Last Call

by Bella Michaels

  To all those who have survived their workplace thanks to colleagues, and the colleagues who put a smile on their friends’ faces, this one’s for you.

  Last Call

  Boys of Bridgewater Book One

  Bella Michaels

  Last Call

  Copyright © Altiora Press, LLC 2020

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Cover design by Najla Qamber Designs.

  Photography by Wander Aguiar.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are product’s of there author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1. Hayden

  2. Ada

  3. Hayden

  4. Hayden

  5. Ada

  6. Hayden

  7. Ada

  8. Hayden

  9. Ada

  10. Hayden

  11. Ada

  12. Hayden

  13. Ada

  14. Hayden

  15. Ada

  16. Hayden

  17. Ada

  18. Hayden

  19. Ada

  20. Hayden

  21. Ada

  22. Hayden

  23. Ada

  24. Hayden

  25. Ada

  26. Hayden

  27. Ada

  28. Hayden

  29. Hayden

  30. Ada

  31. Hayden

  32. Ada

  33. Hayden

  34. Hayden

  35. Ada

  36. Hayden

  37. Ada

  Epilogue

  Get a Bonus Scene

  Billion Dollar Date Sneak Peek

  Also by Bella Michaels

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

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  1

  Hayden

  “Should I let you out here, sir?”

  I open my eyes and shove a curtain aside, looking out the car window. Traffic’s at a standstill. I have no idea how long we’ve been sitting here because I kind of, sort of dozed off. I glance at my watch.

  “Shit.” Enzo is going to kill me. I’m supposed to meet our new project manager from the FDA with him . . . several minutes ago. I’d run through a burning building for my friend and business partner, but apparently getting to bed at a reasonable time the night before a big meeting is too big of an ask for me. I really, really did not plan to be out so late, or to wake up with company this morning, but a series of rather fortunate events . . .

  Focus, Hayden.

  I press a button in front of me just below the privacy screen. “Are we going to get moving any time this century, Henry?”

  His gravelly voice comes through the speaker, loud and clear. “Doesn’t look good. I think you’d get there faster walking.”

  Yup, Enzo is going to kill me.

  “Sir?”

  I glance out a window, find a landmark, and calculate the remaining distance. As much as I’d prefer not to show up dripping sweat, walking is a better call than making them wait. Or wait longer, as the case may be.

  A quick look down at my cell confirms the worst. Two missed calls and even more text messages.

  With another touch of a button, the privacy screen slides down between Henry and me. His judgy gaze peers at me from the rearview mirror. He doesn’t mean to come off that way, but a lifetime of working for my father has ingrained an ironclad sense of duty in the man. Even if he is my driver now, not my father’s.

  “I’ll be at least two hours.”

  Henry blinks. The only sign he’s actually heard me. When I was young I used to think he either couldn’t stand me or was being deliberately disrespectful. But now I know better.

  “Enjoy your morning,” I call as I gather my briefcase and jump out of the car. How is it already so damn hot at nine in the morning?

  Okay, nine fifteen.

  Making my way through the rush-hour crowd, I voice-text Enzo.

  Sorry. On my way. Standstill traffic, and I fell asleep in the car.

  Just as I’m about to shove my phone back into my pocket, it vibrates. A quick glance tells me what I’ve already guessed: it’s my father. I’m tempted to ignore him, but he’ll only call back until he reaches me.

  “Good morning, Father.”

  “I thought you had a meeting with the new project manager this morning?”

  Hello to you too.

  I’m tempted to ask why he’s calling if he knew I had a meeting, but I have too much of a headache to fight with him at the moment. That won’t be a problem anymore once this whole tiresome approval process is over and Enzo and I are able to bring our product to market.

  “I’m on my way there now.”

  “We can’t afford delays, Hayden.”

  I’m not in the mood. It’s hot. My head is pounding. I nearly crashed into a tourist who stopped in the middle of the damn sidewalk to take a picture, and Enzo is texting me as we speak.

  “Dad”—he hates when I call him that—“I’m fully aware. We had no control over the last person being transferred, but there’s no reason to think a new project manager will cause any problems.”

  “When is the last time you’ve looked at the supplier statements?”

  “I talked to P&R last week.”

  “I didn’t ask when you talked to the accounting firm. When did you look at the statements yourself?”

  I turn the corner, walking as quickly as possible.

  “I really have to go,” I try, knowing it’s futile. When my father is finished with me, he’ll let me know, and I won’t be getting off this call three seconds sooner.

  “When?”

  I grind my back teeth, trying not to say something I’ll regret. “End of June.”

