Foundation

by Lainey Davis

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One - Nicole

  Chapter Two - Zack

  Chapter Three - Nicole

  Chapter Four - Zack

  Chapter Five - Nicole

  Chapter Six - Nicole

  Chapter Seven - Zack

  Chapter Eight - Nicole

  Chapter Nine - Zack

  Chapter Ten - Nicole

  Chapter Eleven - Zack

  Chapter Twelve - Nicole

  Chapter Thirteen - Zack

  Chapter Fourteen - Nicole

  Chapter Fifteen - Nicole

  Chapter Sixteen - Zack

  Chapter Seventeen - Nicole

  Chapter Eighteen - Zack

  Chapter Nineteen - Nicole

  Chapter Twenty - Zack

  Chapter Twenty-One - Nicole

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Nicole

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Zack

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Nicole

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Zack

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Nicole

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Zack

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Nicole

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - Zack

  Chapter Thirty - Nicole

  Chapter Thirty-One - Zack

  Chapter Thirty-Two - Nicole

  Chapter Thirty-Three - Nicole

  Chapter Thirty-Four - Zack

  Chapter Thirty-Five - Zack

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Nicole

  Chapter Thirty-Seven - Zack

  Chapter Thirty-Eight - Zack

  Chapter Thirty-Nine - Nicole: Epilogue

  By Lainey Davis

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  © 2020 Lainey Davis

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Individuals pictured on the cover are models and are used for illustrative purposes only.

  Many thanks to Nicky Lewis, Mattie P, Keith G, and Arwen Davis for editorial input.

  Thank you for supporting

  independent authors!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nicole

  MY ASSISTANT, MARK, stands outside my office door, timidly fidgeting with a crisp piece of paper. “I’m supposed to give you a message from the boss.”

  “I thought I was the boss, Mark.” I don’t look up from my spreadsheet. Of course I know he’s referring to the company owner, Tim Stag, but I suspect Tim and his wife, Alice, are going to ask me to babysit again while they go out with my best friend and her husband. Who happens to be Tim’s brother.

  I can hear Mark breathing rapidly, and I glance up. He’s holding a cream colored hand-written note. The fancy letterhead means Alice helped write it, and that usually signifies a big ask. If Tim wanted a profit and loss report, he’d just send a text.

  Or shout from his office.

  Mark rubs his fingers along the paper and shifts his weight, trying to melt into the door frame. I sigh. “I’m not going to watch his baby again if that’s what he’s asking. I told you to tell him no to that shit.”

  “It’s something different this time,” Mark says, and walks into my office. He presents the paper to me.

  “Aw hell no. Definitely not. Tell him no.”

  Mark flushes. “Donna said I was to tell you this is not negotiable.”

  Donna is Tim’s executive assistant and is generally the final say in all matters of actual importance.

  “Hm.” I read it again.

  Nicole—you will join the Stag Law marathon relay team, to compete in the Pittsburgh Marathon on Sunday, May 2. We will produce a faster collective time than Beltane Engineering. Alice will be adjusting meals accordingly. Participation is not optional.

  —TS

  “Well, shit,” I mutter. “Where do I even start with this?” I say that last bit louder, hoping for an answer, but Mark has already backed out of the office.

  Tim is an avid runner and, thanks to his perky wife yanking him out of a funk, he’s an avid joiner. If there’s a golf outing or boat rowing or softball opportunity to schmooze with other businesses here in Pittsburgh, Tim is on it.

  He just usually knows better than to include me in this nonsense.

  Tim never tires of bitching to his family that Beltane has an unfair advantage in the corporate relay challenge. All the big firms bet money on the outcome, which they donate to charities. So of course the charities get in on it until the pressure is pretty high for corporate fitness bragging rights.

  It drives Tim bananas that his staff at a sports law firm is not fitter and faster than a squad of gangly math nerds. While the Stag Law senior staffers are out perfecting their golf game to woo clients, the engi-nerds all seem to be distance runners.

  I give zero shits about any of this, but my boss repeatedly reminds me that our law firm represents a lot of athletes. It’s good for our image to appear competitively athletic. Then he reminds me that, as his director of strategy, I’m the one who said that last bit about our image.

  Both of Tim’s brothers are huge runners, too, so Tim keeps trying to sneak them on the payroll so they count for our corporate teams. I point out that there’s no way to cook the books to include a retired pro hockey player or a world renowned glass artist on a law firm’s roster.

  I look down at my legs. Thick and solid, they will absolutely catch my cell phone if I drop it while I’m sitting on the toilet. But running?

  Do I have a treadmill desk in my office? Sure. But that’s mostly so I can angry-pace while I’m on the phone. I am not what you might call a runner. I am also not what you might call a person who exercises.

  I think back to all the times my mother insisted I go to the gym or go running to “slim down,” and how violently I had refused to do anything of the kind. There’s a war inside me, where one side is raging against my mother’s body shaming, and the other side is recoiling from anyone—including my sub-conscience—telling me I can’t do something.

