Boss Unavowed: A Love On the Rocks Romance (The Boss Series Book 2)

by Nicole R. Locker

  “Hello?” Farren answered.

  Before Gramma said a word, she could hear Harley’s desperate screams in the background. It wasn’t a cry she recognized. Farren’s eyes widened with concern.

  “Farren, honey, you need to come home,” Gramma said, her voice a little more frazzled than usual.

  “Gramma, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s Harley. I can’t console him. I’m worried he’s sick,” Gramma explained.

  “I’ll be right there!”

  Farren threw her phone in her bag without even checking that it had hung up and shot up out of her seat.

  “I’m sorry, Raphe, I have to go.”

  She left him sitting in the booth of the coffee house. She could just barely hear him calling to her as she ran out the door, “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

  She ran across the street and through the vast parking lot of the Convention Center to get into her Chevy Spark and rushed as quickly as she could back to Gramma’s.

  *

  Harley was still crying when Farren walked into Gramma’s apartment a short time later. She rushed over to him and took him in her arms.

  “He’s running a fever,” Gramma exclaimed, pressing a cool, wet washcloth to Harley’s tiny forehead. “I put him in a lukewarm bath that seemed to help for a little bit, but he just seems to be getting worse.”

  Farren could feel the heat radiating off his little body as she held him to her chest. She felt panicked and wished that Rogan was here. She got her phone out and scrolled through her numbers until she located the one for Harley’s pediatrician. She dialed the number and reached an after-hours nurse.

  She let them know what was going on and asked what she should do. They advised her to go ahead and get him to a 24-hour clinic to have him looked at. The nurse on the phone seemed so calm and patient, but Farren felt anything but. She was frantic, wanting to act but not knowing what to do.

  When she hung up the phone, she started gathering Harley’s things.

  “Gramma, I’m sorry, I have to go. Thank you so much for watching him for me tonight. I’m sorry about this,” she exclaimed in a disorganized string of sentences.

  “Everything will be fine, honey,” Gramma assured her.

  She nodded, pressed a quick kiss to Gramma’s cheek, and then hurried out the door to get Harley down to the car.

  Just as she was fastening his carrier into its base in her back seat, she heard footsteps walk up behind her and a man’s voice startled her.

  “Princess?”

  She turned to see who had approached, and the feeling of dread amplified within her.

  “Dad,” she acknowledged with surprise, irritated that he would call her that as though all these years hadn’t gone by without him being here.

  “I was hoping I’d run into you here. Is everything okay there?” he asked, jutting his chin towards the back of the car where Harley was now buckled in.

  Farren was too frazzled to stop and hear what he had to say.

  “No, I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

  He put an arm up blocking her passage. It sent a worried chill through her as she looked up to search his face. What was he getting at? She wasn’t above kneeing him in the groin if it meant getting her baby the help he needed right then.

  “Here,” he said as he handed her a folded up scrap of paper. “I was hoping we could talk. Call me.”

  She took his number from him, and without a word, she rushed around to the driver’s side and got in. Before she closed her door, he called out to her.

  “I really wanted to talk to you,” he repeated.

  Why now, she thought, as the weight of Rogan being gone and Harley being sick was weighing heavily on her with a pressure she had nothing to compare to. It was all just too much.

  “I can’t do this right now,” she said, pulling her door closed and heading off toward the clinic.

  FOURTEEN

  When Farren finally got home with Harley late into the night, she was exhausted, which seemed to be all she knew anymore. They had diagnosed Harley with an ear infection, which meant her poor baby was in pain, and it just broke her heart.

  Thankfully, between the clinic and the 24-hour pharmacy, she was able to get him some relief and he was finally sound asleep in his crib.

  She fell into her bed without even bothering to change out of her clothes. It was one o’clock in the morning. What she wouldn’t have given to be able to curl into Rogan’s arms right then.

  Tears welled in her eyes as the emotional pain in her chest felt as though it might consume her. She had dreaded this moment for days, the moment she would lie alone in a bed she shared with the man she loves while she wondered if he was lying alone elsewhere, or not.

  What could he be doing that he hadn’t called her at all that day? Was he alone? Asleep? Or was he… she couldn’t bring herself to even think it.

  She didn’t want to consider that this could be the beginning of the end between them. What would that mean for Harley? What would it mean for her job?

  Then there was the issue she had been avoiding, which was her father. He had disappeared on her more than a decade ago, and he hadn’t even so much as called, emailed, or sent up a smoke signal to indicate he was living or dead. She didn’t know why he had left all those years prior, and she had decided a long time ago that she didn’t care.

  The question now was what had changed to make him reappear again out of the blue? Was he trying to make amends? Maybe he’d finally gotten into a twelve-step program and was having to make a list of all the people he had wronged. What was that, step eight, or something? She scoffed at the thought.

  Maybe he was just around because he wanted something. But what? It’s not like she had anything to give him.

