by Emily Bishop
He was standing tall around Barrett, but he was too smart to go poking the bear. We watched them go, laughing as they stumbled into the back of the limo with cheers rising from their friends as they did.
It was one of the many moments that I marveled at just how easily I’d slipped into Barrett’s life. Having money wasn’t all bad, which brought me to the next thing I wanted to discuss with him.
“Can we talk?”
“Uh oh. If it’s a bad talk, then no. I’m busy. If it’s a good talk, then yap away.” Barrett’s eyes shone with humor as he drew me against his chest, dropping a light kiss on the tip of my nose. “Either way, I love you more than words can say.”
It was a refrain he’d repeated time and time again since that day at Athena’s, though he couldn’t say “in the English language” anymore because we’d taken to learning how to say I love you in every language we could think of. We might not always remember how to say it afterward but we were determined to say it at least once in every language.
“Eu também te amo.” At least I remembered how to say I love you, too in Portuguese. “But that’s beside the point. I want to set up a charity fund for the families of those affected by cancer. You refuse to let me pay for anything, so I’ve got a load of money saved up, and that’s what I want to use it for.”
Barrett had announced me as the face of the agency after all, claiming that he couldn’t bear to have me working for the competition and that I’d been perfect since the beginning. Since he could bear to look at me again, he said it was a no brainer.
I’d agreed, on the condition that if he ever felt like firing me again, he had to sit me down, hear me out, and answer every one of my questions while he listened to every one of my answers. He promised but then surprised me with a contract from his lawyers stipulating that Athena’s was mine, full and clear, if he didn’t stick to the terms.
When I refused to sign it, he’d threatened to make the entire company shut down until I did. Oh, and to withhold sex. I signed the next day.
It was a completely unnecessary gesture as far as I was concerned, but he wouldn’t budge, citing that he had promised me that he would do anything to prove to me that he was sorry and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.
Before he could answer, my phone buzzed on the table in the entrance hall. It was my mother, and since I’d stopped avoiding my mother’s calls, I shot Barrett an apologetic look. He smiled indulgently as he inclined his head to the phone. I slid my finger along the green line.
“Honey, are you two free?” my mother asked. “Your father and I have news. We’re about five minutes away if you have time. I know it’s Nancie’s prom tonight.”
It was still strange that I spoke to her so often nowadays that she knew exactly what was going on in my life.
“We’re free,” I said. “The kids just left.”
Barrett smiled, clearly overhearing the conversation.
“Is it okay for us to pop in?” she asked.
I shot him a questioning glance, and he nodded. Barrett and my father had grown seriously close over the course of the last few months. They adored each other and spoke at least as often as my mom and I did.
“Sure, Mom. See you soon.” I hung up the phone and turned to Barrett. “Do you know what this is all about?”
“Nope, I would’ve told you, love. All I know is the same as you. They’re expecting the final results any time now.” The anxiety that crept into his voice mirrored the nervous pounding of my heart. “Now, before they get here, I see your idea of starting a fund, and I think it’s great but I also think we can do one better.”
“Like what?” I arched a brow at him. Whenever his eyes danced like they were right then, he was about to propose something preposterous and expensive, which he also had a way of making happen.
“Let’s build a whole new cancer wing at the hospital and name it after your dad,” he said, pulling me back to him and nuzzling my neck.
Sometimes, I couldn’t believe how much I loved this man. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack,” he said into my ear, licking the shell and completely distracting me until the doorbell rang.
“Darlings,” my mother exclaimed as we opened the door. It was times like this that I was grateful she had too much poise to mention our flushed cheeks or bee stung lips.
“How are you, Athena?” Barrett asked, pulling her in for a quick hug while squeezing my father’s hand with his free one. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s marvelous,” my mother said, hanging onto my father’s arm. He was beaming like the sun itself.
“We just got the final results,” my father said.
Barrett reached for me. His fingers dug into my hip, and we both stopped breathing while we waited for my father to spill the beans. I finally prompted him. “Well?”
“I’m clean,” my father announced. “Completely in remission.”
Barrett and I froze, then released each other to hug my parents. My mother and I sobbed into each other’s shoulders, while my dad and Barrett exchanged a warm hug, muttering softly to one another.
“This calls for a celebration,” Barrett called when he broke away from my father. “You guys go settle in the living room. I’ll grab the champagne.”
Happiness was too meager a word to explain my feelings as I led my parents to our living room, chattering all the way about what the doctors had told them.
“So, you’re really all clear?” I asked.
“All clear,” my mother confirmed, snuggling into one of the couches. They’d become as at home here as Barrett and I had back at Villa Fowler. Nancie adored them, and they adored her. All in all, life was pretty damn perfect.
Barrett came into the living room, juggling four long-stemmed glasses and a bottle of champagne that I’d chosen at the supermarket, insisting that it was my favorite, despite its barely-there price tag. Barrett just laughed, told me that he loved me, and bought a case of the stuff.
