by K. A. Linde
“Fuck this,” I muttered.
Without another word, I turned and walked out the front door. My feet carried me down the street and onto the golf course. I found the nearest green and stood there, watching as a couple tried and failed to get their ball into the hole.
This was what it all came back to.
This was where I was home.
This was my whole life.
Now, I couldn’t even use a putter, let alone swing a club. I might be in a midlife crisis or something, but everything I’d known and everything I’d associated with as a person felt over.
I might get back to golfing. I might not.
I might save my marriage. I might not.
I might have a family one day. I might not.
All I knew was, I wouldn’t continue with how things were.
My family hated Miranda. Everyone hated Miranda. The only reason that we had stayed together this long was because of the pregnancy, and after that display, how could I possibly want kids with her. How could I want to bring a child into a world where his or her mother acted this way?
I was done catering to Miranda. I was done dealing with this shit. I had nothing left in me. No more chances.
Why should I keep putting myself through this?
I didn’t even love her.
With a sigh, I felt a weight fall off of my shoulders. I finally knew that I was doing exactly the right thing.
I pulled my phone out and dialed the last number I’d called.
“Landon?” Jensen answered on the first ring. “You back in Tampa?”
“You said that you’d help me,” I said to him.
My eyes were locked on the green before me. Jensen was a fixer. We could do this together.
“Miranda?”
“I think I need a lawyer.”
Jensen slowly breathed out. “I was afraid it would come to this.”
“Yeah. I’m done. I’m so done.”
“I’ll get on it right away. Florida is a no-fault state. You know she’ll be getting half of your golf money, right?”
“Fuck my money,” I growled.
“Just letting you know. Half of everything after the prenup.”
“It doesn’t matter. Something has to change. She’s not the woman I married. She’s not the woman I want to be married to.”
“What are you going to do in the meantime?” he asked. “You can’t live in that house with her.”
“I don’t know. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I’ll know more about what is happening with golf then. After that…I’ll figure it out.”
“Focus on getting better. Let me handle the rest.”
I nodded, and we ended the call.
I took a deep breath as the divorce that had been a long time coming was finally put into motion. It was as if I could finally take a breath, and I knew then that I was doing the right thing.
But I sure was not looking forward to breaking that news to Miranda.
Eight
Heidi
One Month Later
“I don’t know about a third date, Julia,” I said, leaning my hip against the side of her desk. “Nick was almost too nice, too normal.”
Julia rolled her eyes. “You need nice and normal, girl. All you have been dealing with are assholes, douche bags, and jerkfaces.”
I shrugged at my closest work friend. “So, I have a type.”
“You do not have a type. I had that type, remember?” She held out her arm to reveal the tattoos peeking out of her blouse and then ran one hand down the array of studs in her ear. “Bad girls attract bad boys. You are like the prom queen.”
“I was not prom queen.”
“Your hair is bleach blonde to your waist, and you’re wearing more bright colors than I have in my whole wardrobe. Plus, high heels,” she added in triumph. “I attract the bad boys. You go looking for them.”
“So what? I’m only twenty-eight. Live a little.”
Julia laughed brusquely. “Oh, I’ve lived way too much for the both of us. I’m content with not living like I used to and finding a nice and normal dude.”
“Like Trevor?” I asked.
“Yes, like Trevor.”
Julia and Trevor had started dating at the beginning of the summer. He worked in accounting, which made him completely off-limits to me because of my no-dating-coworkers rule. But he had a cute friend, Nick, who did not work for Wright Construction and whom I had now gone on two double dates with. He was exactly as I had described—nice, normal, and baggage-free.
That might be why Julia liked Trevor, but sometimes, I found it all a little dull. I was notoriously picky, and though I thought he was an all right guy, I didn’t get any vibes off of him that he was the one.
But at least I was dating.
Seeing Landon again at the reunion last month had been a wake-up call. I’d been wading through life, waiting for a guy as awesome as Landon and coming up short every time. Turned out, Landon wasn’t as great as I’d thought. He was essentially the same guy who had dumped my friend on graduation day ten years earlier. I clearly hadn’t been giving any other guys the time of day.
Now, I was.
“Just give Nick another chance,” Julia encouraged. She flipped her shoulder-length auburn hair to one side, revealing the shaved undercut she had gotten earlier that week. She was obviously the coolest person I knew.
“All right. I’ll go for date three,” I told her with a shrug. “What else am I going to do this weekend besides plan Emery’s surprise birthday party? Do you think you can make it?”
“Next Monday?” Julia asked.
“Yep.”
“And she still has no clue?”
“Emery hates, hates, hates birthdays. She does not suspect that I have anything planned.”
“I might have to be late. Is that cool?”
“You’ll miss the surprise part.” I pouted.
“Okay, okay. I’ll reschedule my hair appointment. The girl is so hard to get in to see.”
“You just got your hair done!”
“Upkeep, bitch,” Julia said with a laugh. “I don’t look this fabulous for nothing.”
