by Parker, Ali
Fucking impossible.
But apparently there was a chance Dad was still in there and could hear us. For that reason, the doctors said we should talk to him like he was here, because he might be.
It was a fucking depressing thought. He might be there, and might be able to hear us. It killed me to me think he might not, and that the dad I talked to just a couple of days ago might be gone forever.
Not many days ago, he was one of the healthiest men I knew. I couldn’t remember the last time he even had the flu, and now this.
Over the weekend, I read up about strokes. They were nasty, potentially fatal events with devastating consequences. Blood flow to the brain was interrupted or reduced, depriving it of oxygen and nutrients. It could lead to paralysis, difficulty talking or thinking, and a whole host of other side effects. And that was if he even pulled through.
My father’s brain had created and managed a company larger than most people would even have been able to imagine. It had created an empire.
To think that the brain could have permanent damage—it was unimaginable. Surreal in the most awful sense of the word. A future where my father didn’t have control over parts of his body or his brain wasn’t one I could fathom. Nor was a future without him in it at all.
Early diagnosis and treatment were apparently key. No one knew exactly when my dad collapsed, but there was only ten minutes after his last meeting before Norma, his secretary, went into his office and found him.
He was admitted to the hospital less than an hour later. The doctors assured us this was a good thing. They told us his chances of recovery were much higher because of the prompt treatment he received.
I held onto their assurances with both hands. It wasn’t much, but looking down at the shell of a man lying on the bed in front of me, I would take what I could get. Since early intervention was the only good news the doctors had been able to give us, I was leaning on it heavily to try to stay positive.
Rubbing my eyes, I willed his to be open when I looked back down. But they weren’t. Fuck.
To make matters worse, if that were possible, my brother was on the warpath. Before I even knew of my father’s condition, Danny was already speaking to his lawyers.
Since no one knew when, and if, our dad would wake up, someone had to take control of the company. Since Danny was second in command, that person was him.
I always knew he would eventually take over. It wasn’t a position I envied, but it also wasn’t a position I saw him occupying so soon.
He wasn’t ready. Dad knew it and I knew it. Danny wasn’t ready to take care of anyone’s interests but his own. He still had too much left to learn about leading one of the biggest companies there was in our industry.
To be fair, I had a lot left to learn myself. Danny and I practically grew up in the company. I remembered playing next to Norma’s desk when I was six years old. But that didn’t mean I knew all there was to know about it.
The difference between Danny and I, was that I knew and acknowledged where my abilities were lacking. Danny didn’t.
He thought he knew all there was to know, better even than our father did. Danny was frustrated with the decisions Dad had been making the last few weeks. Now that he’d taken control of the company, it wouldn’t be long before he started ‘setting things right.’ His version, not mine.
We had very, very different point of views of what was right and what was wrong when it came to the company at the moment. It scared me shitless to think of what Danny was going to do now that he was in charge. If he did what I thought he was going to do, we were headed for trouble.
“Wake up, Dad,” I murmured, gently squeezing his cool hand. “You have to wake up soon, you hear me? You can’t leave us yet.”
Again, there was no response. I kept on talking to him though. I wasn’t giving up on him. Not now, not ever.
“The McAllen Group needs you, Dad. I need you. Danny needs you too, whether he knows it or not.”
I took a deep breath. Jesus, this was hard. “Come on, Dad. I need you to wake up. If you wait too long before you wake up, there won’t be anything left to save. You built this company from the ground up, but Danny’s going to tear it down from the inside out if you don’t wake up soon.”
Unfortunately, I wasn’t exaggerating. I knew the plans my brother had for the company. Some of them anyway. They weren’t good.
The company Danny envisioned wasn’t the one we already had. He thought it was too old fashioned.
Out with the old and in with the new, he told me once when we talked about the company. To him, hotel chains were fast becoming outdated. He was convinced the age of hotels was coming to an end.
According to him, there would always be some people who would choose to stay in a hotel but that number would keep dwindling with the advent of options provided by things like Airbnb.
Danny wanted to expand into the world of technology. He said that was the future for business, and we needed to get a piece of the pie. He’d already convinced Dad to expand into social media, but if it were up to Danny, he wouldn’t stop there.
And unfortunately, it was up to Danny for now. The damage he could cause to the company if he were left unchecked could be catastrophic.
He could bury the company as Dad and I knew it forever, claiming to be in the pursuit of better things. More sustainable things, as he called it. He didn’t believe hotels were sustainable anymore due to other options being available.
I didn’t agree. To me, new wasn’t always better.
The hotel chain we had was already big and it was getting bigger. We were expanding both nationally and internationally at the moment. We didn’t have the resources to be expanding beyond the property market as well as within it at the same time.
As it was, our planned expansion into social media was already threatening the jobs of some of our current employees and the continued existence of some of our smaller properties. In my opinion, it was Danny’s expansion plan that wasn’t sustainable, not the hotels. If it were up to me, I would be focusing on turning those properties that could have been doing better around.