  “Two weeks ago?”

  If he hadn’t lent Enzo and me eight million dollars last year, I might comment on his superior ability to calculate days of the week. But that qualifies for the something I’ll regret list, or at least the something I’ll be made to regret list, so I hold my tongue. Two more blocks.

  “Yes.”

  “I spoke with Paul this weekend. He mentioned an increased cost of stabling agents.”

  In other words, Since Angel’s accounting firm answers to you, I called your plant manager and talked with him about expenses to circumnavigate the communication chain.

  There are so many things I despise about my father. The constant criticism. The fact that he can hardly tolerate me. But most of all, I hate the way he manipulates me. For the thousandth time, I remind myself Angel, Inc. would not be possible without this man who is convinced I am a total fuck up. So instead of asking why he even bothered to lend me start-up money in the first place, I play nice.

  “I’ll take a look at them. And will let you know how it goes today.”

  There’s my building.

  “I’m expecting an uneventful transition.”

  The FDA doesn’t care what you expect.

  But I keep that one to myself too.

  “Yes, Father.”

  Click.

  Would it kill the man to say goodbye once in a while? Probably, yes.

  I remind myself that his opinion doesn’t matter to me, but it still slides under my skin, if only a little. My phone vibrates again before I can put it aw
ay. Enzo.

  “Hi,” I answer, anticipating another tongue-lashing.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Sorry,” I say sincerely. “I’m just coming into the building now.”

  “I don’t even want to know.”

  I silently agree.

  “Take your time. We already ran through introductions, and I convinced them to take a ten-minute coffee break, assuring them you’d be here by then.”

  “I will be. Just have to run into the men’s room. Traffic was horrific, had to walk the last four blocks.”

  I can see Enzo’s eyes rolling through the phone.

  “Poor baby. Get your ass up here.”

  My ass is what got me into this situation. I went to my neighborhood bar, intending to have a drink or two and head home at a reasonable hour, but a fiery redhead groped me on the way out. Admittedly, I’d been checking her out from across the bar, my interest not the least bit subtle.

  Welcome to my life. A series of bad decisions, one after the other, with one glaring exception. The one that was poised to make me a billionaire in my own right, my parents’ money be damned.

  Just one FDA approval, three more months of pleasing them and my father, and then . . . let the games begin.

  2

  Ada

  “What in the ever-loving . . .”

  My friend Karlene, who’s smarter than anyone I’ve ever met, including my father, is currently peering under the stalls in the bathroom.

  She stands up. “Just checking. I wanted to make sure it’s safe.”

  “From?”

  And here I’d thought we’d come in here to pee and maybe put on some lip gloss.

  “To talk about him.”

  I assume him refers to the half of the sponsor duo who bothered to show up to the meeting. And she’s right—there’s no denying he’s easy on the eyes.

  “Mr. DeLuca?” I guess.

  Karlene pulls a lipstick out of her purse. “He looks like a cross between David Gandy and”—she shrugs—“I don’t know, Michelangelo’s David or something. And he’s about to be richer than both of them. Can you imagine? An alcohol with an antidote? No more drunk driving? It’s nuts.”

  My favorite thing about Karlene? The unlikely cross between intelligence and silliness that keeps people off-balance.

  “It’s impressive,” I agree. “Also, do you even know what Michelangelo’s David looks like?”

  She opens her mouth, making an O.

  “Uh-huh.”

  I don’t actually need to go to the bathroom. Or reapply lip gloss. I’m only here because the moment Mr. DeLuca asked for a ten-minute break, despite the fact that our meeting had barely started, Karlene gave me “the look.”

  I should have guessed why.

  “So maybe now is a good time for me to remind you that you’re married.”

  I say it in good fun. As Karlene reminds me all the time, married doesn’t mean dead.

  She puts the lipstick back into her purse. “Oh shit. I knew there was a snag in my plan.”

  “Which plan exactly?”

  “The one where I take Mister Angel, Incorporated back to my apartment and let him have his way with me.”

  “Mmm-hmm, I figured as much.”

  “But . . .”

  I know that look.

  “Don’t go there.”

  Karlene has been trying to play matchmaker since we met four years ago. She’s even succeeded (temporarily) a few times. But this won’t be one of those times.

  “I’m just saying. If I were single, and that”—she waves her arm out toward the conference room—“were anywhere in my vicinity, the FDA could go to hell in a handbasket.”

  “I’m pretty sure sleeping with a sponsor won’t get me that grade-level promotion.”

  “You’ve got that in the bag,” Karlene says, slinging her purse over her shoulder as if to emphasize her point.

