Tossing the less-than-interesting envelopes onto the black granite counter for Tarik to deal with later, Phoenix flipped the hood off his head, opened the refrigerator, and grabbed two single bottles of orange juice. He had learned long ago that drinking out of the carton — although he was the only one drinking from it — was a surefire way to get his mother to ride his ass first thing in the morning.
Tarik’s solution: individual bottles.
Phoenix couldn’t argue with the man’s logic. Wasn’t the first time he’d thought Tarik was a genius, either.
As he tipped the first bottle to his lips, Phoenix glanced at his mother. As always, Ellen Pierce was dressed in one of her beloved black silk pantsuits, her short ebony hair, severely cut and board straight, resting on her shoulders. While Phoenix watched her, those observant green eyes, so similar to his own, raked over his face.
“Are you here to stay for a while?” Ellen asked.
Phoenix shook his head. “On the road this week.”
His mother didn’t respond immediately, simply watched him carefully. Studying him silently.
She was always trying to figure him out. He’d informed her on more than one occasion that it wasn’t worth the time or effort. Half the time, he couldn’t predict what he would do or say next; no sense in someone else trying to do the same.
In his defense, Phoenix was only unpredictable as long as it didn’t have to do with business. When it came to his companies, he was as straightforward as he was shrewd and single-minded. At twenty-nine, he’d built an empire that couldn’t be rivaled by many, and he didn’t make any apologies for it, either. It hadn’t come easy, but it had helped that his father — God rest his soul — had taught him everything he knew before he’d died nine months ago. A fresh wave of grief passed through him as he thought about his father. God, he missed him more with each day that passed.
But he’d had little time to grieve for the man who’d been his mentor and role model. After Sidney Pierce had suffered a heart attack that’d taken his life and stolen the person Phoenix had been closest to in the world, he’d been hard-pressed to move forward, to keep things going in the right direction, to prove to himself — as much as to his father — that he was worthy.
Now that Phoenix was the owner of the Austin Arrows, one of the youngest teams in the NHL, as well as Pierce Industries, a multi-million-dollar venture capitalist firm, he didn’t have nearly as much time for erratic, impulsive behavior as he’d once had.
As he figured it, either the job was getting to him or he was getting old.
He refused to believe the latter.
Twisting the lid off the second bottle of juice, Phoenix said, “We’ll have dinner next weekend. Will that work?”
The smile that formed on his mother’s ageless features brightened her entire face. “I’d like that.”
Draining the second bottle of juice, Phoenix tossed both bottles and the lids into the recycle bin, knowing Tarik would have his ass if he didn’t. Sometimes he threw them in the trash solely to listen to him bitch and moan.
It was the little things that got Phoenix going in the morning.
“I’ve got to shower,” he informed his mother. “Then I’ve got a meeting at the office.”
Ellen nodded. She of all people knew he wasn’t much of a morning person, and standing around waiting for him to spark a conversation before he’d had his first cup of coffee was like waiting for him to find any interest in a woman for more than one night.
It just didn’t happen.
Leaving his mother in the living room, Phoenix escaped to his bedroom, locking the door behind him.
»»»»»♥«««««
WITH HER SUNGLASSES shielding her face, Mia stepped out onto the sidewalk, the blustery January wind slapping her in the face, instantly freezing her nose. As she fought the overwhelming urge to turn around and sneak a peek at the guy she’d passed on her way out of the elevator, she gave a cursory glance around to see if any reporters were lurking nearby. She was happy to see that today must’ve been a big news day elsewhere, meaning she was alone.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t…
Luckily the windows on the building were reflective, and even if she attempted to look inside, it would be futile, so she shrugged off the notion. She reminded herself that she didn’t have time for men, especially intimidating ones whose faces she couldn’t even see thanks to the hood that had been covering his head.
As she passed the coffee shop next door, she wished she had a few minutes to go in and grab a coffee to go, but she knew she was going to be late if she didn’t hurry. With winter break now over, she had learned last week that her professors had a renewed sense of vigor when it came to keeping things on track. She wondered how long that would last. Regardless, she didn’t want to be late for class.
As she pulled her hood over her ears and ducked her head, Mia smiled to herself. Oh, how things had changed from a year ago. If all those people could see her now, battling the elements as she walked to school rather than having someone chauffeur her around… She knew that her story had probably been heard before: lonely young wife of a rich and powerful man finds herself kicked off the pedestal she’d once been put on, forced to move back into a regular routine, without the glitz and glamor that had been an integral part of her everyday life ... blah, blah, blah.
But that’s where her story began to differ.
At least she’d like to think that was the case.
First of all, no longer wed to the insufferable asshole, Mia had shunned her married name and taken back her maiden name. So that made her the ex-wife of a rich and powerful man — a crucial piece to the new puzzle that was her life.
Secondly, the glitz still seemed to be following her around, but only if the bright flash of cameras constantly in her face whenever she walked out of her building and on the street could be considered being in the limelight. For whatever reason, they wouldn’t leave her alone. They being the paparazzi. It seemed there were still some people out to get the juicy dirt on one of the most newsworthy businessmen in the great state of Texas, Damien Landry. Mia’s ex-husband.