Standing up to help him, my knees nearly buckled when he dropped to his and whipped a royal blue case from his pocket. It was one of the ring cases that my family had built their name on, my mom’s name emblazoned in gold lettering over the top.
My mom and I held our breaths, while a serene smile played on my father’s lips when Barrett started talking.
“You are the love of my life, Demetria Alison Fowler. You swept the world out from under my feet the first time I saw you, and I haven’t been on solid ground since. You’re a constant surprise and my only stability, all at once. I had this moment planned, down to my last word, but seeing you with Nancie tonight and getting this news from James, I couldn’t wait any longer. The moment presented itself, and I’m taking it. I’m all in, my love. So, what do you say? Will you marry me, Demi?”
Indescribable joy floated like bubbles in my chest as I looked down at his loving eyes, giving him the only answer that I’d been waiting to give him for months. “Of course I will.”
Hey, you! Thanks!
I cannot stress how awesome of a person you are for taking the time to read this romance. I hope it’s your new favorite book!
Because you’re so damn awesome, I included two bonus books for you to read: My bestselling novels, Mr. Anything and Bachelor’s Secret.
Happy reading, friends!
– Em
Want even more? Join my newsletter to get book updates, recommendations, and more! Click the image below to get in on it – PLUS a free download of my awesome novella, REAL DEAL!
Prologue
Shane
I was being interviewed for a puff piece article when Bart came barreling into my office. His eyes looked wild, and sweat slicked his brow. Something was seriously wrong.
Bart had been with my company longer than I had, and he’d always been rock-solid in a crisis. For him to be this worked up, the world must be ending.
He looked like he was about to speak until he saw the reporter sitting in front of my desk
. Bart stopped short, and his jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might shatter.
Allison, the reporter for the Houston Star, was here to ask me some questions about this year’s Most Eligible Bachelor article. She mostly worked on non-news stories like this, but like any half-decent journalist, she could smell when there was blood in the water.
Her eyes danced back and forth between Bart’s face and mine. She couldn’t hide the intense interest in her gaze. It was time to end this interview before she started asking real questions.
I flashed her my billion-dollar smile and stood up from my desk. “I hate to cut our interview short, Allison. But I need to have a word with Mr. Burrows.”
Allison’s shoulders drooped and her brow furrowed, but she snapped her notebook shut and gathered her things without protest. She’d been around the block enough times to know when to leave.
“I understand,” she said. “Can’t keep the president of the company waiting. Thank you for your time, Mr. Perkins. We’ll reschedule.”
She shook my hand firmly and swept from the room, shutting the door behind her without being asked to do so.
I turned my attention fully on Bart. He was my right-hand man and my strongest supporter, but I’d never seen him wearing an expression quite like this one. Not when we’d found out the shit that my father had caused. Not when his ex-wife had filed for divorce. Not even when she’d taken his kids and moved to the other side of the country.
Fuck.
“What is it?” I asked, my razor-sharp gaze focused firmly on him.
His beefy body collapsed into one of the chairs across from the hulking expanse of my desk.
“There was an accident on one of the oil rigs. People are hurt. We’re waiting for the preliminary report on what caused it, but there seems to have been some kind of explosion.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and my veins turned to ice. “How long until we get the report?”
“A couple of hours at most.” Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and his coloring was off, but I couldn’t blame him for that.
Incidents at oil rigs are comparable to plane crashes: they occur rarely, but when they do, they have the potential to kill people, cost the company millions of dollars, and spark calls for increased safety measures.
“Do we know how bad the injuries are yet?” It felt like there was a vice grip around my heart. If there were any deaths, I would feel personally responsible.
I started pacing around the office, trying to relieve the ball of stress settling in my stomach. It had already been a long week, but they were all long weeks. They always had been, ever since I took over the company from my father. But nothing like this had ever happened on my watch before.
A catastrophe of this scale had the potential to damage this company irreparably. It might seem callous for me to be thinking about the company at a time like this, but as much as my heart went out to the people impacted by this accident, I had thousands of other employees who still needed a job after all this. Those people and their families were counting on me, too.
Bart dabbed at his sweaty brow with a handkerchief. “We don’t have any official injury reports yet, but they’ll be coming in soon. All I know right now is that it’s bad.”
Armed with the preliminary report and no answers to the questions it contained, I headed for the boardroom down the hall from my office. My board of directors were gathered there to wait for an update.
I started speaking as soon as I strode through the wide double doors, even if I didn’t know what to think about what I had read only minutes before. “Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here on such short notice. Please be seated.”
They sank into their seats as I lowered into mine. “Let me start by saying that it is true that there was an explosion on one of our rigs earlier today. I have reviewed the report myself, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It doesn’t look good.”
