Off the Hook

by Laura Drewry

  With her fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of her suitcase, Kate started for the door, then stopped, turned, and hugged Jessie as tight as she could.

  “I’ll call you as soon as it’s done.”

  Jessie didn’t answer, just nodded against Kate’s shoulder.

  “Stick to the story and everything’ll be fine, okay?”

  Another nod, shorter this time, and then Kate let her go and walked out the door. As with her cabin and that narrow bed she’d come to love so much, Kate would not let herself look back at the lodge.

  In fact, once she had herself strapped into her seat, she sat perfectly straight until they were halfway to Vancouver. Then, and only then, did she let one—and only one—tear slip out. She was right to do what she was doing, she didn’t doubt that, but she wasn’t sure it was the right way to do it.

  As soon as they landed, she hit the ground running, first to her apartment, then to the bank. It was ridiculous to think that in a city the size of Vancouver she’d be seen by Paul or someone else from work, especially on a Saturday, but that didn’t stop her from checking over her shoulder every couple of minutes.

  According to her contract, if she got fired for any reason, she’d lose all her stock options with the Foster Group, and she was going to need those to pull the rest of this plan off. That was why she didn’t stop for a cinnamon dolce latte—even though she was almost ready to kill for one—and she didn’t pay any attention to the 75 percent–off sale at her favorite shoe store. She had enough shoes anyway; what she needed was a good pair of work boots.

  The only stop she made was at the corner store, where she ducked in to grab a few bare necessities to get her through the next few days, then she locked herself in her apartment and waited. And waited.

  She had shut her phone off but didn’t stop checking her email until finally, just after seven, the one she’d been waiting for, the one she’d been dreading, showed up:

  From: Jessie Todd

  To: Kate H

  Subject: bad

  I don’t even know what to think. Usually when one of them gets mad, they yell and carry on, and that’s what he was doing right up until I gave him the jersey. I don’t know what you wrote in that note, but as soon as he read it, he walked out and I haven’t seen him since. The boats are all still here, so it’s not like he’s gone far, but Ro and Finn have been out looking for him for a while now and none of them are answering the radio. I sure hope this works.

  —

  “So do I,” Kate muttered. If it didn’t, she’d just made the biggest and worse mistake of her entire life.

  It was what kept her up long into the night, well after Jessie’s next email assured her that all three O’Donnells were back in the lodge; there’d been no bloodshed and no more yelling. Liam had simply walked in, picked up the phone, and scheduled a Helijet to pick him up in the morning.

  Knowing he’d be on a flight the next morning brought some relief, but it wasn’t until Tuesday morning, when Robyn emailed from the bank to tell her the transaction had cleared and the funds had been deposited to the assigned account, that she felt she could really breathe. Half an hour later, Kate was standing in that same bank, with both the Buoys’s tax bill and the check she’d already filled out.

  As she left the bank, Kate turned on her phone for the first time in days, and, grinning down at the screen, she fired off a one-word email to Jessie: Done.

  It didn’t seem right to waste a second of such a gorgeous day sitting inside a cab, so Kate set out on foot, turning right off Georgia Street and heading up Burrard with her phone pressed against her ear. After clearing the myriad of security questions with Phyllis in the human-resources department, Kate was assured that her resignation had been logged into the system and all outstanding wages, bonuses, et cetera, et cetera, would be paid out by the end of the week.

  Beautiful. And just in time, because twelve stories up from where she stood was her office—the nine-by-nine room she’d been working her ass off in for the last eight years. What a relief it was to know she’d never spend another day there, she’d never get stuck riding the slowest elevator in the Western world, and she’d never have to listen to that god-awful pan-flute music Paul had piped through the whole office.

  “Hi, Lorraine,” she said, breezing up to the woman’s desk. “Is Paul in?”

  “Kate! What are you doing here?” A twenty-plus-year employee of the Foster Group, Lorraine probably knew more about the internal workings of the company than Paul himself, and Kate knew for a fact that every time someone was hired or fired, that information was immediately sent to Lorraine for her records.

  “I’m here to see Paul.” Unlike every other time she’d stood at Lorraine’s desk, Kate didn’t wait for permission; she headed straight for his door.

  “He’s in a meeting!” Lorraine cried, tripping over the corner of her desk in her hurry to run blocker.

  “That’s okay, this won’t take long.” And before Lorraine could get anywhere near her, Kate pushed open the door to Paul’s office and stepped inside. He was in a meeting, all right: with Josh. Big surprise.

  “Kate.” The splash of surprise that washed over Paul’s face was but a tiny ripple compared to the one that hit Josh’s.

  “Good, you’re both here.” She didn’t bother closing the door, and when Josh made to push out of his chair, she froze him with a pointed finger. “Sit down.”

  “I was just about to have Lorraine call you,” Paul said. “There appears to have been some movement in our project.”

  “Some movement?” Kate’s snort was neither ladylike nor polite. She wasn’t surprised he had someone watching the Buoys’s accounts, but she was surprised he had the information already. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “I hope you can explain it, because Josh was telling me about your conversation the other night where, unless I’m misunderstanding, you were pretty certain that they wouldn’t be able to meet their obligations.”

