Meeting His Match (A Match Me Novel) (Entangled Lovestruck) by Katee Robert Page A

“Why were you looking for me so late?”
    “It’s not late. I was still in the office.”
    And their mother was no doubt entertaining her lady friends, or engaged in some sort of nonprofit party planning. She wouldn’t miss him during his late evenings—she’d stopped throwing a fit about it somewhere around the time Caine turned ten, and started throwing herself into her own activities.
    His parents’ relationship—or lack of one—was the main reason he hadn’t been too keen to settle down anytime soon. Sustaining a marriage when he worked the hours he currently did was impossible. Either the woman would end up hating him, or she’d become a stranger like his mother had.
    But now, standing here facing the clear disparity between his father and himself, he had to wonder. There must be a better way, one that didn’t involve isolating the people he was supposed to care the most about. His father hadn’t made a single sports game or extracurricular activity from the time he was in grade school until he graduated from college. He’d always been working, to the point where Caine never expected him to show up, even if he made sure to be there for every varsity football game Brock played in high school. His little brother had deserved more than that, but that was all Caine was capable of giving him.
    Was he willing to miss out on his own kid growing up?
    Addison’s hand on the small of his back snapped him out of it. Whatever the future held, it wasn’t going to be decided tonight. First, he had to deal with his old man. “Is there a problem?”
    “Gloucester is threatening to pull out of the Richards account.”
    Why the fuck hadn’t he led with that piece of information? “What? They’re set to break ground in a few months. They can’t back out now.” If they did, it’d be disastrous. It’d set them back God knew how long, and cost him an arm and a leg.
    “Maybe if you were in your office when Richards called, you’d have found a way to head this off before it became such an issue.”
    Damn it, but his father was right. He had to fix this. Now. He turned to Addison. “I’ve got to take care of this.”
    She smiled, looking for all the world like she actually understood. “Go. I have plenty to occupy myself.” She headed for the hallway leading to the room she’d taken over as her own sometime in the past week. His father started to speak—no doubt to lay into him again—but he held up a hand. “I’ll take care of it.”
    By the time Caine caught up with her, she was already in the room and opening her computer. “Hey.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “That was a quick fix.”
    “Not quite.” He pulled her to her feet. “I wasn’t about to leave without my good-bye kiss.”
    Her eyebrows inched higher. “Good-bye kiss.”
    “Yeah. It’s in the contract.”
    “I don’t remember signing a contract.”
    “I’ll have Agnes email you a copy.” He grinned. Even thirty seconds in her presence was enough to loosen the stress threatening to pull him under. He still had to deal with it, but it would be easier to do knowing that she was here, waiting for him.
    “You do that. I’d like to know what I signed on for.”
    Everything . He hauled that word back by the skin of his teeth and kissed her instead. They hadn’t even had a chance to talk, so his telling her that he had no intention of letting her go would only scare her. And a scared Addison would fly half of New York’s eligible women down here to date him. It wouldn’t change a damn thing, but he didn’t feel like jumping through hoops that could easily be avoided.
    Knowing his father was in the next room kept him from following through on the way she melted against him. Not to mention he had one of his biggest contracts this year threatening to fall through. He refused to let that happen. The Richards account would bring nearly two hundred jobs into an area of Manchester that desperately needed it. Plus, it was the first project in