The Wright Boss

by K. A. Linde

  “Heidi, you should probably text him.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “He might not even know.”

  “I said no,” I spat.

  Both girls stilled. They could feel my anger from where they were standing next to the couch. I couldn’t seem to get it under control.

  If Landon and I had just waited, if we had listened to everyone else, if we had done the smart thing and stayed away from each other, I never would have been in this situation.

  Emery and Julia shared a meaningful look, but they didn’t say anything further about it. They just put on Mean Girls and brought me ice cream. We were only twenty minutes into the movie when my front door sounded like it was going to be broken down.

  My eyes shot to Emery’s. “What did you do?”

  She gave me an innocent look. “Who me?”

  “I hate you.”

  “I know. I love you, too, buttercup.” Emery nudged Julia, and they both headed to her room.

  Slow and creaky, I eased my body off the couch and wandered to the front door. I felt like I’d aged a lifetime in the few hours since I left work. I turned the doorknob and found an irritated Landon standing at the entrance.

  “Is it true?” he asked.

  “Like you don’t know.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Can I come in?”

  “I guess you can. Doesn’t matter anymore,” I said as I walked away from the front door, leaving him room to follow me in. I heard the door click shut behind him.

  “Emery said that you were fired,” he said.

  I winced, as if he had slapped me. Fired. That fucking word. Poisonous and toxic. One word able to do so much damage.

  “Happened this morning.”

  “Why didn’t you call or text me?”

  His arm landed on my sleeve, and I jumped away from him. A look of horror flitted across his face and then disappeared.

  “What would I have said?”

  “I could have been here. We could have worked this out together.”

  “I think we already did. And it happened just like I’d said it would, Landon. That time I told you what would happen and you didn’t listen. You just had to move forward. You had to have me. You couldn’t listen to me when I told you that this couldn’t work, that my job meant something to me, that I needed it. I even told you why I needed it, and that didn’t seem to be enough. You had to push. You had to demand. Well, congratulations! You got exactly what you wanted.”

  “You think I wanted this?” he asked in disbelief. “You think I wanted you to lose your job?”

  “I think you didn’t care one way or another as long as you got what you wanted,” I said with venom in my voice. My hands were trembling at my sides.

  “That is not true, and you know it.”

  “No, I don’t!” I shouted at him. “Because here I am, without my job, and you get to keep yours because you’re a fucking Wright brother.”

  “I didn’t even know that this was happening. I never would have let them do this to you.”

  “Well, it seems we’ve found something you’re not good at. I thought what we had between us felt so right.” I shook my head and looked away. “I was wrong.”

  “Heidi,” he moaned. He ran a hand back through his hair. “Please, love, let me fix this. I can make this right. I know I can.”

  “No, you can’t. And you don’t really want to. You all have millions of dollars. You’re a fucking celebrity. How could you possibly understand someone like me?” I threw at him.

  “I didn’t think any of that ever mattered to you,” he said stiffly.

  “And here I thought that I mattered to you. Guess we were both wrong.”

  Landon recoiled at my words. I was hurting him on purpose. I knew I was. But I was so angry with me and him and the world. He was just an easy target. Because we could have stopped. He could have not pushed me the way he had, but he didn’t stop or back down. And, now, I was the one paying the price. Not him.

  “You should leave,” I told him.

  “Please, don’t do this.”

  “I said, leave.”

  “Heidi, I won’t just leave you.”

  I turned my back on him. “Just go, Landon. Now.”

  Tears welled in my eyes again. I heard him breathing deeply behind me. I knew that he didn’t want to go. And part of me wanted to turn around and beg him to stay.

  But I didn’t.

  And he left.

  Thirty-Four

  Landon

  I tried to put my hand through the brick wall outside of Heidi’s apartment when I left. It didn’t go so well.

  “Fuck!” I cried as I stomped over to the Mercedes.

  I shook my bleeding hand out before getting into the front seat, but it didn’t do much good. The knuckles were broken, and it hurt like a motherfucker. At least the pain kept me from thinking about the train wreck I had just walked into.

  When Emery had texted me and told me to come over, I’d expected it to be bad. But I certainly hadn’t thought it would be as bad as it was. I couldn’t fucking believe that Heidi had been fired without anyone even talking to me. It was so unbelievably fucked up that I was beyond livid. I had known Heidi would be a pissed, but I hadn’t prepared for her to take it out on me. I hadn’t been prepared for it to be my fault.

  And I should have been. Because it was my fault.

  I’d pushed and advocated for this. I wanted to be with her, and I didn’t care about anything else. Of course, I never wanted her to lose her job. Never in a million years. But we hadn’t been careful. Hell, we’d never been careful. It was fucking amazing that no one had caught us before now, considering all the shit we had done together.

  But I wasn’t going to let Heidi walk away from us.

  We were meant for each other.

  Nothing was going to stand in my way.

  I drove over to Jensen’s with a blind determination. I broke at least three traffic laws on the way, but I could really give zero fucks about it all.

