An hour from now, I’m supposed to report to Peterson Corporation to discuss a partnership with one of the country’s largest fast-food franchisees. David Peterson wants to make his four-hundred plus burger joints run on solar panel energy over the next ten years. He could be a huge client of ours, our biggest yet, and Dane would murder me if I screw it up.
Lucky for him, I’ve got this.
I spent most of this week researching Peterson Corporation and assembling reports and estimates and timelines. I’ve spoken to vendors and ensured supplies are stocked and ready to go should David want to pull the trigger on this today.
I keep an eye on the time as I glance over my notes one last time. A text comes through fifteen minutes later from my driver downstairs. Within the hour, I’m sitting at the head of a fifty-foot conference table on the forty-fourth floor of some downtown high rise. David sits to my left along with three of his associates. They’re all cut from the same cloth: silver hair, black and gray suits, blue and red ties. Frown lines. Pot bellies. They reek of new money and excess, not giving a damn about the fact that their wealth was built on the backs of eight dollar-an-hour burger flippers.
But I’m not here to judge. I’m here to sell the hell out of solar panels.
“Beckham, I’m not sure if you’ve met my partners.” David clears his throat. “Mark Whitaker is our CFO. Daniel Davis is our COO. And Harris Cleveland is our Vice President of Marketing.”
“Good to meet you, gentlemen.” I nod, smoothing my tie flat across my chest, ensuring it’s straight as an arrow. Nothing worse than talking business while looking like a slob. “Shall we start?”
I remove a stack of handouts from my briefcase and pass them down.
“Now, just a minute, son. We’re still waiting on our Chief Administrative Officer.” David chuckles. “She was caught on a phone call a bit ago. Should be waltzing in here any second.”
“Of course.” I sit back in my seat and offer a professional smile to the three crusty bastards with permanent frown lines. Clock ticks fill the silent conference room until the coffee machine in the corner begins to percolate. Mark wastes little time rising to top off his mug, and Harris scrolls through his phone while Daniel stares out the window.
“Here she comes,” David announces.
I rotate my chair, turning to greet the late CAO and try to force some color back into my face when I realize whom she is.
Son of a—
“Beckham King, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Abigail Peterson,” Daniel says.
Too bad I already have.
“Nice to meet you, Abigail,” I say, extending my hand. We shake, our palms gliding together professionally, a stark contrast to the way they explored each other’s bodies three or four weeks ago.
A raucous Saturday night between the sheets with a drunken Abigail led to breakfast in bed the following morning and the proverbial exchanging of numbers. She texted me four days after that, likely when her impatience got the best of her, but I never replied.
Abigail doesn’t flush or fidget or fling herself into her chair. She’s poised. A picture of grace. But what I’m sure her father doesn’t see from his end of the table is the fire in her hazel eyes, the one that says she’s going to eat me alive while the suited bastards watch.
I tap my fingers against the polished table and smile, refusing to let her shake me. This could get messy, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.
“Here you are, Abigail.” I slide a handout toward her and begin my presentation, speaking for a solid fifteen minutes before Abigail interrupts me.
“Mr. King, I’m looking at your estimate here.” She sits up, but the sharp pitch of her voice tells me she’s aimed at me, seconds away from firing. “It feels a little high. Is this the best you can do?”
David gives his daughter a reassuring nod. He’s proud of her. And he should be. Four gruff, middle-aged men hadn’t had the balls to question me yet, and she’s wasting no time.
“I can assure you, we’re the most reasonable in the industry,” I say. “My brother, Dane, and I have worked tirelessly in reducing manufacturing costs and lead times. We have an exclusive contract with a manufacturer based out of Iowa. Their central location allows them to reduce shipping costs, thus reducing the final cost of the product. We pass that savings along to our clients.”
“So you wouldn’t mind if I did a little shopping around before we sign anything?” Abigail bats her lashes.
“By all means.” I call her bluff. “If you can find someone lower than us with the same superior product, please let me know. We’ll match their price and give you an additional five percent discount.”
“What makes your product superior?” Harris asks.
“Workmanship. Warranty. Rigorous testing,” I fire back. “And at the customer service level, you’ll be working closely with myself and my brother. We’re always a phone call away. A client contract this size ensures you won’t be working with any lower level employees who have to play phone tag to get answers for you when you need them. Our biggest competitors can’t offer that, and with a project this size, ten years is a long time to be communicating via middlemen.”
The four of them scan the handouts again, flipping pages and nodding and pursing their lips.
“If you turn to the last page,” I say, “You’ll see where I’ve broken down the ROI. Per my calculations, your project will pay for itself within the first ten to twelve years. And I’m sure we can all agree that it’s a sound investment, especially when we figure that fast-food is an evolutionary business model that won’t be going away anytime soon.”
“That’s exactly what I said the other day, didn’t I, Abigail?” David says to his daughter. “Almost word for word.”
“Great minds.” Her voice is flat, she looks my way.
“This is rather convincing,” David says. “I hope you don’t mind if I have my daughter put together a few more estimates? And then we’ll meet again with our board and take a vote.”
