In the Eye of the Storm

by Samantha Chase

In order to keep himself from thinking about Holly and what she was doing right now, he forced himself to think about what he was going to need for his travels and how he was going to convince this particular client of doing the upgrade for all of his offices…it didn’t take long to fall asleep.

  Holly, on the other hand, went to bed early each night and tossed and turned through most of the night. The last two days had been hellacious and luckily she knew she’d only have to deal with one more day with Stephen and then they’d both be gone for several days. She could do one more day, couldn’t she? Apparently not.

  Deciding early on Saturday morning that she really could not take another day, Holly decided that she was going to change her flight home to Long Island and leave as soon as possible. She called Judy, the temp who normally took her place whenever she was out of the office sick or away on business with Stephen, and told her of her plans. It was probably improper protocol and Holly knew that she should just call Stephen and let him know of her change of plans, but decided against it.

  Sunday afternoon, Holly was on a plane north, heading home. With any luck, a full week away from Stephen Ballinger would be enough to ease her pain.

  Chapter Eleven

  Stephen stepped out of his office early Monday morning and froze. What the hell was Judy doing here? He had slept in his office all weekend and although he had already showered and changed, he hadn’t shaved since Friday.

  “Oh, good morning, Mr. Ballinger,” Judy said. “Coffee will be ready in a few minutes. I’ll bring it to you with your messages as soon as it’s ready.” She smiled and went to walk away when Stephen spoke.

  “Where’s Holly?” he demanded a little more harshly than he had intended.

  “Oh, she said that she decided to leave early for her Thanksgiving holiday and asked if I would mind covering for her. I just assumed that you knew.” She stood there, unsure of what to do.

  Stephen was dumbfounded. He couldn’t believe that Holly had changed her plans without talking to him first. Damn but this really was awkward. How was he supposed to work through the next week without her here? He was already prepared for the fact that she was going to be gone for part of the week but he had counted on having her here today to help him get his things organized!

  This was beyond unprofessional! She could be mad at him, personally, all that she wanted but when she screwed with his business, it made Stephen see red. He glared at Judy as if she was an intruder. He didn’t want her here! He wanted Holly here! Hell, if she didn’t want to share his bed, he’d live with that, but he was unwilling to just let her get away with this kind of childish behavior around the office, screwing with his business.

  Stephen spent most of the day taking out all of his anger and frustration on Judy. He criticized her dictation, her coffee, anything and everything that she did. By the end of the day, he was sure that the woman had tears in her eyes and he wouldn’t be surprised if she quit. At five o’clock, she walked in with a file he requested and gently asked him if there was anything else he needed of her for the evening or before he left on his trip in the morning.

  “I’m not going on any damn trip!” he snapped. “You’ll be needed here again tomorrow and Wednesday.” He lifted his head and glared at her. “Will that be a problem?”

  Judy visibly swallowed. “No, sir,” she said quietly. “No problem at all.” She was about to turn for the door when she turned to him and bravely asked, “Do you need me to cancel any of your reservations?”

  “No, I’ll take care of it,” he sneered. Judy walked out and closed the door behind her. Stephen was glad to see her go. At least she was being professional, he said to himself. She didn’t go off and take an early holiday like his real assistant did. No, Judy might just end up being his new assistant. That thought flitted around in the back of his mind as he worked well in to the night once again.

  At six the next morning, Stephen woke and called Will.

  “Hey, man,” Will said, cheerily. “You ready for some downhill competition?”

  “I’m not going,” Stephen said sternly and waited for Will’s response.

  “What do you mean you’re not going? What’s going on? I thought we all agreed to take the time off for this!”

  “I’ve hit a complication with this new client and I can’t afford to take the time off. I’m due on the coast next week and I’m not ready for it. I’ve been practically living here at the office as it is going over everything with a fine-tooth comb and I’ve still to a lot of work ahead of me.”

  “So delegate some of it, for crying out loud,” Will snapped. “You’re the damn president of the company, let someone else do some of the grunt work. What does Holly have to say about that? Can’t she help pick up some of the slack?”

  “What difference does it make what the hell Holly has to say? She’s not in charge here, I am, dammit!”

  It was beginning to make sense to Will but he was smart enough to not comment on it. “Fine, stay home. But you’re going to have to tell Derek because I’m not doing it for you.”

  “Who the hell asked you to?”

  “Right, you just happened to call me to keep me in the loop,” Will said sarcastically. “I’m not an idiot, Stephen; you called me so that I would have to break the news to Derek and deal with the backlash. Well forget it. You want to wuss out of this trip for whatever reason, fine, but man up and do your own dirty work.”

  Stephen didn’t think he was that transparent but apparently he was. “Fine, I don’t need you to talk to Derek for me. There’s nothing he can say or do that I can’t handle. I kicked his ass once and I can do it again.” With that, Stephen hung up the phone and dialed Derek’s number.

  “Hey, brother,” he said as he answered Stephen’s call. “You almost here because the plane is warming up and we are going to have beautiful flying weather.”

