Counting On You (Counting the Billions, #2)

by Lexy Timms

  The idea of doing that, though, left me feeling cold inside. What the hell would I do with myself if I had nothing I needed to do with my day-to-day life?

  No, that wasn’t the way to solve this. Instead, I’d just focus on work to the exclusion of everything else. More late nights so that I wouldn’t have to spend as much time home alone in the house. I’d send Abby home if I had to. Order her to leave. Whatever it took. Eventually, she would get the idea.

  With that in mind, I took a deep breath and opened up my emails, scrolling through for anything important. I had until Abby came back after lunch to compose myself. Then, we would have a quick discussion about that afternoon’s plan, and then we would be in meetings. I needed to stay focused.

  But I was dragged away from my business focus when a new message came in from Austin. I grimaced, already worried to click on the link. Austin was good about sending me the latest stories about myself so that I would see them before anyone else commented on them. But that didn’t mean I always wanted to open the stories he sent me.

  Especially not on a day when it already felt like I had been kicked halfway to New York before I’d even gotten out of bed that morning.

  I sighed and clicked on the link, though, knowing there was no putting it off. Abby was on her lunch break, so for all I knew, she might have already seen this. Whatever it was.

  I grimaced when I saw the header image. It was a picture of me, plastered at the top of the article, as I was leaving work the previous day—actually a series of three images pasted side by side—just before I had gotten in the car with Austin.

  Didn’t the media have anything better to do? What the hell kind of story did they think they could make out of that anyway? Would the article talk about how I was slacking off, heading home early? As though I didn’t put in enough hours at this business. But it wouldn’t be the first time they had accused me of caring more about partying than business.

  Fortunately, most of the guys I did business with were more than willing to let my actions speak for me. I had never, once, slacked off as far as they were concerned.

  I grimaced. That was even more reason to not let something like this morning happen ever again. I had a reputation to protect, and the last thing I needed was people thinking I was so busy partying until late at night that I couldn’t get myself to the office first thing in the morning like everyone else.

  But the article wasn’t about my work ethic at all. Or at least, not directly. Instead, it was all about my relationship with Abby James. I groaned, hoping beyond hope that Abby hadn’t seen this. Would she be angry with me all over again? It wasn’t my fault that the press were all over us. What could I have done differently to protect her from this? I didn’t have a easy answer for that one.

  But I couldn’t help remembering those stupid words I had said before, when her brother was worried about her coming to work for me. Words that Gerrard had echoed the night I’d hit him at the bar. I had told her that I used articles like this to keep my company in the news, to keep us at the top of the search results.

  Would she think I was the one behind the article? The timing couldn’t have been worse.

  I read on. The article was a bunch of bullshit about how I’d been dumped by my recent fling, my advisor. An anonymous source claimed that I had been known to have other quick relationships with my employees before they cast me aside. That Abby wasn’t the first person to find herself in this position.

  There was speculation about what I would do now. Would I manage to keep working with Abby? Would she even want to stay on as my advisor now that she had grown bored with me? Would she maybe take a different position with McGregor Enterprises, or would she head to a different company? And if she did leave her position as advisor, would I replace her with someone even sexier next time?

  I felt sick to my stomach even though I knew that none of it was true. Just the thought that someone would write all of this, I couldn’t believe it. It was one thing to have the press speculating on my work-to-party ratio. But to have them talking about my relationships, things that they clearly didn’t know the first thing about, and then slandering me by talking about how this wasn’t the first time I’d had relationships like this with my employees?

  I suddenly knew that this wasn’t just the work of some bored member of the paparazzi, though. No, this smacked of Gerrard. I sighed and put my head down in my hands, wondering just how to approach this. The trouble was that I didn’t have any proof. And Gerrard wasn’t stupid; he wouldn’t ever admit to having gone to the press about this. Or he’d figure out some way to twist things, say that the press were just being too free with the words he’d said, that he hadn’t meant to insinuate that.

  And the person who wrote the article would never give up their sources, either. I knew that from previous stories that had been posted about me. They knew that as soon as they gave up someone like Gerrard, they were never going to get another story from him. So they’d keep going back for more and more.

  Gerrard would probably never run out of stories to tell them about me. Especially not if he kept fabricating them as he went.

  I spared another moment of pity for myself over having ended up in this position. Gerrard had been a loyal employee of the company for more than two decades. And he’d been my advisor for the last five. But somewhere along the line, he must have wanted something more, and I must have missed the signs of it. He had started going to the press, selling them stories, telling them my whereabouts. All for a little bit of an extra paycheck.

  I’d had to fire him when I found out what he was doing. But that hadn’t made that decision any easier. And now, he was practically goading me into taking him to court over all of it. I hated the idea of doing that, almost as much as I hated myself for having punched the man in a fucking bar.

  Why had things had to go this way? What the hell had I ever done wrong by him?

