman whose face had turned pink from blushing. Surely, she must have paid them for that.

After the room had quieted, and after a solid five minutes of silence, Tristan slowly stood up, ready to deliver his verdict.

“Is that all?” He started, hands in his pocket.

The woman nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Should we go through with this presentation, what benefit do we stand to gain?”

The woman reached for the manila folder in front of her and quickly scanned through it till she got to the desired page. “Last year, we had over a hundred and fifty five million people visit our stores worldwide. Which is about fifteen million per day,” she answered diligently.

Tristan breathed, muttering under his breath. “Fifteen million per day. On a global scale. Not bad, right? So what significant increase does your presentation give us?”

“Potentially, we would be getting an additional five hundred thousand which would not only increase the company’s revenue by the end of the year, but the popularity across the countries of the world.”

Tristan couldn’t care less about the last stat. He was focused on what she had first mentioned, which was the point of the presentation after all. “So fifteen point five million, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

His tongue clicked in what everybody knew to be disapproval. Hearing this, the woman immediately tensed, and everybody listened with rapt attention for what he was going to say next. Knowing Tristan Aguilar, what was coming next was definitely not going to be good.

“Miranda, right?”

“Miranda Jenkins.”

“Miranda Jenkins. Who hired you?”

She swallowed a chunk of saliva. “You, sir.”

“Remind me why I hired you again?”

“You said I was exactly what this company needed.”

“Yeah. . .” he said in deep thought, stroking a strand of hair on his jaw. “You know what, Miranda, I’ll cut to the chase. You see me smiling right now, right?” He flashed his perfect thirty two in a smile that made the ladies go weak in the knees.

Miranda didn’t know how to answer that question so she simply nodded in affirmation. “Good. That’s because I woke up on the right side of the bed today. And since I am feeling very generous, I won’t fire you here and now.”

Her face went pale. Fire?

“Instead, I’ll give you the benefit of doubt. Re-do this bullshit presentation. With statistics that give me nothing less than an additional two million customers per day.” Her mouth dropped to the floor. Two million?

“In three days.”

Just went she thought it couldn’t get any worse. Three days? That was next to impossible in the dictionary. But Miranda couldn’t tell him that. There was no way. Tristan Aguilar was known to be a no-nonsense man when it came to business. This inevitably meant that he discarded employees like they were rags when they failed to impress him. And Tristan was a very hard man to impress.

“This meeting is over. What a complete waste of my time.”

And just like breeze, he vanished.

Immediately he stepped out of the conference room, his assistant jumped on him. Not literally. “Good morning, Mr. Aguilar,” she greeted, handing him his latte. Without sparing her a glance, he snatched it from her hand.

“On your schedule today, you have a meeting with the Realtor of the Delgado Firm. Another with the owner of JT’s Construction Firm. And with your father, you’re scheduled to have lunch.”

“Cancel the first two meetings. I’ll just talk it out with Mr. Delgado.”

“Cancel?”

Tristan stopped in his track. “Did I stutter?”

“No, sir. I’ll do that right away.”

“Anything else?”

His assistant went on to read the rest of his schedule and when they finally stopped in front of his office, she almost bumped into him.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry.”

Ignoring her apology, he asked, “Any personal meetings?”

“None, sir. But Mr. Ed is here.”

He lowered his eyes dramatically. “Ed?”

“Mr. Edward Jones.”

His assistant couldn’t stand another second of those dark hazel eyes boring holes into her face. It was almost like her knees were going to give in any second from now but before that happened, he waved her off and entered into his office.

On seeing his close friend, Edward, his face broke out in a wide grin. “My man!” They did their usual handshake and jammed shoulders together. “You know my assistant just called you Ed?”

“Ed?”

“Yeah. . .shocking. I didn’t know you two were that close. Are you banging her?”

Edward laughed. “Will you fire her if I say yes?”

Tristan smirked. “Now why would I do that? She’s getting some. From the ladies man. As long as it keeps her active,” he winked at his friend who jokingly gritted his teeth.

Tristan took off his suit jacket and tossed it to the brown sofa in his huge office before settling in his chair across from Edward.

“What’s up, man? What brings you here so early this morning?”

Edward sighed, reaching for his inner pocket in his suit jacket to pull out the white envelope. Tristan eyed it before relieving it from Ed’s hands. As he tore open the envelope, he asked, “You’re not getting married, are you?”

Edward chuckled. “Marriage and Edward Jones in the same sentence? Nah, man. You know better. Mrs. Flores Martinez is throwing a party. First to publicly declare her interest to run for Mayor, and second, to welcome her family back to San Luis. I heard they haven’t been together in almost a decade. Strange. It seemed as though Mrs. Martinez was big on family.”

“Yeah. . .” Tristan drawled, lazily moving his eyes across the wordings on the beautifully designed envelope. “I thought so, too. So, she sent you to deliver this yourself?”

“For some reason, your attendance is paramount. Tell me, Aguilar, what does Mrs. Martinez have on you?”

Almost immediately, a knock came in. Their gazes shifted to the door as his assistant walked in with a bouquet of flowers in her hand and a handwritten note in the other.

“What is that, Rachel?”

“This came from the Martinez’s” Rachel responded, proceeding to hand him the note but he put up a hand, effectively bringing her to a stop.

“What does the note say?”

Rachel looked at the note and almost squirmed. Surely this was a trap to get her fired. How was she supposed to read the content of the note word for word and not provoke Tristan by doing so?

When she didn’t respond, Tristan lowered his gaze. “Rachel. . .what does the note say?” “I don’t think I should—”

“Rachel!”

“YOU MISOGYNISTIC, DISRESPECTFUL BEING! IF YOU HAD ANY RESPECT FOR WOMEN, YOU WOULD AT LEAST COURT ONE BEFORE AGREEING TO MARRY A STRANGER. ASSHOLE!