Revenge Best Served Hot
Page 19
When she merely nodded, he couldn’t stand it any longer. “I screwed up, Kate. Bigtime. I should have been honest with you from the beginning. And then the other day…I think I knew I was wrong the minute I started flinging accusations, but I—”
“I know.”
What was it she thought she knew? Before Brody could ask, however, an impeccably dressed young man came down the hallway.
“They’re ready for you, Mr. Flynn.”
“Okay. We’ll be right in.”
Half a dozen men and women waited inside the conference room. Representatives from the hospital, the city, and the architectural firm, all eager to hear what he had to say. Chicago General’s president, Dan Ballantine, rose to his feet and was the first to greet them, pumping Brody’s hand enthusiastically, even as he looked nervous. Brody made the necessary introductions and they all took their seats. Except for him. He remained standing and cleared his throat. It was time.
“Thank you all for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. I know the cryptic email I sent out last night must have raised a lot of concerns, so I’ll get right down to business. My plans for the Stuart & Teresa Abbott Trauma Center haven’t changed. I remain committed to the project that will bear my late parents’ names. I have every intention of following through on the promises I’ve made to build the multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art addition on the adjacent land that I’ve already acquired, but the timeline has been delayed.” Despite the ache in his chest, he knew he was doing the right thing when he added, “For at least another year, possibly two.”
He’d crunched the numbers. Crunched them again. It would take time to liquidate enough of his resources to cover the entire cost on his own without the money from the sale of Douglass’s assets.
The reactions to his announcement were pretty much what he’d anticipated. Mouths dropped open, brows rose, murmurs of disappointment erupted from the room’s occupants. He didn’t care about the reactions of those sitting around the oblong table. He only cared about the woman seated next to him. Her reaction was the only one that mattered to him. He turned to Kate now. She appeared surprised, but not quite as confused as he’d expected her to be under the circumstances. Her words explained why.
“I take it the trauma center is the good use you once told me you had for the money you stand to make from selling off the company’s assets,” she said slowly. Beyond that, however, he couldn’t gauge her response.
“Yes, it is.”
The meeting lasted another half an hour, during which Brody answered questions as best he could. All the while he felt Kate’s eyes on him. For better or worse, he had her full attention.
When the meeting concluded and the others filed out of the boardroom, Brody stayed back. He placed a hand on Kate’s arm as she started to brush past him.
“Got a minute?”
…
Kate returned to the seat she’d occupied. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess, her emotions caroming around in her head like ping-pong balls. Brody Flynn was full of surprises. The investigator’s findings had been merely the tip of the iceberg. Just when she thought she understood him, understood his motives, he’d thrown her for another loop. He wanted to turn his family’s tragedy into hope for others in similar circumstances. Altruism was certainly a more fitting legacy for the Abbotts than revenge. She was proud of him.
He cleared his throat as he took the seat next to hers and then pulled something from his pocket, which he handed to her.
The picture of his family was worn around the edges, telling her he’d carried it with him for a long time. She studied the faces of the people in the photograph, recognizing Brody right away despite the fact that he would have been a teenager at the time it had been taken. He’d been handsome even then, the promise of a strong build evident in his broad shoulders, although his frame had been more wiry than ripped.
His sisters, who would have been in grade school, wore matching blue-and-white-striped dresses, their similarly gap-toothed smiles stretching ear to ear. But the faces that intrigued Kate the most belonged to the man and woman seated with the three children. Brody’s parents: Stuart and Teresa Abbott. She closed her eyes, felt her throat constrict as she recalled the details she’d read just a few days earlier about the accident. Their car had been struck broadside by an eighteen-wheeler, one of Douglass’s fleet. The driver had fallen asleep. He’d been on the road for nearly seventeen hours at the time of the accident. Stuart and Teresa Abbott had died at the hospital despite heroic efforts to save them.
“I’m so sorry about what happened to your parents. And I’m sorry for the role Douglass’s policies played in their deaths. I get why you’re so angry with my father, Brody. Why you targeted the company in the first place. I can only imagine how you must have felt. How you still must feel. Which is why I don’t understand why you did what you just did, pushing back the groundbreaking on the trauma center.” She handed him the photograph. “Care to enlighten me?”
“It’s just as I said. It’s a multimillion-dollar project. It’s going to take me a little more time than anticipated to put together the necessary financing.”
The reason dawned suddenly. “Because you’ve decided not to chop up the company and sell it off.”
“Your ideas will work. They already are. I have no doubts as to your ability to make Douglass a success. And, as soon as the papers can be drawn up, I’m going to sell it…to you.”
Another time such news would have made her jump for joy. It was what she’d set her sights on. But right now, it left her cold. He was sacrificing everything. For her. She couldn’t let him do it.
