Cougar Boss

by Kerry Belchambers

  The report went further to say that Olivia had never been involved in a long-term relationship with anyone, but had encountered sexual activities with women. I closed the file and put it back in my desk drawer.

  I’d read enough. The surplus information wasn’t necessary, though it did manage to shed light on Olivia’s personality.

  By now, she must’ve settled in her new apartment. I’d personally chosen it for her, but I didn’t want her to know that because I didn’t want her to think I had any personal motive for doing this. I wanted her to focus on work and school without outside interference.

  She had all of her professors contact information and had chosen a public library close to her new place to carry out her private studies. So far, she was keeping up with the pace.

  I wasn’t disappointed with the meetings she’d attended. I’d purposely set them up as a test to see how she’d conduct herself and from the report I had received, apart from a little self-confidence, she’d been well-informed, had properly handled the meeting and had professionally conducted herself.

  The knock on the door interrupted my flow of thought.

  “Come in,” I said.

  My son, Jonah, walked in. He had grown into a handsome young man and strived to be more like me, which I disapproved of because my life wasn’t as fulfilling as people thought it was.

  Unlike the way I’d been brought up, I’d made sure my children had a somewhat normal upbringing. They had a childhood and had attended school at a normal pace as compared to my rushed one.

  Jonah was loyal, hardworking and ambitious. He had finished his studies and was working in a financial managerial position for the pharmaceutical company.

  “Hey Mom,” he said as he took a seat across my desk.

  “Hey honey.”

  It had been a personal choice to work from home because I had wanted to be closer to my children, but now that they were both grown up, I was considering going back to the office.

  I was the Chairman and CEO of Winston Enterprises. My mother, who was just a member of the board now, had handed over control of the company six years after she’d married me off.

  My cousin, Eric, still ran the company in Belize. He’d managed to find a balance and settle down and was now married with four kids; three girls and a boy.

  I still couldn’t stand him, but if there was one thing I was grateful for, it was the fact that my mother had sent him away, which ironically, I had initially disapproved of.

  “Grandma and I have been talking,” Jonah said.

  Whenever a sentence started off that way, I always somehow went into shutdown mode. That woman still managed to make my life difficult. She was well into her late sixties but did not look a day over fifty.

  After I’d gotten married to Patrick, I had cut her off from my life and that of my children. When she’d handed over control of the company to me six years later, fully relinquishing her control, I’d let her meet her grandchildren.

  It had been her punishment for forcing me into a life I hadn’t been prepared for. I loved both my children but my life was still far from perfect.

  “When are you planning on merging Price Healthcare with Winston Enterprises?” he asked.

  I’d had the same discussion with Kathy and Patrick for years, which on a number of occasions had ended up in unpleasant arguments. I couldn’t believe I was now having the same conversation with my son.

  I had a thirty percent stake at Gallagher Manufacturing Industries, but no one said anything about that. But when it came to Price Healthcare, something that didn’t belong to the family, everyone seemed to have a say in it.

  “You’ve run the businesses as two different entities for so long.”

  He was my son and I loved him, but he would never know or understand the significance of Price Healthcare. “Jonah, did your grandma tell you how I came to acquire Price Healthcare?” I asked.

  “I thought it was part of the family business.”

  Kathy seemed to have conveniently left out that part during their talk. “How about you go do some research, and then we can talk.”

  He looked at me in confusion.

  Twenty-seven years ago, it had been all over the widespread media. Everyone had known I’d acquired the business from Isabel Price shortly after her passing. Details over how I came to acquire the business had been entirely based on speculation.

  I didn’t blame Jonah for thinking Price Healthcare was a family business. It had been a long time and no one spoke about it anymore. If Jonah made the effort to actually try and figure it out, maybe I’d share my reasons for keeping the two businesses apart.

  “Was there something else?” I asked.

  “You’re so secretive, Mom. Can’t you just tell me?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  He smiled at me and got to his feet. “See you at dinner,” he said.

  When he left, I picked up my phone and dialed Kathy’s number. I kept my distance, but she still couldn’t keep her nose out of my business.

  I allowed her to maintain a relationship with my kids under certain circumstances but sometimes she overstepped and forgot her place, and I was forced to remind her.

  I wasn’t sure if it was age or the presence of the kids, but over time, it seemed a softer side of her had developed. Nonetheless, our relationship was more strained than ever.

  She’d thought Patrick would somehow manage to control me, but he’d never even come close to succeeding. It must’ve been why she was reaching out to Jonah now.

  “Hello Kathy,” I said when she picked up.

  “Amelia, how pleasant to hear from you,” she said.

  “Have you been talking to Jonah?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, we had lunch the other day.”

  “During this lunch, did Price Healthcare come up as a conversation piece?”

  She hesitated. “Ah, yes. He asked about it.”

  “I need you to stay out of my business, Kathy. Just because you failed to get your way through Patrick doesn’t mean you’ll succeed using Jonah.”

