This was beyond unprofessional. She could be mad at him, personally, all she wanted, but when she screwed with his business, it made Stephen see red. He glared at Judy as if she was an intruder. He didn’t want her here. He wanted Holly here! Hell, if she didn’t want to share his bed, he’d live with that, but he was unwilling to let her get away with this kind of childish behavior around the office, screwing with his business.
Stephen spent most of the day taking out all his anger and frustration on Judy. He criticized her dictation, her coffee, anything and everything that she did. By the end of the day, he was sure that the woman had tears in her eyes, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she quit. At five o’clock, she walked in with a file he requested and gently asked him if there was anything else he needed for the evening or before he left on his trip in the morning.
“I’m not going on any damn trip!” he snapped. “You’ll be needed here again tomorrow and Wednesday.” He lifted his head and glared at her. “Will that be a problem?”
Judy visibly swallowed. “No, sir,” she said quietly. “No problem at all.” She was about to turn for the door when she turned back to him and bravely asked, “Do you need me to cancel any of your reservations?”
“No, I’ll take care of it,” he sneered. Judy walked out and closed the door behind her. Stephen was glad to see her go. At least she was being professional, he said to himself. She didn’t go off and take an early holiday like his real assistant did. No, Judy might end up being his new assistant. That thought flitted around in the back of his mind as he worked well into the night once again.
At six the next morning, Stephen woke and called Will.
“Hey, man,” Will said, cheerily. “You ready for some downhill competition?”
“I’m not going,” Stephen said sternly and waited for Will’s response.
“What do you mean you’re not going? What’s going on? I thought we all agreed to take the time off for this!”
“I’ve hit a complication with this new client, and I can’t afford to leave. I’m due on the coast next week, and I’m not ready for it. I’ve been practically living at the office as it is, going over everything with a fine-tooth comb, and I’ve still got a lot of work ahead of me.”
“So delegate some of it, for crying out loud,” Will snapped. “You’re the president of the company; let someone else do some of the grunt work. What does Holly have to say about that? Can’t she help pick up some of the slack?”
“What difference does it make what Holly has to say? She’s not in charge here, I am, dammit!”
The situation was beginning to make sense to Will, but he was smart enough not to comment on it. “Fine, stay home. But you’re going to have to tell Derek because I’m not doing it for you.”
“Who asked you to?”
“Right, you happened to call me to keep me in the loop,” Will said sarcastically. “I’m not an idiot, Stephen. You called me so that I would have to break the news to Derek and deal with the backlash. Well, forget it. You want to wuss out of this trip for whatever reason, fine, but man up and do your own dirty work.”
Stephen didn’t think he was that transparent, but apparently he was. “Fine, I don’t need you to talk to Derek for me. There’s nothing he can say or do that I can’t handle. I kicked his ass once, and I can do it again.” With that, Stephen hung up the phone and dialed Derek’s number.
“Hey, brother” were Derek’s first words. “You almost here? The plane is warming up, and we are going to have beautiful flying weather.”
“I’m not going,” Stephen said defiantly. Derek was silent. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you,” Derek snapped. “Why the hell not? I’ve got everything freakin’ planned and waiting. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Stephen’s back went ramrod straight. He hated having to explain himself to anyone, and he knew that if Derek were here right now, they’d be exchanging blows. “Nothing’s wrong with me,” Stephen snapped. “I happen to have a business to run, and something’s come up. No one’s telling you that you can’t go, so get off my back!” He hung up without waiting for Derek’s reply.
Throwing his cell phone down, Stephen went into his bathroom, showered, changed, and got ready for the day. By the time he came out thirty minutes later, there had been more than a dozen missed calls on his cell—most of them were from Derek, but there were a few from Will.
“Screw them,” he mumbled and went about starting his day. When Judy arrived, he instructed her that if either Derek or Will called, she was to tell them that he was tied up. He didn’t want to speak to either of them and had long since shut off his cell phone.
His mood stayed black all day long, and by the time Judy came in to say good night, her frustration with him was evident. “I’ll need those Texas files on my desk by noon on Friday, Judy,” he said without looking up at her.
“I won’t be here on Friday, Mr. Ballinger,” she said, barely concealing her disgruntlement.
“What?”
“The company is closed on Friday for the holiday, and I’m sorry, but I cannot change my plans to be here,” she said it firmly, but upon closer inspection, Stephen could see that she trembled a little bit.
“Fine,” he sneered. “Leave me high and dry, like Holly. Pretty soon maybe we’ll all be without a job because no one wanted to be bothered doing their job!” Judy walked out and shut the door loudly behind her.
Stephen wanted to feel guilty about treating her so poorly, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Dammit, why was he the only one who was concerned with this company?
* * *
Early Monday morning, Will and Derek arrived at the office, sure that they were arriving before any of Stephen’s employees. They had seen that his car was in the parking garage, so they were confident they would find him in his office.
