Flown By The Billionaire

By

Carla Davis

Copyright 2013 Carla Davis

Published by Carla Davis at Smashwords

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Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter
Three

Chapter Four

Other Books by This
Author

Thomas
Wolfe
believed that, ‘you can’t go home again’. He obviously hadn’t ever
been to my home; because, in ten years, precious little had
changed. In fact, my parents hadn’t altered the décor of their
house in over two decades. My bedroom was unchanged since the day I
left for college. My twin bed still had the predominantly pink
patchwork quilt laid on it. The cream drapes hung in the window. My
dressing table still had rosettes, for gymnastics and horseback
riding, placed neatly around the mirror. It was the room of an
adolescent girl.

So, the fact of the matter is, when I
finally accepted the cold hard truth; after three months of
searching for another job and desperately trying to make ends meet,
I
did
go home again. And it was as if I
’
d stepped back in time.

Mom and Dad professed they were happy to
help me until I got back on my feet, but they were also predictably
self-righteous, and I suspected it took everything within them to
not scream,
‘
I told you
so
’
from the
rooftops.

“Life in the city can be tough,
”
Mom said.
“
Your dad and I feared this might
happen.
”

Breathing deeply before responding, I tried
not to start an argument.
“
You had a premonition about Blue Rock laying off a
hundred people?
”
I
murmured.

Turning from the bread dough she was mixing,
she brushed her floury hands on her white apron.
“
These things happen,
”
she said tartly. She was only twenty-one
when she
’
d given birth
to me. Now, as she started to nudge fifty, she looked pretty good
for her age. She was slender, just as she
’
d been throughout my lifetime, and still
had most of her hair color, with just a hint of gray peaking at the
temples.

“You
’
re right, Mom,
”
I replied, trying to focus on the laptop that sat
before me.
“
They
do.
”

She continued to lecture me about how I
should have been satisfied to get a job locally. I didn’t see the
sense in arguing with her. It seemed fruitless to point out that
I
’
d been living and
working successfully in New York City for just under seven years.
She wouldn’t have listened. In her opinion, living in the city was
the surest way to ruin my life. So, while she relished telling me
that I
’
d made the wrong
decision, she was secretly glad that I was back in Woodbridge,
Connecticut. It was a sleepy, affluent town, a bubble (or so my
parents believed) that kept out all the nastiness of the world.

And God knows they tried to keep me away
from the “world”. At thirteen, I attended Sacred Heart Academy in
Hamden. It was an all-girls Catholic school, which offered the
obsessively religious, guilt-laden education that my mom in
particular was eager for me to receive. Mom and Dad were both
devout Catholics, as were their parents. They expected me to follow
suit and become a God-fearing woman, who retained her innocence
until marriage. They viewed sex as nothing more than a means of
procreation.

Sending me to an all-girls school was
intended to help on that front, to keep me away from temptation and
ensure that I didn’t create temptation in any young man. It worked,
at least for a while. By the time I left home for college, I was
socially awkward around boys and artless in my conversations with
them. I also learned to always be suspicious of their motives.
However, I didn’t buy into all the Catholic Church had taught me.
Gradually, I stopped attending mass on Sundays. Then, I met a guy
who pulled me even further from the faith my parents had so
desperately wanted me to follow.

Greg was a physics major, a staunch atheist,
and one of the most handsome men I
’
d ever met. He talked to me about the vastness of
the universe, and convinced me that creation myths have always
existed in some form.

“Organized religions are a human’s way of
trying to understand what seems incomprehensible,” he would tell
me. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

My own doubts, which I suspect had simmered
under the surface for at least a few years by that point, were
stoked by his persuasive arguments. He was incredibly intelligent,
charming, and witty. Falling in love with him was ridiculously
easy. It was a naïve first love, the kind most of my peers had
experienced at sixteen. But it was a fervent, fierce kind of love;
one that made me feel that I would do anything for him. However,
there was one thing he wanted that I shied away from for a time,
not because I didn’t want to give it, but because I was scared.
Thankfully, he was much more understanding than I could have hoped
for. Slowly but surely, he chipped away at my insecurities.

After nine months of dating, and at the age
of twenty-one, I took the final step of defiance against the
religious dogma my parents had forced upon me.

Having received absolutely no sex education,
my first time was exactly what you might expect: a little clumsy,
painful because I was so tense, and, I dare say, it didn’t rock
Greg’s world, either.

Afterward, I felt a bizarre mixture of
emancipation, coupled with an overriding sense of guilt. Whether I
believed what my parents believed or not, I’d let them down. I knew
they’d be terribly disappointed if they ever found out.

My relationship with Greg continued for
another year after that, but things were strained. We were having
sex regularly during that time, but I can’t say I ever really
enjoyed it. My mind was always drifting to the things I’d been
taught. As much as I wanted to disregard it all, I couldn’t—not
entirely. Eventually, once we’d drifted so far apart that neither
of us could ignore it any more, we parted amicably.

That year, we both graduated; he moved to
California and I headed to New York, where I’d already secured an
intern position at Blue Rock. I moved up quickly, putting in more
hours than my fellow trainees. By the time I was twenty-five, I was
the fund manager’s assistant and I was content.

