by Jayne Blue
Jessie broke through the crowd. He lifted her off her feet, kicking and screaming.
“Put me down, Jessie!”
“You need to simmer down. We’re going outside.”
One of women hit the back of Jessie’s shoulders, but it was like hitting a brick wall. Cassidy couldn’t fight Jessie as the stocky man whisked her out of the room. He kept going until they were down the hall near the steps.
“You okay, killer? Can I trust you to calm down?”
“I.. he-” The tears overwhelmed her. A sob racked her body. It was mixed with anger and frustration.
She choked down another sob. “Thanks for getting me out of there, I don’t know what came over me. I wanted to kill her, kill him.” She turned and ran. Her emotions were out of control. She was out of control. How could he do that to her? She heard Jessie yell after her. She didn’t really have an idea of where she was headed. Just out, away.
“Cassidy, wait, where are you-”
She kept going. She took the steps two at a time and ran out to the lobby. She needed the hell out of there. She realized she still had Craddock’s keys and his car. Part of her wanted so badly to take the keys and rake them up and down the side like that Carrie Underwood song, but she resisted.
Craddock may have a violent temper, he may go off, but she didn’t. She wasn’t going to be on his level. Ever again. She wiped her face with the back of her hand as more tears threatened. She tried hard to hold them in as she walked up to the front desk.
“Please deliver this to room 342. Thank you.” She wiped her face. “Can I get a cab?”
“Sure thing, miss, at your service.”
A cab was on the way. She figured she could afford it now that she had the grant — the grant Craddock didn’t even know about.
Her phone buzzed. Finally a text! She hoped it was Craddock so she could let him know it was too fucking late. He’d ruined more than his chances at a pro contract tonight. She read the screen.
“I’m a little foggy on the details. Did I win?” – Zeke
She choked out a laugh, thank God, Zeke was at least well enough to text. Darius had been right, Zeke was awake and even joking. She exhaled, but it sounded shaky to her ears. She didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself in the Garden Inn Lobby, dammit.
She was startled when the desk clerk tapped her on the shoulder.
“Your cab, miss.” The hotel clerk indicated the cab was just outside the lobby doors.
Cassidy looked back toward the elevator and then the stairwell door she’d used. Part of her hoped that Craddock Flynn would run after her. They’d fought before, they’d made up, but this time, he was with someone else — two someone elses — when he should be with her, figuring out how to recover from this fight. But he wasn’t. He would never be with her again, if she had anything to say about it.
Bess was right about him. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. She’d been so wrong about him. Now it was time to break his hold, just how he’d told her she could, no matter how strong it was.
She walked to the doors and got in the cab.
“Henry Ford Hospital, please.”
To be continued….
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Coming Soon – The Men of the Great Wolves M.C.
Meet the sexy, dangerous, tortured men of the Great Wolves M.C. and the strong women they love. The series kicks off with “Dex” available 6/28/2015 wherever ebooks are sold.
Dex
Dex - When they locked me away for another man’s crime they called it justice. When they set me free they called that justice too. But their damned justice cost me my freedom, my family, my club, and the only woman I ever wanted ... Ava.
Now I’m back. Only two things have kept me sane all these years. I want to hurt the man responsible for sending me to prison and end his hold over the Great Wolves M.C. forever. And I want the feel of Ava’s body beneath mine again. I need to watch the way she surrenders only to me and makes me whole. It’s selfish of me to think Ava would wait for me.
But, I’m a selfish man and it’s time for me to take back what’s mine.
Ava - At night, sometimes I still dream of what it felt like when Dex touched me. He awakened things in me, made me burn for him like no other man has since. But those are just dreams, aren’t they? The years, distance, and the battles I’ve fought have made me remember Dex as something more than he really was. Except now he’s back, stirring my body and heart even though my head knows better. I can’t let him take me back into his world...the club, the violence, the heartache.
I don’t know if I can survive loving or losing him all over again and we both know there’s only one way this can end.
**Each Great Wolves M.C. book is interconnected but can be read as a standalone.***
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Books by Jayne Blue
WLUV Series
The Consultant (FREE!)
The Rookie Reporter
The Anchor
Torrid Trilogy
Book One (FREE!)
Book Two
Book Three
Call Girl, Inc. Series
The Offer(FREE!)
The Mogul
The Candidate
The Spy
The Prince
The G-Man
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Bonus Excerpt from WLUV Book One – The Consultant
There it was on the front page of the USA Today Lifestyle section, the headline more tabloid than news: “Sports Anchor Phil Strong Marries America’s Sweetheart, Kirstie Pippin!” A picture of the lovely couple splashed across the paper and included an inset shot of their infant daughter in a stroller festooned with flowers. With this all over the papers today, Macy was glad to be in the air traveling instead of in a hotel hate-reading all of it. And she wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or enraged that she didn’t even rate a footnote in the coverage.
