In the limo today, before all the mess, she’d almost convinced herself that maybe Will was a possibility. That maybe he had changed. That they could work this crazy thing out.
But here.
Here, it was like God was laughing at her, teasing her like dangling filet mignon in front of a dog. Both in religion and in wealth, Hanna and Will were the ultimate oxymoron.
And she was sitting here pretending. The ultimate fraud.
A hand pressed against her shoulder, and she turned to see handsome-as-ever Will.
“I brought you a recovery kit.”
She looked down to the small side table beside her. He’d set down a tall bottle of fancy water, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a Ziploc bag full of ice, covered with a paper towel.
He is out of your league, Hanna. OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT!
Smiling through the dull ache in her skull, she dumped a few pills in her palm and swallowed them with the water. “Thanks. I don’t think my head hurts enough to need ice though.”
“Humor me.” He pulled her by the elbow over to the light brown leather couch and gently pushed her down. He propped her feet on the matching oversized ottoman and brought her the ice. “The paramedic said you needed ice, so ice you shall get, my dear.”
Out. Of. Your. League, she reminded her swooning heart. This was not the Will she remembered. “I thought you’d give me a tour.”
He stood there, looking all handsome in his gray slacks and black button-down shirt, a few buttons undone on the top to taunt a girl. “There’s not much to tour. It’s a pretty small place. This, as you can see, is the living room. The kitchen is behind you. Over in the corner is the dining room. I like the whole open-area concept.” He stopped to hand her the ice bag and motioned for her to apply it.
So he’d continue, she complied.
“You passed the french doors to my office coming in, and on the other side is the bathroom if you need it. On second thought, I don’t keep that one stocked unless I know I’m having guests. Just use mine upstairs if you need. There are two bedrooms up there. You can stay in the guest room tonight.”
One would have thought he was the one who cracked his head on the limo floor. “Uh, yeah, no. There’s still time to get a hotel.”
He plopped down in the leather recliner beside the couch and propped a foot up on his knee. “I thought you decided not to care what people thought.”
“Doesn’t mean I want to add fuel to the flames though.”
“You already did just by coming here right now.”
True enough. She hadn’t honestly cared, considering the way her head throbbed and the immense desire to get out of the view of cameras. “I can’t sleep here, Will.”
“Will it help if I’m not here? I need to get headed to the meeting soon. And I’m so far behind, honestly, I’ll probably just work through the night. I have a couch I’ve slept on in my office plenty of times.” It would be crazy to waste money on a hotel when he wouldn’t even be here. “Fine. But a hotel tomorrow, okay?”
He nodded. “I’ll have Emma make the reservation.”
“When do I get to meet her, by the way?”
Will smiled and stood. “Later this week, maybe I’ll bring you by the office. One day at a time, okay?”
Hanna sat back and closed her eyes, letting the cold relief of the ice pack have full impact on her head. She desperately wanted to address the gigantic elephant in the room.
They were pretend engaged.
But their kisses in private where everything but feigned.
They needed to plan how to break up. But she was afraid she’d gone and fallen in love again.
She really wanted to push all good sense out the window and elope with him tonight.
But they were 100 percent wrong for each other.
So many elephants.
So many things to be said.
Will slid out of the recliner and onto his knees in front of her. “We’ll figure this out. I have no idea how. But—” He reached forward and brought her to him then kissed her lips with a gentleness she’d never known he possessed. His lips lingered on hers for a few moments, unmoving, just tantalizing her senses and making all reason flee. “But we will. I promise.”
She had every reason not to trust him.
Every reason to argue about how this wasn’t a problem he could snap his fingers and solve.
But despite it all—
She trusted him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Will walked through the condo parking garage and clicked the button on his key fob to unlock the Audi sedan. He started the car and checked the clock on the dash.
Less than an hour until the board meeting.
Shifting into REVERSE, he backed out of his purchased parking spot and exited the parking garage, preparing to combat rush-hour Nashville traffic. He was used to it. But usually he was on his way home going the opposite direction.
He wasn’t a nervous man. His father had instilled in him the art of having confidence in one’s abilities without being too cocky. At the time, his dad had thought he was grooming another lawyer like himself. But as much as he and his dad didn’t see eye to eye most days, the philosophy had served him well as he rocketed up the corporate ladder.
But today, his future hung in the balance.
He’d tried to be confident with Hanna. She’d looked like a lost, scared puppy.
The truth was, though, he wasn’t sure he’d have a job after this meeting. He might be at the office all night, packing up his things.
If the sales numbers weren’t showing any improvement or, worse yet, really showed a decline as Doug’s report had shown, no amount of maneuvering on his end could save his tail.
The thought should crush him.
And on a level, it did.
