Perks of the Job

Chapter 1 - Meet Cleo (Intro)

He had met Cleo when she was barely nineteen. Skinny as a rake and looking about the place as if it were her first day, certainly not with the second-year swagger that most university students carried by now. With the general academic population on three-year courses entering their second year meant they were virtually middle aged in university terms, but Cleo had seemed to miss the memo.

However, it made her impossible to miss in Christian’s eyes.
Cleo didn’t want to be so terrified all the time. University was meant to be the best time in a person’s life or so they said. However, as an only child to elderly parents, the world had been painted out to be quite the scary place. A point her parents had proved excellently by passing tragically in a car accident, a driver on the wrong side of the road flipping Cleo’s life upside down. Just shy of eighteen, she’d seen out the last of her school days with a family friend to make it to her supposed independence. But sheltered and shy, Cleo wasn’t finding independent life all too easy. She longed for someone to take control, just tell her what to do. A desire, she would soon find fulfilled, as Christian approached her in the university library.

It had started with some blasé question about a book, entirely fabricated by Christian as an excuse to speak to Cleo he delighted in sharing during his wedding speech, eliciting a universal ‘awww’ from the small number of guests, virtually all of them Christian’s family and friends. Christian had proposed to Cleo exactly one year after their graduation, three years after they had met, when she was only the tender age of twenty-two and he twenty-six. It hadn’t necessarily been the plan when he’d approached her in the library all those years ago, he’d simply thought of her as the perfect complement to his ego. Someone to play the hero for and in return reap the rewards of their eternal thanks and praise. He’d had enough of the loud party girls on campus, always so forward and in his ‘humble’ opinion brash and vulgar. They’d chew you up and spit you out, all in the name of feminism. What was so abhorrent with being nice and polite? Quiet and devoted. Pretty and petite. He’d almost given up. Until he met Cleo.

Cleo was 92lbs and 5ft 5 with shafts of long strawberry blonde hair she typically peered out from. Deep blue eyes, a smattering of freckles across her high cheekbones and a full pouting mouth. If she’d ever proudly stuck out her sharp jaw, she’d have made a name for herself as one of the prettiest girls in their year. However, hidden behind her hair half the time it had been for Christian alone to notice. But being slim and beautiful was not a prerequisite to Christian’s other desired traits. No, in fact the slim and beautiful women he encountered could be the worst loud mouths of them all. Not Cleo. Dating her had been a challenge for how quiet she was, and Christian had relished in it. Never had he met a girl so demure, so sweet and innocent, but most importantly so willing to mould herself to him. Over the years he had pruned her like a bonsai, paying the upmost attention to direct her into the shape he wanted. Nevertheless, just because she was his perfect girl didn’t mean he had always planned to get married so soon. That little adjustment to the plan had emerged shortly after graduation.

Trying to sort out their post student finances to stay together and not be dragged back to their various hometowns, although Cleo had glumly considered if she even had a home to be dragged back too, Cleo shyly revealed the extent of her funds. Her parents had been mature, and highly sensible, the money she’d inherited after they’d passed had been managed well and was only growing. Plus, she had the pending sale of her family home to add to the spoils of her tragedy. Christian had nearly swallowed his tongue. She had confessed to this fortune like a dirty secret. Truth was, it overwhelmed her. The house stuff was so complicated, so painful. The fund meant calls with a wealth manager, words she didn’t understand.

Christian locked the rock on her finger, earning her complete and utter trust, and along with it the keys to the kingdom. He now managed her finances exclusively and after their simple, small wedding life, as he designed it, was about to begin.