  “Amelia, he was just asking–”

  “I don’t want to hear it. If I learn you’ve been talking to him about this again, I’ll not be quite so lenient with you. Do you understand?”

  She was silent for a while.

  “I understand,” she said.

  I hang up the phone. Her weaknesses were more exposed now, so she couldn’t have her way with everything like she had when I’d been younger. She was older now, and alone. She needed to feel like she was part of a family, my family.

  She should’ve expressed more interest in Eric’s family. If they were anything like him, I was certain they would’ve doted on her, falsely or not.

  I got back to my duties and somehow, my mind flew back to Olivia. For some reason, I thought of her more often than I should have. I had my motives for helping her, but they would be revealed in time.

  I didn’t want anything from her, but that fact did not sway my mind from the memories of our intimate encounters during the time we’d spent together. She made me feel more alive than I’d felt in my entire marriage.

  I’d met Patrick during a luxury cruise vacation with my mother. She’d forced me to take some time off from work because I’d been unable to function after Isabel had passed away.

  I was almost certain she’d known the true nature of our relationship, which had been her keen motivation for rushing me into a marriage I had not desired.

  The first time I met Patrick, I thought he was a nuisance. Sure, he was tall, handsome and came from a good successful family but like every other time before that, I couldn’t stand the fact that Kathy was trying to find me a suitor.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t run as I had during previous similar situations because I was in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Patrick was traveling with his family who were old friends of Kathy’s.

  He kept trying to force conversation, in spite of me expressing my lack of interest but in the end, I r
ealized the cruise was equally as miserable for him as it was for me because he was traveling with his parents and did not have anyone else around his age to hang out with apart from me.

  I made an attempt to be friendly to him because I thought it’d make the trip lighter on both our parts, but I had no idea he’d fall in love with me. He always said the sadness in my eyes had drawn him to me because he’d wondered how it’d be like to see me smile or laugh.

  I came to learn he was kind and sweet because he was constantly trying to cheer me up in an attempt to win me over. When Kathy saw that I was actually paying attention to him, she started plotting.

  Being idle drove me crazy because I didn’t know how to relax, but Patrick found ways to entertain and distract me.

  “I know you like your comfort zone and don’t like to talk much but I think I might’ve found a way to change all that,” he said one afternoon.

  I was sunbathing when he joined me. “What way is that?” I asked.

  He held out his hands to reveal two expensive bottles of wine.

  “One is for you and one is for me. We’re going to get drunk and make our parents miserable for a change.”

  The last part of his statement was appealing to me, but I didn’t see how getting drunk would make our parents miserable. Nonetheless, being stuck on a ship with absolutely nothing to do played a big role in me wanting to have a drink.

  “Where are the glasses?” I asked.

  He lowered his sunglasses, meeting my inquisitive gaze and dramatically said, “No need to be a lady today, we’re breaking all the rules.” He uncorked his bottle and took a sip.

  I was slightly amused, but I didn’t show it. He uncorked my bottle and handed it over to me. I followed his lead and took a sip from the bottle. “Where’d you get this?” It was really good wine.

  “I stole it,” he said.

  I almost gave back the bottle. “You stole it? Why would you do that?”

  “My father manipulated me into coming on this cruise. I just want to give him a little taste of his own medicine,” he said.

  I took another sip.

  “What makes you happy, Amelia?” he asked.

  His question prompted me to remember Isabel, which drove me to take another sip. “Nothing,” I said.

  “There has to be something.”

  “Can we drink without talking?” I asked.

  Back then, he thought it was amusing whenever I barricaded myself. He thought somehow over time, he’d manage to get me to open up.

  “You’re a beautiful girl, don’t you have someone special waiting for you back home?” he insisted.

  I looked at him, wondering why Isabel and I had never gone on a cruise. We’d have had such a lovely time. We would’ve probably spent most of it in our room making love and we would’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

  “Amelia?”

  The look of concern on his face pulled me back to the present. He moved closer to me and stretched out his arm, slowly reaching for my face and wiped a tear from my cheek.

  I didn’t know I’d been crying. I didn’t cry. It wasn’t in me. Embarrassed by my show of weakness, I got to my feet and walked away from him. He didn’t follow after me. It was like he knew I needed time to myself.

  Later on, in the evening, I was taking a walk along the deck when I saw him standing at the edge of the ship. He was still drinking, but he had a different bottle.

  “What are you doing?” I asked when I approached him.

  “Amelia, my current favorite person in the world.” He was drunk.

  I took the bottle from him and took a sip. “Did you steal this one too?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “I charged it on my father’s credit card.”

  His anger towards his father made me curious. “I know your father manipulated you into coming along on the cruise, but is that the only reason why you’re so angry with him?”

  “If I tell you, will you tell me why you’re so sad?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “You have to trust somebody, Amelia,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me,” he said.

  I took another sip. “You first,” I said.

