by Asrai Devin
He smiled at her on the way by, but didn’t stop.
Shanna’s cell phone beeped as she checked her e-mail for Kendall’s resume, which had arrived without an attachment. She sent a reply, then reached for her phone.
Gabe. Her heart clenched. She missed their daily talks. We signed the finals on the contract today. You did an amazing job. Miss you.
She texted back, one eye on the door. That’s exciting. Work is going well here.
She went back to the file she was working on before the Kendall and Gabe interruptions. Her e-mail and phone beeped.
Gabe first. That’s good. We are busy. I’m busy. Too busy to think of her? It seemed not.
She tapped back a reply. That’s good. If you are busy, Dad is staying out of the office, I hear. Things are much slower for me back here.
The door started opening and she shoved her phone into a desk drawer and opened her e-mail. Trenton came back and placed a mug on her desk. “There you go, one herbal tea for you.”
“Thank you, that’s sweet.” She grabbed the mug. “Kendall forgot to attach her resume on the first e-mail, but it’s arrived now.”
Trenton smiled. “You are the expert on grammar and spelling, so if you could give it a glance over for me... I’m still e-mailing back and forth with that guy from DomPlanet.”
“Marty.” She’d talked to him on the phone a few times. Once, when Trenton was out of the office, she asked him about his company and idea. He had a solid product, but it was still risky to back a start-up. Banks weren’t lending, and investors were hard to come by. If she were in charge of the money, she’d back them, but she didn’t have access to capital.
“Right. I really don’t think Dad wants to get involved with such a small company. But he’s refusing to take my no.”
“It’s a good product. You could let Marty make up a pitch, pass it on to your dad and let him decide on his own.”
“And if Dad does invest, everyone will look at it like he’s investing in his son’s friend’s company and only did it ‘cause I know the guy.” Marty had grasped at straws in the first place, contacting Trenton. They’d had a couple of classes together, but when you start a small business in need of cash, you grasp every straw you can.
“Then tell Marty no, and ignore the rest of your e-mails from him.”
“Probably the better thing to do. Dad is stressed with things lately, and I don’t want to put one more thing on his plate.”
Trenton patted her hand absently then went back into his office. Shanna shook her head and returned to Kendall’s resume. Sure, she didn’t have anything better to do. Okay, a quick glance at the file and she changed the text color to black. What had she gotten herself into here?
* * *
Shanna sighed as she flopped on the sofa. She grabbed the popcorn off the table and hit play on the movie. “I’m starting,” she called.
Trenton came into the room wearing sweatpants. It was so out of character to his usual dress code, that it made him look sexier.
She grinned at him and tugged the flannel garment. “I love when you wear these. So hot to see you relaxed.”
He glanced up from his Blackberry. “If you think I look hot in these, wait 'til we veg out and watch the movie.” He looked back down and continued pressing buttons. “I have a few more messages to send.”
She laughed. “Come on, finish up. I turned my phone off. It’s Friday night. I want to relax tonight.”
“I know. Two people called us old and married for not going out tonight. They have no idea what hell this week hath wrought on us.”
“I know. Carmen messaged me as well and said the same thing. I don’t care. I want to watch this movie then seduce you.”
“Yeah?” Trenton said, barely looking up from his phone. “Okay. Last one, then I will shut it off.”
She hit play and turned her attention to the TV. When he pushed his phone across the coffee table, she snuggled up to him and put the popcorn on his lap. The next two hours were dedicated to superheroes and the imminent destruction of the Earth.
The credits rolled and they came out of their stupor. “What did you think?” she asked, stretching her arms.
Trenton stifled a yawn. “It had its moments.”
“I was only in it for the spandex.”
“So, I should get some tighter fitting pants?”
“No, I told you, I love the sweats.” She leaned over and caressed his cheek, rough with the need to shave. She moved closer for a kiss. He kissed her back, his hand resting on her lower back, instead of slipping under her shirt. Then she recalled, she was going to seduce him, and he was waiting for her to make the first move.
She slid her hands toward the bottom of her shirt. Trenton pulled away from the kiss and grabbed her hands. “Something wrong?” she asked.
“No. Well yeah. I’m more tired and stressed than I thought. I hoped the movie would help, but... I’m sorry, babe. I need a rain check.”
“Oh, okay. No problem, sweetie. I can wait.” Except they hadn’t had sex since before her dad’s heart attack. Even for Trenton that was slow.
He kissed her gently. “Thank you. Think I’ll hit the sheets.”
“I’m gonna stay up a bit more.”
“And do what?”
“I dunno read, check Facebook, work.”
He dropped next to her. “You’ve been restless since coming back from Alberta.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“No. Being my assistant isn’t fulfilling you. You got a taste of directing your day and I’m boring.”
“You are not. But sometimes I would like a challenge. I studied four years of marketing. I thought it might be the right time to move to that department. Acquisitions and numbers isn’t my thing.”
Trenton stood. “I hate it, but I think it’s time for you to fly. Apply to marketing. Beef up your resume now and send it off. I can get Dad to put in a word.”