And they were apparently accomplishing that goal by following her around. Well, except for today, which was a nice change of pace.
How much did you get in the divorce, Mia?
Are you upset that Damien has moved on?
Did you actually catch him in bed with another woman?
Can you tell us about the lawsuit, Mia?
What will you do now, Ms. Cantrell?
She’d heard all the questions a million times over, but every time she answered with the same: “I’m not married to him anymore. Not sure what he’s doing.”
They didn’t listen. But she wasn’t surprised.
Whatever floozy was hanging on Damien’s arm at this point should have to deal with all of their constant harassment, not her. She’d relinquished that burden when Damien had come home from a business trip reeking of perfume. Cheap perfume, at that. Since Mia knew he hadn’t taken to wearing it, she had assumed that it belonged to another woman. And truthfully, she knew Damien was not that stupid, which meant he’d wanted her to catch him. From the beginning, Mia had warned him that cheating was a deal breaker for her. He had called her bluff.
He had quickly learned that she wasn’t bluffing.
And here she was — officially single as of two months ago, when her divorce was final — crossing one of the busy downtown Austin streets on her way to the University of Texas campus, wondering how she’d ended up, now twenty-four years old, back where she’d started.
Granted, Mia wasn’t the same naïve young girl she’d been when she’d first met Damien. No, that twenty-year-old virgin had long since disappeared, in her place a woman who was much smarter, much less gullible.
At least she’d like to think so.
Being married to Damien might’ve robbed her of her innocence, made her into a woman she hadn’t recognized for the last few years,
but Mia couldn’t blame him for everything. She’d been a willing participant. Right up to the moment she’d told him that she wanted a divorce — nine months ago.
Looking back on it now, Mia realized it hadn’t been all that difficult to fall for an attractive, wealthy man like Damien. He was older, some would say far too old for a twenty-year-old girl who, at the time, had still been living at home with her mother while she plotted out the rest of her life. Unfortunately, she hadn’t figured out until later — much, much later — how true that really was.
At twenty, Mia hadn’t been even remotely old enough to handle being married to a man like Damien. Hell, even now she questioned whether she was mentally strong enough to deal with the emotional upheaval he was known for.
That never stopped her from trying to make it work. The way she saw it, marriage was supposed to be forever. Apparently, she and Damien hadn’t been reading from the same book when it came to the sanctity of their wedding vows.
She had met Damien on a Friday night at a restaurant in downtown Austin where Mia had been having a celebratory dinner with some of her closest friends. They’d all been gearing up to start college in the fall after taking a year off to enjoy themselves, something Mia’s mother had advised her against. But in her opinion, she’d needed a break. And when she’d met Damien, she’d been ready to grow up, ready to move on to the next phase of her life, school be damned.
At the time she’d started dating Damien, he’d been a young thirty-three, as he’d liked to tell it, thirteen years her senior. He was single, rich, and known for his playboy status. Not to mention, he’d avoided marriage on multiple occasions. Or so he’d proudly informed her.
According to him, he’d been waiting for the right woman. Her.
Rolling her eyes, Mia realized how silly that sounded thinking back on it now. Yes, she’d definitely been naïve and gullible at the time, hanging on every sweet word he’d told her until he’d charmed her right out of her panties two weeks after they’d met.
Although Mia hadn’t intended to skip a large portion of young adulthood and move right into marriage, she’d found that Damien was a very persuasive man. He was handsome and charming, and she’d been putty in his hands from the very beginning. The media had made them out to be the perfect couple, and Mia had been too naïve to know what she was getting herself into. She’d been a beautiful blonde trophy — their words, not hers — on the arm of a man who was continuing to prove himself as a power player in the real estate market. At the time, Mia had felt like she was right up there on top of the world with him.
Her mother had warned her, but at the time, Mia had thought she was too overprotective, something Clarice Cantrell had been for most of Mia’s life. So, Mia had done what any inexperienced twenty-year-old girl would do when faced with that sort of challenge: she’d ignored her mother’s reasoning, insisting that she knew what she was doing.
Yeah, well, it wasn’t the first time Mia would have to admit that she’d been wrong.
Unfortunately, her mother had been forced to sit back and watch her. And just as she’d predicted — something she’d later told Mia — Clarice had watched Mia climb, only to see her fall back down to earth, her broken heart in her hands.
However … what Mia’s mother didn’t understand was that her heart didn’t have anything to do with it. Not in the end. Not after having endured all of the hardships living with Damien had brought her. No, what no one else seemed to realize was that Mia’s heart had been shattered into a million tiny pieces long before that night.
Her marriage to the enigmatic man had proven to be the opposite of the fairy tale she’d thought it would be. She’d fallen in love with a blond-haired, blue-eyed charmer in the beginning, there was no doubt about that. But by the third year, Mia had watched her life crumble around her, and she’d known it wouldn’t be long before she would have no choice but to get out. She’d decided at that time to reclaim her heart, even before she reclaimed her life.