“By all means.” I rise. “Gentlemen. Abigail. Thank you for your time today.”
“I’ll walk you out.” Abigail gathers her things and follows me to the door.
She says nothing as we amble out of the conference room and head down the hall toward the elevators.
“You’re going to give us one hell of a deal.” There’s sugar in her tone but poison in her words.
“If this is an attempt to extort my company because I didn’t call you back the other week then…”
“This isn’t extortion, Beckham. This is karma.”
“Resentment isn’t a good look on you.” Dane would kill me for speaking this way to a prospective client, but I’ve got this. “You’re a beautiful woman, Abigail. You have no business wasting your time with someone like me.”
Her face softens for a second, her eyes dragging from my eyes to my mouth before she sighs and stares at the gray wall behind me.
“I don’t commit. I have fun. I thought I made myself clear when we met?”
The thought of settling down and becoming a family man makes my cock shrivel and wilt. It’s not going to happen. In fact, I’m so sure it’s not going to happen that I’ve taken permanent measures to ensure it.
I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a cookie-cutter husband and soccer-coaching father. I may have entertained the idea once.
Like an imbecile.
But never since and never again.
Her hazel eyes roll, and she tucks a strand of her sandy blonde hair behind her ear. “You did, but I just thought we had fun. I thought–”
“I would love to have a professional relationship with you,” I say. “You’re clearly a successful woman who knows how to handle herself in the boardroom. I admire that about you.”
My words are scripted and my fingers crossed that she doesn’t notice.
“It’s rude not to text someone back.” She won’t give up.
“You can’t take that personally. It had nothing to do with
you and everything to do with me. I’m not sure how I can make myself more clear here?”
Her mouth hardens.
“I’m sorry.” I say, running my hand along the side of her arm. “I would be a lousy boyfriend. I don’t deserve someone like you.”
It’s the truth. No self-respecting woman deserves me as a boyfriend, but that’s something I’m absolutely okay with.
Her breath suspends until my hand falls. The elevator behind me dings, and I step on. She clutches the handouts across her chest, watching until the doors slam shut.
A week from now, she’ll be calling to finalize the deal on behalf of her impossibly busy father.
And…
That’s how it’s done.
Chapter Six
ODESSA
I lock up my temporary office and head outside. Beckham never returned from his afternoon meeting, but I spent the last half of the day setting up social media accounts. Tomorrow I’ll be working with Devin to brainstorm ideas for the new website. I have a few I need to run by Beckham and Dane, but by the end of next week, we should have our concept nailed down and a test site to explore.
By the time I turn the corner on the sidewalk, Beckham is barreling toward the building, head tucked and on his phone. He doesn’t see me at first, locked in a heated conversation, but once he does, he mutters something and ends his call.
“Cutting out early?” he asks.
“Early? It’s five. On a Friday,” I say. “I’ll be back first thing Monday morning. We’ll go over everything I did today, and we can discuss the website.”
We’re blocking the sidewalk like a couple of assholes, throngs of five o’clockers rushing past, bumping us with shoulders and bags. I’m not sure what else to say to him, so I give him a quick wave and tighten the strap of my bag over my shoulder before heading home.
I peek around my shoulder when I get around the next block, making sure he isn’t chasing after me again or following me home like some crazy stalker.
He’s nowhere to be seen.
I’ll think about being nicer to him tomorrow.
***
My key sticks in the lock to my apartment. Jeremiah used to call the landlord about it every other week, but all she’d do was spray WD-40 into it and call it good. He was going to fix it himself. Two weeks ago. The day before he left.
I twist the key so hard the metal leaves indentations in my fingers, but the lock eventually pops and my door swings open.
“Jeremiah.”
I drop my bag on the kitchen counter and stand frozen. He’s sitting in his favorite chair, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. His spray tan is faded, and his hair appears to be product-free.
“Hey, Sam.” He moves toward me with careful steps, a stark contrast from the days when he’d lunge toward me, slip an arm around my waist and lift me up. I was weightless then, lucky in love.
“What are you doing here?”
“Came to check on you. Haven’t heard from you in a while. Was getting worried.” His hands grip the arms of his chair as he pushes himself into a standing position. “Had a few days off from shooting.”
It’s not the answer I expected. Was hoping for something along the lines of, “I came back because I realized how crazy I am for doubting us.”
“How are you holding up?” His clear blue eyes squint. “You’re all dressed up. You start a new job?”
“I’m doing some consulting.”
“Good, good. You’re staying busy.”
Our small talk is painful and trite. I’d give anything to dive right into one of our old heart to hearts where nothing’s off the table and brutal honesty is the name of the game.
Who knew we could lose all that in just two weeks?
“How are you doing?” I ask, praying for a hint that these last fourteen days have been just as brutal for him as they’ve been for me.
“Doin’ real good, Sam.”
My heart breaks with one little word: good.
“That’s nice.” I force a smile, inhaling a lungful of tension and uneasiness. The floor beneath my feet wobbles, though I’m sure it’s my imagination. I need to sit.
