by Ellie Danes
MTS was the best damn medical technology firm, and that wasn’t even just my opinion. The numbers didn’t lie. It was a fucking fact.
I knew that I shouldn't really care what they thought.
I shouldn't have cared if I pissed off a few people. Hell, didn't all CEOs do that from time to time? No board was ever happy with their CEO. I would have been perfectly within my parameters—it was practically in my job description. My dad sure as hell had pissed off people. I didn’t know why I gave a shit if I hurt a few feelings along the way. I should have told them that if they didn’t like me, or the way my company did business, they could take their asses over to BioResearch.
But even as I hated caring, I cared.
I blamed my dad. I blamed how fucking perfect he’d always been at managing the business he built. I blamed him for how hard it was to live up to him.
As soon as the elevator dinged and opened to the top floor of the building, I stepped out. It was hot as shit on the top floor.
“Can someone please turn the heat down?” I asked as I pounded quickly toward my office. I knew someone would hear me. And they did, as one person scrambled to get on the phone and call maintenance.
I pulled my overcoat off and slung it over my arm as I walked toward the large fogged glass door that read Ian Cross CEO just beside it.
I had only just gotten the heart to take Dr. John Cross off the sign a couple of months ago.
Shaking the thought off, I kept going. I didn’t have time to be sad. After the long Starbucks trip, I didn’t have time for anything.
Walking in, I immediately looked to my left — and surprisingly, there was no Skype call. No foul-faced, angry board member to worry about. I smiled. “Off to a good start, I suppose.”
I tossed my jacket onto the couch on the far side of the room and trekked toward my desk. Honestly, the only thing I really wanted to think about was that gorgeous woman I’d seen at Starbucks.
There was something about her.
She was probably the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen. Plus, she must have been kind. I mean hell, I was embarrassed that I had forgotten my wallet. Really, how many times had that cashier probably heard the same ridiculous excuse? People used that all the time to get free stuff, I was sure. But that woman took some sort of pity on me. Even though I hated pity and never felt like I needed it, in this particular case, it hadn’t been completely unwelcome.
I wasn’t sure if I was willing to accept her pity because she was incredibly gorgeous, or if it was because I really did appreciate her gesture. Maybe it was a mix of both. I still didn’t know her name. I hadn’t gotten her number. My oversight bothered me.
The old single me would have made sure to get her number and, at the very least, her damn name! What the hell was this job doing to me? Was I even me anymore? Or was I my old man?
She had been so nice, but I’d turned away and then she was gone. All because I was taking a damn phone call.
Before becoming CEO, I’d made it a point to explore the possibility of dating each and every beautiful woman that I encountered. I called it my very own exploration of the world. I never knew what sort of beautiful butterfly I was going to uncover, or what mystery there was to solve about a woman.
Sadly, for me, though, the only mystery I had for the gorgeous red-head from the coffee shop was what her fucking name was. I wondered why I hadn’t paid more attention to her name being called. I’d purposely said my own in front of her.
I sighed. I wondered who she was, and what she liked to do for fun.
She’d seemed great, and she was damn sexy.
There was something about that hair — that fiery red and gold hair. It was unique. It fell in soft silky curls and draped over her shoulders in a lusciously effortless sort of way.
I think the effortlessness of her hair was what made her even hotter, actually. It made her irresistibly attractive; it made her something worth seeking after.
And she’d seemed so nice. I wanted to pay her back, to thank her more properly than I had. To show her how much I really did appreciate her kindness.
Daydream over. Like a bi-polar businessman, I grumbled as soon as I turned on my computer and saw my inbox. I had to get to work.
It was in the large stack of legal documents that littered my desk that I finally lost all thoughts related to anything other than work. There was so much. Sure, I always had quite a bit of paperwork to deal with on the computer — but this stack, it was different. This stack came from a big-deal customer, who always wrote up his own contracts, and on paper, too. I’d say he was old-school, and Dad would always laugh at the comment.
Even though I had an entire sales and legal department equipped to deal with matters like this, he’d proposed that since he wrote the contracts himself, I should look at them… myself. Just like my father had.
Normally, I would have said yes and then passed this off to someone else, but this one always felt different. If we kept him happy, it meant a lifetime of excellent sales. It also gave me a sense of doing something my father used to do, in the exact same manner. I was the CEO now, and I had a responsibility to the company, and I felt responsible for keeping some things the way Dad had them. For better or for worse.
I sighed and flipped through the papers. Yep, this particular mound of papers was probably enough to completely wrack my brain and pull me from any sort of thoughts, work or otherwise. Hell, it might have even warped my sense of time.
After I had tackled a good bit of the stack, I finally looked up. My eyes were heavy and tired. I felt like I’d been staring, unblinking, into the red-hot intensity of the sun. My neck ached, and my back was stiff from being hunched over for god knew how long. I wondered if I looked as bad as I felt…
I wiped my eyes with a sigh that soon turned into a grimace when I looked back down at the desk. I couldn’t feel a sense of accomplishment for even a second— because more emails kept coming in, more calls kept coming in, and more meetings were being scheduled, one after another. The list of shit to do was no shorter than it had been when I started.