“No, don’t. I want to get a job on my own merits. I want my work to be on my own merits as well.”
“Okay. Goodnight.”
Shanna pulled her laptop from under the coffee table. While it booted, she texted her plans to Gabe. After she hit send, she cursed. She was supposed to be putting distance between herself and Gabriel. She had contacted him so many times in the last five years to share her wins and losses, to seek advice and to seek comfort and a reminder of home. It seemed natural to share this with him as well.
When he texted back with a question, she couldn’t ignore him. It turned into an hour-long textual conversation. She had to end it when she could no longer keep her eyes open. She turned off her phone and crawled into bed with her boyfriend. He rolled away from her.
* * *
Gabe went straight to Bryce’s office on Monday morning to grab some files. He’d spent a nice weekend texting with Shanna off and on, while she shared her excitement and fears about moving to the marketing department. He hoped it worked out for her.
Rachel cleared her throat as he smiled at her. “Problem?” he asked.
“Someone is in the office.” She pointed at the office door.
Someone? “Someone?” He closed one eye while he tried to understand what she alluded to. “Oh hell, he’s in the office. He swore he’d take at least a month off.”
“Should I call Rita?”
“Not yet. Let me see what is going on.”
Gabe knocked then opened the door. He smiled at the memory of Shanna caught in her dress or rather, partially in her dress.
Bryce was at his computer, not Shanna. “Rachel, what does this note mean here? You need a better password?”
“I’m not as nice as Rachel. What are you doing here?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Working. Don’t worry, only the morning today, but by Friday I should be back in full time.”
“No, no. You said you’d be off for a month.”
“I have been. Two weeks while Shanna worked here and two weeks after she left, that’s near a mon
th.”
“No, it was a month after Shanna left. The time Shanna was here didn’t count as time off.”
“Gabriel Brande, this is my office and my life. I’ll make the decisions.”
The phone rang. Gabe reached over and hit the speaker button. “Yes?”
“Rita on line one,” Rachel said.
“You called Rita?” Bryce thundered.
“No, she called here. You’re in the office, I’m transferring the call. Sir.”
Gabe pressed his lips together to keep from laughing at Rachel’s calm voice. The woman could stay cool in any situation. He had no idea how she did it.
Before Bryce could reply, Rita was saying, “Hello, hello? Bryce Whittikar, you get in your car and drive home right this instant.”
“Rita, I’m a grown man. If I stay home any longer, I’m going to die of boredom. I’m already watching those talk shows. Yesterday when I ran for milk, I talked to the cashier about her daughter’s issues with authority at school. I run a company, I don’t chat with the cashier about family issues.”
“You said you’d take a month off.”
“I did. Two weeks while Shanna was here, and two weeks after she left. That was a month.”
“That was not a month. Shanna’s time did not count as time off, you were in the hospital for most of it. You have one hour or I am coming down there.”
“Fine,” Bryce said.
“You do not want me to come down there.”
“I’ll make sure he leaves within forty minutes,” Gabe said.
“Thank you, Gabriel.”
“For the record, I tried to kick him out when I found him.”
“I know. He’s the one determined to work himself into an early grave.”
“I won’t let him,” Gabe said, looking pointedly at Bryce, who shook his head.
“Good. Because I booked plane tickets for Europe this fall.”
“I’m sure Europe will be lovely in the fall, Rita.”
“Rita, if I only have an hour, I need to go and talk to Gabe,” Bryce put in.
“I mean it, Bryce,” she said. “See you in exactly an hour.”
Bryce ended the call. “Damn woman,” he muttered. “What’s this about the new HomeZones contract? Who’s idea was it to ask for double our original arrangement? They could have ruined everything.”
“Shanna, and they agreed once she added that our product is far superior to anyone else’s.”
“Shanna? Shanna went for this number? You let her lead the call?”
“I thought it was an open and shut, final handshaking agreement, then we’d send the papers. So I let her take it. She spit out this outrageous number and I nearly reached over and ended the call.”
“God, all those weeks, months of work could have been lost.”
“They wouldn’t let us go that easily. I admit I was shocked then annoyed, but they agreed and that was damned exciting. Especially for her. You should have seen her.”
“You should have told me that night so I could have celebrated with her.”
“You would have flipped a lid. Anything else you need to go over before you leave?”
“What is this about my password?”
“I explained this to you. Your password is too easy to guess. Tech explained it like seventy times.”
“Oh, please. I can barely remember my own name in the morning. I’m not going to have some meaningless password that I’ll forget.”
“You need a more secure password. The right hacker could easily guess yours and gain all the information from our company on the entire server: financial records, bank account numbers. Please pick a more secure password. Go home, you need to rest.”
“Fine. I suppose Shanna rearranged my files.”
“Yep.”
Bryce shook his head. “Damn girl.”
“She’s applying for a marketing position.”
“She told you that?”
“We were texting over the weekend. She’s nervous but optimistic. She’s afraid two years of working for Trenton will have made her forget everything she knew.”