My love life was sparse and I’d had two
boyfriends since Greg. Neither relationship lasted longer than a
few months, and just like before, the sex was a disappointment to
me. Frustratingly, I knew the problem was mine and not the men I
chose. Even masturbating, I found it hard to reach an orgasm, and I
would feel misplaced shame at the act. However, sexual
gratification quickly became the least of my concerns.

Blue Rock suffered a major hit in the
economy crash, and I was one of its casualties. At first, I was
disappointed, but not overtly concerned. After all, I thought, I’d
be able to get another job without too much hassle. But as the
weeks turned to months and every application was either ignored or
responded to with a curt decline, I started to panic.

Despite attempts to pinch pennies and beg a
little leniency from my landlord, I eventually had to admit defeat
and give up my apartment.

That’s when I found myself back home in my
parents’ house, sitting at the kitchen table trawling through job
sites while my Mom made a batch of bread from scratch and still
found the time to lecture me about the mistakes I’d made.

“So, you will be coming to mass tomorrow?”
she asked suddenly, ripping me from my melancholy thoughts.

“Hmm?” I replied, lifting my head as I
realized I hadn’t been listening to a word she said.

“You’ll be coming to mass,” she said, this
time it was phrased as an expectation rather than a question.

“Oh,” I mumbled. “I don’t know…” I hedged
slowly. “I…umm. I don’t really think so,” I eventually uttered.

“Mmm,” she hummed discontentedly.

“Mom,” I began with a soft sigh. “We’ve been
over this. I told you, I haven’t been for a while and I just…I
don’t feel it’s for me.”

“Jesus is for everybody, Melissa,” she
tossed back at me, turning her back to attend to the beeping
oven.

“You know Michael hasn’t been to church for
years, either,” I sullenly responded. “You don’t give him the third
degree over it.”

Michael, my younger brother, stopped
attending church when he was eighteen. By the age of twenty-six, he
was living in Florida, had had a string of girlfriends, many of
whom my parents knew about, and was ‘living in sin’ with his
current lover, Kate. None of this seemed to bother our mom.
Apparently, it was perfectly natural for a man to ‘sow some wild
oats’ and since none of his girlfriends had been ’good Catholic
girls’, that meant it was acceptable.

“He’s still young,” Mom told me. “He’ll come
around once he finds the right woman and starts to think about
marriage and children.”

The youngest of the family, Livia, was in
her junior year of college and wanted to go on to med school. She,
as far as I knew, still shared our parents’ beliefs and had even
talked about joining a medical mission. She was, therefore, the
‘golden girl’.

“All I ask,” Mom sighed, “is that you come.
Just listen to what Father Perry has to say.”

“I’ll think about it,” I grumbled, picking
my laptop off the table and retreating to the privacy of my old
bedroom.

I couldn’t bring myself to attend church
with my folks, which led to more lectures; some from my mom, some
from my dad, and some in which they tag-teamed me. My dad was not
only concerned for my immortal soul; he was worried about the here
and now.

“You need to think about marriage,” he
urged. “Who’s going to take care of you if you haven’t got a
husband?”

“I’ve managed okay so far,” I bit back.

“Well…” he shrugged, one eyebrow
arching.

“This is a blip,” I told him sharply. “I
will get a job and get out of your hair.”

“It’s not about getting out of our hair,” he
argued. “I just want you to have a man you can depend on, so you
won’t experience any more of these ‘blips’. Besides,” he added
smiling, “don’t you want to have children?”

“I don’t know Dad,” I huffed. “Maybe one
day.”

“You’re not getting any younger.”

“I’m not even thirty yet, Dad!”

These debates with my parents would go
around and around in circles, neither of them ever seeming to
understand my point of view.

Once being back home for more than a month,
and after ten unsuccessful interviews, I had moved beyond
desperate. I would have been willing to do anything, even clean
toilets. I had to get out from the suffocating atmosphere of my
parents’ home.

So, with an attitude of ‘why the heck not?’
I applied for a post I found online. I wasn’t qualified, I had no
experience, but it was a job and it was one that would get me out
of my folks’ house (even if just for stints at a time)
immediately.

“You have an impressive résumé, Ms.
Cannagh,” said the man sitting on the other side of the desk. I’d
only had to wait a week for the interview, and I was determined to
make a good impression.

“In fact,” he added, with a tilt of his
head. “You’re rather overqualified for the job.”

That morning, I’d applied a little more
make-up than usual, ensuring that I looked as beautiful as ever. My
long blonde hair was clipped up at the back, with bangs swept
sideways across my forehead. “I’ve been out of work for several
months now,” I admitted, “and I really am desperate to get a job,
no matter what it might be.”

“Hmm,” he nodded understandingly. “It’s
just, I wonder if you’ll be bored. Being part of a flight crew can
be tedious,” he chuckled. “But being the flight crew on a private
jet is truly mind-numbing at times.”

“I’m sure I won’t be bored,” I insisted,
smiling warmly.

“Well, you’re clearly an intelligent woman,”
he replied. “Serving drinks and fetching blankets or pillows is
hardly the kind of work I think you would find stimulating.”