Only when she refused to give way to the man walking towards the podium did she look up into the eyes of her lover.
Ryan … no … Mason.
The scream silenced the crowd. She felt him reach for her, but in the mass of bodies, it was easy to push him away.
The last look before she turned to leave was his stricken face, mouthing the words, “I love you.”
Trustworthiness, honesty and integrity.
All she ever wanted.
All he had destroyed.
Language Barrier
“Quick, get him up there,” Derek hissed to Jade.
“What the hell happened?”
“She’s here.”
“Who?”
“The girl, Ellin. The one who thinks he is some lowly programmer called Ryan.”
“Damn. She saw him?”
“Get him up here, now. He needs to talk to the crowd and get his head in the game or he’ll run back to the desert and we all lose.”
Derek scowled, too many years in building up Mason to be the business leader could not be wrecked by a girl and a man thinking he was in love. Derek had been in love – many times. Only to keep coming back to his true love, his wife.
Girls were everywhere – especially for good looking rich men like Mason. But billion-dollar companies – they were rarer. As much as he genuinely liked Mason, he wanted Mason to be back in charge of Softli, so his billable hours as leading consultant could continue.
“Find her, get her back here, please,” Mason pleaded as Jade led him to the stage.
“How?”
“She will either be heading back to the airport – look for the flights to Adelaide or Alice Springs. Or she’ll be heading to the university. Just find her. Please, tell her I’m not the evil ogre.”
“I’ll find her, just stick to the plan,” a wry smile, “You don’t want to lose your girl and your company in the one day.”
Mason sucked back all the turmoil resigned to doing what he came here to do. Striding to the podium, he turned on the charm for the crowd, removing his tie and throwing it to the front row.
“Enough of treating Softli like a corporate giant. Today, I’m here to say that I’m back. I want to come back and make this company what it once was. But I need your support. I need you to trust me. I need you to believe me when I tell you that I can’t do it alone.”
He looked out, recognizing some of his oldest friends and former staff at the sides. Jade and Derek had issued personal invitations to be ready for an announcement. Only an hour ago did they each get a text giving them the time and place. Speaking directly to them, “I need my team. For those of you who left, either because of the new direction or because you lost faith in me, I ask you to forgive me and give me a second chance.”
Looking for the camera’s, he found the one from the same network that had given him Ellin. “I am the same man you once knew and trusted. Give me a second chance, let me prove myself to you. I promise you, I am committed to you and our success together. Thank you.”
Simple, unscripted. Passionate.
“You stupid fool, do you think she was watching?” Derek hissed at him as they made their way inside and towards the Board room.
“I made my point. How did the share market respond?”
Susannah joined them, “Can you please give me a heads up before you go rogue, next time?”
“How bad?” Derek asked as they kept walking.
“Not at all. The media loves him, the markets want to trust him. The shareholders welcoming him like a rock star made good footage.”
“Good,” Derek said as they slowed down. “You had your moment to go random. Inside this room, you need to stick to the plan.”
“Yep.”
“Who was the girl?” Susannah asked as Derek opened the door for them.
“The woman I love who now knows who I am and hates me because of it.”
“From the footage I saw, she doesn’t hate you. Now go in and get our company back.”
“Ellin, are you Ellin?” Jade ran up to the gorgeous black girl at the ticket counter.
“Go away.”
“Please, give me a couple of minutes.”
“Are you on his payroll? Does he always send you to get what he wants?”
“He asked me to find you and convince you not to hate him. Just have a coffee with me and think about things before you run away.”
“He sent you instead of coming after me himself?” the girl’s jaw was locked in anger, but the wet paths of dried tears down her face told Jade everything she needed to know.
“You know he needs to be at the meeting. His company has been falling apart without him. They are about to get rid of the CEO and put Mason back where he belongs.”
“I fell in love with Ryan.”
“I didn’t know that. He told me to come and find you. How about I buy you a coffee and you tell me about Ryan, and I’ll tell you about the Mason I know.”
Luckily, all flights to Adelaide were full and Ellin could only get standby tickets so Jade convinced her to have a coffee, which turned into a late lunch. Her phone kept going off, but she didn’t want to break the bond being formed with Ellin.
She could see why Mason loved her.
Equally obvious was how much his lies had hurt her.
“You’d better check those messages,” Ellin nodded to the phone on the table between them.
“Are you sure?”
“Are you worried about him?”
“Of course. He is one of the most decent men I know.”
“Yeah, decent men lie to women and get involved in corporate blood-baths all the time,” Ellin snorted.
“Look, you got to know the man without the suits, without the money or house or any of the crap. What did you find?” Jade pleaded, she wanted this girl to see past her pain and not throw away an amazing man.
“I love Ryan. I loved Ryan – but I loved a lie. He knew how I felt about his company and the man called Mason Winters.” The tears fell again, “He lay inside me while I told a man called ‘Ryan’ that I loved him – he let me love a lie.”