  After pulling into the garage, I wandered into Jensen’s house and called out for him, “Jensen!”

  “Up here,” he called back.

  I found him sitting in his second-story office, staring at his computer screen. My hand was still on fire, but I slapped it down onto his desk.

  “What the hell did you do?” I demanded.

  He glanced at my hand. “You’re bleeding on my desk.”

  “Let me repeat myself. What the fuck did you do?”

  “Landon, I didn’t do anything. But I know what you’re going to say.”

  “No, you don’t!”

  “Yes, I think I do. Now, have a seat and talk to me about this.”

  “I quit!”

  Jensen sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sit,” he repeated, pointing at the chair.

  “I’m not going to sit down and be a good boy, Jensen! This is outrageous. I told you I was seeing someone, and then Heidi got fired before I was even told about what was happening. Don’t you think that’s fucking ridiculous? I would never have let that happen to her, and now, you have lost one of your best employees,” I snapped at him. “So, yeah, I quit. I need the job, but I don’t need it this much. Give Heidi her job back, and let me fucking figure out my own thing.”

  Jensen leaned back in his seat. “Are you done?”

  “Am I fucking done? That’s all you have to say?”

  “Well, are you going to clean up your hand, was second, but I thought I’d lead with the more important question.”

  “Did you hear a word I said?”

  “Of course I did, Landon. But you’re not quitting the company. I didn’t know that Heidi had been fired until it had already happened, and I’m working on discovering who is behind the videos that surfaced.”

  “Who cares where the videos came from? What matters is that Heidi needs this job, and you stole it from her because of me.”

  “I understand that you’re upset,” Jensen said calmly. H
e slowly got to his feet and put his hand on my shoulder. “But you can’t think clearly when you’re like this.”

  I smacked his hand away and ignored the pain from that movement. “Heidi broke up with me because of this shit. I don’t need to think clearly. I need to fix this.”

  “What happened to Heidi was…unfortunate,” Jensen said, carefully choosing his words. “It was handled poorly. I understand that the employees in her department believed they were doing the right thing to contain the situation and avoid a scandal. However, as you were not notified, no investigation was put into it other than to assume that the evidence hadn’t been doctored. We both know that this isn’t good for the company. And, obviously, it’s not good for your relationship with Heidi. And, by the way…Heidi? No wonder you didn’t want to tell me.”

  “Yeah, well, I did want to tell you, but I didn’t want her to get fucking fired.”

  Jensen sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Look, speaking as the CEO of this company and your boss, the evidence was pretty damning, and everyone reacted quickly to minimize the damage. Have you seen the videos?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t even know what they had.”

  Jensen moved back to his computer and pulled up the email that he had received with the evidence of Heidi and me together. It was a series of videos and a couple of pictures of Heidi and me on the golf course, in the clubhouse, and even at dinner at the seafood restaurant that we had picked at random. Whoever had taken these shots had clearly been following us because no one else had known where we were.

  “Well, fuck,” I groaned, finally sinking into the seat.

  “I agree. After watching these, do you see why she was fired?”

  I hated myself, but I nodded. “I know why they did it, but I still want to fix it.”

  “The way to fix this is to figure out who sent these. It was anonymous. I already have someone looking into it. The way these images were sent to us feels like a threat. It was pointed. Not sent to me or Morgan, but directly to Heidi’s immediate supervisor. Does Heidi have any enemies? Anyone who would want to see her fired?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Wait, maybe this Matt guy who works in her department. He wanted the promotion that she got.”

  Jensen drummed his fingers on the desk. “He has motive, but would he have had access to these videos?”

  “Fuck, I don’t know.”

  “And do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  Jensen averted his gaze, and that was when I realized he had already come to a conclusion. He looked back at me then. “Do you know anyone who would benefit from Heidi getting fired?”

  I opened my mouth as the conclusion Jensen had come to dawned on me. “Miranda.”

  “Yeah. That’s where I landed, too.”

  “She was at the tournament,” I told him. “Heidi saw her briefly. She was trying to pick up a golf buddy of mine to replace me, but we didn’t see her the rest of the weekend. We skipped a dinner and everything to avoid her.”

  “Didn’t seem to work,” Jensen said, touching his screen.

  “Fuck. What a conniving bitch!”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “Oh, I’m going to call her and give her a piece of my mind.”

  “I’m certain that’s what she wants from you—a reaction. It’s best for us to dig a little deeper and see if we can nail her on something like this. Let’s make sure it’s really her and not this…Matt guy. Then, we’ll decide where to go from there. A judge will not look kindly on threats if she’s trying to get more money.”

  “I could wring her neck.”

  “I would also advise against that,” Jensen said with amusement. “Though I know the feeling well.”

  I leaned my head back and stared at the white ceiling. “What the fuck do I do, man? Heidi freaked out on me and forced me out of her apartment. I’m head over heels for that girl, and she won’t even talk to me.”

  “As your brother, I’d tell you to fight for her. If you’re willing to throw everything away for her, she must be worth it.”