  One more thing she wouldn’t miss: Paul’s business voice.

  “That’s right,” she said. “That’s what I told him. Were you concerned about your good friend Jimmy’s family, Paul? Worried they’d all find themselves out on the street after you screwed them out of their home?”

  Josh’s tanned face blanched even before Paul rolled a warning look at him.

  “Kate,” Paul said, his calm, smooth voice dripping with condescension, “you’re letting your emotions control what you say right now, so, because I like you, I’m going to give you a minute to gather yourself before this conversation goes any further.”

  “Thank you,” she said, blinking steadily at him. “But I’m as ‘gathered’ as I’m going to get. If anyone in this room needs to gather themselves, it’s Josh, because he’s the dipshit who forwarded your email to me.”

  “That was—”

  Kate didn’t even look at him. “Shut up, Josh.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Foster?” Lorraine tiptoed into the room behind Kate. Clutched in her hand was a single piece of paper, which Kate immediately snatched away. “That’s—”

  “I know what it is,” Kate said. “And I’ll give it to him, so thank you, Lorraine, that’ll be all.”

  Wide gray eyes stared at her, then shifted to Paul, whose brief nod sent Lorraine backing out of the office.

  “Why’d you do it?” she asked. “You said Jimmy was your friend.”

  “He was. But as I have repeatedly told you over the years, Kate, one can’t mix personal feelings with business. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “That’s such bullshit,” she muttered. “But I guess it explains why you used me, doesn’t it? All this time I’ve believed that if I worked hard for you, it would pay off, that one day you’d appreciate it and I’d be rewarded. But that’s not what happened, is it? Instead, you went digging around in my past and used it against me.”

  It took him a second but he finally sighed, leaned back in his big leather chair, and folded his hands over his s
tomach. It was over; he’d lost the property, so there was no reason to hide anything anymore.

  “Come on, Kate, you know how this works. Before we agree to anything, we do background searches on everyone involved. Nothing out of the ordinary showed up on the initial check, but my guy wanted to do a little more digging because, let’s face it, pro athletes are no strangers to scandal and we needed something to help motivate the O’Donnells to sell.

  “When it didn’t look like we were going to find anything, we were all set to go with our original plan. Josh was packed and ready to go and then”—he lifted his fingers in a “there you go” kind of way—“there it was. You were our ticket in, Kate. You’d never breathed a word about the ball player, so he was obviously something you wanted to keep secret.”

  “Oh my God. You knew I wouldn’t say anything.”

  “Of course I knew. You’d been wanting a chance to prove yourself for so long you could almost taste it; everyone here knew that. I admit I was surprised that you didn’t seem to know what the Buoys was, and I had no way of knowing how your ball player would react to having you there, but it seemed to be working out pretty well.”

  He’d played her, plain and simple.

  “And so what?” she asked. “What did you think would happen?”

  “That’s what was so beautiful about this, Kate. I knew no matter what happened, it would be because you let your emotions get involved. Yes, I was rather hoping you’d get up there and turn into a crazy ex-wife, wreak some havoc, make their lives so miserable and cause so much damage that they’d never recover. But you didn’t, and while that surprised me a bit, it wasn’t a complete shock, because I know you, Kate. You went in there and worked because your heart was set on making it yours. From the second I called you about it, I knew you would do everything you could, whether it was because you wanted to make your ball player suffer or because you wanted to prove you could do it; either way it was a decision you made based on your emotions, and either way we were going to get that place.”

  “All that work we did, the repairs, the rebuilding, it would have been for nothing.”

  “Not at all,” he said, smiling at her as if she were six years old. “You know how long it takes for construction permits to come through, so while we waited for those, Josh would keep the place running and keep the clients coming back. You, Kate, made that possible for us.”

  “Josh. You were going to give the Buoys to Josh to run.”

  “Of course.”

  “Because I’m too emotional with my decisions, is that right?”

  “Exactly.” He might as well have been discussing how many times his coffee should be stirred for all the sentiment he showed.

  “I see.” Despite what Paul said, Kate thought she was doing an amazing job of keeping her emotions in check as she stood there running her finger along the edge of the paper in her hand, the one that confirmed her resignation. “So what will you do now?”

  “I’ll have someone look into the payment they made, to find out where they got the money. If there’s so much as a hint of anything untoward, we still might—”

  “Untoward?” The word ripped from Kate’s throat on a harsh choking laugh. “God, you have no idea who you’re talking about. There’s nothing ‘untoward’ about any of them, Paul. They work hard, and all they want is to share their little piece of the world with others, to show the rest of us what life can be like if you stop to appreciate it once in a while.”

  “Kate.”

  “Don’t ‘Kate’ me, you condescending piece of shit.” Paul was right, she was letting her emotions rule her, and she didn’t care. “You want to know where they got that money from? Me! I gave it to them.”

  “Oh my God,” Josh croaked. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Don’t,” she said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare speak to me right now, Josh, you slimy little snot.”

  She kept her eyes fixed on Paul the whole time, watching as something new washed over his face: understanding. He’d underestimated Kate, and they both knew it.