This time, when Ellin left the table, Jade didn’t try and stop her.
What could she say.
“She’s not here,” Maali growled at Mason, pushing away his attempt at a hug.
“I didn’t expect her to be her, I wanted to talk to you. Explain things.” He left the Board meeting as new CEO, arranged a chartered flight direct to Alice Springs and hired a limousine to drive the 200 kilometres to Andamooka Gorge. There was no way Ellin could have beaten him back her, which was the point. Now his truth was out there, he needed to explain to Maali and Birrani.
“I knew there was something. Didn’t expect you to be hiding your true identity.”
“Did you expect we’d welcome you back like a superhero?” Coen and Birrani entered behind him, Coen holding a long metal pipe, hitting it against his palm. “I should take this and shove it where it will always remind you of what you’ve done.”
“And I’d deserve it,” he stood forlornly, shaking his head.
“Who are those people you bought with you?” Maali nodded to his new executive team standing outside in the heat. None of them expected to be travelling half way across the country on their first day in the job.
“I have 100 days to turn my company around. People are relying on me. I needed to be here, so they are here with me to make sure I keep working.”
“Are you really a billionaire?” Birrani asked. “I’ve never even seen a thousand dollars.”
Mason nodded, “I walked away a wealthy man, but not a rich one. The only time I felt rich was when I was plain old Ryan Swan, here with you.”
“Liar,” Coen took a step forward, raising the pipe.
“Stop it!” Maali started before a coughing fit took her breath away. “Go out and get those people out of the heat. Make them comfortable and leave me to talk to Ryan … Mason.”
Mason’s phone rang and after excusing himself from Maal
i, he convinced his first banking customer to give him a second chance.
“Brett, I promise you my team will give you all the support you need. Yep, she is amazing, isn’t she. I’m glad the campaign is working out. Yes, she is the girl on the footage – I’ve been working on a language program for her grandmother. Of course, I’ll get their lawyers to contact yours. Of course, I trust you – it’s your lawyers I don’t trust. Let me get the corporates together and we’ll see what we can do. Just don’t try to screw them, okay?”
“All sorted?” Maali asked as he sat beside her.
“Your lawyers will be getting an offer from the Community Bank.”
“The company that Ellin works for?”
“Yes, they want to sponsor or fund the language program.”
“Why?”
“They were my first customer, and they owe me – I also owe them. They were also the first customer to cut ties with Softli after I left.”
“I figure you changed their mind.”
“I promised I would turn things around, make sure my team looks after them and delivers what we promised.”
“Like you keep all your promises.”
“I love her. Whatever you think of my name, who did you know when I was living here? Did you see me as some rich, selfish bastard or did you see me as the man.”
Mason stood up, angry with himself and the world, “Yes, I made a profit when Softli went public – but it didn’t change me only how people saw me. I went from being the nerd no one wanted to the rich billionaire all women saw as their prize. Not one of them wanted to know me – only what I could do for them.”
“I lost my company, my identity, my privacy and I need to get away. I saw you and Ellin on that interview and knew I could still make a difference in the world.”
“You came here.”
“Damn right, I came here and changed my name because I wanted to be known for me, not my name or money. Do you think Ellin would have given me two minutes of her time if she knew I was the rich bastard she saw on the news and hated?”
“You never gave her a chance.”
“By the time we fell in love, I didn’t know how to tell her,” he sunk to the floor. Kneeling at her feet for forgiveness. “I still don’t know how to tell her. I love her, I want her to be my wife and partner.”
“Her brothers will never forgive you, or give you permission.”
“They will, if you convince them. You know me. You knew there was a secret and even that she might hate me. Please, Maali, I’m begging you.”
“She will never accept the money that goes with loving you. It isn’t in her nature. It will eat at her, and she will want you to give it all away.”
“Then let me give it away. Let me give a chunk of it to a foundation, in your name, to put the language program into classrooms and build new programs for other languages.”
“Just like that.”
“Maali, if I have to choose between money and Ellin, it isn’t even a choice.”
His phone rang again. Torn between saving his company and convincing Maali to forgive him.
“I can’t stop loving her, but I’m asking for your blessing to try and make her forgive me.”
The phone went through to voicemail while he stood, waiting for the old woman to consider his plea.
Maali had seen a lot in her life. She had seen babies taken from their mothers’ arms and raised in group homes. She had welcomed them back as broken adults. She watched as Ellin’s father came into town, sweeping her only daughter off her feet in love, baring him three children before he left.
As her own health worsened, she had learned to forgive the crimes of the past, looking forward with hope and resilience rather than bitterness. The three people she loved the most lived under her roof, and God willing, would be at her bedside when she joined the elders passed.
The man standing in front of her had committed a crime against her family. But it took courage to come back and face the wrath of Ellin’s brothers, and her own judgement.
The suspicions she held about him were all faded now. She not only heard his truth, she felt it.