But the accident, and maybe the kiss preceding it, had caused a major disruption in his mind-set.
As cliché as it was, as they were flying through the air, the whole two feet of it, his life passed before his eyes.
If he died today, would he be proud of the life he’d led? What legacy did he have? What would he miss?
The truth, now that he had a second to grasp it in stand-still traffic, was that he’d be ticked off for squandering all his time and effort on Foster and Jones. Yes, he loved his job. But he’d let it define him.
He wasn’t just William Preston.
He was William Preston, CEO of a multi-billion-dollar corporation.
Whoop-de-do.
He’d rather be Will, husband, with a wife to come home to every night. A wife who needed him to help take out the trash and mow the lawn, or at least hire a guy to mow it. Who needed him to hold her while she cried and to support her dreams.
He’d rather be Dad to a kid or two or three he could build tree forts for and change diapers for. Okay. Maybe not the latter. But he would totally study up on tree fort building. Or even a playhouse if they had a little girl.
He’d rather be a friend to someone who cared for him for more reasons than the fact he had the power to fire them or give them a raise.
And, as eternity flashed before his eyes, he realized that he missed something he never thought possible.
God.
How could that be? He’d effectively given God the finger years ago, telling Him off and going his own way.
But the thought remained.
A small part of his heart still yearned for the faith he’d once had. For the trust in something, or someone, bigger. For a purpose beyond just making money. Beyond achieving a level in a career. Beyond appeasing stockholders and board members.
He’d had that purpose once. Felt and believed it with all his heart. He’d been young and full of zeal. Even when Claire had gotten really sick, he’d been the one to make silly faces at her to make her smile. To assure her how big God was and how she was going to be just fine. He promised her that.
But she’d still died.
God had made him break his promise.
And since
then, he made it a point to both not make promises and not rely on God.
Yet, hadn’t he just made another promise to Hanna?
A promise he had no clue how to keep?
As he pulled into Foster and Jones’ parking lot, he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
He didn’t need God. He would keep this promise on his own. He was William Preston. He fixed things. Give him a problem, he’d find a solution. No divine help needed. All it took was good, sound, analytical thinking.
His brush with death, if one could call it that, had only brought back bad memories. That was all.
But it had done one other thing.
It made William realize he had much more he wanted to live for.
The first order of business…
I’ve got to keep my job.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
We must ask for your resignation.”
William sat at the head of the large conference room table, board members in suits lining each side. The words Sam Deddrick, the director to his right, had just issued, the whole scene really, was a déjà vu from a nightmare he’d had soon after receiving the promotion. In fact, it almost seemed prophetic.
Doug sat at the opposite end, his eyes steeled on William, the haughty know-it-all look on his face.
Careful to school his features, Will nodded and searched for the best words to address this situation. There was no way he was going down without a fight. While asking for a resignation is effectively saying, “You’re fired, but we want to give you the chance to quit so it doesn’t look so bad even though everyone will know that we canned you,” he was still determined to fix this. “We just gave the official interview this morning. There is no way to gauge the impact on sales at this point. That was the whole point of this, wasn’t it? To fix what went wrong? To get sales back up?”
Sam cleared his throat. “The numbers are looking more dismal by the day, from what we’ve seen of the most recent forecast. But it’s not just about that. There have been a few things that have come up….”
William narrowed his eyes. Something didn’t sound right. “What do you mean, a few things?”
“Internal auditors are questioning some changes you signed off on. Their final report isn’t in yet, as you know, but with this development and last quarter’s loss, we feel like now might be the right time to part ways amicably.”
Changes? He went through all the process changes he’d made in the last year, and nothing detrimental crossed his mind, much less even remotely illegal. “I don’t understand. What changes?”
Sam looked down the table at Doug then back again. “Most are in accounting.”
Accounting? Suddenly, the light blazed brighter in Will’s mind. Accounting wasn’t his forte. He knew quite a bit, but he’d cut his corporate teeth on the operations side. He’d relied heavily, perhaps too heavily, on Doug’s advice the past year or so. Especially while he was on the TV show and handling all the press that followed.
Had Doug set him up?
Surely not. The guy was a little odd and more than a little rude and overbearing, but this didn’t seem like him.
He pushed back his seat and stood, then took his time to study each and every director that lined both sides of the table, looking them each directly in the eye. Finally, his gaze rested on Doug, who sat expressionless with his chin in a hard set.
What should he do? He wasn’t a throw-in-the-towel kind of guy.
There was only one person he could trust to help him with this. And as much as he hated the thought of admitting his failure, he had no other choice.
But in order to fix this, he had to buy himself time. Which meant committing what could be the worst career suicide move on the books.