  “I’m not going,” Stephen said sternly; defiantly. Derek was silent. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I heard you,” Derek snapped. “Why the hell not? I’ve got everything freakin’ planned and waiting. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Stephen’s back went ram-rod straight. He hated having to explain himself to anyone and he knew that if Derek were here right now, they’d be exchanging blows. “Nothing’s wrong with me,” Stephen snapped. “I happen to have a business to run and something’s come up. No one’s telling you that you can’t go so get off my back!” He hung up without waiting for Derek’s reply.

  Throwing his cell phone down on the ground, Stephen went in to his bathroom and showered and changed and got ready for the day. By the time he came out thirty minutes later, there had been more than a dozen missed calls on his cell – most of them were from Derek but there were a few of them from Will.

  “Screw them,” he mumbled and went about starting his day. When Judy arrived he left her with instructions that he did not want to speak to either of his friends and if they were to call that she was to tell them that he was tied up in a meeting or on a call. He had long-since shut off his cell phone.

  His mood stayed black all day long and by the time Judy came in to say good night, her frustration with him was evident. “I’ll need those Texas files on my desk by noon on Friday, Judy,” he said without looking up at her.

  “I won’t be here on Friday, Mr. Ballinger,” she said, barely concealing her distaste of him.

  “What?”

  “The company is closed on Friday for the holiday and I’m sorry, but I cannot change my plans to be here,” she said it firmly but upon closer inspection, Stephen could see that she trembled a little bit.

  “Fine,” he sneered. “Leave me high and dry just like Holly. Pretty soon, maybe we’ll all be without a job because no one wanted to be bothered actually doing their job!” Judy walked out and shut the door loudly behind her.

  Stephen wanted to feel guilty about treating her so poorly but he just couldn’t bring himself to care. Dammit, why was he the only one who was concerned with this company?
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  Early Monday morning, Will and Derek arrived at the office – sure that they were arriving before any of Stephen’s employees. They had already seen that his car was in the parking garage and so they were confident that they would find him in his office.

  Without knocking, they walked in and found him asleep on his office couch in wrinkled clothes. “What the hell?” Will said, taking note of the take out containers littering the entire office and the amount of trash and dirty clothes lying about.

  “This contract must be brutally important for him to be freakin living here,” Derek murmured, kicking a pile of clothes aside as he walked over to the sofa. He said Stephen’s name and when he didn’t immediately wake up, Derek gave him a slight shove.

  “What the…?” Stephen said as he sat up. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t alone and was shocked to see who his company was. “What do you want?” he snapped, standing up and walking to the bathroom without waiting for an answer.

  Taking pity on him, Will went about the task of picking up the trash and placing it all in the office kitchen’s large pail. He found Derek sitting behind Stephen’s desk with his fingers laced behind his head when he walked back in to the office at the same time Stephen exited the bathroom.

  “So what is going on with this project that you have to skip a vacation and freakin sleep in your office?” Derek asked. “You missed one hell of a weekend, by the way.” Stephen didn’t respond. Derek went on to talk about the twins he had slept with and the waitress who had ‘serviced’ him in the men’s room of his favorite restaurant.

  Stephen felt sick but noticed that Will was just leaning against a bookcase taking it all in, not sharing any stories of his own. “No, seriously, man, what’s going on here?” Derek asked.

  There was a noise in the outer office and Stephen just about tripped over his own two feet running out, hoping that it was Holly. “Judy?” he roared. “Where the hell is Holly? Why isn’t she back?” His friends sat silently and looked from one another to Stephen and back again as Stephen ranted and raved about Holly not being here.

  Mumbling to himself and forgetting that he wasn’t alone, Stephen said, “This is beyond childish! All I wanted to do was spend some time with her and now she’s going to be spiteful and screw with my business? I don’t think so. I cannot even believe that I thought about marrying her!”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa…wait a minute,” Will said, breaking off Stephen’s tirade. “What did you just say?”

  Stephen’s head quickly turned towards Will, his eyes a little crazed as he suddenly remembered that he was even there. “What?”

  “You just said that you were thinking about marrying Holly!”

  “I knew it, I just freakin knew it,” Derek said snidely. “You’ve been screwing her all along and you had the audacity to lie to me and deck me in a bar over it? What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Will went and stood in front of Derek to block Stephen’s view of him because he could tell that Stephen was ready to deck him again. “Stephen, what is going on?”

  As much as Stephen wanted to howl and wail for them to get out he needed to be honest with them. All of the solitude he had experienced in the last week was making him crazy. He was slowly going insane, sick of his own company and was just finally beginning to see it.

  Within minutes he spilled out the whole story to them, from the weekend of their fight at the bar until the weekend before when Holly left for her trip early. “The thing is, I don’t know what the hell happened,” he said miserably. “I mean, we had plans for dinner and sometime between the time she left he office until the time I got to her house, her whole attitude changed. There was no warning, one minute she was mine, the next, she wasn’t.” He sat down on the couch and leaned his head back and closed his eyes. It felt good to say it all out loud to someone other than himself.

  “What are you going to do?” Will asked.