“Yes, you do. You always look fabulous.”
Julia rolled her eyes and waved her hand, as if to say, Whatever. “So, is, uh…Austin going to be there?”
I grinned wide and crossed my arms, giving her the look. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened with you and Austin Wright after the office Christmas party?”
“Not a chance,” Julia said, standing abruptly. She was in an all-black getup—pencil skirt, button-up blouse, and ballet flats. “Austin Wright completely proves my point of the bad boys finding me. I like to file him under The Past I Will Never Look at Again.”
“At least he hasn’t been in your office as much lately,” I conceded.
Julia was head of HR for the entire company. She was excellent at her job. But Austin got more HR reports against him than anyone in existence. Apparently, being drunk daily on the job got him into a lot of trouble. If he were anyone else other than a Wright, then he would be gone. Right now, he got paid to drink at his desk and dick around. He had a problem, but no matter how many complaints he got, his family wouldn’t throw him into rehab.
“He comes and goes, depending on the week.” Julia shrugged. “I don’t want to talk about Austin. Let’s talk about Nick. Do you think you guys are going to have sex?”
I shrugged. “I think we have a while to go. We’ve kissed, but it wasn’t really anything.”
Of course, it was impossible to have a life-altering kiss like I’d had with Landon at the back of Flips that night. Shouldn’t have allowed it to happen, but damn, he was a good kisser.
Fuck, I’m doing it again.
How many times did I have to remind myself that I couldn’t think about kissing someone else’s husband?
It was bad enough that Emery had been pushy about Landon after the reunion. I’d finally had to shut her down completely and tell h
er that, like her, I had sworn off the Wright brothers. She, of all people, should understand that I didn’t want to hear about Landon or talk about Landon. Whatever had happened with us was over. The idea that people actually went from friends to lovers was ludicrous. Friends to lovers didn’t exist any more than Landon and I did.
“Ugh! I just want you to fall in love, like me!” Julia confessed.
“It’ll happen. Maybe. Someday. Never.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Hey, Heidi,” Jim said, popping his head into Julia’s office. “Morgan came by and asked for the entire engineering and project team to convene in the conference room. Some announcement.”
“What announcement?” Julia asked.
“I don’t know what it’s about, but I need to steal Heidi.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there,” I said. I turned back to Julia with a shrug. “I guess I’ll go see what that’s all about.”
“Keep me in the loop.”
“Will do.”
I hopped off her desk and strode out of her office. My office was on the other side of the floor with the rest of engineering. The engineering and project team worked closely together here at Wright Construction headquarters. I was lucky to be on the same floor as Julia even though our jobs were night and day.
I was the only woman working in engineering, and I was damn proud of it. Even if I did have a tiny cubicle, unlike Julia’s swank office. I’d been climbing the ladder to this job my whole life. I’d graduated at the top of my class in civil engineering at Texas Tech and started working as an intern at Wright right out of college. I’d worked my way up and up and up. My job was my life. I made great money, and I loved what I did. I felt so fortunate to be where I was.
“Hey, Heidi,” Matt said, coming up beside me. He had a pink-and-blue plaid shirt under his navy blazer with a bow tie. With him, every day was more eclectic than the next.
“Hey, do you know what this announcement is about?” I asked as we walked to my cubicle. I rummaged through my purse and grabbed my phone. If this meeting was boring, I was going to need something to occupy my mind while I pretended to take notes.
“No idea. You?”
“Nope,” I said, glancing down my nose at him.
I was already five foot seven without my heels on, and I made it a point to wear my heels into work. I liked to be as tall or taller than a lot of the guys on the team, so they couldn’t look down their noses at me.
“Jim thinks someone is getting fired,” he told me, trailing behind me, as I moved toward the conference room.
From the outside of it, I could tell that it was already crowded. Matt must have waited for me. He would follow me around a lot, like a lost puppy.
“Why would they bring everyone together to fire someone? Isn’t that kind of personal?”
“Yeah, true. Maybe it’s a new project or something.”
“After we took over Tarman Corporation last year, I do not want to think about adding on another new project. I feel like we’ve finally caught up from how shitty they were.”
Matt laughed and held the door open for me. “Yeah, definitely.”
We stepped into the brightly lit conference room. It was full to the brim with men in cheap suits who just wanted to go on a coffee run. There were a few guys, like Matt, who were around my age, but most of them had been with the company long before Jensen took over. Those guys really did not think too fondly of women in engineering, even when I schooled their asses.
Or maybe because I did.
I wasn’t sure. Nor did I particularly care.
As much as I detested the blatant sexism that ran rampant around the office, I was getting paid as much or more than my colleagues. Unless someone was sexually harassing me, I wasn’t about to complain to the higher-ups that my colleagues were douche bags.
But that was neither here nor there. I was waiting to find out what the big announcement was, and I’d completely zoned out on Matt.
“What?” I asked, glancing back over to him with wide blue eyes. “Sorry, I missed what you said.”