  I bite my lip. I consider the options. I remind myself that Tim is not my mother, and that his request here is fully related to his own dumb pride and has nothing to do with him wanting me to fit into any sort of mold of what anyone says a woman should look like.

  I sigh and weigh my options, deciding I need to call my best friend to figure out why in the hell Tim thought I’d do this.

  I look at the time and figure it’s late enough in the morning that I can call my best friend without pulling her out of some sort of baby nap. Emma is married to Tim’s brother Thatcher, and the whole damn herd of Stags is about as fertile as a pack of rabbits. She and Thatcher just had their second bunny in as many years.

  Since my family are a bunch of assholes and I’m not giving up any of my precious time with Emma, I’ve become an honorary Stag family member. Tim is still my boss, though. We do work to keep each other at a bit of a distance—him because he has control issues and me because he reminds me of my hyper-controlling parents.

  It’s different with Emma, though. I pretend to be a grouch about her babies, but I know how many health struggles she overcame to get them here. Hell, I helped her find the right doctors for her epilepsy when we lived together in college.

  Emma’s phone rings and rings. I’m about to hang up in frustration when she picks up on the tenth ring. “Nik,” she whisper yells. “I got them both to sleep! At the same time!”

  “If I pretend to be excited for you, can we skip ahead to my drama?” I am excited for Emma. I know how important sleep is for her, and ho
w rarely her kids succumb to this state. She knows I’m just fucking with her. I have an image to maintain, after all.

  “Spill,” she says, louder now, and I can hear her walking down the hall of her house. I fill her in on Tim’s memo, and she laughs loudly. “He was just over here complaining about the marathon again yesterday. You know how he gets about not-winning.”

  “I do, but how did he determine that *I* am the great, curvaceous hope for Stag Law? I mean, isn’t his wife the next logical step?”

  Each of the corporate teams is supposed to include at least one person who identifies as female. We don’t exactly have a ton of women working here at Stag Law, something I’ve been working on ever since I arrived a year ago. Tim’s wife is the corporate chef here and I know she at least exercises occasionally. I’ve seen her in actual running clothes in the past.

  “Well,” Emma says with her mouth full of something. She must be trying to cram in a meal before her fawns wake up. “If I tell you, you can’t tell them you know.”

  “Fuck a duck, is she pregnant again? What’s that—four for them? Five?”

  Emma laughs. “Three, Nicole. Tim and Alice will have 3 kids. She’s angling for 4 and he wants to stop at 3, if you care about the family debates.” I do not care about this debate. Like I said—I’m keeping some distance.

  “Is there anyone else at work who can do this,” I mutter, as if Emma would know the answer. I mentally scroll through the other female employees, and can see why Tim sent me this invite. The rest are all knocking on retirement’s door or pregnant. I sigh.

  “Will you come with me to buy some workout clothes? That seems like the sort of thing I have to try on in person.”

  “Ooh, a trip to the mall is a great idea. I need bath fizzies for once I’m allowed to submerge again. Pick me up at 6?”

  I make plans to go shopping with Emma, promising that I’ll be nice to the baby when I pick them up. I’m not actually a monster—I am glad my friend found her perfect life partner and have admitted that the two of them owe it to humanity to reproduce their sexy genes. I just don’t know anything about kids and they make me nervous, like I might break them or fuck them up as much as my parents did me.

  I look up the details of the race online. I’ll have to run five miles. In a row. I don’t know if I can do that. That’s more than three times the distance from my house to my office, and I don’t even walk that far each day. Can people really run that far without stopping?

  “Mark!” I shout for him to come back. He pops his head around the doorframe again. “Can you get me a coach or something? What’s it even called when someone shows you how to run?”

  Mark’s face breaks into a relieved grin. “That’s the good news,” he gleams. “Mr. Stag also forwarded me a schedule for training events. He has a whole series of memos about team building and workplace morale and cardiovascu—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Shit, Mark. Do you know how my ass is going to look at a team jog? Don’t answer that.” He backs out of the office again.

  Mark emails me the schedule and training information for the relay team. Is Tim serious with this bullshit? The training program starts this month. In January. It’s not like we have an empire to run or anything—we all have plenty of time for speed work and zone dieting, whatever the hell that is. The good news about all of this is that the city finally finished work on that recreation path along the river.

  My townhouse in Lawrenceville is at least walking distance from the running path so I don’t have to run along the sidewalk while all the hipsters stand in line for ramen and barbecue.

  Still, though. Running in the snow translates to Tim Stag giving me another raise. I pull up the company calendar app and pencil myself in for a meeting with the CEO.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Zack

  IT’S COLD AND there’s a crowd here for the group training run. I hate crowds. My brother Liam leans a sneakered foot up on the tailgate of my truck, stretching his hamstring in the parking lot while the sky figures out if it’s going to snow or just look foreboding all day. “Tell me again why we’re doing this?”

  Liam just growls, and I join him in the stretch.

  Our father jogs up in an electric blue track suit he probably bought in Cuba when it wasn’t legal for Americans to travel there. “Hope you drank your protein shakes, boys,” he says, slapping Liam on the ass. “Corporate team training starts right here, right now. Gotta maintain that Beltane legacy.”

