Sweet Water: Destination Billionaire Romance

by Laurie Lewis

  She squeezed the keys again. “And thank you for these. Olivia can recuperate where she’ll feel comfortable.”

  Hudson reached into the breast pocket of his white button-front shirt, withdrew two cards, and handed them to Susan. “Here is my personal business card. You can always reach me at that number. And I stopped by the bank and arranged for this preloaded bank card for any expenses that come up … at least until Liv can sort things out.”

  Susan touched the gold-embossed “HB” with her finger. “This is the very card I would have expected from you. Elegant, unpretentious. Hudson Bauer …” Her hand swept through the air as if she were drawing a marquee. “You’re an icon, like The Boss or Madonna.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me,” he teased.

  “You’ve probably placed this card in the hands of famous people I only read about … but I’m glad you’re still a regular guy.”

  “Money doesn’t make one person better than another. It’s just a tool.” Then he tapped the card. “The only thing that matters right now is that it allows me to get here in a few hours no matter where I am.” Despite his wealth, a sense of powerlessness slammed Hudson, rounding his shoulders. “I wish I could do more. I planned to stay right there in her room and relieve you, but …” He looked at Olivia’s door and shook his head. “I’m the last person she wants to see. Just promise to call me if you or she need anything. I mean it.”

  “I promise.”

  2

  A hospital chaplain arrived during Olivia’s rant, but when his efforts to comfort her failed, sedation was ordered. She welcomed the fog until her last fateful drive and conversation with Jeff began replaying in a subconscious loop. As the effects of the medicine decreased, the clarity of the memory increased until she was there beside the car again, watching Jeff walk away. But this time, she knew what would happen next. Her mumbled warning for Jeff to come back went unheeded, and her panic increased until she bolted upright, yelling, “Watch out! Watch out!”

  Monitor leads and her IV hose whipped loose despite Susan’s efforts to still Olivia’s flailing arms. The beeping alerts sent nurses scrambling while Susan was relegated back to the reclining chair she had slept in the past few nights. Olivia noticed the stress on her sister-in-law’s face. The quiet teacher had questions she needed to ask, questions that denied her peace, and the time had come for them to talk.

  After the nurses left, Olivia closed her eyes and brushed her long, dark hair away from her face with her least encumbered hand before resting the arm across her brow. Opening her eyes, she met Susan’s gaze. “I haven’t thanked you for staying with me. We haven’t really spoken since—”

  “Since your secret wedding eight years ago?”

  There it is. Olivia stiffened at Susan’s quiet but well-aimed reproach that revealed her own pain.

  “Do you know how my parents found out that their only son had brought a new member into the family? Facebook. Some of Jeff’s football buddies posted photos.”

  How could they have been there? We had only been engaged for an hour.

  There had been no thought of parents. No thought of anything, really. Now, it was clear the McAllisters blamed her for the family’s estrangement. “I’m sorry. It all happened so quickly. We … just didn’t think.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Susan muttered, dipping her head, clearly uncomfortable over causing Olivia pain.

  “How did you hear … about the accident?”

  Susan fumbled with her hands. “Jeff called unexpectedly yesterday morning. He said he was returning to Portland for a week or so and wanted to get together. I was so excited…” She bit her upper lip and wiped her eyes. “Anyway, the police saw my number on his phone and called me since there was no emergency contact info for either of you and only a series of P.O. boxes for an address.”

  Olivia cringed as she heard how irresponsible they sounded. “I’m sorry. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.” Unable to hold the tears back any longer, she wept into her blanket. Susan looked aside until she regained control. “Would you help me … Would you help me plan his service?” Olivia’s voice caught.

  The topic seemed to suck the air from the room. The awkward silence that filled the void was finally dispelled when Susan coughed to clear the emotion from her own voice. “My folks arrived last night. They would appreciate being included in those plans.”

  Olivia swallowed and nodded. “Of course.”