Cutting our workforce was a last resort in my mind. I wasn’t interested in cutting jobs, I was interested in retaining what we had and creating more. The McAllen name was linked to every person who worked for us, every property we had. Danny didn’t see it that way.
To him, the people were expendable. The money and expansion into the things he saw as our future were the only things that were important. I didn’t give a fuck about immediate expansion, especially not on the scale he was proposing.
In the company’s current financial position, our two points of view were mutually exclusive. We couldn’t have it both ways. The company couldn’t afford it.
Dad and I never talked about it outright, but by his actions I knew Dad supported my stance. We couldn’t expand at the expense of our current business.
He had been willing to make some compromises, such as the social media expansion. Danny convinced him some cuts were justified in the interest of the company, but what Dad saw as some and what Danny saw as some wouldn’t be the same thing.
With Danny at the helm, I was afraid the days would be numbered for our smaller properties, as well as the jobs of the people employed in them.
Danny wouldn’t reshuffle, he would fire. The order to go ahead with immediate cuts hadn’t come down yet, but I knew it was coming.
I could feel it in my bones.
Sighing, I looked up at the machines keeping a constant vigil over my father. It was disheartening to see no change in his vitals. If he could hear me, surely there would’ve been some kind of acceleration of his heart rate or something.
Beep. Beep. Beep. The machines taunted me with their consistency.
Better that than not beeping at all, I reminded myself. Take comfort in the consistency.
I brushed Dad’s hair back from his forehead. “I’m going to do my best to keep Danny from hurting your company Dad,
to keep it the way you wanted. But I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to hold him off, so you have to wake up. You hear me?”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“You’re going to be okay, Dad.” I promised him, hoping to every deity out there it was a promise I could keep. “I’ll make sure of it. Just keep fighting. I will, too.”
The next couple of days weren’t going to be easy. Today was Danny’s first official day on the job. I expected my fight was going to start within the hours. Two hours, max.
I was startled when my phone started buzzing in my pocket. I felt so isolated in the curtained glass box we were in, I completely forgot I carried the outside world in with me on my phone.
Half afraid it was Danny, I shifted in my seat and pulled the buzzing thing out.
Relieved, I saw that it wasn’t Danny calling. It was Aston.
Guilt overcame relief. I’d been sending her calls to voicemail since I left California. I would call her back, I just didn’t know what to tell her yet. Sliding my finger across the screen, I sent her to voicemail again. The outside world could wait another hour.
Just one more hour with Dad without any interruptions, then I would get back to it.
Chapter 25
Aston
Sighing, I tossed my phone down onto the bed beside me and let my back fall to the mattress. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. I was so damn tired, but I couldn’t sleep anymore.
Sleep was getting harder to come by the longer I didn’t hear from Blake. At first, it was worry about my job that kept me up at night. Sleeping with the son of the owner of the hotel was the single most unprofessional thing I had ever done, and I hadn’t even known it at the time.
I was terrified I was going to get fired for being the worst manager the hotel chain had. I told Blake the truth about being a virgin before we slept together, but jumping into bed with a guest wasn’t a great first impression.
Another worry was that he didn’t believe me about being a virgin. At first, I wondered if he was avoiding my calls because he thought I slept with guests all the time and was processing the paperwork to have me removed from my job.
There was nothing in our company policies that specifically prohibited me from having an intimate relationship with a guest—I went back and checked—but he wasn’t just any guest. The only reason I could think of for him not revealing his identity was that he checked up on branches anonymously so he could get the real scoop instead of the rosy picture any branch would create if they knew the bosses were coming.
My sleeping with him, as just another guest, didn’t paint the picture of professionalism I would have liked for corporate to see. I spent the first night after he left kicking myself over and over again for allowing such a lapse in judgment. I would spend the rest of my life berating myself for all the hours I’d spent with Blake.
For a person who prided herself on being the utmost example of a hardworking professional, it had been my biggest mistake ever. And it happened with the worst person possible.
Next to Wayne McAllen himself, of course. That would have been infinitely worse.
In the days since he left though, my worry about my job and lapse in professionalism morphed into worry about Blake. He had looked terrible when he came to tell me he was leaving that day. I asked him what was wrong, but he never gave me an answer.
All he said was that he had to go back to the office and to call him if I needed him. Well, I did call him. Many times. Each time, I got his voicemail.
The longer I didn’t hear from him, the more I became convinced something was wrong. Something other than my job being cut because of what I’d done.
Surely, the paperwork to have me fired wouldn’t have taken this long. I also doubted he looked the way he did before he left because he slept with the manager of one of their properties. He knew who I was when it happened, after all.
Days had passed between losing my virginity to him and his leaving, so that couldn’t be why he looked so worried when he came to say goodbye.
In the back of my mind, I was still afraid his abrupt exit had something to do with us sleeping together. But logical reasoning led me to conclude that something else was going on. The timeline just didn’t make sense if it was about us.