Thanks to the network’s efficient corporate damage control, Macy had been out of the way of the happy couple’s fairy tale for months now. They had obliterated her career as the network’s lead investigative journalist to make way for the better storyline and bigger stars.
For the most part, her broken heart had mended and then set like a bone; it was tougher and knit together. She liked it that way. Her heart matched her head and her head matched her new career path.
Macy checked the directions on her phone. WLUV was a third-place television news station. The new owner and GM wanted some changes, and so he hired an outside firm to come in and fix the place. There were only a few big news consulting firms in the country, and after being bounced hard out of her network reporting career, Macy needed a job. Luckily she had some friends at the
firm and that’s how her second, decidedly less glamorous career was born.
It was now her job to read the research on a floundering station, offer her advice, and implement plans for fixing things. She traveled the country nurturing progress at her roster of stations. She used to travel the country chasing the big stories…but that was before the “Phil Situation.”
She’d been doing so well, not letting it get to her. But the wedding was this weekend and so she was mentally picking at the scab that had formed over her old life. Macy struggled to put it out of her mind and concentrate on her assignment.
WLUV, her newest client, was a mess.
She’d perused their website on the flight from New York. It was an old station, expanded from radio, like most of the country’s first local television stations. Based in Grand City, it served the upper portion of Western Michigan. Television markets were ranked in terms of size; the number one market in the country was New York, of course. Out of 210 television markets, total, WLUV ranked 117th. In other words, it was small.
And it was a cash-hemorrhaging joke. Its deep pocketed owner, Rush Thompson, kept it afloat likely out of nostalgia—or more likely a tax write-off. His focus was on the growth of the Thompson-Hardaway portfolio, and so the station managers at WLUV did the bare minimum to keep its network affiliation and FCC license. It was the first business he’d owned and he couldn’t bear to just put it out its misery. Instead, he placed his son Wes in charge to see what could be done with it. After decades of neglect, Wes Thompson was at least making an attempt to fix things at the station.
Still, Macy suspected it was a case of a silver spoon type of guy playing with one of his toys. She’d never met him, but she figured that Wes Thompson was bringing her in so he could flip the station as if it were a dilapidated house. He’d slap on a new coat of paint, mow the yard, and then try to convince someone to buy it. Turn a little profit and get out. She didn’t have a lot of hope that this was a place for real news or talent development.
Her bosses at American News Consulting and Research gave her a secondary mission with the stations she consulted: she was to scout out good talent. ANCR could then place the talent with jobs at the other stations in its client list. That’s actually how the consulting firm had found her, fifteen years ago, doing local news in a little town just like Grand City.
She’d loved her days as a television news reporter, ferretting out a story, meeting deadlines, and going live to share it with the viewers. Maybe one or two of the faces she saw on the station website biography page had that same passion.
If WLUV was too far gone she’d salvage the situation and find a few of the meat puppets – lovely name for on-air talent – to pillage. But before that happened she was committed to doing her best. Though she was no longer a hard-driving network reporter, she’d found surprising satisfaction in her ability to mentor journalists and add zip to a station. She was going to try like hell at WLUV just as she did at her other stations, and it was going to be a challenge—her biggest yet as a consultant.
Macy had low expectations when she pulled into the station’s parking lot just outside of downtown Grand City, Michigan on that January day. She was a perfectionist though, and fixing newsrooms was what she did best these days. She certainly wouldn’t make any friends at WLUV, but maybe she could make a dent in their ratings.
***
Three months earlier …
“You’re sending me where?” Wes’s father, Rush Thompson, was a self-made billionaire, and at 80 years old he was sharp as ever. But this suggestion, order, assignment, banishment – whatever it was – proved the old man was losing it, Wes thought; dementia had set in overnight.
“You’re going to go get your hands dirty at my first business, WLUV-TV.”
“Where again? Wisconsin?” Wes unbuttoned his suit jacket as he walked towards the window and glared at one of the many tall bookcases in the room, “From the time I was eighteen, I’ve done everything your company needed. As far as getting my hands dirty, I hardly think I’m wet behind the ears.”
It was true. He helped take his father’s holdings in Michigan nationwide, then worldwide. They’d turned a few media properties into a billion-dollar hedge fund. Since finishing his finance degree, he’d worked every day to build on what his father started. Hell, he’d burned through a marriage doing it. And now, at 45 – just when he was ready to take his dad’s place at the top – he was being sent to the minor leagues.
