The Game (Carolina Connections Book 4)

by Sylvie Stewart

  Of course, Craig was ridiculously prepared. “I was just looking up EnerGro, and we’ll have to gather as much data as possible from AgPower to prove they have the rights to the patent over the new company. Hopefully the new guys are just throwing spitballs trying to see if they can get one to stick. I’m sending you the data I’ve already gathered.” His fingers sailed over the keyboard of his laptop, and all I could do was stare blankly.

  “Excellent,” was Mr. Wheeler’s response.

  “Emerson,” Mr. Schenk addressed me. “I think you can go now.”

  I looked to Mr. Wheeler in a last-ditch effort to salvage things. He just nodded absently and read the new message from Craig on his laptop. I quietly gathered my things, carefully avoiding all eyes in the room and made my way to the hallway and back to my office.

  It was no surprise when Mr. Schenk knocked on my door thirty minutes later, accompanied by a security guard, and gave me my walking papers.

  I woke up the next morning feeling like I’d been run over by a bus. My body begged for coffee and I prayed I’d have enough time to grab some before I had to get to work. And then I remembered. Ugh. My limbs felt heavy as I forced myself out of bed and on a hunt for caffeine. Ari was in the kitchen, coffee cup in hand and her phone to her ear.

  She spotted me and gave me a weak smile. “I gotta run, but I’ll talk to you later,” she said to the person on the other end. Then she tucked her phone in the back pocket of her pants and filled a second coffee mug from the pot on the counter. She approached me where I sat slumped on the couch and passed the cup over.

  “Thanks.”

  “So,” she said as she sat next to me. “I know you weren’t ready last night, but you need to tell me what happened. I’m worried about you.”

  I ran a hand over my hair and found it in a tangled mess. “You’re going to be late for work.” My pathetic stall tactic failed.

  She shooed me away. “Pshhht. I’ve got time, and besides, Amara owes me one. She can answer a few calls.”

  “I have to check and see if any of my e-mails got responses.” I tried again.

  “After you talk to me. And if you don’t open your mouth and spill it, I’m calling Mamá to get her ass over here. You choose.”

  I gave her a betrayed look. Her mom would be all over me and I wouldn’t be released until I’d shared every secret I ever had and accepted a job with one of about twenty people she’d call and demand hire me. It wouldn’t even matter what field the job was in.

  But Ari just stared at me and sipped her coffee, her expression making it clear she was not letting up.

  I finally sighed. “Fine. It was Craig.”

  Ari stood abruptly, her coffee sloshing over the side and spilling on her shoe. She didn’t even notice. “I knew it! That mother fucker. I’m going to junk punch him so hard he’ll be eating his balls for breakfast! Then I’ll drag him over to your boss’s office and make him confess.”

  I put a hand out to calm her. “There’s nothing you can do. He was way too sneaky. Ari, I should have seen it coming. I let myself get distracted.”

  She cut me off. “Oh no you don’t. Don’t make this about Gavin. You deserve a life outside of work.”

  “We can debate that later, but the truth is I brought Gavin right into my work by agreeing to the whole tournament thing. I flaunted him in front of all my colleagues and lost sight of what was expected of me.”

  She shook her head. “Just because he’s not some lawyer or senator or something? That’s crazy! Other people had their spouses and partners there, and you can’t tell me they were all members of all the right clubs and associations. Why should they expect different from you?”

  “Because they do! They did. I forgot what game I was playing.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s a load of double-standard bullshit.” She finally sat back down and set her coffee on the side table.

  “Yes. And I agreed to it the moment I signed on at their firm.”

  “That’s got to be illegal.”

  I looked at her earnestly—my fierce friend who would take on the world for me. “They didn’t fire me for dating a twenty-four-year-old construction worker. They fired me for not filing a patent application, Ari. They are well within their rights. I failed to do the job I was hired for and they let me go.”

  “Emerson, never in your life would you fail to do something you were hired for.”

  “But I did. Craig laid out the breadcrumbs, but I followed the trail.”

