Love Stuck (Big City Billionaires #2)

by Michele De Winton

  But Joe and her mother were competitors and when Anna Brooks and her company Brooks Pharma, had won a take-over bid five years ago, Joe hadn’t taken it well. So what the hell were they doing…talking?

  Oh shit. As they started walking over, Cara ducked under the table. Thank all that was good in the world that the table cloths were long and all she had to see of him was his impossibly shiny shoes.

  When she’d started ruffling feathers, Anna Brooks had taken great pains to make sure that Cara could live a life free from attention and nobody – not even Joe – knew she was Cara’s mother. Living in different cities and having different last names helped but the last thing Cara needed was for someone like Joe Diaz to see them together.

  “You won the Kings take-over fair and square, but don’t expect me to ask you to lunch.” Cara’s mother’s voice was calm, but there was an undercurrent of hardened cement Cara knew would be accompanied by a flint-like stare in Anna Brooks’ gray eyes.

  “You’re right. I did win it fair and square, unlike the HoganTech take-over five years ago.” His voice was the same; rich and dark and set on grabbing Cara and doing dirty things to her up against the wall of some hotel room. Joe Diaz got under her skin like no-one else had, before or after she ran out on him.

  It was dusty under the table and Cara felt her nose starting to twitch with a sneeze. Ohmigawdohmigawd no no no. She held her nose with one hand and pinned her lips together with the other.

  “Five years is a long time. When are you going to let that go?” Anna said as Cara struggled with her sneeze.

  His laugh was without mirth. “When I find the truth and crush you with it.”

  “You should move on Joe. Making threats like that is bad for your health.”

  “Oh it’s not a threat, it’s a promise.” And with that Joe Diaz’s shiny shoe spun on its toe and stalked out of the restaurant. Cara let go of her nose and the sneeze dissipated.

  “Darling. Have you ordered yet?” Anna asked.

  “Shushhhh.” Cara poked her mother’s shoe and hissed. “Is he gone, gone?”

  “Yes. He’s gone.”

  Struggling up from under the table and ignoring the raised eyebrows around the restaurant, Cara slumped into her chair. In contrast, Anna Brooks wafted into her seat and Cara closed her eyes a moment. Her mother always wafted. Unless she was swanning of course, and Cara found it unbearable. She did get it: her mother was a leader in an industry dominated by men and she had to be hard as nails-in-concrete if she was going to stay at the top. The wafting, perfectly coiffed hair and brightly colored neck scarves Anna Brooks wore were a finely tuned Fuck You to anyone who wanted to say she’d lost her femininity. But Cara wanted more than that for her mother. She wanted her mother to be able to celebrate being a woman with a lighter touch. Maybe starting with eating something that didn’t start and end with steak. “What the hell were you doing talking to Joe Diaz? And letting him walk over here?”

  “I didn’t invite him over, he followed me. You didn’t answer, have you ordered?”

  “No I haven’t ordered, obviously.” Cara held up the menu which was basically an ode to meat in every meal. A nicely crafted ode sure, but not something she wanted her stomach to recite. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “So you’re still vegetarian then? Shame. I’ll get the Chef to make you up a salad. Grated carrots with lettuce or something, right?”

  Cara raised an eyebrow. “Nice try, Mother. I know you know I’m still vegetarian, and as nicely played as your little barb was, there’s no chance you weren’t expecting me to call you on it.” She tipped her head to the side. “There it is. You always twitch the left side of your eye when you’re hoping to get a rise out of someone. You’re a shit poker player, you know that right? I have no idea how no one has worked that out yet.”

  “No one knows me like you do darling. And you can’t blame me for playing. You think I’m easy to read, you’re practically see through.” Anna wrinkled her nose cutely. “It’s okay, I told them you were coming and they’ve already got some mushroom roast thingy ready for you.”

  “You need to do this every time Mom?”

  “I know. Don’t hate me, I just love to see how your face twists when you think I’m still trying to save you from being a vegetarian. I get it sweetheart. It’s been ten years. I give up. And I love that you put up with me without once telling me where to put my sausage.”