“Not Wisconsin, Michigan! Grand City. I grew up just outside there... it’s beautiful. It’s no backwater though; I hear Grand City has all the things your refined tastes are used to.” Rush and Wes sat in the study. Books were piled everywhere, and a fire roared, like always, in the fireplace. Rush Thompson lived more like a college professor than a corporate raider. He was a student first, a conqueror next, an investor last.
And WLUV was the place that started it all for him. Thompson Broadcasting turned into Thompson Media, which turned into Thompson-Hardaway, Inc. A conglomerate with a portfolio from ice cream shops to microchips.
“I’ve got three sons. And you’ve all learned this business from the top down.” Rush’s deep voice had gotten gravely in his old age, perhaps a result of his daily cigar.
“I think you owe us a bit of credit for doing everything we could – everything you asked – to turn it into what it is.”
“I do. But I have a decision to make. I have to decide what to do with Thompson-Hardaway after I’m gone. All three of you would make fine CEO’s, but don’t forget we’ve got the Hardaway heirs out there,” Rush said. They owned a lesser percentage, but what his father said was true. The Hardaway siblings had some claim to the top job.
“I’m assigning you and your brothers each a few tasks. I want to see how you do. No interference from me. At the end of the year I’ll decide what I want to do.”
“Is this some sort of test? I won’t compete with Sloan and Max.” Wes loved his brothers. They were competitive with each other but not cutthroat. Their father had brought them up as a team.
“No, it’s not a competition. In fact all of the businesses need help. We need to take a good look and decide whether to save, sell, or shutdown these losers. To be honest, I’m entrusting my favorite business to you. WLUV has a place in my heart.” Wes’s dad lost focus on the conversation and seemed to be rolling something around in his memory.
Wes interrupted his father’s revelry, “You first saw mom there. I get it.”
“Yes, among other things...” he started to drift away again, but snapped himself back into the study, and looked hard at his son, “Listen. You’ve been pretty ruthless since…well, since your marriage collapsed. I’m worried about you. You don’t enjoy very much.”
The tabloids had nicknamed Wes’s father “The Happy Billionaire.” He had a twinkle in his eye that couldn’t be extinguished.
“Dad, no one is as lucky as you, to find someone like mom. And yes, I’m ruthless. But how else do you think we have the majority stake over the Hardaways?”
“No accident, son, you’re right. I’m proud of that brain you have—your strategy, your loyalty, your knack for numbers.” He stood up and walked to the sideboard, reaching for a scotch glass, “You need a change, though, and you don’t even know it. A change of social circle, a challenge, a change of scenery, plus it will help me make some decisions.” He poured while he spoke, and after taking a sip, he stared out the window a few moments before adding, “I think I know who you and your brothers are. But I also think I robbed you.”
“What?” Wes rubbed his forehead. His dad was giving him a headache.
“You watch. You’re going to love working with people, lifting up the hood and seeing what makes a small business run. You’re going to want to fix it if you can. We’ve all been looking at spreadsheets for too long.” He took a generous sip from his glass, “That’s what I robbed you of, the guts of it, the way a company works… or doesn’t. You’ve been on the phone or in a plane too
long. Why don’t you stay on the ground and roll up your sleeves for a while? Even if you come back after a year and can’t salvage it, you’ll be a better man for knowing what it takes.”
Wes didn’t have an answer. The old man’s mind was made up.
“You leave tomorrow.”
“I get the sense you’re telling me to get lost, dad.”
“No. It’s the opposite. You know I love you. But you and your brothers need to find something, and you all need different things right now…I’m interested to see just what it is, for each one of you.
The man was nothing if not decisive. Wes hugged his dad and walked out. Apparently he was headed to Bum Fuck, Michigan, also known as WLUV-TV in Grand City.
***
Present day…
Wes was three months into his exile at WLUV and so far nothing about the place looked promising. He’d spent plenty of time unraveling the books, but he had no idea how to fix the mess that was on the air each night.
November ratings were in the toilet as usual, even after Wes put some money into billboards. WLUV was still a dismal third place, where it had been for fifteen years. The poor performance meant they had to sell advertising at rock-bottom prices. A recipe for profitability wasn’t even on the horizon.
Wes looked over the ratings book again. He knew how to balance the budget and cut some fat, but how was he supposed to bring the station out of the 1980s? His few months at WLUV had pretty much convinced him he’d be selling it when his time was up. Most of his work day was spent lining up prospects for that eventuality.