  I explained to her about me getting the initial application wrong and Craig offering to submit the new one. How he tricked me into thinking he’d actually done it, and how he’d timed the bomb to explode when Melissa wasn’t there to back me up. Not that it would have done much good since I was the one to screw up the date in the first place. I still didn’t know how EnerGro had gotten the specs to file the patent, but I wouldn’t put it past Craig to screw over a client as long as it ended with him looking like the hero.

  “Shit,” Ari said when I finished.

  “Yup. That about sums it up.”

  “So what do we do now?” she asked. I managed a small smile at her use of “we.” I appreciated it more than I could express.

  “I find a new job and start over. I buckle down and work twice as hard to prove myself, and I don’t lose sight of what’s important again.”

  She looked at me disapprovingly. “You’re dumping Gavin, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t have any other choice, Ari. I knew it was a bad idea from the start and I let it happen anyway.”

  “But he makes you happy. I’ve never seen you that happy.”

  “Happy doesn’t pay my mortgage and secure my future.”

  “Oh, Em.”

  “I’ll be fine, Ari. Go ahead to work. I’m going to go home and continue the job hunt.”

  “You’re more than welcome to stay here. You know that.”

  “I do, and thanks. But I need to be home for Jay. I don’t like leaving him—overnight especially. Yet another thing I need to reprioritize. My brother deserves better than I’ve been giving him.”

  “Emerson Scott, you stop right now. You’re an amazing sister.”

  I smiled and hugged her. “There’s always room for improvement.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Adulting with a Hacker and the Pope

  GAVIN

  “Thanks, Ari.” I hung up the phone after her abrupt goodbye. Emmy must have woken up. I still hadn’t heard back from Emmy, and Ari hadn’t sounded too encouraging. Emmy had apparently spent about ten hours on her computer sending out resumés and reaching out to her contacts in the world of corporate law. She hadn’t shared any details with Ari about what had happened, but we were both confident Craig was at the center of it.

  I sighed and donned my hard hat and gloves before going to find Trey and getting started with my day. I could tell it was going to be a long one.

  When I finally finished up for the day, I headed over to the Academy, hoping that Jay would show up as scheduled. Not that I could really ask him about Emmy and her job. I figured she wouldn’t tell him so as not to worry him. But just being around Jay would hopefully ease the feeling in my gut that she was drifting away from me with every second that passed.

  I got my wish. After showering and changing into my uniform, I found Jay and a couple other players throwing pitches at screens in the indoor facility. They were all buzzing with energy since the regular season was winding down and playoffs were on the horizon. Jay’s mood matched those of the other players so I assumed I’d been right and Emmy hadn’t told him a thing. We got down to work and I tried to push my growing sense of dread aside.

  Given the fact that Emmy had been avoiding me for the last day, I was more than a little surprised when my phone rang and her name popped up as I was walking to my car after training.

  “Emmy, Christ. I’m so glad you called. How are you doing?” I didn’t even let her say hello.

  “Hi, Gavin.” She sou
nded defeated.

  “Hey,” I answered gently.

  “So, I got fired,” she said with a laugh that held absolutely no humor.

  “I know, Ace. I stopped by your office and ran into that Craig asshole. What happened?”

  She sighed. “It’s a really long story, but let’s just say that one of your theories about Craig was right on target.”

  I brought my fist down on the roll bar of my Jeep. “Dammit. I wish I’d been wrong.”

  She inhaled deeply. “Well, I can’t blame it all on him. I screwed up, Gavin.” Her voice cracked and I wanted to pull her into my arms and make it all better somehow.

  “Are you at home? Let me come over.”

  “No.” I heard a small sniffle. “I can’t. I can’t do this anymore, Gavin. We can’t see each other anymore.”

  “What? Why?” Was she blaming me for her getting fired? Well, maybe I was to blame after all. I’d bulldozed my way into her life. I’d told her boss we were dating. I’d joined that damn team. Shit.

