by Amelia Wilde
You’re skipping your shift?!?? Did you tell Greg?
I frown at the phone before typing my reply. If he’s pissed, he can fire me.
I curl my fist around my phone and tumble out of the bed, heading straight for the closet. I strip off the business casual outfit I wore to meet with Cole and leave it in a pile on the floor, then dig out a pair of ratty pajama pants and a tank top. That’s as dressed up as I’m getting tonight.
Every muscle in my body aches—a deep ache, the kind of ache that lingers, that settles into your bones. It’s all I can do to get back to the couch.
I ignore the stream of texts coming in from Peter, open a food delivery app, and choose the nearest Chinese restaurant. The order is outrageous. I don’t care.
I eat it all and follow it up with ice cream.
“I did the right thing,” I tell myself, my gut churning with the food. “I did the right thing.”
44
Weston
“Who brought these in?” My voice is sharper than I wanted it to be, but it’s too late—there’s no taking the words back now. There’s a rustle as Sarah pushes herself back from her desk, and then her footsteps are soft on the thick carpeting of my office.
“Mr. Grant?
“Who brought these in?” I try to temper my tone, but the white roses on the side table in the sitting area of my office are a taunt I can’t bear.
Sarah’s eyes flick from me to the rest of the office. “The flowers?”
“The flowers, Sarah. Yes.”
“They—” She moves over to them, considering. “They were a gift from one of the companies renting space on the eighth floor. I think part of their business is managing floral.” Then she nods firmly, locating the card in the massive bouquet. “Yep. That was it. They came in late yesterday.”
There’s no hint of judgment in her voice. I didn’t see the roses come in yesterday because I left work early to coerce Gideon into going out with me…again. With similar results.
Which is why my head feels like it’s being crushed in the world’s largest vise right now.
“Get them out of my sight.” I sigh. I’m being a dick to Sarah, who doesn’t deserve any of this, but the last thing in the world I want to see right now is a bouquet of roses.
“Of course.” She lifts the vase in both hands and carries it out.
I sit down behind my desk and try to pretend I’m not gripping it for balance. This is a normal thing that people do, clutching the edge of their desks in the companies they own like they have a sudden case of vertigo.
“Are you all right, Mr. Grant?”
Sarah’s back in the doorway. I force myself to focus on her face. The effort of moving my head, the splitting pain, makes me wish I were dead. “Why do you ask?” I try to put a cavalier grin on my face, try to make up—at least a little bit—for being such an asshole, but I fail miserably.
Pity shines from her eyes. “Is there anything I can get for you? Would you like me to call your driver?”
I open my mouth to refuse on both counts. I don’t need anyone to give anything to me. I don’t deserve Sarah’s kindness, or anyone else’s. I tried to treat Juliet like property the other night, and how I feel right now is probably karmic payback for it.
The decision to stop calling her was a good one. What kind of woman wants to be with someone like me?
Not Juliet. She hasn’t answered a single call. And I’m not about to keep making a fool of myself.
I don’t deserve any kindness, but the alternative is that I sit here at my desk for the rest of the day—maybe the rest of my life—and try not to move.
“Yes. Painkillers. Tylenol—whatever we have is fine. A glass of water.” My stomach gurgles. I don’t want to eat, but that might be the only solution to my problem. It’s utterly pointless to be here today if I can’t leave my desk to attend the meetings I’ve scheduled. I’m also not interested in tipping off my executives to how shitty I feel by making them crowd around my desk. “And breakfast.”
“What kind of breakfast?”
“Sarah, do you ever go out drinking?”
The corners of her mouth quirk in a little smile. “A time or two, yeah.”
“Bring me something that would fit in with the morning-after scenario.”
Fifteen minutes later, she bustles through the door with a tray in her hands, dishes covered. In one corner is the glass of water, two pills lying neatly next to it. Sarah slides the tray across my desk, then whisks off the covers.
The plate in the center has two eggs over easy, four strips of bacon, and hash browns that glisten with grease. A stack of toast and a container of jam are perched nearby. There’s no way I can eat this. Then I smell the bacon. Maybe I can.
Sarah smiles down at me, the silver cover in her hands, and heads for the door. “I’ll give you a few minutes.”
“That’s probably for the best.”
With every bite of the food—it’s piping hot and delicious, and I’ll have to send a note down to the kitchen staff congratulating them on a job well done—my head clears, the pain dulling until it’s a low throb I can ignore.
How I got to the office in the first place is a mystery. Dave must have had something to do with it. I groan a little, thinking of what an impossible douche my hungover self likely was a couple of hours ago. I must have been awake then. It must have taken all this time to get here, and I’m not dressed in some weird combination, which means other people were involved.
Fifteen minutes later, my belly is full, and the weight is like an anchor pinning me to Earth.
“I can do this,” I say out loud, and my voice brings Sarah in from the other room.
“Finished?” She whisks the tray away from my desk before I can answer. “There’s someone here to see you.” Her cheeks go pink. “I didn’t fight him off this time. You’ve got forty-five minutes before your first meeting.”
“Wes!” Gideon cries, striding through the door like this is his own personal office. He eyes the dishes on the tray as Sarah goes by. “You ate. Thank God. I thought you might end up dead after last night. We can’t keep doing this, my friend.”
“I’m alive.” I rub at my temples, waiting for the painkillers to kick in. “Thanks to you.”
“Me and that driver of yours. That guy—he’s a gem. Never let him go.”
“I won’t.”
Gideon throws himself into the chair across from my desk. “I’m ready to talk.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You have something to get off your chest?”
“You do. Clearly. When’s the last time you went on a bender like that?”