  “What can I do? She won’t come in; I have a feeling that Judy is going to end up being my assistant by default – if I haven’t scared her away by now with my ranting and raving like a lunatic for the last week.” He sighed angrily. “I don’t know if she’s even back from visiting her parents but it doesn’t matter, I’m not going to go to her and beg. If she wanted to end things, then that’s fine. She just could have had the decency to tell me to my face rather than just running away and leaving me hanging – both personally and with the business.” He knew it was a lie and was pretty sure his friends saw through him, too.

  Without warning, Derek stood and walked out. Stephen just shrugged but Will stared at the office door for a few minutes curiously. “He doesn’t understand,” he tried to say in defense of their friend.

  “It doesn’t even matter,” Stephen said. “I don’t give a damn about Derek and his opinion. This isn’t about him, anyway, no matter how much he likes to make everything about himself. I’m pissed and I’m disappointed and I guess I always knew going in that this wasn’t going to work. A man can’t have a successful career and run a business and have a relationship, a marriage. It just doesn’t work.”

  Just then, Derek walked back in holding a bag of ice. “What are you doing?” Will asked.

  Derek went and stood right in front of Stephen.

  “Hit me,” he said flatly.

  “What? Why?”

  “Trust me, just hit me.”

  Stephen looked at Derek and then at Will. “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” Will shook his head.

  Derek sighed loudly. “Look, I’m the reason that Holly broke things off. I called her house that day and essentially told her that you were looking to cool things down and that it would be best for everyone if you came on this vacation where I was handling the entertainment.”

  Suddenly, everything made sense. Stephen could picture it all and realized why Holly had reacted the way that she did. But why wouldn’t she just say something to him about it? Why didn’t she just discuss it with him first?

  He didn’t know and he didn’t care. If Holly had truly cared about him, she would have fought for him a little bit more. They had never had a serious conversation about where this was all leading and he knew now that it had been a mistake. Then he looked at Derek and realized the reason he never got to have that serious discussion with Holly. Before he could even begin to reconsider, he swung and had Derek lying on the floor at his feet.

  “Feel better?” the man wheezed from the floor. Stephen didn’t bother with an answer; he stepped over Derek as he walked over to his desk and sat down like a man defeated. Derek stood as Will held out the bag of ice for him. Placing it on his chin he walked towards Stephen’s desk. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I had no idea you were serious with her. I just wanted the type of guy’s weekend that we used to have.”

  “We’re not frat boys anymore,” Stephen mumbled. “It’s time to grow up.” When Derek made to speak again, Stephen held up a hand to stop him. “Just go. Please.” He turned his chair around and stared out the window long after his friends had left.

  When had life gotten so complicated?

  Holly knew there would be repercussions for her actions and yet couldn’t find it within herself to get back in to the swing of things just yet. If she played her cards right and still had a job to return to, she’d go back to the office when Stephen left for Texas. He was to be gone for two weeks between the two jobs and perhaps by the time he got back they would be able to be in the same room without it being too terribly awkward.

  Who was she kidding? It would forever be awkward because she was in love with him and even a week away at home with her family and everything that was familiar and dear, she had not been able to stop thinking about him and wondering if he was off making love to some slutty snow-bunny that he’d met on his trip. That was an image that refused to leave her brain as she’d lain in her childhood bed.

  By her third day at home her mother had figured out that something was amiss and so Holly had had no choice but to c
onfess. While her mother had listened without judgment, she did advise Holly to come home and straighten things out with Stephen and perhaps think about finding a new job.

  That was the last thing that Holly wanted to do but being that she couldn’t make herself get in the car and drive to the office or pick up the phone because just the sound of Stephen’s voice was too overwhelming for her right now; she knew that she really didn’t have much of a choice.

  Looking at the clock and seeing that it was only nine-thirty, she rationalized that it was too late to go in to the office anyway; Judy would already be there hard at work. Glancing around her home she decided that she would go and do her food shopping for the week, run some errands, something safe and boring that would keep her mind off of her troubles.

  Dressed in faded blue jeans and a thick navy colored hooded sweatshirt, Holly pulled on her sneakers and grabbed her purse as she headed for the door. Keys in hand, she opened it and found Will and Derek standing on the other side; Will’s hand raised as if prepared to knock.

  It was hard to tell who was more surprised at that moment, but after a brief silence, Holly spoke. “Will. Derek. What can I do for you?” Her tone was cool and steady even though her insides were shaking uncontrollably. Thank God for the bulky sweatshirt!

  “Can we come in?” Will asked.

  Holly glanced at her watch, unsure that she wanted to know what Stephen’s two friends were here for at this hour. “Um…”

  “We won’t take too much of your time, I promise,” Will said quickly, sensing her indecision. Derek remained blessedly quiet but Holly noted the purple bruise on his chin. She was a little envious of whoever it was to put that mark there because she certainly had entertained the thought of doing it herself after his smug phone call that fateful night.

  Silently stepping aside, the men walked in. Holly led them to her living room and sat. Her hospitality skills decided to stay hidden; the quicker they said what they had to say, the quicker they’d leave.