  I pressed my fingers against my eyelids, trying to deny the next thought that came into my head: Were things going to go just as wrong with Abby? It honestly felt like we couldn’t be far off from some personal apocalypse already, with the way that things had been going between us. I hated the idea that she might never want to talk to me again. That she might want to sabotage me, moreover.

  But that was a distinct possibility, I realized miserably. I never should have found someone that I liked and hired them on as an advisor. It would be so much easier if we had just been on terrible terms right from the start, if we had always been fighting about what to do with the company or something, even though I knew that would make the whole role of advisor counterproductive. No, that was just wishful thinking.

  At the same time, though, why did it have to be Abby? Why couldn’t we have met in some other way, so that she could have actually seen me outside of my business dealings and the media trail I left in my wake?

  I sighed, feeling my sour mood from the previous night come crashing back full force. And in that moment, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to sit through an afternoon of meetings. I should be there. This company was my responsibility. But no.

  “I’m going home,” I muttered to Erin as I passed her on the way out of the building.

  “But what about your meetings?” she called after me. “Should I cancel them?”

  I shrugged but didn’t turn back to her. “Let Abby decide what she wants to do,” I called back, just wanting to get out of there. It was everything I had sworn I would never do. But in that moment, I realized that I didn’t have a choice. If I couldn’t handle being there with Abby by my side, polite and professional and more distant than ever, then I couldn’t be there.

  I could do some of my work from home anyway, I reminded myself as the car pulled up at my mansion. It wouldn’t replace my presence in all those meetings, but that could at least be explained away by my illness. Or something. The others would handle that.

  I sat down at my desk and tried to force myself to focus. But when I stared at the blank document in fro
nt of me, all I could see was Abby’s face, the small smile she had given me as she headed out to lunch.

  I had failed her just as much as I had failed myself by running away from my problems like this. I wondered if I should call her. But she might be in our afternoon meetings even now. Maybe I could get away with pretending that it was some sort of test for her. Something I would have done to any new advisor.

  Some of the others might buy it. But I knew that Abby would see right through an excuse like that. The decision to go home for the afternoon had already been made, though. Might as well make the best of it.

  Chapter 10

  Abby

  I WAS SHOCKED WHEN I got back to the office after lunch to find out that Daniel wasn’t there anymore. I stared at Erin, wondering if I’d heard her right.

  “I don’t know,” his assistant said, looking uncertain. “I guess he just really wasn’t feeling good today? You saw how he looked when he came in.” She paused. “He told me it’s up to you if you want to go through with the meetings you have this afternoon. I think everyone would be fine with me just canceling all of them, though. We have enough time later in the week that we can reschedule all of them, and it’s not like Daniel habitually takes sick days. He’s allowed to have one every now and then.”

  I nodded at her. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” I told her. “Go ahead and cancel all of them.” I paused, though, wondering if that was really the right course of action. Who knew if Daniel was going to be feeling any better about his meetings later in the week. This could be the very tip of the iceberg, just the start of a downward spiral out of control.

  But I doubted that I was really the cause of a total breakdown. Daniel had an impeccable work record. I was sure he’d be right back into the swing of things by the next day. Or if not, then, well. He could always fire me. Or I could quit, if that was the way things had to be.

  I hated the idea of that. I wanted to keep this job. But I knew that things were clearly difficult for Daniel, and it wasn’t fair for me to keep showing up to work if it made him feel like he couldn’t be here. I wondered if the only reason he hadn’t fired me already was because he was afraid I might try to sue him.

  I sighed, and Erin gave me a sympathetic look. “Well, before you run over there, you should definitely see this,” she said, turning her screen around so that I could see the article on it.

  I frowned, shaking my head. But I realized didn’t want to talk to Erin about the wild claims in the article. It was none of my business if this was a pattern for Daniel. I honestly didn’t believe that it was. From his interactions with his employees, I didn’t think that he had ever slept with any of the rest of them. I knew that he wasn’t the player that the media made him out to be.

  Not only that, but there was plenty of other stuff in this article that was patently false. I hadn’t broken up with Daniel, for one. No, I didn’t believe any of it. And I wasn’t going to let anyone in the office believe that I did.

  “Reschedule this afternoon’s meetings,” I suggested to Erin. “But I’m not going to go rushing right over there. I don’t need to give the paparazzi another reason to gossip about us. And both of us leaving in the middle of the workday would definitely do that.”

  “Sure,” Erin said, but I could see that she was fighting not to grin. “I just figure that at some point today, you might want to go over there and check on him. Or something. But if not, well, that’s totally up to you.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her, remembering what she had said before about how I shouldn’t get involved with Daniel if I didn’t think I could hack the media thing. Now, it almost sounded as though she was encouraging me to chase after him—to go over to his home, no less.