“Uh…I was seeing if you were free on Friday night.”
Even though he was kind of short and wore strange clothing, he was a cute guy. He just…wasn’t my type. Not that I would date him because of my number one rule—do not mix business and pleasure.
“Oh,” I muttered. “That’s sweet, Matt, but I’m kind of seeing someone.”
Sort of true. If I considered date number three with Nick to be seeing someone. And it counted right now.
“Right. Totally. Of course,” he said the tips of his ears going pink.
I gave him a smile that said, I’m sorry, and then faced the front of the room again. That was when Morgan Wright stepped into the conference room. It went from a loud buzzing to almost complete silence in a matter of seconds.
Morgan had that effect on people. She was two years younger than me, and we had cheered together in high school. But she had been bred for her position as a senior vice president of the company since birth. Some people said she ran the business even better than Jensen. It was clear to me that she enjoyed it more.
She commanded attention and respect, and these men, who gave it out so rarely, dished it to her in spades. It didn’t matter what she was wearing or how she looked or how pretty she was—those things that men would never consider about other men but usually judged women on. What mattered with Morgan was that she was smart, loyal, fierce, motivated, and hardworking.
If she didn’t know how to help you with your job, she would learn how to help you. She would go out to the construction sites. She would get her hands dirty if she had to. Morgan Wright was unstoppable.
“Thank you for convening here on such short notice this early in the morning. I’ll make it brief, so you can go back to your coffee breaks,” she said with a mischievous smile.
The men laughed at what wasn’t exactly a joke. I loved how sarcastic Morgan could be without ever breaking character.
“I wanted to let you know that we have reorganized the company a bit, and we’re adding a new level of management to this department that has been needed for some time.”
A rumble of confusion followed that statement.
We needed better management? That was an odd thing to say.
Engineering and project teams along with a few smaller departments all reported directly to their supervisors, and the supervisors met with a team manager for the department. Then, the team managers reported up from there. The way things had worked had never been a problem before.
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t change anything with what you already do. We have recently hired on a new employee who will be filling the void in this area. Is that clear?”
The answer was essentially no.
“We can work out the kinks as we go, but I think this will be a good solution for everyone involved. Let me introduce you to your new boss,” Morgan said.
With a giant grin, she pressed the door open, and in walked none other than Landon fucking Wright.
Nine
Heidi
All eyes turned to Landon, and a short smattering of applause followed his entrance, but I was frozen like a block of ice in the Arctic.
What the hell was Landon Wright doing at Wright Construction, on my floor, in my department? Why was he even in Lubbock?
And, oh my God, he was in a suit. A sharp-cut, clearly custom-fit black suit with a crisp white shirt underneath and a patterned blue tie. His hair was cut shorter than normal, and his dark eyes were aimlessly wandering the room, as if he were lost. A lost, lost puppy trying to find his way in this strange world of corporate America.
Then, his eyes, those puppy-dog eyes, landed on me. He found me standing in the back of the conference room, shell-shocked. Surprise was written on his face, but mine only revealed horror.
Had he really not known that we would be working together when he showed up?
I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions. I didn
’t know why he was here or what had happened, but none of it mattered.
Landon Wright was my boss.
He was my boss.
Fuck, he was my motherfucking boss.
I couldn’t process that information. I couldn’t process what Morgan was saying, and I certainly couldn’t understand why he was here, standing a few feet in front of me.
Why would Landon be my boss?
Sure, he had a business degree from Stanford that he’d gotten while on a golf scholarship. He knew his shit. He was perfectly competent. And he was a Wright. But it still didn’t make sense.
It didn’t help the knot that had formed in my stomach and weaseled its way up to my throat. My mouth was dry, and I felt sick. As if it weren’t bad enough that I had kissed him while he was married even if he had been legitimately separated, I didn’t know if I could handle seeing him day in and day out.
I slowly inched toward the door. I couldn’t be here a second longer.
Work was my safe place. My happy place.
He couldn’t take this away from me.
We were still staring at each other, even as he spoke to the department about how excited he was to be here. Though he said it with no enthusiasm. He wasn’t convincing me at least. I knew a lot of the guys looked up to him for his PGA wins, so maybe they didn’t hear how he really sounded. Or they didn’t know him like I did.
I had known him.
Past tense.
Previously.
In another life.
Big difference.
Without a second thought, I broke eye contact, yanked the conference room door open, and disappeared down the hallway. Our side of the building was a graveyard, and I jogged in my high heels down to the restroom.
I burst through the door of the vacant room and pressed my hands onto the counter. I leaned forward and tried to catch my breath. I felt as if I were hyperventilating. Unable to get enough oxygen to feed my brain. My utterly confused and bewildered brain.
“He can’t be my boss,” I whispered to myself. “He can’t be.”
I wanted to call Emery and demand answers. How could she not have known that Landon was coming back to town? How could she not have told me that he would be working here?