  “Mom!” The smile felt good on Cara’s face. This was how it always was with them. And that was why she’d do almost anything for her mother, including taking the fall for her five years ago. “Don’t avoid the subject.”

  “Of Joe Diaz? Why ever not? Horrible man. Sorry things didn’t work out the way we hoped with Kings.”

  Suddenly the context of what her mother and Joe had been talking about hit Cara like a cake in the face. “Hang on, he was bidding for Kings? He’s taken over the company I work for?”

  “Yes, shame you had to hear it like that, but that’s life. He’s your new boss.”

  If she hadn’t already been sitting, Cara might have needed to find a solid something to grab on to. “My what now?”

  “Sorry darling. I tried. But he came back all guns blazing from that last take-over. He’s even moved down here.”

  “Moved to Austin?” The world shrank to a bright pinprick of color, swirling around her mother’s head before Cara blinked and the rest of the room swam back into vision. “I can’t believe you were even talking to him.”

  “The meeting was next door, that’s why I suggested we eat here. He followed me in but I saw you duck under the table and he didn’t spot you, don’t worry. Nice place though don’t you think?”

  “Seeing Joe Diaz is not what I’d call nice. And finding out he’s my new boss…”

  “It won’t be like you’ll see him though. I hardly ever get on the shop floor with my subsidiary companies. That’s what company managers are for. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  It’ll be fine. Cara hung on to those words like a rock climber on a rope because when she’d stalked out on Joe, it had felt like the world had gone slippery smooth and she’d run out of places to put her feet.

  “Darling? I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but like I say, I’m sure it will be fine.”

  Their meals came and Cara tried to eat the mushroom stack with the attention it deserved. Piled with blue cheese and sitting pretty in a bed of rocket, the mushrooms were delicate and delicious. But looking at them only reminded Cara of the last time she’d been with Joe. “I’m sorry mom, but I have to go. I hope you have a lovely lunch.” Almost running out of the restaurant, Cara somehow made it onto her bus before she let herself stop. Then with the soothing rhythm of the vehicle, she let herself fall back into the memory of five years ago.

  Standing at the stove in his black marble kitchen, Joe had had his back to her. He never cooked, his private chef was Michelin starred, but the night before he’d told her he’d make her mushrooms, her favorite. At the stove though he was tense, his back too straight, and when she’d arrived at his penthouse apartment he’d been curt and hadn’t met her eyes. When he’d tipped the food onto her plate, the mushrooms were so burnt they were practically ready to spark into flames. Black and twisted, they were a perfect mirror to the vicious anger in his eyes when she looked up, and her heart had shrunk as if to protect itself.

  “How could you?” Those three words were as dark as the carbon on the food, and they stabbed into Cara’s heart. “I trusted you. Thought we were building something together. And then I find out you do this? What was it for? Money? A leg up the corporate ladder? I know you were new to big pharma, but doing this to get a promotion?”

  For a moment Cara had been lost. Then she’d clicked about something her mother had said to her that morning. “I hope your date is okay. But there’ll always be a tomorrow for everything won’t there. Live and learn, live and learn.” It had been a warning. “You didn’t win the deal?” Cara reached for Joe’s hand
but he shook her off.

  “You know I didn’t.” Joe spat out the words and Cara shrank from him. “You work at Brook Pharma. I’m sure everyone over there is celebrating.”

  “Not me.”

  He’d scoffed. “Uhuh.”

  “So Brooks won the deal? They own HoganTech?” she asked. “I’m sorry, I know how much you wanted it. But surely you must have been prepared for that. How is it my fault?”

  She hadn’t thought it would be possible, but his face twisted further. “You should give up PR and go into acting. Move to LA. You’d do great.”

  Cara’s heart shrank smaller still, even as the wound his words had made dripped her blood slow and cold into her stomach.