  Another long, silent pause magnified the tension in the room until Susan spoke. “This was the first time Jeff’s been home in years, and he didn’t keep in touch with anyone from here as far as I know, so it’ll be a small service. Just us and a few old family friends.”

  Olivia thought of the family with the oranges and the red-haired toddler, but she couldn’t recall their names.

  Susan sniffed. “He had a hymn he sang and played on his guitar as a kid.” She bit her lip again and turned away.

  Olivia had forgotten that he sang and played guitar. The only time she could remember such a moment was when he entertained a date during a summer campfire on the beach. Never to her. She wished she had known that he had attended church. She’d been married to the man for eight years and knew as little about him as he knew about her. The depth of their marital failure slammed her. “Let’s use the one you remember, if you think it would please your parents.”

  Susan nodded. Her hands twisted nervously, and then she looked up. “Did you love him?”

  Olivia swallowed hard, and Susan pursued the question.

  “I-I’m sorry. I’m trying to understand why he cut us out. I’d prefer to imagine him happy and self-absorbed over miserable and ashamed to come home. Why did you marry so quickly and stay away? Did you love him?”

  Olivia didn’t want to answer, but neither did she want to lie. “I-I-I thought so.” She could hear how hollow the words were. “I tried to love him, but he didn’t seem to want to be loved by me.” Olivia’s slim, olive-toned fingers toyed with the edge of her bedsheet. “He didn’t seem to like himself much either.”

  “My proud, arrogant brother? That doesn’t sound like Jeff at all.”

  Every word was being weighed, and the strength of Susan’s rebuttal caused Olivia to shrink back into the mattress. “He changed after the wedding. We had just graduated, and he and Hudson were launching a promising software company. Jeff could have had his pick of women, but he pursued me, a girl with no dating experience. He said he loved me, but I suppose he woke up that first morning and realized the mistake he had made.”

  Susan slumped, mirroring Olivia’s defeated posture. Her voice was softer when she asked, “Then why not call it a mistake, go your separate ways, and be happy?”

  This was the precipice upon which Olivia had spent the last eight years, with each day hanging just a word or a look away from the fall into a marital separation. Walking that narrow line had worn her down, but failure and abandonment seemed equally terrifying to the young woman she once was, an insecure youth who voiced her surly opinion about her beautiful mother’s miserable but convenient marriage. So Olivia had stayed, but why had Jeff?

  She closed her eyes against the sting and shifted in the bed, wanting to close that chapter in her thin book of memories. But Susan was still staring at her, waiting for an answer, so Olivia supplied the only one she had. The only one that made any sense to her.

  “The day after our wedding, Jeff drove us back to the apartment he shared with Hudson. It had also been the headquarters for our software company, but Hudson had vacated the place. All he left was an envelope with a note for Jeff, berating him for missing their big presentation and describing how he’d stumbled through it alone and closed the deal.”

  “Did he know why Jeff missed the presentation? That you two had eloped?”

  Olivia shrugged. “Evidently. I was so stunned that I never actually read the letter, but Jeff told me what was in it. He read a line to me that said, ‘I hope you’re happy.’”

  “Ma
ybe he meant it. Maybe Hudson was actually wishing you guys well, and he moved out to give you two some privacy.”

  Those had been her first thoughts too, but all the other evidence was stacked against Hudson. “I admit that Jeff and I got ourselves off to a rocky start. Shutting you and your parents out was wrong, but Hudson left us nothing to build on when he stole the partnership away from Jeff.”

  “Partnership?”

  “Hudson designed a software program that evaluated players’ stats and predicted what strategies would work best against different opponents. He set up an LLC, and I wrote the programming. Several NCAA teams were interested.”

  “And he made Jeff a legal partner?”

  Olivia shrugged again. “I suppose it was more of an understanding Jeff said they had, but even though the concept was Hudson’s, Jeff was the face of the company. He knew the sports lingo, and he could talk to anyone, especially the crowd looking at that program. But Hudson reneged on everything and kept the company. One success led to another for him, but he destroyed Jeff that day.”