I grumbled, feeling completely wrecked. My assistant must have forwarded more work and emails without me even noticing. I glanced at the clock. Four fucking hours had passed. Who the hell could possibly stare at bullshit like this without falling asleep or going certifiably insane?
I sighed. I supposed when I was in the zone, I was in the fucking zone.
I was basically like a machine when I was at work. Like any machine, I required fuel. For me, that fuel came in the form of caffeine. But maybe it wasn’t caffeine I needed—maybe I just really needed to escape my office.
It was funny, really. My office was a corner office, and it was large, with wall to wall windows surrounding my desk. Despite the windows and the incredible view of the city, I felt claustrophobic. I felt closed off from the rest of the world, even though I could see it moving just down below.
I felt like a zoo animal or a goldfish trapped inside a small bowl. I felt like I was on display — like I was right there with it all — but like I couldn’t really move with the world that I was looking at. I couldn’t really be a part of it. How had my dad lived like this? What a shitty existence. I felt a twinge of pity for the old man.
I remembered seeing him in the office all the time, but I never heard him complain. I never saw him hunched over. Just the opposite. He ruled with an iron fist. He got things done. He had people getting things done.
It was time I took on that mentality.
I reached out and hit the button for my assistant, Janice.
“Hey, beautiful,” I said into the speaker. “Could you bring me some caffeine STAT?”
“Don’t say STAT like you’re a doctor,” she joked.
She was right, but as I fingered through the papers and shifted them to the side, I smirked. “Well, I may as well be! All these contracts and the medical terms make me feel like I just went through four years of med school.”
I wasn’t a do
ctor. That was my old man. I had a Master’s degree in Engineering, as well as an MBA, so as qualified as I was for this job, I definitely didn’t have a strong background in medicine. My dad was the medicine guy. But he was also an engineering guy. Most importantly, he had also been one hell of a businessman. He’d earned a Ph.D. in engineering and an MD. He was the superstar of the family, and I would never live up to him. But I wasn’t going down without a fight. I was going to do my best.
Janice came in with a strong smile. She was short and thin, and quite a bit older than me — but she was a beauty. I bet back in her day she’d been a bombshell. But the one thing I knew about her was that she didn’t smile — not like that.
“What’s wrong?” I raised my brows.
She never looked that happy unless she was trying to distract me. Janice and I had known each other for years — I knew when she was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
“Ben Murphy is on the phone.” She smiled even brighter. Almost like she was on laughing gas. Then she shuffled quickly out of the room.
My head fell to the desk with a bang. As well intended as her fake smile was, I would have preferred for her to have frowned at me. Because the more she grinned, the more taunted I felt.
I really didn’t have the time to deal with BioResearch Labs.
Ben Murphy was the son of BioResearch Lab’s CEO, Michael Murphy. Chief Asshole. Whatever Ben wanted had to do with the lawsuit, which was quickly turning into the biggest pain in my ass. I dreaded hearing about it, and I certainly dreaded every single conversation that I had with anyone regarding it.
“Ian Cross,” I said as soon as I picked up the phone.
“Hello, Mr. Cross.” He sounded pleasant enough, but his tone was definitely more business than usual. “I want to keep this brief, no small talk. I hope you’re doing well, but I really wanted to level with you a little.”
I smirked and continued to listen. This was going to be good.
“I wanted to see if there was any sort of agreement that we could come to that would keep us from continuing this lawsuit,” he said. “This has been an ongoing battle, and it’s using up a lot of our resources and time, and I’m sure yours as well.”
He was right. It was an ongoing battle that annoyed me to the core and used up a whole shit load of resources and time that I didn’t really want to spare.
Truth was, it was always one thing after another with the Murphys and the lawsuit. Every day it was like something new, and every time that something new came up, I felt like I was about to have a stroke.
Even days like this, where nothing substantial was going on with the lawsuit, there was still shit to put up with. Being asked to drop a lawsuit that was perfectly within my rights as the CEO of a company that was stolen from, was enough to make my head spin.
In reality, it was nothing to worry about. It was just a question. But I’d lost my patience—with the lawsuit, with the Murphys, and with my new life in general.
Pursuing the lawsuit was difficult. Ben was right about that. I didn’t want the headache or the stress, but it had been important to my dad.
I remembered when I first realized its importance to him. It was a conversation Dad and I had right after my birthday party. The whole office had gotten together in some sort of lame attempt at a surprise party slash soiree. They’d decked the whole top floor of the building up in an immaculate black and white ball theme. It was over the top, and I’d known it was expensive. But then again, it was my dad we were talking about. Everything he did had to be grand and expensive. There really wasn’t a lot of middle ground. How he had managed to keep a stash of cash and his investments sound was a miracle if I’d ever seen one.
He’d always loved to spend money.
I remember going into his office — now, my office — just as everyone was leaving, only to find him in the dark, the whiskey already pulled out.
“Dad?” I’d asked as soon as I came in the room. I reached for the light switch, but he immediately shot a resounding “no” toward the door, halting my movements.