He picked up his yellow steno notepad and pen that cost a fortune and pushed in his chair. “You asked for my resignation, but I’m not going to give it. There has been no evidence presented showing my guilt or even details on what I’m guilty of. I’ve done nothing but give my best to this company, and that included nothing illegal. I’d like to ask the board to give me a week to address whatever the concerns the auditors have and try to get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
Doug stood. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. This company has been through enough the past few years, we don’t need a hint of any other scandal.”
Sam cleared his throat. “I understand your concerns, Doug, but personally, I’m on the fence about this. If we jump the gun, we’ll look just as bad in the public eye, not to mention stockholders. All in favor of reconvening in one week for a final vote—”
About two-thirds of the hands raised.
“All not in favor—”
The remaining hands, including Doug’s, shot up.
Sam stood and turned to William. “You have one week to present your case, along with the auditors, to the board. I suggest you use it wisely.”
A knock sounded on the door, and Emma peeked her head in. “Boss? Can I come in?”
He motioned her with his hand. “I thought you left awhile ago.”
“I thought you were leaving right behind me.”
He shrugged. He’d only said it to get some time alone with his thoughts. His assistant was a hoverer. “Lied.”
She settled in one of the chairs across from his desk. “So did I.”
Good ol’ Emma. The girl had spunk. It was what he liked about her. But right now, he just needed to be left alone to think. And to make a dreaded phone call. “I just have a lot to do; I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t tell me how the oh-so-urgent meeting went.”
He drummed his fingers on top of the folder containing notes he’d gotten from the auditors. Most of the changes they had flagged had been small and seemingly innocuous on their own, at least to him.
Every single one of them had been suggestions made to him by Doug.
But he was smart enough not to mention that just yet.
The suggestions had been made verbally—and William had been the idiot who initiated every one of them. He’d trusted his CFO, even when he, too, had questioned a few of the suggestions.
But his mind had been other places—specifically on a blond from Minnesota and a TV show that was supposed to jump-start the company back into the black.
The auditor had explained that none of them individually were bad per say, but they added up to a suspicious trail and, when looked at together, weakened controls.
Never had Will felt so ill equipped to handle his job.
“They asked for my resignation.”
Her eyes turned to wide circles. “Did you give it?”
He probably should have. Most people would have. But William wasn’t a quitter. He was a fixer. This was a problem, and somehow, someway, he’d find a resolution that didn’t involve never being able to find a job for the rest of his life and a possible jail sentence. “No. And I don’t plan to.”
“So, what? They think you’re cooking the books?”
“A bright one, you are.”
“But—wouldn’t you make them actually look good if you were going to do that?”
It was the same question he’d been contemplating. “You would think. I don’t think they entirely know what to think of it all. I’m trying to put myself in their shoes. They have an ex-CEO who is being indicted for accounting fraud. They have sales that had finally started to take a turn up but are now plunging into a nosedive like a plane with all engines failing. And an inexperienced CEO they weren’t entirely sure of in the first place, who has now made some changes that look fishy. I think they are just trying to deploy their parachutes and get out before the whole thing does a fiery crash landing.”
She frowned. “You don’t think they think I’m part of any of this, right?”
Now there was an interesting thought. What if determined, bright Emma had been involved? She was his asset. The one person in this company who had his back and always stood by him. Even in the whole craziness of The Price of Love, she
’d agreed to be his eyes and ears. Had she set him up?
Surely not. “You aren’t, are you?”
Standing quickly, she jabbed her hands against her hips. “If you think that, then I might as well quit today.”
He held up a hand. “I don’t. Not really, anyway. I’m just trying to figure all this out.”
“Aside from investigating your innocent assistant, what do you plan on doing next?”
He eyed the phone, knowing the call he had to make but dreading it. He’d been sitting here for the last thirty minutes trying to get up the courage. The only man who could help could also make the rest of his life miserable because of it.
William sighed and picked up the phone, twirling it in his hand then fisting the handset with a firm, determined grip. He’d do what he had to do to clear his name. Sometimes you had to stand up, be a man, and fight your own fights. And other times—as a wise man once taught him—you had to know when to call in reinforcements.
“I’m calling my father.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Hanna stood at the bottom of the white spiral staircase. How did they get furniture up there, anyway?
But nature called. She’d tried the downstairs bathroom, and Will had been right. No toilet paper, no hand towels, no soap, nothing.
Plus, if she was going to stay in the guest bedroom, she might as well get her things settled in.
Being in someone else’s house, by herself, was uncomfortable. She tried to treat it as a hotel room, but yeah. That was not gonna work.
Little things reminded her of Will. The small, rather old family picture on the mantel, with his parents, him, and Claire. His jacket thrown over the couch. Dishes in the sink he’d obviously done nothing with before they’d gone to New York. Typical bachelor.
The Engagement Plot Page 20