  Her mother, this was about her mother, the CEO of Brooks Pharma. Cara knew it like she knew her own name. They’d had a conversation where Anna had pumped Cara for information about Joe. Subtly of course, but ruthlessly none-the-less.

  She’d taken the job at Brooks because her mother wanted her to. So they could spend more time together. And then she’d met Joe Diaz at a fundraiser. Joe was real. He looked at her like she meant something, like she had important things to share, and Cara wasn’t ready to let that go, even if her mother thought she should. When Cara had refused to give any information up, her mother had looked her straight in the eye and said “You know how hard it is to get to the top and stay there. Only the strong survive. Only the strong should survive. It’s basic science.” Her mother had done something that had cost Joe the deal with HoganTech, and somehow, it was landing on Cara’s plate with a pile of burnt mushrooms.

  “When we met you were straight up that you worked at Brook Pharma and that was fine. No shop talk. That was the deal. So to find out that you read my private papers and told them about my illness. That you’d let your employer use that to scupper the biggest deal Mex Industries has prepared for, ever. Well, I won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. It shouldn’t, because it’s obvious that your loyalty to me doesn’t run as deep as your loyalty to your bank balance. But it still stings,” he said.

  “You’re sick?”

  “Don’t pretend anymore Cara. I got a phone call from HoganTech’s media people saying some crucial information about my abilities to handle an expanded workload had come to light and Mex were out of the running.”

  “How is that my fault?”

  “He held up a piece of paper with a smudgy set of finger prints on one side and a scan of a thumb print on the other. You’re the only one whose finger prints are all over my office.”

  “You had someone run my finger prints?”

  He shrugged. “Someone stole my personal information.”

  “How do you know they’re mine? I hardly have my finger prints on file.”

  He pointed to the thumb print. “It’s the scan from your phone. It’s not hard to get if you pay the right people the right amount of money. But I’m sure you already know that.”

  Each sentence had been yet another punch in the heart to Cara, and by the time he’d finished she didn’t know that she’d have enough blood circulating her body to get to the door. But she’d turned and stumbled her way there.

  “Don’t think this is over, I want to know why, and I want to know who else knows.” The bitterness in his words cut the last hope Cara had of talking things through. Her mother had done this, she knew it in her bones. Despite the yearning to make him stop, to make him listen, Cara knew that he was beyond understanding anything other than the betrayal he thought she’d made happen. She screwed her eyes shut a moment then looked hard for a glimmer of hope in his dark eyes. The promise that with time, he might be able to see that this wasn’t her, that they could rebuild what they’d started. But there was nothing. His eyes were flat and cold, the pupils huge, making it look like his eyes were black instead of brown, and there was nothing he’d like more than to take a bite out of her and spit it into the trash. His phone rang and he held up a hand. “We’re not done but I have to take this. Wait here.” He turned and strode to his office. Taking her chance, she yanked the door open and fled into the night.

  The bus shuddered and Cara looked up, realizing she’d got to her stop. Like she had that night, she dragged herself off the bus and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other until she got to the door of her apartment. She didn’t work at Brooks Pharma anymore, hadn’t for five years. She worked at Kings, in Austin, not New York. This was a different home, in a different city, but the sensation was the same, until she opened the door and Muttly came bounding up to meet her.

  With his effervescent welcome almost knocking her down, Cara’s breath started filling her lungs properly again. She patted the scruffy mongrel dog and ushered him back in, shutting the door behind her before dropping her bag, collapsing on the kitchen floor and letting Muttly and Boris snuffle into her face. She’d saved Muttly from death when one of her co-workers had been about to have him put down. And Boris she’d saved after he’d been retired from the pharmaceutical industry and been heading to an early grave too.

  It was a risk. She wasn’t really supposed to have pets, but the property manager was a soft touch and Muttly had melted his heart. As long as she kept them inside during the day and took them for walks at night when everyone else was at dinner or asleep, her secret was safe. Or at least it was for now.