  “So that’s why you lashed out at him.” She shifted in her seat. “I guess I still don’t understand why you and Jeff chose to stay together and be miserable.”

  The question wouldn’t go away. Olivia surrendered to her fatigue, allowing her eyes to drift closed, ending the interrogation but not the mental examination of the question. Why did she stay? She knew. Once the shock of Hudson’s departure sank in, Jeff kicked the desk, cursed, and paced in a circle. Panicked, he turned to Olivia.

  “You wrote that code. I wrote the sales pitch. We’re two-thirds of the dream team. We’ll just start again … make our own company.” The light returned to his eyes as he extended his hand to her. “Deal?”

  The proffered partnership wasn’t the bond of two lovers, but it fit a pattern with which she was familiar. Jilted by Olivia’s father while pregnant, her beautiful mother dated many men, keeping her eyes peeled for a suitable opportunity. When she found Louisiana plumbing contractor Peter Thibodeaux, a quiet Cajun man with a profitable business, she packed up her daughter and their things and headed to the altar.

  As a child, Olivia was almost glad she wasn’t pretty. Gangly and nearsighted, with a narrow, aquiline nose, long black hair, and an olive complexion like the Greek father she never met, she didn’t share her mother’s need to fend off suitors. Education became Olivia’s ticket to stability, and she threw herself into her studies, joined the nerd clubs—computer science and math—and applied for every scholarship she could find. Then she accepted the offer from the school farthest from her mother—the University of Washington in Seattle.

  The library became her refuge. That was where she clicked with another freshman math nerd—Hudson Bauer—the high school buddy and personal stat-man to Jeff, the freshman Adonis at tight end. Hudson introduced her to Jeff, and their odd threesome worked somehow.

  But it was Hudson she gravitated to. They were never at a loss for conversation. There was always a question to solve or an idea to puzzle over together. They rolled their eyes as Jeff’s conveyer belt of fantasy dates strolled past while Hudson envisioned a way to turn the game strategies he provided Jeff into a marketable program.

  He offered Olivia a crucial role. For the first time, she felt she belonged somewhere, that she was needed, and her confidence soared. But all the while, Olivia secretly wished Hudson would close the laptop and look at her the way Jeff looked at his dates.

  With that in mind, she adopted some of the styles and trends of the girls Jeff dated. She cut and highlighted her hair, got contacts, tried makeup, and bought stylish clothes. Jeff applauded the changes that left Hudson wary and unsettled. As disappointed as she was over his lukewarm response, she liked the confident woman looking back at her from the mirror.

  The next three years of building the company were the happiest of her life. Until the night Jeff swept her off her feet. And Hudson went away. Until she realized that the confident woman in the mirror had surrendered to the insecurities of her youth, and the love-filled marriage she dreamed of had become a business with occasional benefits.

  Why did she marry Jeff? She told herself it was infatuation, but deep down she knew there was something else, something far less romantic. Why did he marry her? It was the question she had feared to ask him, and now that he was gone, she’d never know the answer.

  3

  The scent of pine filled Hudson’s nose as he drove his silver Range Rover north along the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway. He passed alternating stands of straight, soaring evergreens and swatches of bare land cleared by logging, now dotted with new plantings for the future. His stress eased as the familiar sights and smells overtook him.

  He pulled off U.S. Highway 101 and cruised the downtown area of quaint Cannon Beach, Oregon, popping in at the Family Market. After picking up some carefully selected groceries and supplies, he headed for the Bauers’ gray, cedar shake-sided home on Forest Lawn Drive.

  He could almost feel his parents’ absence. The home seemed to miss them too. Ocean breezes blew trash into the shrubs, and lichen had crept across the gray cedar shake roof, leaving yellow-green patches.

  His cares eased as he carried the groceries around to the back of the house to take in the spectacular ocean view. He had travelled the world to places most people only dream of, but this lot, selected by his great-grandfather, a Blackfoot Indian and logger, was his favorite spot on earth.