  If only Rogan were there to help her sort it all out. She hated feeling like this, and it all just reiterated for her why she preferred numbers, computers, and machines to human problems and complications. She could pick up a computer and know how it was going to work every single time. She could open it up and pinpoint exactly what was wrong with it, then know exactly how to fix it to make it work right again.

  She couldn’t exactly open her father up and pinpoint what was wrong with him or Rogan either, for that matter. Worst of all, she’d always had the sinking feeling that what was wrong with them was the one thing they all had in common: her.

  When her phone rang from across the room in her bag, she jumped up and rushed over, scrambling to dig it out from where it hid at the bottom. She felt a momentary relief that Rogan was finally calling until she pulled it out and saw that it was Gramma. Disappointment set in once more.

  “Gramma, you’re still awake?”

  “I’m sorry to call so late, my dear. I just wanted to check on you and see how Harley is doing.”

  Farren kicked her shoes off and lay back down on the bed.

  “He’s going to be okay. They said he has an ear infection. They gave us an antibiotic and some ear drops. He’s sleeping now.”

  “That’s good to hear. What about you? Are you doing okay?”

  Farren knew that Gramma could always sense when something was bothering her. She didn’t know how she did it, even from miles away through the phone.

  “I’m okay. I’m just tired. I think I’m going to try to get some sleep,” she said.

  “Okay, sleep tight, honey. Call me in the morning and let me know how Harley does through the night.”

  Farren hung up and held the phone to her chest for several minutes. After going back and forth, she decided to just suck it up and send Rogan a text. It was late, but with everything that had happened that day with Harley being so sick and having to go to the doctor, she figured she owed it to him to let him know, regardless of anything else that was going on.

  Then she waited.

  And waited.

  She sat quiet and still for several moments. She set the phone down on the nightstand next to the baby monitor. She buried her face in the pillow and
sobbed her very heart into it until sleep finally and mercifully overtook her.

  *

  Rogan’s cell phone lit up with a text on the nightstand next to where he had been trying to sleep earlier. The phone went dark again in the empty room.

  When the nightmares had woken him in a panic, he had decided to get dressed and go down to the hotel bar for a drink or few, anything to get his mind on something else.

  He had an important task to complete the following morning before they left, possibly the single most important thing he would ever have done in his life up to that point, and the drink also served to help calm his nerves from that as well.

  He spent a few hours drinking, pretending to watch the ESPN football highlights on a screen behind the bar, and most of all, thinking about his visit to Tiffany’s the following morning. The bar was empty when he finally felt tired enough to fall asleep, hopefully before he had any time to recall his nightmares.

  When he got back in and turned a lamp light on next to the bed, he noticed the tiny, flashing light of his cell phone indicating he had missed a text. He pressed the button to bring the screen to life when he saw it had been from Farren almost three hours ago.

  1:13 a.m. - Harley is sick. I wish you were here... I miss you.

  Fuck!

  FIFTEEN

  The sound of the phone ringing and vibrating against the hard surface of the nightstand jolted Farren awake. She sat upright, startled, and grabbed the phone.

  It was Rogan.

  “Hello?” she answered in a groggy voice as she tried to regain control of her racing heartbeat.

  “Farren? What happened? Is everything okay?” he asked with no small amount of concern.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. “I texted hours ago and you didn’t answer.”

  “I’m sorry, baby; I left my phone in the room when I went down for a drink. What happened?”

  His deep voice was growing more impatient by the second.

  She was quiet for a moment, and he thought he could hear her gasp in a breath like she was crying. “You were with her, weren’t you?”

  “What? Of course not,” he proclaimed. “Farren, what is this about? Tell me what’s wrong.”

  His thoughts flashed to Edith earlier that evening and how she had tried to make a move. He had all but dumped her refined ass on the floor before walking out. He shook his head with irritation.

  “How am I supposed to believe you? I needed you tonight and you weren’t here. It took you until four in the morning to even respond?”

  She shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around everything.

  “Farren, don’t be absurd. We can talk about this when I get home. I just need to know that everything is okay.”

  “Absurd? You think it’s that crazy for me to think something happened when-”

  She stopped herself. It wasn’t absurd because that’s exactly how she and he had first gotten together – away on a business trip to Italy last year.

  “That’s different, and you know it,” he growled.

  “Is it? I mean, things between us have been strained lately, and I know that’s my fault.” Her voice sounded more defeated now than defensive.

  “Baby, listen to me-”

  “No! I get it, okay? Harley and I will be out by the time you get back.”

  Her tears flowed freely down the curves of her face, and she wiped at her cheek with the back of the hand that wasn’t holding the phone to her ear.

  “Farren, stop! You’re being ridiculous,” he protested.

  She shook her head. “I’ve got to go. Harley is crying.”

  She was unable to hide the anguish in her voice. She hung up the phone and her body shook with violent sobs. Within seconds, her phone lit up again with Rogan calling her back.

  She hit Ignore and powered off the phone.