It’s easier to be strong when he’s not around, when I can funnel my anger into grit and determination. But seeing him now, standing within arm’s reach and untouchable? Sensing that we’re no better off now than we were two weeks ago?
It changes things.
“Sam, you okay?” Jeremiah rushes toward me, taking my arm and leading me to the sofa we’d spent many Friday nights binge watching The Walking Dead and eating massive quantities of Chinese takeout after intense weeks of blogging.
I collapse into the cushy pillows. He takes the spot next to me, still holding my arm.
Jeremiah’s baby blues used to comfort me. Absent is their cozy familiarity. He stares at me like he has no idea what he should do when he should know. That man knows me better than anyone.
“I don’t like this.” I draw my legs in, leaning away. “This gray area. Not knowing what we’re doing.”
“I don’t like it either.”
Then end it.
“How much longer do you need?” I barely have the strength to meet his gaze. “Have you done any thinking about us in these last two weeks or have you been busy working this whole time?”
It’s not right for him to leave me hanging. If he only came here to check on me and not to discuss what’s going on between us, I’ll be livid.
“Both,” he says. “And I don’t know how much longer I’ll need. I don’t want to give you the wrong answer.”
“Either you still love me and still want to spend your life with me,” I say. “Or you don’t. It’s pretty simple.”
“It’s not simple at all, Samantha.” After all these years, I still love the way he drawls my name out, his accent dragging each syllable a millisecond too long. “A year ago? Six months ago? Yeah. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted.”
“Which was?”
“You,” he says. “You as my wife. A couple kids. A house in the suburbs. Maybe Connecticut. A simple life.”
“What changed?”
“What do you mean what changed? Everything changed.” His hand pulls from my arm, resting on his knee as he stares ahead at the coffee table. “They’re saying I’m going to be huge, Samantha. They’re talking huge endorsement contracts, restaurants, a cookware line. They’re calling me the next Rachael Ray or Paula Deen, only the attractive, guy version.”
He laughs. The old Jeremiah never would’ve called himself attractive despite the fact that he inarguably was.
“This is all so surreal,” he says. “There’s so much going on my head is spinning, and I don’t have the time to dedicate to you – to our relationship. It’s not fair to you.”
“Fine,” I say. “You want to take over the world. Great. I don’t understand why I can’t be a part of that? I’ve been by your side all along. We always said we were going to take over the world together.”
“I want that, Samantha.” His voice breaks. “I can’t imagine going through all of that without you. But on the other hand, I know I wouldn’t make our marriage a priority, especially while my empire’s getting off the ground. How could I do that to you?”
He turns to me, taking my hand and squeezing it. My heart clings to his. I want to kiss him, lay in his arms. Convince him that we’ll be fine no matter what.
Instead, I freeze. Because now I don’t know.
“Plenty of celebrity chefs have spouses,” I say.
“They’re not us,” he says. “We can’t do it just because they do.”
Jeremiah lifts the top of my hand to his mouth, before pulling me into his arms. My cheek falls slowly against his chest, breathing in his familiar, spicy scent.
“I still love you, Jer,” I sigh, wrapping my arms under his and listening to the steady thrum of his heart. “I love you for who you are. Not because you’re suddenly somebody. No one else knows you like I do.”
“I love you too, Sam.�
�� He squeezes me. “Everything’ll work out.”
His words give me little hope and comfort.
“I miss you. Bed gets cold at night,” I say.
“Are you eating?” He glances down at me and back up, his fingers running against my rib cage. “You’re smaller.”
“Stop.” I laugh.
“Let me cook you dinner tonight.”
“Aren’t you tired of cooking? How many episodes did you shoot this week?”
He stands up, and for a second it feels like we’re headed in the right direction. I can’t help but grin.
“The cool thing about filming a show like that is I’ve got a whole team of interns and assistants who make the food ahead of time and prep everything and clean up, so my part is mostly pretending and keeping the show fun.”
Jeremiah is a natural born entertainer. His mother is the head of the theater department at his hometown high school, and his father is a radio disc jockey for a major radio station in Atlanta. Commanding audiences, in person or over the airwaves, is in his DNA.
I wrap myself in a blanket and get cozy as I observe him picking through what little ingredients remain in the fridge and cupboards. Haven’t gone to the store in forever, and when I do go it’s cereal, milk, and frozen dinners for me.
“I’m going to have to run down to the market,” he says, running his hand through his messy blond hair. “But I’ll make you a nice dinner, Sam. We’ll hang out tonight like old times, okay?”
I nod and give him a closed-mouth smile, silently mourning the old times. They’re gone. Never coming back.
All we have is ambiguity and a distance between us that grows further each day.
Chapter Seven
BECKHAM
“I warned you about redheads.” Xavier Fox sips artisan beer from a frost-covered mug, his eyes glued to the sports reel flashing on a TV above my head.
I’ve just filled him in on my last twenty-four hours, or at least the condensed version because we’re men and we stick to the facts.
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