“At least she won’t be working for that asshole. I’m sorry for how things turned out between you two.”
“I am, too. I deserved it, I guess. She tried to tell me five years ago, but I couldn’t get over that she was too young, your daughter, all these ideas I had about her. And I wasn’t even divorced. I thought she deserved better.”
“She said something about five years when we had a chat one day. I am pretty sure I don’t want to know.”
“Probably not. She was still a kid.”
“Maybe she does deserve better, but if someone will treat her better than you, I can’t find him. I guess we’ll have to adjust to having Trenton von Brooke in our lives forever.”
“They aren’t married yet. You can still hope.”
“And you won’t hope?”
“No. I’m better off not hoping for that.” For her. Of course, his heart would never give up hope. He’d love her forever.
Bryce patted his shoulder. “I’m going to check my e-mail, then I’ll get out of your hair. You can have my office.”
“I prefer mine. I came to grab some files I needed. If I can find them.” He pulled open the filing cabinet. “She was right, this is a much more efficient system. I should have had her do my cabinet as well.”
Gabe grabbed his files and headed back for his office, making a point not to think about Shanna or hope Trenton would slip and he’d get her back.
* * *
“He needs a hobby,” Rita Whittikar said to her daughter on the phone. “But something easy, something he can do from home. Something to keep his mind occupied.”
Shanna sighed. It wasn’t a surprise her father was trying to work while he was supposed to be resting and recovering. She tried to remember if he’d ever taken a sick day when she was growing up. Her mom had been hard pressed to even get him to take vacations.
“How stressful do you think mentoring someone would be?”
“Mentoring? Like a student?”
“No, a young entrepreneur. There might be an investment aspect to it.”
“You know we have the money for small investments.”
“I do.”
“Gabe told us you found out.”
“Dad and I talked about it. I thought he would have mentioned it.”
“He’s had a lot on his mind. It’s not like we meant to hide it from you. It’s not something you announce to your child. Hey guess what we are worth almost eight million dollars.”
“Eight?”
“Well, with property values and other investments.”
“And the house dad is building?”
“I don’t know. He insisted on building this house. I figured what the hell, he worked all those years, he could have his hobby and do whatever he wanted with it.”
“Do you think he expected me to live in it?”
“I think at first when bought the land, he thought when you came home, you’d want a place of your own. You announced you weren’t coming home, so he held it. He put Gabe’s name as owner shortly after. Suddenly, a couple of months ago, he announced that he’d arranged for the utilities to go in.”
“He told me he was bored and needed a challenge. Which is where my idea comes in.”
“Yes, tell me more.”
“There’s a start-up, a guy who knew Trenton at school. He asked if Trenton would talk to his father about investing, but Trenton doesn’t want to ask Byron. I talked to the guy, it’s a great product. I’d love to, but I don’t have any money. But you and Dad do, and Dad could help the guy out a little. Give him some advice. But he wouldn’t have the day-to-day responsibilities of running the company. It would help Gabe out, since Dad would busy, he wouldn’t be bugging Gabe with a thousand e-mails and phone calls.”
“I’m trying to monitor your Dad’s time, but I have a few obligations I couldn’t get out of. Did Gabe tell you Dad’s been bugging him? That much?”
“Gabe said Dad’s pretty steady.”
“Poor Gabe.”
“Poor Gabe what?” Bryce asked in the background. “Are you talking to him? Give me the phone, I need to ask him something.”
“Hold on a sec,” Rita said into the phone. “I am not talking to Gabriel. And you need to let that poor man do his job. I’m talking to Shanna. She has an idea.”
Bryce grumbled something Shanna couldn’t understand. The next voice she heard was her dad’s grumble. “Fine. You have busy work for me do you?”
“Nope. I know of someone who needs your expertise.”
“Stop pandering to me.”
“I’m really not pandering. He also wants your money. He’s a guy who Trenton went to school with. Bryon von Brooke won't invest. But I thought, you have money and you have time. You could invest in them, help mentor them.”
“Tell me about the company,” Bryce said.
Shanna smiled. “It’s a small start-up …”
Chapter 13
Shanna stared in disbelief at the e-mail from Henry Schnek, vice president of marketing.
She hit the button for Trenton’s office.
“What’s up?”
“There’s no openings in Marketing.”
“I’m sorry, babe. I’m sure something will become available soon and you’ll be at the top of their list.”
“Yeah, it sucks not to be hired based on that, not on my lack of merits. It’s depressing.”
“I know. Well, at least it’s Friday and you’re going out with the girls tonight, right?”
“At least I can get drunk and forgot my troubles.”
“You should leave early, get your nails done or your toe,s or whatever it is that you women do at the spa where you come out looking like the thousands it cost.”
“At least our efforts pay off. I might do that.”
She sighed as she ended the call. A half hour later, she logged off and went to Trenton’s office to give him a kiss. He had plans for the evening with his own friends. People who looked down their noses at her because she didn’t come from old money. She wanted to glare at them and tell them her parents were worth millions as well, only they had earned it, not inherited it.