  “I need to focus on finding a new job and taking care of Jay. Whatever job I get is going to take even more time than my last one. I’ll be starting at the beginning and I’ll need to dedicate all my spare time to catching up. I didn’t work this hard over the past four years to just give up now.”

  I couldn’t respond. It was as if I’d been struck by a lightning bolt. The similarity between our two situations was uncanny. I’d worked for years for a dream, and when it had been taken—whether from my own poor decisions or fate—I’d taken the coward’s way out. I’d wallowed and cursed the world. I’d let it beat me.

  Emmy wasn’t doing that. She’d never do that. Her dream had just been ripped out from under her, and instead of giving up, she was fighting. She wasn’t going to play the victim and feel sorry for herself. She was getting back on that horse and pushing forward, even though she knew the new road would be even harder than the old one.

  I knew right then that I was in love with this woman. And I also knew I had to let her go. At least for now. But I was going to set some wrongs right whether she wanted me in her life or not.

  Damn, this adulting thing was no joke.

  The first thing I did was to call Ari. I’d learned a lot about Emmy in our time together, but I had a few questions I needed answered, and Ari had those answers. Luckily, she was only too happy to oblige. She may have even broken the girl code when she gave me the details of Emmy’s firing, but she assured me she’d always colored outside the lines. That wasn’t hard to believe.

  The next thing I did was to call—you guessed it—my fairy godmother.

  “Hey, Gav. We missed you at dinner last night. Did everything turn out okay?”

  I’d called Fiona the night before to tell her something unsettling had come up at Emmy’s work and we’d have to bail on dinner.

  “No, I’m afraid it didn’t,” I responded. “So, tell me, who do you know who’s got some hacking skills and puts the greater good above, say, the law?” It was a long shot, but this was Fiona we were talking about.

  “Oooooh. This sounds juicy. I may have just the guy.”

  “So, we’re not talking about the greatest firewall here, so don’t be too impressed,” Ollie said, pushing his glasses up his nose before getting back to the fastest typing I’d ever seen in my life.

  It was the next day, and we were at the office of Fiona’s day job at Precision Lawns and Landscaping. Jax, her boss, sat at his desk talking on his phone and eyeing us. Fiona and I leaned over Ollie’s desk, watching as he hacked his way into the system of Jefferson, Wheeler and Schenk. Ollie did the accounts for Jax, but in his spare time he was some kind of computer wizard and comic book freak, among other things. The guy was scrawny and wore black hipster glasses that almost perfectly matched the color of his hair.

  “Okay,” said Ollie. “Do we know the last name of this Melissa?”

  I scratched the back of my neck. “No, but she’s a paralegal. There can’t be too many with the same name, right?”

  “Just a sec.” Ollie continued to type. I heard the creak of a chair and Fiona and I both turned around in time to see Jax emerging from his office.

  “I got it,” Fiona whispered and sashayed towards Jax to cut him off. We were guessing he wouldn’t exactly approve of our activities. “Jax, can I have a word?” I heard her ask in her sweetest voice.

  “Melissa Yates. Got her,” Ollie said quietly. “Let me get into her e-mail. You said we’re looking for anything to do with the patent office, right?”

  “Right,” I said, trying to keep an eye on both Fiona and Ollie’s computer screen.

  Jax crossed his arms and grinned at Fiona. Shit. “Darlin’, you seem to be under the impression I was born yesterday. Now, you and your high heels need to step aside.” Jax came striding over to where we sat.

  “Jax,” I managed to whisper to Ollie. He snapped his laptop closed and we both sat there, our guilt painfully obvious. We’d make the absolute shittiest actors.

  “You boys wanna tell me what you’re up to?”

  I considered that. “Not exactly.” I decided to go for partial honesty.

  Fiona caught up with Jax. “Oh, come on. It’s for the betterment of humanity,” she pleaded.

  We all looked at her. She shrugged. “Well, it sort of is. It’s for Gavin’s girlfriend.” She proceeded to give the short version of events.