I wished for a second that I had a pin that I could drop, to confirm my belief that you’d be able to hear it. But there was no pin, and no time for an experiment anyway.
“The choke on the gas buster failed,” I said. “As you well know, the effect of such a failure was that the gas couldn’t escape, and that is what caused the explosion.”
There wasn’t an eyebrow in the room that didn’t shoot up into its owner’s hairline. Shit like equipment failure was bad and very, very rare. The mechanisms were built to be practically failure proof, and they were generally safe. Or they should’ve been, at least. Which was why we would be facing a shit storm in the media very soon, and also why I needed to take a good long look into the supplier.
“We need to face the facts here,” I said. “The public will be demanding, if they’re not already, that I step down for the course of the investigation at the very least.”
A round of protests erupted around the room, interrupting my announcement of the plans I’d already committed to. I was not so set in my ways that I couldn’t change them if I had a good enough reason, but it was going to take some convincing to divert me from the course of action that I was sure would be best for the company under the circumstances.
“Shane, no,” one of them said.
“What’s best for this company is you at the head of it,” another board member argued. “You need to be leading us through this crisis, Shane.”
I raised my hands to quiet the room. “I’ll still be at the helm, steering us through this mess. I will simply be doing so away from the public eye. By taking a step back and letting someone else handle the internal investigation, it will show the public that we’re taking this accident seriously. And that I’m not trying to cover anything up, which I’m not.
“As soon as the heat and public pressure die down, the public will be appeased and more accepting of my remaining in my role as CEO. In the meantime, my dad has a property in Connecticut. I’ll be going there. I think that some of the original procurement documentation from the time when the valve was installed will be at the house, so I might be able to find it and send it back to assist with the investigation. However, as always, I will abide by what you think is the best decision.”
The members of the board looked stunned and started murmuring among themselves. The murmurs grew louder and louder until someone slammed a fist on the table.
“Shane is right,” Bart said. “As much as we need him here, it will reflect badly on our corporate governance, on his leadership, and on our sense of accountability if he doesn’t step away and allow for transparency in the investigation. The last thing we need is people pointing fingers and alleging that he knew of wrongdoing or is protecting his father’s decisions.”
One by one, the other board members nodded in agreement, grim-faced and stressed, but they were behind me and my plan. As always.
“Well, that’s settled, then,” I said. “I’ll be flying out to my dad’s place in Mystic this evening. I’ll be available on my cell and through email, but it’s probably best if we keep our distance as much as possible for purposes of the investigation.”
Mind made up, I adjourned the meeting. I answered a few more questions, said my goodbyes, and strode out of the conference room.
I gathered what I needed from my office and headed straight home, calling my pilot on the way.
“Eric,” I greeted the man that I trusted with one of my favorite toys. “I’ll need the wheels to go up as soon as possible.”
“Sure thing, boss. Where to?”
“Mystic, Connecticut,” I informed him.
Just saying the name of the small town aloud brought back warm childhood memories of fishing off the pier. I remembered the cool breeze rushing in from the water while I dangled my pole in the harbor. The sea gulls hovered overhead, keeping me company with their constant cries. The whole world seemed drenched in a salty, ocean smell. It seeped into my pores and made me feel like I was truly a part of that place. Like I was home.
Eric’s voice brought me back to the present.
True to his word, the jet was fueled up and ready to go by the time I reached the private airstrip. The crew rushed to grab my bags. I took one last look at my surroundings. It would be a while before I was back here in Houston. The thought saddened me as I boarded my plane.
Settling into one of the wide leather recliners, I set up my laptop and dealt with the fallout of the explosion as the jet carried me to one of my childhood homes.
The explosion was simply one loose brick in the empire that my family had been building for generations. I wasn’t going to allow it to cause the whole damn thing to crumble down. Even if I had to hold it up myself all the way from Mystic, Connecticut.
Chapter One
Fiona
Working with my best friend, Drew, was both a blessing and a curse. Right now, it was definitely a curse. I stood atop a stepladder, waiting for him to pass me another can of paint so I could restock the top shelf. But the can never came.
I turned around to see what the hold up was. Drew’s lanky body was hunched over his phone, his thumbs tapping quickly on the screen. I couldn’t see his face, only the dark, tangled mess of his hair.
“Are you seriously texting right now?” I asked.
He grinned without looking up. “It’s an emergency.”
“Sure it is,” I said. “What’s her name?”
“Cordelia,” Drew said, drawing out her name like a sigh.
I rolled my eyes. “Are you sure she didn’t give you a fake name? Because that sounds fake as hell.”
His smiled widened. “I’m sure I don’t care. As long as she agrees to go out with me tonight, I’ll call her whatever she wants.”
“Well, do you think your flavor of the week can wait until we finish restocking the paint?” I asked.
“Love waits for nothing, Fiona,” he said.
I snorted. “Love? Like you’d know anything about that.”