“Come and sit,” he’d said, and I obeyed. I always did.
“Happy birthday, son,” he said with a laugh. “I’m sorry I’m not in a better mood.”
“You’re fine—” I started, but I could see from the lights ablaze outside the window, that he’d held his hand up to stop me.
“I’m not.” He nodded. “I’m bitter. A bitter old man, Ian.”
He twirled his glass between his fingers, palming it, studying it with his eyes through the darkness. “I’m old, bitter, and I’ve let Michael Murphy get away with everything,” he said with a scowl on his face.
Sadly, that scowl was something I’d seen a lot of on him toward the end. That terrible, terrible look of disappointment and anger.
“I’m not letting him get away with this one,” he said before he took a drink of his whiskey. “This one I’m going to have the upper hand on, and he’s going to back down.”
The look he gave me was a terrifying one, and now, it shook me out of the old memory. He’d been determined to make this work, so now it was my responsibility to make it happen.
“I’m sorry, Ben,” I said abruptly, bringing myself back to reality. “I just can’t.”
I didn’t know how else to put it to him. I couldn’t sit there with him all day, explaining it. He wouldn’t have understood anyway, especially considering a lot of it had to do with his own dad.
“I’m not going to drop it.” My voice was stern. I was proud of it. It was the sort of tone that said I meant business. It also was the sort of tone that meant that the conversation was over. I wasn’t going over it again, and I wasn’t explaining it. I couldn’t really explain it, anyway.
“But—” Ben started to say.
I interrupted him. “BioResearch stole MTS’s technology, and you know that they did — there’s no way that I’m dropping this case. You’re using technology from a patent we own, and we’ll prove it.”
Ben was a nice enough guy. He was courteous enough. Very professional. But I could tell that he was a little bit of a hard-ass. He was the type that was pretty easy-going until you pissed him off.
Telling him something that he didn’t want to hear risked doing just that—pissing him off. In reality, he probably just wanted our two companies to get along, and be free of this lawsuit. It wasn’t like I didn’t want all that too, but I couldn’t just turn my back on everything my father had worked so hard on. I couldn’t just give up on something that he had started before he passed.
I couldn’t let it go.
No matter how much I really wanted to — hell, for my own sanity, if nothing else.
Chapter 4
Kate
With a flick of the wrist, I straightened the newspaper out onto the table. The coffee shop was loud, and I couldn’t help but glance up every once in a while, to watch the crowd. Every person was so different. It was one of the things I’d miss about New York—the diversity, the energy of so many people doing so many different things. Or, all doing the same thing, like getting their morning coffee.
A young couple stood in line. They didn’t hold hands; in fact, they didn’t do anything that made them look like a couple. It was an energy about them rather than any physical contact or how they were turned toward each other. That energy was something I wanted with a man.
When I pictured that man, he looked something like the guy I’d “rescued” yesterday, right here in this shop. Maybe I’d meet a man someday who would have that energy with me. Maybe he was waiting for me in San Diego. I smiled for a second and glanced back down at my paper.
I loved indulging in a fresh issue of the Times while sipping from a nice cup of coffee. But instead of the Times, I had some random no-name paper, given to me by a homeless man just down the street.
It was all about urban America, mostly pop culture. Not really my thing, but I couldn’t exactly say no to the guy. When he’d asked me for a couple of bucks in exchange
for a newspaper, I’d figured what the hell.
Besides, now I had something to do with my morning. Rather than rush back to my dad’s place and feel stifled by his expectations, I could sit down, look interested in a newspaper, and take even more time for myself. Maybe the antics of the latest Hollywood breakup weren’t interesting to me, but they were a hell of a lot more interesting than one of my dad’s lectures.
As I pulled my cup to my lips and looked over the top edge of the paper, my gaze fell on a very familiar back and overcoat. The man’s sandy blond hair was still styled just as perfectly as it had been the day before.
His fidgeting was just as bad as it had been, too. Poor guy—he really needed his fix. I giggled under my breath. Should I even bother trying to talk to him again? He wasn’t on the phone. And he was super gorgeous.
But at the same time, he hadn’t seemed very interested in me yesterday.
I wasn’t sure why I was so interested, myself. I had San Diego and a teaching job waiting for me. In six months, I’d be out of here.
I went back to my paper, pulled into the drama of Philip and Jenna’s divorce. I couldn’t remember who Philip and Jenna were, exactly, although one of them looked vaguely familiar. Who paid attention to this stuff? I could barely manage the drama in my own life. Still, the more I read, the more captivated I became with their accusations of trysts and drug abuse. I automatically took sips from my coffee cup as I fell further into their world.
I was in the middle of an anecdote of how Philip had hired a private detective to spy on Jenna when a deep voice interrupted me.
“Hey,” he said, and immediately my head snapped up.
There he stood, the gorgeous wallet-forgetter, staring down at me and smiling.
“Hey,” I smiled back, hoping I didn’t have mocha stains on my upper lip.
“I wanted to at least stop and say hello,” he said. There was something in his eyes. It was almost like he was happy to see me — surprised and happy.