  This was for the best, she tried to tell herself. It was bound to happen sooner or later. She knew he would eventually leave her. She knew that with him insisting on going with Edith on this trip that Edith could have handled herself, him not wanting her to go along with them, and Edith’s trip to the lingerie store the day before they had left all pointed to one thing.

  The fact that he was conveniently unreachable until four in the morning was just the nail that sealed the coffin. She wasn’t just some naïve little girl, and she wasn’t going to be taken for a fool. At least this way, she had some control over her own exit.

  Why it had to hurt this much, though, she just couldn’t fathom.

  *

  Fuck, he thought. How the hell did his entire world just fall apart when he was in New York, mere hours away from walking into the top jewelry store in the nation to buy the love of his life a fucking engagement ring?

  His child was sick, Farren was forced to handle it by herself, and he wasn’t there to help her through it. Now, he was accused of having an affair with Edith Underwood of all people, and Farren was threatening to be gone by the time he got home. This definitely wasn’t going as expected.

  He’d never felt more powerless in his life. He was 1,600 miles away, and even with the direct flight on his private, company plane back to Houston, it would take three and a half hours, not including the time it would take to get the plane ready and travel to and from airports.

  He packed his suitcase, foregoing any thoughts of getting any sleep at all. He had just under six hours before Tiffany’s opened at ten a.m. and he wasn’t leaving this city without an engagement ring.

  Then, all bets were off. Wherever she was, he would find her and get her back.

  SIXTEEN

  11 Years Ago

  Rogan felt as though his chest were being ripped open and gutted. He couldn’t believe Craigan was gone, his life extinguished right before Rogan’s very eyes. What could he have done to save him? He knew he was to blame, and God help him, he didn’t know how he was ever going to live with himself.

  He didn’t know how he was going to look Dallas or Elaina Evans in the eyes and tell them their brother was gone. What would become of them now? Craigan was all they had. Rogan would just be a poor substitute for the only real friend he’d ever had.

  How he had torn himself away and driven himself back to this house, Tommy the Tank’s house, he didn’t know. It took all the strength he had left in him to do it, but then there was no way he could deny doing it either. When Craigan’s last words to ever be spoken before he left this world were ‘Go back for the girl,’ there was only one thing for him to do.

  He pulled his Harley up next to trailer number 402 and killed the engine. He sat staring into the ether for several moments before he pushed himself off the bike.

  A part of him hoped that Tommy the Tank would show back up right about now so that Rogan could give the son-of-a-bitch the justice he deserved. What he wouldn’t give to strangle the life out of the bastard with his bare, fucking hands.

  But Tommy the Tank wouldn’t show back up, not now, and not for a long time to come, so Rogan forced one step in front of the other until he reached the front door of the portable, run-down home. The door was still gaping wide open, splintered at the seams from where Hugo had kicked it in earlier.

  Rogan inched inside the home looking around. The place was a mess, littered with cans of cheap beer, empty cigarette packages, piles of dirty laundry, and empty fast-food bags. The place was dead quiet, eerily so. He wondered if the girl really was here, or if she had gotten lucky and been somewhere else.

  He and the guys had come to teach old Tommy the Tank a lesson. Since he liked beating up on little girls, they had thought they’d see how he fared with someone his own size, see if he felt like putting his fists on little girls anymore after that.

  Rogan never thought things would end up like this. He knew there were risks, and he even knew there were consequences, but this was something in a whole other realm of disbelief.

  He walked up the hallway toward the bedrooms. He came to a door that had a pink sign hanging from it that read Prince
ss. This had to be her room, he thought, so he rapped his knuckles lightly against the flimsy, hollow excuse for fake wood. He thought he heard the slightest sound of something rustling inside, but no one answered.

  He was sure the poor girl was scared out of her mind. She couldn’t have been much older than ten, from what they’d uncovered, though he’d never seen her yet himself. He only knew what Hugo and the guys had told him, and he trusted those guys with his life.

  So had Craigan and a fucking lot of good that had done.

  Rogan turned the knob and eased the door open a few inches.

  “Hello?” he called, tempering his voice to put the girl at ease.

  Still, no response came, so he pushed the door open a little further.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised.

  He was fully in the room now, and he nearly couldn’t believe his eyes. The small space, maybe ten feet by eight, was spotless, but what really threw Rogan was the setup of computers, second-hand game systems probably purchased at a resale shop, and old television sets that lined the walls. One lone computer screen was lit up and cast a dim, blue glow over the small space.

  Being a tech mastermind, the room was enough to leave him speechless. This didn’t look like the room of any pre-teen girl he had ever seen. He had expected pink curtains and doll houses. Instead, he saw tin foil lining the only window. He looked back at the Princess sign on the door, the only hint of femininity he could see, and did another once-over of the room.

  “You can come out now. I promise you’re safe.”

  His eyes darted to beneath the bed, but still no movement. He looked at a dark cubby beneath a desk, and still no sign of her. Then he turned and honed in on the closet. The sliding doors were pulled shut and he could almost sense her presence through the slats he was sure she was watching him through.