  But I realized, it was just what she expected that any of the employees here would do if they were on good terms with Daniel. Someone needed to look out for the boss who was always looking out for everyone else. And who better to do that than someone the boss actually cared about? The person who had started this whole mess in the first place.

  I didn’t really have a choice. I needed Daniel back to work the next day, or I needed to quit. Better go over there and talk to him about what he was planning on doing.

  I barely made it until 5:00 p.m. before hurrying out of there, but no one remarked on my hasty departure or the fact that I had barely gotten through any of our client files that afternoon. I took the back exit again, glad to see that that secret was still safe. For now, at least.

  As I headed to the McGregor estate in a cab, I wondered if any of this really affected Daniel. It had to, I thought. I had barely made it a few scant weeks with the media’s attention on me before it had all gotten to be too much. But this had been Daniel’s life since he had taken over his father’s company at twenty-two. Since before that, actually, but especially since then.

  I vaguely remembered having seen articles at one point about whether or not Daniel was even fit to take over the company. Whether he’d had enough schooling, whether he really understood the company well enough to make decisions on behalf of it. Whether he was going to drive the whole thing straight into the ground. Whether he cared enough about the company to make the right decisions.

  They said that he only cared about himself. That he would fire half the company and replace them with people his own age, people that he could go out partying with. It was obvious that the people who had said all those things hadn’t really ever known Daniel at all. They had certainly never worked with him.

  But regardless of the veracity of any of it, the stories were out there, and I knew that Daniel had to see at least some of them. He put on such a brave face to the world, as though none of that mattered to him. But I had to wonder what the truth of it was. That had to take its toll on a person after a while. It couldn’t be easy living up on a pedestal like that, with everyone expecting you to fall. To fail.

  It had been so easy for me to tell Daniel that I didn’t want any part of that, that I didn’t want the media circus to become my life. But Daniel himself had never had any say in the matter. He’d never gotten that choice.

  I felt a rush of sympathy for him, even as I knew that the last thing Daniel wanted was for me to pity him. Maybe I shouldn’t go over there right now, though. Maybe I should let him have his peace for once. He certainly deserved it.

  But I needed to know what he was planning, for me and for the company. If he and I could no longer work alongside one another, then I needed to know that now so I could start looking for alternate positions, as much as I hated the idea of that.

  I sighed, staring up at the mansion. It was just as big and intimidating as I remembered it being. Not that I’d gotten much chance to really see the place the last time I’d been there, but just finding the kitchen, despite the delightful smell of food cooking on the stove to guide me, had been enough of a challenge. I still could barely believe that Daniel lived in a place like this all by himself.

  It had to be lonely, I was sure. But that was another bit of pity that Daniel wouldn’t want to know I was feeling for him.

  I shook my head and slipped out of the cab, making my way to the front door. I wondered if I should have asked the driver to wait, but I supposed I could always call for another cab if I needed to. And I liked to think that Daniel would actually agree to talk to me, that he wasn’t just going to send me away straight away.

  Of course, I didn’t even know if he was really in there right now, I realized, feeling foolish as my knock went unanswered. He could have gone anywhere after he’d left the office. Was I stupid for even coming there to check on him?

  I shifted from foot to foot, feeling anxious as I waited for any sort of sign that someone was home. But then again, with a house this big, I supposed it was no surprise that he didn’t hear me knocking. Who knew how far into the labyrinth he might be. I tried the bell and again waited for an answer.

  Still nothing. I chewed at my lower lip, remembering how he had looked when he had shown up at the office that mo
rning. Was he in there right now, drinking himself back to oblivion? I hated the idea of putting off the conversation that I knew he and I needed to have. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to see if he actually deigned to show up at the office or not.

  Slowly, I reached out and tried the handle. The place was unlocked. Surely that meant he was home, somewhere in there? If I could find him and he didn’t want to see me, then he could throw me out. But I really needed to talk to him. Before I lost my grit.

  I slipped inside, taking another deep breath when I was inside the front door. I tried not to giggle as I wondered if he perhaps had alarm systems set up that I had just triggered. I knew the sound of my laugh would probably echo down the marble floors, and I didn’t really need to know how empty the place must feel every night when Daniel came home alone.

  I wandered down the hallways, peeking into various rooms as I went. Half the rooms didn’t even look like they were ever in use. Oh, they were clean enough, no sheen of dust. But they looked too perfect, as though they could have come from a catalogue or something. I shook my head and wandered on.

  I finally found Daniel up on the second floor. I stood in the doorway staring at him, unable to help myself. He was lifting weights in his personal gym and didn’t seem to notice that I had shown up there. For a moment, I could only watch him. He had discarded his shirt over the handlebar of the nearby stationary bike, and now, his impressively sculpted chest gleamed with a sheen of sweat.

  I wondered how long he’d been going at it. Surely not all afternoon since he had left work? But definitely long enough that he looked like the endorphins had kicked in. He no longer looked quite so pale as he had that morning at the office. No, he looked good now.