  Jax scrubbed at his wild blond hair with both hands and let out a breath before looking at each of us in turn. “I trust this isn’t gonna come back and bite me in the ass?”

  Ollie looked almost offended. “Please. Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

  “Well, carry on if you must,” Jax said, and Fiona hugged him.

  Just then, the door to the building swung open and Ari rushed in. “I’m here! I’m here! Sorry I’m late,” she panted. Her chest was heaving, and I’m no perv, but even the pope would have noticed. Turns out neither Ollie nor Jax were feeling very papal either. Fiona made a disapproving noise at us and beckoned Ari forward for a hug. Ari hugged her back and then said, “I tried as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get Emerson’s computer. It’s attached to her like a barnacle. I even tried to get Jay to help, but he asked too many questions.”

  “That’s okay. We can get by without it. I can always reach it remotely if we need to,” Ollie said, as if he were discussing an alternate beverage choice instead of illegally hacking into various computers.

  His laptop was open again and he continued to search the paralegal’s account as Fiona got Ari up to speed. He shook his head. “I’m not seeing anything.”

  “That’s impossible,” Ari protested. “Emerson said she and Melissa drafted it together and then Melissa filed it with the patent office. She would have gotten a confirmation e-mail at the very least. Isn’t there some record of websites she’s accessed?”

  Ollie continued to type and then suddenly sat up. “This is interesting.”

  “What?” we all asked at once. Even Jax had come back to investigate.

  “It looks like I’m not the first person to be in here uninvited.”

  Ari and I looked at each other. “Craig,” we both said.

  “Well, whoever it was, he was messy as shit. And I believe I just found what we’ve been looking for,” Ollie announced, leaning back in his chair and leaving us all a good view.

  “Holy shit,” was all I could think to say.

  I rang the doorbell and heard what sounded like about a hundred windchimes going off at once. I stepped back involuntarily. Jesus, this place was practically a mansion.

  The ornate front door opened and a woman about Emmy’s age with perfectly-styled blond hair and an overly made-up face greeted me with a smile. “Hello.”

  “Hi,” I said. “You must be Mandy.”

  She cocked her head to the side but still gave me a friendly look. “Yes. Do I know you?”

  I shook my head. “No. No. I’m a friend of Emerson. Gavin Monroe.” I held out my hand
and she accepted it with a limp shake.

  “Well, it’s lovely to meet you, Gavin. Please, come in.” She paused then. “You do know Emerson doesn’t live here, right?”

  I smiled. “Yes. Of course. I was actually hoping to speak with her father.”

  “Oh!” She suddenly looked way too interested, her polished nails coming to rest over her mouth. I realized my mistake a moment too late.

  “No! God. It’s nothing like that.” We both released a laugh.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have assumed. It’s just that we don’t meet too many of Emerson’s friends. I figured you must be…special.” She looked me over. I’d chosen to dress a little more formally that usual. And, by that, I mean my shirt had buttons.

  I didn’t have a good response, so I gave a noncommittal noise.

  “Anyway, please come in. I’ll go see if I can tear Robert away from his computer.”

  “Like father like daughter,” I said.

  She gave a stiff smile at that and left me in the entryway while she went to retrieve her husband. Annoyance gnawed at my gut over Richard Scott’s blatant hypocrisy.

  I turned in a circle, taking in the place. Hand-rubbed hardwood floors extended throughout the first floor, and an enormous stonework fireplace stood as the focal point of the great room beyond the entry. Two wide hallways forked off on either side and a high ceiling opened the space, making it feel enormous. I didn’t even want to think about how much this place must be worth. Or the fact that this was the world Emmy came from.

  “So, you couldn’t settle for ruining my daughter’s career. You had to sully my doorstep as well.” I turned to see the same man from the game, except this time he was wearing suit pants and a white dress shirt rolled up at the sleeves.

  Wow. What a complete asshole.

  I decided to ignore his comment. I hadn’t come here to live up to the stereotype he’d obviously pegged me with. And, since a handshake was unlikely, given his opening line, I got on with it.