Without knocking, they walked in and found him asleep on his office couch in wrinkled clothes. “What the hell?” Will said, noting the takeout containers littering the office and the trash and dirty clothes lying about.
“This contract must be brutally important for him to be freakin’ living here,” Derek murmured, kicking a pile of clothes aside as he walked over to the sofa. He said Stephen’s name, and when he didn’t immediately wake up, Derek gave him a slight shake.
“What the…?” Stephen said as he sat up. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t alone, and he was shocked to see who his company was. “What do you want?” he snapped, standing up and walking to the bathroom without waiting for an answer.
Taking pity on him, Will started to pick up the trash and place it all in the office kitchen’s large pail. He found Derek sitting behind Stephen’s desk with his fingers laced behind his head when he walked back into the office at the same time Stephen exited the bathroom.
“So what is going on with this project that you have to skip a vacation and freakin’ sleep in your office?” Derek asked. “You missed one hell of a weekend, by the way.” Stephen didn’t respond. Derek went on to talk about the twins he had slept with and the waitress who had “serviced” him in the men’s room of his favorite restaurant.
Stephen felt sick but noticed that Will was leaning against a bookcase taking it all in, not sharing any stories of his own. “No, seriously, man, what’s going on here?” Derek asked.
There was a noise in the outer office, and Stephen about tripped over his own two feet running out, hoping that it was Holly. “Judy?” he roared. “Where the hell is Holly? Why isn’t she back?” His friends sat silently and looked from one another to Stephen and back again as Stephen ranted and raved about Holly not being there.
Mumbling to himself and forgetting that he wasn’t alone, Stephen said, “This is beyond childish. All I wanted to do was spend some time with her, and now she’s going to be spiteful and screw with my business? I don’t think so. I cannot believe th
at I thought about marrying her!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa…wait a minute,” Will said, breaking off Stephen’s tirade. “What did you say?”
Stephen quickly turned toward Will, his eyes a little crazed. “What?”
“You said that you were thinking about marrying Holly!”
“I knew it, I freakin’ knew it,” Derek said snidely. “You’ve been screwing her all along, and you had the audacity to lie to me and deck me in a bar over it? What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Will stood in front of Derek to block Stephen’s view of him because he could tell that Stephen was ready to deck him again. “Stephen, what is going on?”
As much as Stephen wanted to howl and wail for them to get out, he needed to be honest with them. All the solitude he had experienced in the past week was making him crazy. He was slowly going insane, sick of his own company and finally beginning to see it.
Within minutes he spilled out the whole story, from the weekend of their fight at the bar until the day Holly left for her trip early. “The thing is I don’t know what happened,” he said miserably. “I mean, we had plans for dinner, and sometime between when she left the office and I got to her house, her whole attitude changed. There was no warning—one minute she was mine, the next she wasn’t.” He sat down on the couch, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. It felt good to say it all to someone other than himself.
“What are you going to do?” Will asked.
“What can I do? She won’t come in. I have a feeling that Judy is going to end up being my assistant by default—if I haven’t scared her away by now with my ranting and raving like a lunatic for the past week.” He sighed angrily. “I don’t know if she’s even back from visiting her parents, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to go to her and beg. If she wants to end things, then that’s fine. She could have had the decency to tell me to my face rather than running away and leaving me hanging—both personally and with the business.” He knew it was a lie and was pretty sure his friends saw through him too.
Without warning, Derek stood and walked out. Stephen shrugged, but Will stared at the office door curiously. “He doesn’t understand,” he tried to say in defense of their friend.
“It doesn’t matter,” Stephen said. “I don’t give a damn about Derek and his opinion. This isn’t about him, anyway, no matter how much he likes to make everything about himself. I’m pissed, and I’m disappointed, and I guess I always knew going in that this wasn’t going to work. A man can’t have a successful career and run a business and have a relationship, a marriage. It doesn’t work.”
Then Derek walked back in holding a bag of ice. “What are you doing?” Will asked.
Derek went and stood right in front of Stephen.
“Hit me,” he said flatly.
“What? Why?”
“Trust me, hit me.”
Stephen looked at Derek and then at Will. “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” Will shook his head.
Derek sighed loudly. “Look, I’m the reason Holly broke things off. I called her house that day and told her that you were looking to cool things down and that it would be best for everyone if you came on this vacation where I was handling the entertainment.”
Suddenly, everything made sense. Stephen could picture it all and realized why Holly had reacted the way she did. But why wouldn’t she say something to him about it? Why didn’t she discuss it with him first?
He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. If Holly had truly cared about him, she would have fought for him a little more. They had never had a serious conversation about where this was all leading, and he knew now that had been a mistake. Then he looked at Derek and realized the reason he never got to have that serious discussion with Holly. Before he could even begin to reconsider, he swung and had Derek lying on the floor at his feet.
“Feel better?” the man wheezed from the floor. Stephen didn’t bother with an answer; he stepped over Derek as he walked to his desk and sat down like a man defeated. Derek stood as Will held out the bag of ice for him. Placing it on his chin, he walked toward Stephen’s desk. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I had no idea you were serious about her. I wanted the type of guys’ weekend that we used to have.”