  Cara buried her face in the dog’s fur and let the memory of what she’d done to protect her mother wash over her. They had barely even discussed it. Cara had fled to her mother’s home, worried that Joe might follow her and demand she tell him everything. She told her mother she and Joe had broken it off, and after a long look Anna had just nodded. “Brooks was a better fit for the deal, that’s just how it goes.” Cara had looked at her mother, the question about whether she’d stolen secrets from Joe tingling on her lips, but then Anna had nodded slowly. “Better to finish now than end up having to look after someone who can’t repay the kindness. You know I’d never want that for you,” she said, and at the time Cara had no idea what she’d been talking about. When she learned that Joe was sick, it made sense. Her mother or someone at Brooks knew he was sick, and they’d used it against him. But whether her mother was directly involved or not didn’t matter. Cara and Joe were history, end of story. Her mother would always be there for her. The way Joe had turned on her so viciously, how he hadn’t given her even a chance to prove her innocence, showed he wouldn’t be. Her mother was right.

  “We’re better off without him,” Cara whispered to her dogs and both of them whined in reply as if agreeing with her then tried to lick her face in unison. “You would say that,” she chuckled. “If I ever manage to hold down a boyfriend again, you’ll have to compete for my attention and I don’t imagine you’d dig that very much.”

  At the word dig, both dogs perked up their ears and Muttly ran around on the spot, chasing his own tail. Cara ruffled him behind the ears and got up off the kitchen floor. “Let’s have dinner shall we?” Both dogs bowed down to her like she’d taught them and Cara finally felt the smile tugging at her lips.

  Taking the fall for her mother back then was ancient history. If Joe and Mex Industries had beaten out Brooks in this latest deal, then Joe was obviously fine. No harm done. And like her mom said, she’d probably never see him in her day to day job at Kings now. It wasn’t like the CEO of an International company was going to come and visit every department in the tiny little subsidiary he’d absorbed.

  At her desk the next day, the hope that things would be fine started cracking. The office was a buzz with the news of the take-over, as Mr Tsiolkas had only told senior staff about the sale of the Kings brands. “We’re going to stay right?” Cara’s junior quizzed her as soon as she walked in the door. “I mean we’ve only just got the new branding into the public eye and Valentine’s is...” she checked her watch, “six days away. If he dismantles our department he’ll be left starting from scratch. That’s not good business practice, and he’s obviously a man for good business practice. So we’ll be fin
e. Right? Right?”

  If the topic hadn’t involved Joe Diaz, Cara would have laughed. But as it was, she steered Olivia back to her desk and buried her under a pile of work.

  King Kondoms was the brain child of Geronimo Tsiolkas. The man who had taken Cara in at Kings a year and a half ago when she’d felt defeated by the world, and had encouraged her to build it into a brand that consumers were really starting to respond to. A big family man, Tsiolkas had changed his business model so that King Kondom’s were cruelty free and it was now one of the biggest selling vegan condom brands worldwide. The condom range wasn’t the biggest seller in King Company portfolio, but it had the highest public profile, one that Cara had built up carefully from scratch.

  It wasn’t lost on Cara that as the father of ten kids, Geronimo hadn’t exactly been a big proponent of prophylactics and she’d nicknamed him The No-King King, a title he’d adopted happily with his staff. But the cruelty free promise was something she had been able to throw her heart into and she was proud of what they’d made happen. Joe Diaz was not going to come in and destroy what so many people had worked so hard to create.

  Still, it didn’t stop her heart hammering out a staccato beat when she opened an email, titled, New Staff Procedures - Mex Industries Handover. His signature was at the bottom, a digital swirl of letters that revealed as much about his mood as the words in the memo. Joe Diaz was scrawled halfway across the page, and Cara wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he’d etched his name into his tablet when he’d done it. Sharp and angry, his signature promised he wasn’t about to be messed with and the contents of the memo said the same. There would be no redundancies, yet, but all departments should prepare for an audit of their functionality and to justify their budgets, ASAP. “Just what I need with the Valentine’s promotion about to hit,” she muttered to herself.