This was better, he thought, as he looked over the numbers. Work. Work was good. It kept him focused. Like telling Serena he was taking her to the gala—a work function. They’d been at galas and banquets like that before. What difference did it make if they arrived in the same car or not? It didn’t. It was business related. Nothing personal.
Except it was personal and he knew it. Picking her up in his car, taking her out to dinner? Not business. Even if they discussed business things, it still wouldn’t be the same as dinner with, say, Bob Larsen. Serena usually wore a black silk gown with a bit of a fishtail hem and a sweetheart neckline to these things. Chadwick didn’t care that it was always the same gown. She looked fabulous in it, a pashmina shawl draped over her otherwise bare shoulders, a small string of pearls resting against her collarbone, her thick brown hair swept up into an artful twist.
No, dinner would not be business-related. Not even close.
He wouldn’t push her, he decided. It was the only compromise he could make with himself. He wasn’t like his father, who’d had no qualms about making his secretaries’ jobs contingent upon sex. He wasn’t about to trap Serena into doing anything either of them would regret. He would take her to dinner and then the gala, and would do nothing more than enjoy her company. That was that. He could restrain himself just fine. He’d had years of practice, after all.
Thankfully, the intercom buzzed and Serena’s normal, level voice announced that Bob was there. “Send him in,” Chadwick replied, thankful to have a distraction from his own thoughts.
He had to fight to keep his company. He had no illusions that the board meeting on Wednesday would go well. He was in danger of becoming the Beaumont who lost the brewery—of failing at the one thing he’d been raised to do.
He did not have time to be distracted by Serena Chase.
And that was final.
* * *
The rest of Monday passed without a reply from Neil. Serena was positive about this because she refreshed her email approximately every other minute. Tuesday started much the same. She had her morning meeting with Chadwick where, apart from when he asked her if everything was all right, nothing out of the ordinary happened. No lingering glances, no hot touches and absolutely no near-miss kisses. Chadwick was his regular self, so Serena made sure to be as normal as she could be.
Not to say it wasn’t a challenge. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing. She could blame a lot on hormones now, right? So Chadwick had stepped out of his prescribed role for a moment. She was the one who’d been upset. She must have misunderstood his intent, that’s all.
Which left her more depressed than she expected. It’s not like she wanted Chadwick to make a pass at her. An intra-office relationship was against company policy—she knew because she’d helped Chadwick rewrite the policy when he first hired her. Flings between bosses and employees set the company up for sexual harassment lawsuits when everything went south—which it usually did.
But that didn’t explain why, as she watched him walk out of the office on his way to meet with the divorce lawyers with his ready-for-battle look firmly in place, she wished his divorce would be final. Just because the process was draining him, that’s all.
Sigh. She didn’t believe herself. How could she convince anyone else?
She turned her attention to the last-minute plans for the gala. After Chadwick returned to the office, he’d meet with his brother Matthew, who was technically in charge of planning the event. But a gala for five hundred of the richest people in Denver? It was all hands on deck.
The checklist was huge, and it required her full attention. She called suppliers, tracked shipments and checked the guest list.
She ate lunch at her desk as she followed up on her contacts in the local media. The press was a huge part of why charities competed for the Beaumont sponsorship. Few of these organizations had an advertising budget. Beaumont Brewery put their name front and center for a year, getting television coverage, interviews and even fashion bloggers.
She had finished her yogurt and wiped down her desk by the time Chadwick came back. He looked terrible—head down, hands jammed into his pockets, shoulders slumped. Oh, no. She didn’t even have to ask to know that the meeting had not gone according to plan.
He paused in front of her desk. The effort to raise his head and meet her eyes seemed to take a lot out of him. Serena gasped in surprise at how lost he looked. His eyes were rimmed in red, like he hadn’t slept in days.
She wanted to go to him—put her arms around him and tell him it’d all work out. That’s what her mom had always done when things didn’t pan out, when Dad lost his job or they had to move again because they couldn’t make the rent.
The only problem was, she’d never believed it when she was a kid. And now, as an adult with a failed long-term relationship under her belt and a baby on the way?
No, she wouldn’t believe it either.
God, the raw pain in his eyes was like a slap in the face. She didn’t know what to do, what to say. Maybe she should just do nothing. To try and comfort him might be to cross the line they’d crossed on Monday.
Chadwick gave a little nod with his head, as if he were agreeing they shouldn’t cross that line again. Then he dropped his head, muttered, “Hold my calls,” and trudged into his office.
Defeated. That’s what he was. Beaten. Seeing him like that was unnerving—and that was being generous. Chadwick Beaumont did not lose in the business world. He didn’t always get every single thing he wanted, but he never walked away from a negotiation, a press conference—anything—looking like he’d lost the battle and the war.
She sat at her desk for a moment, too stunned to do much of anything. What had happened? What on earth would leave him that crushed?
Maybe it was the hormones. Maybe it was employee loyalty. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, she found herself on her feet and walking into his office without even knocking.