  “She is. She is worth it.”

  “You know, Emery suspected something was going on with y’all back in December, but I thought she was crazy.”

  “Yeah. She was right. I tried to deny that anything was happening back then and tried to say we were just talking a lot. But that’s a lie. I’d fallen for her, and I stopped talking to her when I realized I had feelings for her.” I shrugged. “Didn’t want to be a cheating douche bag.”

  “I think that was smart. All things considered.”

  “Yeah, but now, when I finally get her, it all blows up in my face.”

  “You’ll work through it,” Jensen confidently told me. “You should just try and talk to her.”

  “No, she won’t listen to me. She unloaded when I stepped into her apartment. The last thing she wants to do is talk to me. She’s blaming me for this.”

  Jensen ran a hand back through his hair. “What if I tried to talk to her?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’d do that?”

  “She was my employee after all. Until we get this all cleared up, I can’t do anything about her job, but I can try to fix how this was handled and let her know that you were not at fault.”

  “I…yeah,” I said with a nod.

  I’d texted her half a dozen times after Emery messaged me, but she hadn’t responded. She actually hadn’t responded to my texts all day. I’d been messaging her through my meetings.

  “That’d be great.”

  “Okay. I’ll do that now. You go clean up your hand.”

  I nodded and disappeared into the guest bedroom. I ran my hand under cold water, hissing the whole time. It hurt something horrible. Dumb fucking idea. Yet it had seemed perfectly logical at the time.

  My stomach was in knots over everything that had happened. And the helplessness that had settled over me. Quitting had felt like the only logical thing to do. If I weren’t her boss, then she could have her job back. Yet it wasn’t that simple. There were more things to consider than our relationship. Too bad I couldn’t concentrate on any of them but the way that Heidi had looked at me when she told me to get out of her place.

  Once my hand was bandaged—another freaking injury for me to deal with—I moseyed back into Jensen’s office. He was staring down at his phone, and he looked bleak.

  “What?” I asked. My stomach dropped, and I waited for the bad news that I knew was coming.

  “She didn’t answer.”

  I waited. “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  “And, Jensen?”

  He frowned. “She texted back.”

  “What did she say?”

  He shook his head. I snatched the phone from him and stared at the text from Heidi.

  I know you’re only calling me because of Landon. So, just…don’t. I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to talk about him. I want nothing to do with him or any of his family. Leave me alone.

  My hands shook as the words filtered in and out of my vision. If it had been my phone, I probably would have thrown it against the wall and shattered it into a million fucking pieces. As it was, I tossed it to Jensen without care and left his office.

  He followed. “Hey, man, where are you going?”

  “To find Austin.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I know he’ll have a spare bottle handy.”

  “I have alcohol here.”

  “Fuck off, Jensen. I want to get wasted and not think about how my girlfriend broke up with me or how I lost the best thing that had ever happened to me.”

  “Shit,” Jensen muttered. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Fine,” I spat.

  I didn’t care one way or another who was there. Austin and Patrick were good for a distraction. And I needed one. Desperately. Because, otherwise, I was going to end up doing something really stupid.

  Tonight, I would be pissed.<
br />
  Tomorrow, I would put my life back together.

  Thirty-Five

  Heidi

  Two days later, I still hadn’t moved from the couch. I was in the same clothes, and my hair was in the same topknot.

  Emery took one look at me when she got home from work and started to force me into the shower. “You cannot do this. You can’t wallow.”

  “Yes, I can. What else do I have to do?”

  “Heidi Anne Martin! You are a strong, independent, unbelievably incredible woman. You will pick yourself up from this and keep going. This is not the end of your life. You are a brilliant engineer, and anyone would be lucky to have you. Just because you are no longer gainfully employed by Wright Construction does not change a damn thing about your awesomeness.”

  “You’re a great friend, Em.”

  “Damn straight!” She shoved me toward the shower. “Now, go.”

  I complied. By the time that I was clean, had blown out my hair, and had chosen a new set of pajamas to lounge around in, Julia was here with her hand on her hip, looking fierce as fuck.

  “What is this? An intervention?” I asked.

  Emery and Julia were both dressed in cute black-on-black outfits. And they looked ready to take me down if I resisted whatever plot they had come up with.

  “Hell yes, it is,” Julia said. “Now, turn your cute ass around, and put on something presentable. We’re going out.”

  “I’m not going out.”

  “Don’t make us come in there,” Emery threatened. “We’re trying to get you back on your feet. You haven’t left the house in three days. It’s time.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Where are we going?”

  “Shopping.”

  “God, y’all are the worst,” I muttered.

  They were playing to my weakness. They knew I loved shopping. Even if I didn’t need anything. Though maybe some retail therapy would help.

  “Whatever,” Julia said. “Just hurry up!”

  I matched their morose attire and slipped into black skinnies, a black tank, and some old beat-up Converse. I skipped all my makeup, except mascara. Emery handed me her wallet, and I stuffed it in my purse. The weirdo still didn’t like to carry a purse.