Having convinced myself I wasn’t out of a job just yet, I grasped at other reasons why he could be avoiding me. I had half a dozen theories, but no way to test any of them.
The uncertainty was driving me a little nuts. I pulled the covers over my head and burrowed deeper into my bed. It made me feel safe.
Until I heard knocking at my front door. I froze, then told myself I was being silly. Blake didn’t know where I lived and even if he looked it up in my employee file or something, he would hardly come to my house personally to fire me. At least I didn’t think that was how it worked.
I’d never been fired before though, so I really couldn’t be a hundred percent sure. Another barrage of knocks sounded at my door. “Aston! It’s me. Get your lazy ass out of bed and open the door.”
Every muscle in my body relaxed at the sound of Tiffany’s voice. My best friend worked the front desk at the hotel. If I was getting fired, she wouldn’t be the one to give me the news.
I rolled over and dropped my feet onto the floor, stumbling out of bed. “Coming!”
My apartment was comfortable, but small. Thirty seconds after I left my red and purple bedroom, I opened my front door. “Come on in.”
I stepped aside and Tiffany came barreling in. She was carrying two takeout cups of coffee. I reached for one, plucking it out of the cardboard carrier tray she was holding. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Oh, I know.” She eyed my pajamas. “Unicorns and cupcakes, huh? Very mature. I like it.”
I scoffed. “You’re just jealous.”
“Very,” she said with a nod. “I actually love those, but seriously, are you okay? You never called me back yesterday.”
Rats. “I completely forgot. Sorry, I’ve been a bit—caught up.”
“Still sulking over Blake?” Sympathy clouded her green eyes.
I shook my head. “I’m not sulking, I’m worried.”
Walking over to my living room, I plopped down on a couch and crossed my legs, cradling my coffee with both hands in my lap. Tiffany took a seat kitty-corner from me, mirroring my position. We always sat in the same places, in the same way. We had spent hours talking just like this.
“Have you heard anything from him?”
Taking in a deep breath, I released it slowly. “Not yet. I called him again earlier, but he didn’t pick up.”
“Kudos for calling.” Tiffany nodded approvingly, sipping her coffee. Her flaming curls were pulled up into a messy bun at the very top of her head. They bounced with her movement. “I’m proud of you for reaching out, I know you’ve been worried since I told you who he was.”
“I am, but whatever is going on with him must be important. He told me to call him if I needed him, but he hasn’t answered. He’s not the kind of guy to just blow someone off. Something must be going on.”
“Just keep trying to get a hold of him,” she told me, pointing her coffee cup at me. “This is exactly the kind of guy who you should be with.”
I tilted my head. “Not that I disagree, but why?”
Sighing, she gave me a look that told me I was obviously missing something. When I didn’t react or catch on immediately, she sighed again. “Because my dear, innocent, oblivious friend, he’s hot and rich. Plus, you said he told you he cares about you. That’s a trifecta, which means you have to keep trying him until he picks up.”
“I don’t care about his money.” Since I learned who he was, I guessed Tiffany thought I was imagining myself in fancy dresses on his arm at charity events. That wasn’t me though. And she knew it, but I knew her well enough to know she couldn’t help dreaming about that now. That, and perhaps the possibility that I would invite her to said events so she could meet a billionaire of her own.
&
nbsp; The last thing I’d thought of since finding out who he was, was his money or what his having it could mean for me in a future where I might see him again. “Honestly, I don’t give a hoot about it. I’m making my own money. I’d give all of his just for him to call me back though. I’m really worried about him. I just want to make sure he’s okay.”
Rolling her eyes, her lips curled into a smile. “You would only care about that. It’s one of the things I love most about you, but keep your friends in mind too and keep calling him because he’s rich. He’s bound to have some rich friends hanging around just waiting for me.”
“I’ll keep calling,” I said, crossing my heart to seal the promise, then lifted an eyebrow. “But not because he’s rich. If I ever see him again, I’ll ask about a friend for you though. Only because I love you too.”
She winked. “That’s all I ask. So, now that we’ve got that settled, what do you want to do today? It’s been ages since we had a day off together. I was thinking we could go to the beach again and then maybe catch a movie later. There’s a new romantic comedy I’ve been dying to see.”
I smiled apologetically. “That sounds great, but I was actually going to go to the hotel.”
“It’s our day off,” she whined. “The hotel will still be there tomorrow, but my tan is fading fast. It might not be there tomorrow if I don’t touch it up today.”
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but I need to go in to make sure things are running smoothly. We can’t afford any mishaps right now.” Our position was too precarious. It made more sense to me now why Blake showed me the numbers for our branch compared to the rest.
Obviously, he was worried there were going to be cuts made if we didn’t start performing better immediately. He wouldn’t have taken time out of what had to be a super busy schedule to help us improve our performance otherwise.
Tiffany, as the first person to have been afraid we were going to lose our jobs, had to understand why I wanted to go to work despite it being my day off. She rocked her head from side to side, then shrugged.