  I wish I had half her confidence. But there are at least two other candidates, just as qualified as me. It’s anything but a sure bet.

  “OK, so say you’re on the hiring board,” I tell her. “Three candidates are presented to you. One is the son of the chief scientist, another is a certifiable genius with a Davy Medal, and the third is a woman who slept with a high-profile sponsor and delayed the approval of a potentially lifesaving drug. Who do you pick?”

  Karlene pretends to think about it as we leave the ladies’ room.

  “Does the third one also have a Doctor of Pharmacy degree?”

  I try not to smile. “She does.”

  “And is she the daughter of famed biochemist Dennis Flemming? The fourth-most-quoted physician in the U.S. with five honorary Doctor of Science degrees—”

  “This is the most ridiculous discussion,” I say, stopping her. Listing my dad’s accolades will take all day. Besides, those are his achievements, not mine. I want this because I’ve earned it.

  “Time to put your game face back on,” Karlene says as we walk through the main door and she steers us toward her office. There’s coffee in the meeting room, but she has a thing about germs—she’ll only drink from her own machine.

  “Think our no-show will be there yet?”

  Karlene shrugs as she pushes down the handle and the Keurig comes to life. “Who knows. You’d think he’d want to make a better impression, but a guy like Hayden Tanner probably isn’t worried much about little old us.”

  I’m inclined to agree. When I worked in Maryland at the main FDA headquarters, there were fewer of those types than there are here in New York. But they still existed. And they never seem to learn.

  Except at the highest levels that no one really talks about, the Food and Drug Administration can’t be bought. A sponsor submits a new drug application. A hundred-plus-person team reviews it, the process presided over by one production manager (in this case me). And the director decides whether it should be deemed safe or not.

  The amount of money in the sponsor’s bank matters very little. There are checks and balances built into the review process to ensure it. Even so, at least once a year some mega-billionaire comes along and tries to buy their way through the system. Or doesn’t show up to a meeting with the new RPM—the very person who could, if not morally obligated to do otherwise, make the process a living hell.

  “He should be,” I mutter, about to follow Karlene back to the boardroom. But I notice a loose thread in the sleeve of my blazer, and when I reach for it, I realize that my wrist is bare. “Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “My bracelet.” I look down to the ground. “I know I had it on earlier.”

  “Is it in your office, maybe?”

  I shake my head, glancing around her office. “No, I reclasped it in the bathroom. It’s been coming loose.”

  I curse myself for not having taken it to the jewelers to be fixed. My mom gave it to me when I got my job at the FDA, and it has sentimental value.

  “How much time do we have?”

  Karlene looks at her watch, which she wears religiously to keep track of steps.

  “Six minutes.”

  “OK.” I leave her office and head in the opposite direction, back toward the bathroom. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Although the meeting can’t start without me since I’m running it, I don’t want to be late. Unlike Mr. Angel, Inc., I have a high regard for being on time and would rather die than be late to my own meeting.

  But I need to find my bracelet first.

  3

  Hayden

  I step off the elevator and look for a water fountain. Six minutes until the meeting starts, again. I’ve been here before and know the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research is just down the hall. Taking two pills out of my briefcase, I find the blessed water fountain and pop them into my mouth. When our product goes to market, hangover headaches won’t be a problem. Neither will drunk driving, at least for people who drink our products.

  Because Enzo is a fucking genius.

  Until
then, I really need to start waiting until the weekend to drink. This grown-up, being responsible, morning meetings thing is a bitch.

  I turn the corner, and . . . holy hell.

  I’ve been to this office a handful of times to meet with the other RPM, and this is the first time I’ve glimpsed this particular backside. She’s bent over, having apparently found something on the floor. When she stands and turns around, it does nothing to quell the raging hard-on that I don’t have time for at the moment.

  She looks at me the way most women do. With an appreciation I’ve come to love and expect. I’m not being cocky here. It’s just a fact of life. Or my life at least.

  Her pale green suit is totally out of place, which tells me she’s not from the city. Or maybe she just doesn’t give a shit about fitting in.

  It looks good on her.

  This woman, late twenties I think, looks like a cross between Lauren Conrad and someone not as sweet. Not that I know Lauren Conrad personally. I’ve only met her in passing, but she seems kind of sweet. This woman, not so much.

  Her eyes are hard. Her chin, raised. She’s a pit bull, this one.

  Perfect, a challenge.

  “Looks like you found something.”

  As I walk closer, the smell that wafts toward me catches me off guard. I’d have expected flowers, not sandalwood.

  She’s wary. Burned by a guy? More than one?