  The powerful, never-ending expanse of churning blue met an almost equally blue horizon. Gulls squawked, waves crashed, and children squealed from the beach below the bluff where the old gray house stood. Hudson looked left to the massive, famous Haystack Rock of Goonies fame and to the sea garden that stretched from the beach to the rock and its caves. The scene was filled with memories. His favorites included Liv.

  He stepped onto the sprawling porch, unlocked the French doors, and disarmed the alarm. A tautness surrounded his heart since seeing Liv. He felt it release as he stepped into the timeless house—a time capsule fitted with familiar, comfy furniture in blues and corals. The white walls and gray wood floors of the open dining/living space flowed into the kitchen. Long-stifled images returned of Liv eating at the counter or lounging on the sofa in an oversized T-shirt and jeans. Feeling wrung out, he slumped onto a stool and imagined her here again—hurt, injured, afraid. How had they gotten to this agonizing point?

  He stood and began emptying the grocery bags. If Liv wouldn’t see him, he’d at least make sure the old place was ready in case she accepted his offer to recuperate here.

  His phone buzzed distinctively in his pocket. It was the ring reserved for Alejandra, his assistant. He took the call and waited expectantly for her Latin inflections.

  “I’m trying very hard not to bother you.”

  “It’s okay. What’s up?”

  “Have you even seen the news? There was another terrorist blast near Rashaya.”

  The hairs on his arms stood on end. “Were any of our people hurt?”

  “No, but some of the investors are pulling out. They think it’s too risky to move forward at this time. HSB agrees. What do you want me to do?”

  Hudson ran a hand over his face and sighed. HSB was the Humanitarian Services Branch of TBG, The Bauer Group, his sprawling corporate umbrella that now required teams of people to manage. Rashaya was the Lebanese city where he was trying to launch family-based microbusinesses to help the Syrian refugees.

  Alejandra cleared her throat. “Shall I transfer corporate funds to cover the losses?”

  “Not yet. Money isn’t the problem. We need to get more people invested in the project … people who will care enough to mentor these new business owners. Call the AMAR Foundation. Tell them we have the capital if they have some volunteers. Get back to me when you hear from them. And double the number of security people there, no matter what it costs.”

  “Will do. I do have some good news. Arthur Baswell of Micro-Gear has a prototype of that solar pump to show you
.”

  “That’s great. Set up a video chat. I want to see that ASAP.”

  “I’ll get on it. This is a delicate time for you to go dark on me. Whatever has taken you away must be pretty important.”

  “I’ll do better about checking in.”

  He wasn’t ready to tell Alejandra why he excused himself from critical meetings, shifted responsibilities to others, and walked away from his corporate world with only an hour’s notice. It wasn’t like him. Except where Liv was concerned.

  4

  Aides arrived almost hourly, delivering packages containing expensive brands of personal items lost in the accident. A large bouquet of yellow tulips arrived, along with several novels and a teal-colored robe. Olivia assumed the items had been purchased by Hudson or one of his people, and while Olivia received the needed goods with initial discomfort, it did not go unnoticed that he had remembered her favorite flowers, author, and color.

  Susan began staying at a local hotel with her parents after she and Olivia talked. Her parents arrived at the hospital with her one afternoon, carrying a bag that contained a new dress and shoes for Olivia to wear to the upcoming funeral. She couldn’t imagine what that agonizing errand had cost them emotionally, and though their kindness was genuine, a suffocating curtain of guilt and blame shrouded all of them each time the conversation drifted to Jeff. She wept when they left, wondering why Jeff hadn’t taken her home to meet his parents. She could only assume it was because he hadn’t wanted them to meet her.

  A soft knock sounded on the door before it opened slightly, revealing a woman with short brown hair and a kind face. She held a Mason jar filled with day lilies and orange poppies.

  “Hello,” the woman said. “Is it all right if I come in?”

  Olivia wiped her eyes and nodded.

  “I’ve been calling Susan every day to check on you.” Her smile quivered. “I’m so very sorry about Jeff. We’d like to help if there’s anything … anything at all you need.”