Chadwick was sitting at his desk. He had his head in his hands as if they were the only things supporting his entire weight. He’d shed his suit coat, and he looked smaller for having done it.
When she shut the door behind her, he started talking but he didn’t lift his head. “She won’t sign off on it. She wants more money. Everything is finalized except how much alimony she gets.”
“How much does she want?” Serena had no business asking, but she did anyway.
“Two hundred and fifty.” The way he said it was like Serena was pulling an arrow out of his back.
She blinked at him. “Two hundred and fifty dollars?” She knew that wasn’t the right answer. Chadwick could afford that. But the only other option was...
“Thousand. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“A year?”
“A month. She wants three million a year. For the rest of her life. Or she won’t sign.”
“But that’s—that’s insane! No one needs that much to live!” The words burst out of her a bit louder than she meant them to, but seriously? Three million dollars a year forever? Serena wouldn’t earn that much in her entire lifetime!
Chadwick looked up, a mean smile on his face. “It’s not about the money. She just wants to ruin me. If I could pay that much until the end of time, she’d double her request. Triple it, if she thought it would hurt me.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. I never cheated on her, never did anything to hurt her. I tried...” His words trailed off as he buried his face in his hands.
“Can’t you just buy her out? Make her an up-front offer she can’t refuse?” Serena had seen him do that before, with a micro-brew whose beers were undercutting Beaumont’s Percheron Drafts line of beers. Chadwick had let negotiations drag on for almost a week, wearing down the competitors. Then he walked in with a lump sum that no sane person would walk away from, no matter how much they cared about the “integrity” of their beer. Everyone had a price, after all.
“I don’t have a hundred million lyin
g around. It’s tied up in investments, property...the horses.” He said this last bit with an edge, as if the company mascots, the Percherons, were just a thorn in his side.
“But—you have a pre-nup, right?”
“Of course I have a pre-nup,” he snapped. She flinched, but he immediately sagged in defeat again. “I watched my father get married and divorced four times before he died. There’s no way I wouldn’t have a pre-nup.”
“Then how can she do that?”
“Because.” He grabbed at his short hair and pulled. “Because I was stupid and thought I was in love. I thought I had to prove to her that I trusted her. That I wasn’t my father. She gets half of what I earned during our marriage. That’s about twenty-eight million. She can’t touch the family fortune or any of the property—none of that. But...”
Serena felt the blood drain from her face. “Twenty-eight million?” That was the kind of money people in her world only got when they won the lottery. “But?”
“My lawyers had put in a clause limiting how much alimony would be paid, for how long. The length of the marriage, fifty thousand a month. And I told them to take it out. Because I wouldn’t need it. Like an idiot.” That last bit came out so harshly—he really did believe that this was his fault.
She did some quick math. Chadwick had gotten married near the end of her first year at Beaumont Brewery—her internship year. The wedding had been a big thing, obviously, and the brewery had even come out with a limited-edition beer to mark the occasion.
That was slightly more than eight years ago. Fifty thousand—still an absolutely insane number—times twelve months times eight years was...only $4.8 million. And somehow, that and another $28 million wasn’t enough. “Isn’t there...anything you can do?”
“I offered her one fifty a month for twenty years. She laughed. Laughed.” Serena knew the raw desperation in his voice.
Oh, sure, she’d never been in the position of losing a fortune, but there’d been plenty of desperate times back when she was growing up.
Back then, she’d just wanted to know it was going to be okay. They’d have a safe place to sleep and a big meal to eat. To know she’d have both of those things the next day, too.
She never got those assurances. Her mother would hum “One Day At a Time” over and over when they had to stuff their meager things into grocery bags and move again. Then they finally got the little trailer and didn’t have to move any more—but didn’t have enough to pay for both electricity and water.
One day at a time was a damn fine sentiment, but it didn’t put food on the table and clothes on her back.
There had to be a way to appease Chadwick’s ex, but Serena had no idea what it was. Such battles were beyond her. She might have worked for Chadwick Beaumont for over seven years, might have spent her days in this office, might have attended balls and galas, but this was not her world. She didn’t know what to say about someone who wasn’t happy with just $32.8 million.
But she could sympathize with staring at a bill that could never be paid—a bill that, no matter how hard your mom worked as a waitress at the diner or how many overtime shifts as a janitor your dad pulled, would never, ever end. Not even when her parents had filed for bankruptcy had it truly ended, because whatever little credit they’d been able to use as a cushion disappeared. She loved her parents—and they loved each other—but the sinking hopelessness that went with never having enough...
That’s not how she was going to live. She didn’t wish it on anyone, but especially not on Chadwick.
She moved before she was aware of it, her steps muffled by the carpeting. She knew it would be a lie, but all she had to offer were platitudes that tomorrow was a new day.
She didn’t hesitate when she got to the desk. In all of the time she’d spent in this office, she’d never once crossed the plane of the desk. She’d sat in front of the massive piece of furniture, but she’d never gone around it.