“No.”
“No?”
“Chop it up.”
“What?”
“I know you had buyers lined up for a lot of the more profitable assets. We should contact them today. I’d be willing to bid on the Chicago holdings.” She could start the company over. Begin again the way her great-grandfather had almost ninety-two years ago. “But the rest can go.”
“What? No!” He looked almost scandalized when he said, “I can’t believe you’re saying that.”
She couldn’t quite believe it, either, but she meant it. Nothing was more important to her than Brody and his happiness. She was exorcising the demons of her past. The grief over her mother. The strain that unresolved grief had caused between her and her father. She wanted him to do the same. Otherwise any future they could have together would always be dictated by the past.
“The trauma center is too important. Let’s find a way to stick to your original timeline.”
“Why would you do this? After everything I’ve put you through.” His expression, so earnest, so vulnerable, touched her battered heart and helped it heal.
“It’s what your parents—what your entire family deserves.”
“They were good people. Kind. Generous. They wouldn’t be happy with me for what I’ve done, especially since I’ve claimed to be doing it on their behalf.” Kate watched his Adam’s apple bob almost convulsively as emotions played over his handsome face. Then he continued, “I’ve figured out some things over the past few months. First of all, revenge is a poor choice as a career objective. I’ve spent so many years planning how best to pay back your father that I forgot to plan my own future. Beyond destroying your dad, I didn’t think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I sure as hell didn’t think about a relationship. Then I met you and…”
The beginnings of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. He reached for her hand, kissed the back of it before resting it against his heart. “When I sealed the deal on Douglass, I thought I had everything I wanted. But I was wrong. You’re everything thing I want. Everything I need.”
“Oh, Brody.”
He squeezed her hand. “You’ll never know how deeply I regret hurting you, Kate.” It wasn’t just him; they’d hurt each other. But before she could tell him that, he was saying, “There’s only one thing to do now, as far as I can see.”
“To make it up to you. I love you, Kate. It started when you chased me down in the parking garage and asked me to give you a job. And I’m still falling. Every day. I don’t ever want to stop.”
Kate’s heart burst with emotions too numerous to process. But one stood out above the rest. It was the one that made this moment so precious and perfect. Getting to this point hadn’t been easy for either of them. But the reward was worth the heartache they’d risked. “I don’t want you to ever stop, either, Brody. I love you, too.”
Epilogue
“Happy?” Kate asked as she and Brody arrived for the trauma center’s grand opening on a sunny day in May.
Through the SUV’s windshield, he spied his sisters chatting with Seth and others assembled near a red ribbon that stretched in front of wide sliding doors that would soon improve the survival rates for the severely injured who entered through them.
“Happy” wasn’t the right word for the emotion he was feeling, but he nodded anyway. He wasn’t surprised when Kate reached across the SUV’s console for his hand, stopping him before he could get out. Her expression told him she understood.
“It’s a lot to process,” she said.
Indeed it was.
So much had happened since he’d set into motion his plan two years earlier to take over Douglass Shipping Solutions and use the money from its sale to build the facility on land that had once housed an office high-rise. Looking back now, he hardly recognized the man he’d been then: one so driven by grief-fueled revenge that he’d nearly let the best thing to ever happen to him slip through his fingers. He tightened his hold on Kate’s hand now. The diamond on the ring he’d placed on her third finger pressed into his palm. In less than two months, she would be his wife.
Already they were partners in the company, which had been renamed Douglass-Flynn Logistics after she’d used her trust fund to buy into the business. It was her investment, as well as a very generous and unexpected donation from her father, that had prevented the delay in the trauma center’s construction.
Brody wouldn’t say he and Jonathon were close, but they had one thing in common: they both loved Kate.
His parents would have, too. He glanced at the large sign affixed to the side of the main doors: The Stuart & Teresa Abbott Trauma Center. Finally, something good had come from their tragic deaths.
Two things, really, he thought as his gaze moved to the beautiful, smart, and amazing woman next to him.
“Have I told you today how much I love you?”
“This morning when I joined you in the shower,” she replied, her smug expression reminding him of an encounter so heated it could have steamed up the vanity mirror even if the water sprinkling over them had been freezing cold.
He leaned over and kissed her. “Well, I’m going to tell you again and again, every day for the rest of our lives.”
Kate smiled. “And I’ll be saying it right back.”
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About the Author
Jackie Braun is the author of more than thirty romance novels. She is a three-time Rita finalist, four-time National Readers’ Choice Awards finalist, and was short-listed for RT’s Series Storyteller of the Year in 2008. In real life, she is happily married to her own hero and the proud mom of two sons.
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