Still, there were tiny fragments of her heart that she feared would never be put back in their original place, no matter how much she despised Damien, no matter how grateful she was to be able to move on.
Thankfully, Mia had planned for the worst, and she’d run fast and hard toward the infinitesimal light at the end of the tunnel in the end.
There had been a prenuptial agreement, but only because Mia had suggested it.
Seriously, the man was worth millions; it should’ve been Damien who had insisted on the legality. Nope, that’d been her.
She knew that was about the only reasonable thing she’d requested going into the relationship, and that was after her mother had broken down and cried. Mia was giving up her college years to be with a man who insisted that he be the one to take care of her, so, according to her mother, she should at least have something in writing to ensure she didn’t have to start completely over.
She and Damien had worked out an agreement with the help of his ruthless lawyers so that she would get one million dollars for every birthday she spent married to the man — a mere crumb off the loaf of the Landry fortune — provided the marriage ended amicably. She’d spent three birthdays with him, would’ve been four had he not come home smelling like cheap perfume two weeks before her twenty-fourth birthday. Even knowing what she was giving up, Mia had left him the very next day with a suitcase packed full of her most beloved items and nothing else.
There had also been a clause that stated she would get an additional ten million if Damien cheated on her. At the time, Mia hadn’t considered the fact that she would have to be able to prove the latter. Of course, the floozy on his arm these days wasn’t admitting to anything, so she and Damien had agreed to disagree. It’d been easier on Mia just to let it all go and walk away. After all, cheating really was a deal breaker as far as she was concerned, and his admission had been enough for her. So, because she’d wanted out, she’d ended the marriage stating irreconcilable differences, and she’d walked away with three million dollars.
From the second the ink was dry on the divorce papers and the funds made it to her bank account, she’d become incredibly frugal with her money, despite her one and only splurge — the condo she now called home. Mia had plans, and that money would help her accomplish her goals and keep her from having to live with her mother until she could get to the point where she was financially stable. It would eventually be gone, and she didn’t have any preconceived notions that she would ever make the kind of money that Damien did, nor would she run in the same circles that she had previously, but she was okay with that. She simply wanted to be happy, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she was.
Which was how Mia had gotten to where she was now, walking up the steps on the UT campus, on her way to her first class of the day. She was probably a little too anxious, especially since she’d been doing this exact same thing for going on five months now, but she couldn’t help herself. It’d been a long time since she’d had something like this to look forward to. But that was where she found herself. Looking forward to another day of school.
College.
How it had happened, she didn’t know, but she’d been accepted at the University of Texas, and back in August, Mia had taken the necessary steps to move on with the rest of her life. Pursuing her degree in psychology, she was taking control of her destiny, no longer being led around by the nose, flaunted as a trophy, looked at as though she didn’t have a brain cell in her head.
Each day seemed like her first day all over again, and she prayed the excitement didn’t dwindle.
When Mia had first started school, she hadn’t known what to expect because she’d been out of the loop for so long. Spending day and night with high society had left her with a detachment to the norm, which she’d longed to get back. She was glad to say that she had.
Opening the door to the building, Mia smiled to herself. Yep, this was a new day, another chance to keep moving forward, to live in the moment. What the future held, she d
idn’t know. For now, she was going to embrace life. Embrace the woman she was becoming.
Chapter Two
PHOENIX MANAGED TO shave, shower, and dress in the same twenty minutes it took him every day, coming out of his bedroom a different man than when he’d ventured in. Gone were the hoodie, mesh shorts, and running shoes. In their place, a three-piece black Brioni suit, white shirt, Italian loafers, and the Bulgari watch his father had bought him for his last birthday. Today’s tie was emerald green because it was the first one he’d touched when he’d hit the button on the ridiculous electric tie rack his mother had given him for Christmas one year.
“Mornin’,” Tarik greeted, placing a cup of coffee on the kitchen table with a copy of today’s paper as Phoenix made his way down the narrow hall.
Fixing the knot on his tie as he stopped in front of the glass-topped table, Phoenix remembered the question he had wanted to ask Tarik, but he decided to hold off. “Morning,” he replied, doing his best to ignore the heated look he could feel coming from Tarik’s golden eyes.
In an attempt to avoid his penetrating gaze, Phoenix paid more attention to the newspaper than he cared to while he sipped his coffee, purposely leaving Tarik standing there as he did every single morning.
It didn’t matter how much Phoenix tried to ignore him, though, it never worked. First, Phoenix was acutely aware of Tarik’s overwhelming presence in every possible way. And secondly, even when he tried to forget that he was there, Tarik made sure he couldn’t.
Sparing Tarik a brief glance, Phoenix allowed his eyes to graze over all six foot three inches of the other man in those few seconds. He noted that Tarik was still wearing his workout clothes, the large muscles in his arms flexing as he gripped his cell phone tightly. Tarik’s usually stylish hair was unkempt, sweat glistening near his ears, which meant he hadn’t bothered to stop by his place to shower yet.
“Something wrong?” Phoenix questioned, turning to face Tarik fully, nodding his head to Tarik’s casual wardrobe.
A Million Tiny Pieces Page 2