  “I would be very careful about what you say next, Kate.”

  “Or what? You’ll fire me? Too late.” She slapped the paper down on his desk, pressing her fingers against it until her nails whitened. “I never thought I’d say this again, but you know what, Paul? You can take this job and shove it as far up your ass as you can reach—or, better yet, let Josh do it for you.”

  She was already at the door when he called her name, and this time it wasn’t nearly as calm or condescending as before.

  “Kate!” Pushing out of his chair, Paul lifted the paper off his desk and waved it between them. “If you think I’m going to let you walk out of here with anything other than your coffee mug, you are sadly mistaken. A couple keystrokes and this’ll show you as being fired, which you are.”

  “Go ahead and try, but before you do, know this.” Holding her phone up, she waved the screen in front of him, showing the most recent email she’d received. “My friend Phyllis has already sent me a copy, and if that’s not enough, then you should probably know that I have several saved text messages, of the highly inappropriate kind, from a couple of your investors who had a difficult time taking my no as an answer over the years.”

  A slightly grayish tinge covered Paul’s face.

  “Exactly,” Kate continued. “And as both of these ‘gentlemen’ are, and I shudder to say it, well respected in their law firms, and both are married to women who’ll ruthlessly rip their hearts out, I’m fairly confident either one of them would be only too happy to represent me should I need to retain counsel for any reason—like wrongful dismissal or anything else we can come up with.”

  The vein in the middle of Paul’s forehead began to throb, and his jaw clenched so tight he was no doubt going to damage some of his expensive veneers.

  “Anger.” Kate gave him the most condescending smile she could muster. “It’s an emotion, too, Paul. Don’t let it cloud your decision-making.”

  She started through the door, then stopped and looked back one more time. “I’ll expect everything I’m owed before the close of business on Friday.”

  And by the time Friday afternoon hit, not only was her bank account well padded, but with the help of Jeanette and Laurel, both of whom were still in total shock, she packed up her apartment, put some of it in storage and donated the rest, gave her landlord notice, and took care of the seemingly endless accounts that needed to be changed or canceled.

  By the time she finally made it inside one of the Helijets, she was almost twitching. She’d only been gone a week, yet it felt like half a lifetime. But as excited as she was to be going back, the cavern in her heart still ached.

  Chapter 12

  You can’t second-guess baseball. You can’t second-guess yourself.

  —Mariano Rivera

  As luck would have it, Liam arrived in Oakland just as they started a three-game home stand against the Tigers. They had him throw in the bullpen the first game, but he didn’t actually take the mound until late in the second game, when they let him face a single batter before pulling him.

  The jog out of the bullpen had always been something Liam loved: the fans roaring, music blaring through the sound system, the smell of the Kentucky bluegrass mingled with kicked-up dirt. He loved the feel of the rosin bag as he flipped it around in his hand, and he loved knowing that once he climbed up on the mound, he could shut everything else out and focus solely on the catcher’s glove.

  Except when he looked down the chute at the glove behind home plate, all he saw was Kate crouched in that too-big gear, telling him to throw some heat and then heckling him when she didn’t think he was throwing as hard as he could.

  So he let himself believe it was Kate’s glove there, and he hurled that damn ball as hard as he could, sitting the batter in three straight pitches. It was everything he remembered. It was what he’d dreamed about his whole life, what he’d worked so hard to get back to.

  And i
t meant nothing.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  The team was great, the coaching staff was awesome, and the training staff was top-notch, so there wasn’t a single thing Liam could complain about. Two nights later he even got to pitch against the Yankees in front of the Oakland fans, which was something he’d always loved. It didn’t matter which team you played for or which field you played on, the fans were always that much louder, that much more passionate, when the Yanks were in town.

  And yet nothing about it felt right.

  He called home at least every other day, and whether he spoke to Jessie or one of his brothers, the responses were all the same: everything was great, they were ready to open, and they’d hired a friend of Olivia’s to help out with housekeeping, waiting tables, and the desk when Jessie was working the shack.

  “We got this,” Jessie assured him. “The only thing you need to worry about right now is getting that slider of yours working.”

  “What do you know about my slider?” He laughed, but it felt a little hollow. “You don’t even watch the games.”

  “Damn right we do! There’s some sort of MLB app that we run from, uh, a laptop into the screen in the great room. We haven’t missed a game yet.”

  A couple of years ago, that would have meant something to him, but now? Now all he could wonder was if Kate had watched any of them. She’d admitted to watching a few before, but now? He doubted it.

  He had to give her credit: She’d worked him over pretty good, reeled him in and made him feel things he’d never even considered possible. And then she’d gutted him like a goddamn fish, leaving him wrecked, with nothing but an old jersey and his own words to keep him warm.

  Sorry, but this is the only way.

  He’d never been that pissed, that hurt, and that confused all at the same time. And his brothers hadn’t been any help at all; they just kept reminding him that everything was as it should be: They were going to get to keep the Buoys, and Liam would get to return to playing ball without anything holding him back. He should be happy, they’d said; he should be excited, because life was finally handing him everything he wanted.