  I roll my eyes, not bothering to point out that I have no intention of competing for the company relay team in this year’s marathon. We have this discussion every year, and every year I am bullied into running with my extended family. Meanwhile, I’ve never even gotten to run the full marathon in my hometown. The relay takes place at the same time, with the long distance runners blending in with relayers who switch out every five miles or so.

  I always feel like an asshole on the fourth or fifth section, starting on fresh legs while the runners around me have been pounding the pavement for 20 miles.

  I feel like I want to explain to all of them that I’m actually a full marathoner. I just have to drive to other cities and run their marathons to feel their masochistic, amazing pain.

  Dad catches my scowl, and he says, “To sweeten the pot, I’ll cover the New York marathon registration fee, since a relay leg isn’t nearly challenging enough for my Brady boys.”

  My cousin Orla coughs and glares at my dad. “Right. Brady FAMILY,” he says, clapping her on the shoulder. “Well it hardly counts as a challenge for you, dear. It’s not like I can kick you off the relay team for dragging ass.”

  “Just what I always wanted,” she says, rolling her eyes. “To be the token female in a herd of men performing feats of strength.” My brothers and cousin start in on each other, slinging foul comebacks, when the event organizer jumps up on a boulder with a megaphone.

  “Good morning, titans of industry!” he shouts, grinning. I groan. “Who’s excited to be here for our kickoff run?” I tune out his chipper voice and look around, seeing the regular crew. There’s the corporate bankers, the out of shape CPA firm, the doctors, and the academics. And then I do a double take, fixated on a mop of chestnut hair swirling in the gray light.

  I cannot stop staring at the woman shivering off to the side with a group of scrawny lawyers from Stag Law. I see their boss stretching his quads, wearing headphones, ready to gallop down the path as soon as the whistle blows. I feel one of my brothers punch my shoulder. “Ouch!” I glare at him. “What was that for?”

  “Were you even listening? Seasoned runners are supposed to pair up with someone new, to help them pace and work their breath and all that shit.”

  “What’s your point? I’m not doing that.” It’s one thing to be here. They can’t make me be coach to an amateur.

  The guy with the megaphone jumps down from the boulder and picks up two orange buckets from the ground. Climbing back onto his perch, he shouts, “Your group leaders have taken the liberty of identifying team members who are beginners, and those with a bit more experience and wisdom to share today.” He starts reaching into the buckets and calling out names, pairing people at random. “This is what it’s all about!” he says.

  I feel my blood pounding in my ears. I watch as people awkwardly team up and start off jogging or stretching. A small voice inside wants me to get stuck with the woman over there, with all the hair. That voice is coming straight from my dick, who keeps reminding me how nice it would be to run right behind her, staring at that round ass moving down the path. “Shut up,” I mutter to my junk, as if it had actually said those things out loud.

  Some of the pairs are doing secret handshake moves and laughing. This is like a nightmare for me. But then I hear the organizer say, “Zack Brady, you’re going to be helping to coach your new best friend...Nicole Kennedy!”

  Nicole Kennedy does indeed turn out to be the woman with out of control hair and ice green eyes. She’s short and curvy and looks l
ike she’s never run a day in her life. My family members all flip me the bird as they tear off down the trail—apparently there were way more experts than beginners needing a coach.

  Dad gives me a grin, and then Nicole and I are in a standoff, waiting to see who will approach whom first. She stands with her legs spread wide, arms crossed, eyes seeming to say I do not make the first move in these situations.

  I roll my eyes and approach her. “Isaac Brady,” I say. “Zack.” I offer her my hand, and she raises an eyebrow, keeping both hands on her rounded hips. God, I love when women wear tight leggings to go running. Jesus, the ass on this woman. What the fuck am I doing here? “So…we’re doing this I guess,” I say. “What’s your typical pace?”

  She cocks a brow at me. “If I knew what typical pace meant, I wouldn’t be in the beginner group, would I?” So that’s how this is going to go, I guess.

  “Ok,” I say, gesturing down the trail. “Today’s run is 2 miles, and the plan is to do a steady pace. So why don’t you start running at a pace where you feel comfortable talking.”

  “Talking? How will I know if it’s a comfortable talking pace?”

  This is going to be harder than I thought. “You’re going to have to talk to me to test it out.” This gets, if not exactly a smile, at least an amused expression. I get a definite no-nonsense, don’t-fuck-with-me vibe from Ms. Nicole Kennedy. I like it. I don’t want to be fucked with, either.

  We start running, faster than I thought we’d go. Everything she’s wearing looks brand new, like she went out shopping for this experience. Certain she’s going to burn out, I test the waters and talk to her. “Tell me how you wound up here today.”

  She falls into step beside me and snaps that her boss is making her be here. “What are the consequences if you refuse?”

  She keeps her eyes straight ahead when she tells me, “He’d be a miserable asshole and a bear to work with. Which I’m now re-evaluating, since my alternative is apparently training with you.”