  “Right before I agreed to come on the cruise, he promised me a great position in the company. I’ve done the work, put in the time and effort so I knew the job was mine. After we boarded the ship, I called the office to confirm everything was in order and came to learn that he’d offered the position to someone else. So not only did he use the position to bait me, he managed to screw me over,” he explained.

  I handed him the bottle and he took a sip. It was the first thing he said that made me feel like I could relate to him. My mother had used the company to manipulate me on several occasions, so I understood how he felt.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  I took a deep breath and said, “I lost a close friend.”

  “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry.”

  We spent the rest of the evening talking and somewhere through it all, I got drunk as well. The following morning, I woke up in his bed. I was surprised to find him sleeping on the floor because I’d never known any man to be such a gentleman.

  He was my first friend after Isabel, but my relationship with him from my side was purely platonic. After the cruise, we went back to our normal lives and two weeks later, he called me to tell me his father had promoted him to an even better position.

  We went out to celebrate and when my mother found out, she couldn’t stop talking about him or making plans for us to spend more time together.

  Somewhere along the second month, he finally worked up the courage to confess his feelings for me. It was a little tense and awkward since I didn’t feel the same way and when I told him so, he decided that he couldn’t be just friends with me and ended it.

  It was saddening, but I didn’t want to lead him on just to hurt him in the end. It must’ve been over three months before my mother reunited us again. She hosted a party and invited Patrick. I had no idea he’d be there when I attended, but I was pleased to see him.

  We started seeing each other again, spending more and more time together. I knew his feelings for me hadn’t changed but I needed a friend and at the time, he was the only one available.

  “Patrick is a good young man. I don’t see why you don’t want to give him a chance. You need companionship, Amelia. Patrick is willing to give you everything. He’s smitten with you.” Kathy’s sermons became part of a daily routine.

  Leave me alone. I wanted to scream. Couldn’t she see I needed Patrick as a friend because I was hurting over someone else? What was her obsession with wanting to marry me off? Was she doing it for me or for herself?

  “I think Patrick is serious about wanting to spend his life with you. Wouldn’t that be lovely?” she said.

  What about me and what I wanted? What kind of world had I been born into that what I wanted for myself didn’t matter?

  “Your father would approve of this union. He’d want you to be with Patrick. He’s such a gentleman. Any woman would be lucky to have him,” she continued.

  Then let any other woman have him. I would respond in my head.

  “Listen honey, I know since Isabel passed, things haven’t been easy for you. I understand you two were close, but the only way you can feel better is by having someone you trust by your side.”

  I didn’t know what made her use Isabel to make her point, but her words got to me. She was sweet and soothing and didn’t use her usual nagging tone. She touched my face, tucked my hair over my ear and spoke to me like a mother to a child.

  I should’ve known it was her way of getting what she wanted, but I was too in need to care. Once she knew what my weakness was, she started exploiting it. She would use Isabel to make me feel like I needed Patrick.

  When he proposed, both our families were seated at the dining table at Patrick’s house having dinner. During dessert, he went down on one knee and declared his undying
love for me right before he popped the question.

  I couldn’t remember saying yes to him because my mother squealed in joy and everyone got caught up in the excitement. My mother must’ve been celebrating because finally she’d succeeded in her attempts to find me a perfect suitor.

  She planned the wedding, making it a bigger extravaganza than my twenty-first birthday, and a month after the proposal, I was no longer Amelia Winston. I was Amelia Gallagher.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I knew it wouldn’t be easy juggling my work and my studies but having professors teach me on my own time sure made things a whole lot easier. I loved being busy, it kept me active.

  During the day, I attended meetings and learned more about Mrs. Gallagher’s job and healthcare business and in the evening, I got home, showered, changed, had dinner then went out to meet with my professors.

  I got back to the apartment sometime around midnight and after reviewing my day, I retired to bed in exhaustion. The following days ran on a loop in a similar manner.

  It wasn’t until I’d step back into the apartment that I’d remember my whole life had taken a complete turn. The two-bedroom apartment was large and it was fully and elegantly furnished.

  It would’ve probably taken me a decade to afford such luxury. It felt like I was living in an expensive hotel room.

  Apart from food and some shopping for clothes, shoes and handbags, I wasn’t spending much money. I had free transport, accommodation and Mrs. Gallagher was generous enough to pay for my professors.

  I thought about Rex all the time and I missed him terribly. I imagined how happy and supportive he’d be to learn how much my life had improved from that girl who’d been about to lose everything just a few months back.

  It had been a week since he’d left, but it felt like years and for some reason, I still couldn’t reach him.

  I still thought about his allegations, and sometimes I thought he might have been right but I wasn’t brave enough to confront Mrs. Gallagher on this one, not after all she was doing for me.

  I couldn’t help being suspicious, though. I wanted to understand her reasons behind her motivation for doing so much for me. I wanted to know if this was something she did for her other employees.