“We’re not frat boys anymore,” Stephen mumbled. “It’s time to grow up.” When Derek made to speak again, Stephen held up a hand to stop him. “Just go. Please.” He turned his chair around and stared out the window long after his friends had left.
When had life gotten so complicated?
Chapter 12
Holly knew there would be repercussions for her actions and yet couldn’t find it within herself to get back into the swing of things yet. If she played her cards right and still had a job to return to, she’d go back to the office when Stephen left for Texas. He was to be gone for two weeks between the two jobs, and perhaps by the time he got back they would be able to be in the same room without it being too terribly awkward.
Who was she kidding? It would forever be awkward because she was in love with him, and even with a week away at home with her family and everything that was familiar and dear, she had not been able to stop thinking about him and wondering if he was off making love to some slutty snow bunny he’d met on his trip. That was an image that refused to leave her brain as she’d lain in her childhood bed.
By Holly’s third day at home, her mother had figured out that something was amiss, and Holly had had no choice but to confess. While her mother had listened without judgment, she did advise Holly to go home, straighten things out with Stephen, and perhaps think about finding a new job.
That was the last thing Holly wanted to do, but since she couldn’t make herself get in the car and drive to the office or pick up the phone because the sound of Stephen’s voice was too overwhelming for her, she knew that she didn’t have much of a choice.
Looking at the clock and seeing that it was only nine thirty, she rationalized that it was too late to go in to the office anyway; Judy would already be there hard at work. Glancing around her home, she decided she would do her food shopping for the week and run some errands, safe and boring tasks that would keep her mind off her troubles.
Dressed in faded blue jeans and a thick navy-blue hooded sweatshirt, Holly pulled on her sneakers and grabbed her purse as she headed for the door. Keys in hand, she opened it and found Will and Derek standing on the other side, Will’s hand raised as if prepared to knock.
It was hard to tell who was more surprised at that moment, but after a brief silence, Holly spoke. “Will. Derek. What can I do for you?” Her tone was cool and steady even though her insides were shaking uncontrollably. Thank goodness for the bulky sweatshirt!
“Can we come in?” Will asked.
Holly glanced at her watch, unsure that she wanted to know what Stephen’s two friends were here for at this hour. “Um—”
“We won’t take too much of your time, I promise,” Will said quickly, sensing her indecision. Derek remained blessedly quiet, but Holly noted the purple bruise on his chin. She was a little envious of whomever put that mark there because she certainly had entertained the thought of doing it herself after his smug phone call that fateful night.
She silently stepped aside, and the men walked in. Holly led them to her living room and sat. Her hospitality skills decided to stay hidden; the quicker they said what they had to say, the quicker they’d leave.
Will cleared his throat as he watched Derek sit in an overstuffed chair opposite Holly. “Obviously we’re here to talk to you about Stephen,” he blurted out.
“What about him?” She was trying for blasé but had a feeling she asked a little too quickly to pull that off.
“He’s in pretty bad shape. He’s been sleeping in the office—something about this new contract or something—and he’s not prepared to go to Texas. Can you cut him some slack, Holly, and give him a
hand? He’s a complete mess.”
Holly looked at Will for a moment as if he’d spoken Greek. This certainly wasn’t the news she had wanted to hear. There was no reason for Stephen not to be prepared for this business trip. Everything had been settled and secured before she left—before she’d sent him away. For the minutest of moments, she had allowed herself to hope that Stephen was a mess because he missed her. But as usual, it was the business. It was always going to be the business.
Holly’s brows furrowed. “I don’t understand,” she looked from one man to the other. “Everything was set before I left for New York. Unless something changed after I left, this Texas trip is a no-brainer. As for the second leg of the trip in California, any kinks that had to be worked out would be nothing for Stephen.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Holly,” Will began. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you exactly what the problem is business-wise, but the reality is that he is missing you.”
“As his assistant,” she said flatly, her disappointment evident.
“No,” Derek finally chimed in and made Holly’s head snap up. “It’s you he misses. He’s been a mess since you…well, since I called here that night.”
“Why would he be a mess over that?” she asked, clearly confused. “I did exactly what you told me he wanted.”
Derek shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked to Will for assistance, but Will crossed his arms over his chest and stared him down. “Fine,” Derek mumbled. “The thing is, Holly, Stephen never said anything to me, to us, to anyone about the two of you. I sort of found out by accident, and…”
“How?” she asked.
“I stopped by the office one night as Stephen was pulling away. I was planning to see if he wanted to go for a drink and figured I’d follow him home. But he didn’t go home, he came here.” Running a hand nervously through his hair, he continued, “I really didn’t think much of it. I figured he was coming by to drop something off. But I watched the lights go off downstairs and go on upstairs.”
In the Eye of the Storm / Catering to the CEO Page 14