Today she did. Maybe it was the hormones again, maybe it was the way Chadwick had spoken to her yesterday in that low voice—promising to take care of her.
She saw the tension ripple through his back as she stepped closer. The day before, she’d been upset and he’d touched her. Today, the roles were reversed.
She put her hand on his shoulder. Through the shirt, she felt the warmth of his body. That’s all. She didn’t even try to turn him as he’d turned her. She just let him know she was there.
He shifted and, pulling his opposite hand away from his face, reached back to grab hers. Yesterday, he’d had all the control. But today? Today she felt they were on equal footing.
She laced their fingers together, but that was as far as it went. She couldn’t make the same kinds of promises he had—she couldn’t take care of him when she wasn’t even sure how she was going to take care of her baby. But she could let him know she was there, if he needed her.
She chose not to think about exactly what that might mean.
“Serena,” Chadwick said, his voice raw as his fingers tightened around hers.
She swallowed. But before she could come up with a response, there was a knock on the door and in walked Matthew Beaumont, Vice President of Public Relations for the Beaumont Brewery. He looked a little like Chadwick—commanding build, the Beaumont nose—but where Chadwick and Phillip were lighter, sandier blondes, Matthew had more auburn coloring.
Serena tried to pull her hand free, but Chadwick wouldn’t let her go. It was almost as if he wanted Matthew to see them touching. Holding hands.
It was one thing to stick a toe over the business-professional line when it was just her and Chadwick in the office—no witnesses meant it hadn’t really happened, right? But Matthew was no idiot.
“Am I interrupting?” Matthew asked, his eyes darting between Serena’s face, Chadwick’s face, and their interlaced hands.
Of course, Serena would rather take her chances with Matthew than with Phillip Beaumont. Phillip was a professional playboy who flaunted his wealth and went to a lot of parties. As far as Serena could tell, Phillip might be the kind of guy who wouldn’t have stopped at a simple touch the day before. Of course, with his gorgeous looks, he probably had plenty of invitations to keep going.
Matthew was radically different from either of his brothers. Serena guessed that was because his mother was Hardwick’s second wife, but Matthew was always working hard, as if he were trying to prove he belonged at the brewery. But he did so without the intimidation that Chadwick could wear like a second skin.
With a quick squeeze, Chadwick released her hand and she took a small step back. “No,” Chadwick said. “We’re done here.”
For some inexplicable reason, the words hurt. She didn’t know why. She had no good reason for him to defend their touch to his half brother. She had absolutely no reason why she would want Chadwick to defend their relationship—because they didn’t have one outside of boss and trusted employee.
She gave a small nod of her head that she wasn’t sure either of them saw, and walked out of his office.
* * *
Minutes passed. Chadwick knew that Matthew was sitting on the other side of the desk, no doubt waiting for something, but he wasn’t up for that just yet.
Helen was out to ruin him. If he knew why, he’d try to make it up to her. But hadn’t that pretty much described their marriage? She got her nose bent out of shape, Chadwick had no idea why, but he did his damnedest to make it up to her? He bought her diamonds. She liked diamonds. Then he added rubies to the mix. He’d thought it made things better.
It hadn’t. And he was more the fool for thinking it had.
He replayed the conversation with Serena. He hadn’t talked much about his divorce to anyone, beyond informing his brothers that it was a problem that would be taking up some measure of his time. He didn’t know why he’d told Serena it was his fault that negotiations had gotten to this point.
All he knew was that he’d had to tell someone. The burden of knowing that this whole thing wa
s a problem he’d created all by himself was more than he could bear.
And she’d touched him. Not like he’d touched her, no, but not like she’d ever touched him before. More than a handshake, that was for damn sure.
When was the last time a woman had touched him aside from the business handshakes that went with the job? Helen had moved out of the master bedroom almost two years before. Not since before then, if he was being honest with himself.
Matthew cleared his throat, which made Chadwick look up. “Yes?”
“If I thought you were anything like our father,” Matthew began, his voice walking the fine line between sympathetic and snarky, “I’d assume you were working on wife number two.”
Chadwick glared at the man. Matthew was only six months younger than Chadwick’s younger brother, Phillip. It had taken several more years before Hardwick’s and Eliza’s marriage had crumbled, and Hardwick had married Matthew’s mother, Jeannie, but once Chadwick’s mother knew about Jeannie, the end was just a matter of time.
Matthew was living proof that Hardwick Beaumont had been working on wife number two long before he’d left wife number one.
“I haven’t gotten rid of wife number one yet.” Even as he said it, though, Chadwick flinched. That was something his father would have said. He detested sounding like his father. He detested being like his father.
“Which only goes to illustrate how you are not like our father,” Matthew replied with an easy-going grin, the same grin that all the Beaumont men had. A lingering gift from their father. “Hardwick wouldn’t have cared. Marriage vows meant nothing to him.”
Chadwick nodded. Matthew spoke the truth and Chadwick should have taken comfort in that. Funny how he didn’t.
“I take it Helen is not going quietly into the night?”
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