“Boys,” she called until Coen and Birrani rejoined them. Such responsibility rested on her shoulders as they looked to her for how to treat this man who had hurt and betrayed their sister.
Life was short. Too short to live with regret and without love.
She extended her hand, “Mason, good to meet you. I understand you want to talk to my grand-sons and I about marrying my grand-daughter.”
“Mason,” his new assistant, Tara interrupted them. “You need to get back to Sydney – some of the institutional shareholders have called a meeting and need you to address them or they are pulling their investments.”
“What does Derek say?”
“Excuse my language,” Tara threw a sheepish look at Maali, “He told me to get your f’ing ass back to Sydney before the meeting.”
“Can they do that?” he looked to Maali, wanting to thank her but not knowing the words.
“I guess so. They are refueling your plane. It will be ready to leave as soon as we get back to Alice.”
“Maali,” he hugged her, “Thank you, I need to sort this out and then I promise you I will do everything in my power to get Ellin to forgive me.”
“Tell her, you have my blessing.”
“If you see her first …” his voice cut out.
“I will. Now go and save that company – what do you expect, that I give my grand-daughter away to a penniless quitter?”
He tried to sleep on the plane, instead calling Jade and insisting she replay her conversation with Ellin again.
Almost 48 hours of travel across the country and back again. Ellin wasn’t taking his calls and Jade couldn’t give him any hope.
“She’s hurting – give her time.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know, Mason. How much did she love you.”
“Not as much as I love her, but enough for her to turn to hate.”
“She doesn’t hate you, you didn’t give her a chance to know you.”
He couldn’t argue with a smart woman, especially one who called him out on his behavior. “How bad is the shareholder meeting going to get?”
“Pretty messy. You have all the small shareholders on your side, but it is the big investors who wanted the corporate direction. They are concerned that what they see as the big gains in your absence will be lost.”
“Staff cutbacks and lost clients,” he snarked.
“Cost of labor and cutting low margin clients.”
“Damn them,” as he saw the Sydney skyline take shape, he turned his focus away from Ellin and towards his company. Jade was right, he couldn’t lose his company and his girl. Once he had proven to the world that his place was at Softli, all his attention could be on finding Ellin and winning her back.
By the time she arrived home, everyone was asleep. Ellin packed up her canvases, paints and camp gear. She didn’t head out to the Gorge where she usually got her inspiration. Instead, she drove west, to the desert. No scrub, no houses, no people. No phone reception and no temptation to answer his calls, hear his lies and forgive him.
What he did was unforgivable.
He knew how she felt about Mason Winters, darling of the tech press. He let her ramble on as if she knew him – all the while laughing at her. What a joke. She thought she hated the man when he was sitting in front of her, next to her at dinner, lying next to her as they slept.
How the hell was she supposed to move past this.
He tricked and lied to her, and her family.
Maali! Ellin couldn’t even think of facing her grandmother and ask for forgiveness. Because of her naivety and stupidity, her family let a stranger into their home, introduced him to their world and trusted him with their language.
By sleeping during the heat of the day, Ellin managed to stretch her week’s supply of food and water to almost 10 days and 15 completed canvases.
Looking at them laid out on the ground, she considered them some of her finest work. Clearly, anger, pain and art were the perfect match.
Now, she needed to get them to the Desert Mob exhibition for the final week. She wanted others to see the beauty and pain in her art, to be inspired by the desert rising in the morning sun, and the depths of the evening shadows.
She had already laid her heart and soul bare to Mason, what harm could come from sharing it with the world.
“Miss, are you okay?” Ellin awoke to an old stockman peering through the broken windscreen.
“I think so,” she tried to undo her seatbelt, but couldn’t use her wrist. “I think I need help …”
She woke up again in a white hospital bed, her left arm strapped to her side, her other hand feeling the bandages around her head and side.
“Ellin, thank goodness, not you, too,” Coen broke into tears at her bedside when she groaned.
“Where am I?”
“Elli, it was bad. You blew a tyre and hit the only bloody tree in miles. Your car is totaled, and your easel sliced through all your paintings before stabbing you in the back.”
“So, what’s the good news?” She couldn’t think about her car or paintings, the hurt from her heart now covered her whole body. “What do you mean I was stabbed?”
“The leg of the easel went through the seat and into you. What were you doing out there?”
“Running away, I guess. Didn’t work. Does gran know I’m here?” She saw a second chair with a folded-up blanket.
“Gran’s in a room down the hall. Elli, I don’t know how to tell you,” Coen sobbed. “We were trying to find you when we got the call you were here. They bought her here last night – gran had a stroke and now she’s in a diabetic coma.”
Suddenly, her world that was already shattered, evaporated into dust.
Her phone buzzed on the bedside table. Coen looked at it, “Him. Again.”
“I can’t – not while …” then she too cried, for the love she had lost and the grandmother she couldn’t bare to lose.
Money Can’t Buy
A Billion Reasons Why_Billionaire romance Page 9