I roll my eyes. “You know when.”
He leans forward, elbows on the desk, fingers steepled in front of his face. “Listen, I can’t stay in the country to hold your hand. I’m supposed to fly out this afternoon.”
I laugh out loud, the sound seeming unfamiliar and strange. “Trust me—you don’t have to do that.”
“You need to talk to Juliet.”
A flash of anger spikes in my chest. “Oh, God. Is that what you came here to tell me?” I point toward the door. “There’s where you can take that kind of talk.”
“You do, and you know it,” he says, leveling a stern look at me. “The Wes I know would never turn to drink unless it was really bad. He’d look for a replacement woman instead. Plus, you said something last night in the club that made me think you were avoiding the inevitable.”
“What?” I can’t help my curiosity.
“You said, they’re never going to measure up to her. Not a single one of them. She’s the only one.”
We consider each other across the desk. “I did not.”
“You did.” Gideon stands up, heading back for the door. “Don’t let her get away, Wes. You’re a wreck without her.”
45
Juliet
I lean my head against the window of the cab, letting the blast of air conditioning wash over me.
Dad did not go gently to Bel
le Park. He was sullen and surly and argumentative, demanding that his escorts take him to Havenshill, but they never seemed to blink. One of them, a wiry man named Mitchell, nodded to every single one of his statements and then delicately changed the subject.
Somehow, they got him to the entrance and got him inside the lobby without having to use anything other than the power of persuasion.
It was in the lobby that everything changed.
While I filled out paperwork, my shoulders so tense they stayed halfway to my ears the entire time, the escort team chatted with my father. His voice rose and fell over theirs.
I’d signed the last form and turned around when the fourth man approached their little huddle. A few inches taller than my father, he had rich black skin and a wide smile. He didn’t take his eyes off Dad for a second, not even to look for me. He stepped up with his hand out. My father straightened his back.
“Landon Pike,” said the man. “You must be Don James.”
“I am.” My father’s eyes narrowed, sizing him up.
“You worked at the Cayuga plant. That’s what I’ve been hearing. All the way up from the bottom, yeah?”
“When I retired, I was overseeing the whole shebang.” A flash of pride moved across Dad’s face. “I tell you what—those guys now don’t know what they’re doing half the time.”
“But you trained them good, didn’t you?” Landon put his hand on my father’s shoulder and let out a deep, rumbling laugh that filled the lobby. “I know you did. That’s why the place is still running.”
My father beamed.
“Listen, I should show you around a little bit and then we can get away from these losers and talk. Hey—do you like checkers? Or are you more of a chess man?”
Dad cocked his head to the side as Landon led him toward a bank of elevators past the reception desk. “Both have their advantages. Checkers always struck me as more of a beach game.”
Then they’d disappeared into the elevator, leaving me to drag my jaw away from the floor.
One of the escorts laughed. “He seems to like Landon all right.”
“Who’s Landon?” I couldn’t hide my bewilderment. “Is he on staff here?”
Mitchell nodded at my stack of paperwork. “That’s his new aide, I think. It should all be confirmed in the paperwork.”
There it was, right at the top of page three.
There was nothing more for me to do, once Landon had taken Dad up to his room. The last thing I wanted was to set him off again. The only answer? Head back to Anderson for my Torts class.
The exhaustion descends on me, even heavier than before, the moment I lean my head on the window.
“Long day?” The cabbie glances at me in the rearview mirror. I splurged on the cab, even though I’m going to need every last penny to keep up with the admittedly generous payment plan Cole arranged for me.
“It’s not half over yet,” I say, forcing a laugh into the sentence.
“I feel you.” He navigates us around a delivery truck parked at the curb a few blocks from Dad’s new place. “I’m off shift in an hour, though. What else have you got?”
“Classes. Then work.”
“You in college?”
“Law school.”
His eyes light up. “Hey, that’s fancy. I bet you’ll be one of those high-powered types once you graduate.” Then he laughs. “They’re always on the phone.”
I wish I had a reason to be on the phone.
I wish that reason was Weston.
But after what I did...
And in light of what he does...
It’s better this way.
I think it more convincingly: It’s better this way.
It doesn’t make my heart ache any less.
I’ve got a shift at the Rose tonight, which is a miracle considering the shit I pulled on Wednesday night. Greg didn’t call until this morning, and even he must have realized something was up, because he didn’t rip into me the way I thought he might.
He asked me if I was still taking the shift.
I don’t have any other choice.
I have every intention of chatting with the cabbie about the lawyers I’ve seen in the city—walking fast, serious expressions on, talking a mile a minute into their cell phones at all hours of the day. A few of them are members at the Rose, and they’ll talk through an entire meal without taking more than one breath. But the weight of the day is heaviest on my eyelids, and they begin to droop down, down...
“Miss?”
His voice seems to come from far away.
“Miss? We’re here.”
I jerk upright, reaching frantically upward to wipe at my mouth. “Here?”
“The address you mentioned. Do you need to go somewhere else?”
I squint out into the afternoon sun. We’re on the curb in front of Anderson. “No. No, I’m good. Thank you.”
I gather up my bag, scanning the back seat of the cab to make sure I wasn’t carrying anything else. My head is a foggy mess. It takes far longer than it should to dig up my credit card and run it through the scanner to pay the cabbie.
I step out onto the curb and lean back through the passenger-side window, pressing a tip into his hand. “Thanks again.”
He gives me a grin and pulls back out into traffic.
I’m only three steps toward the building when my phone starts to ring.
It’s the number for Belle Park.
My stomach drops all the way to the concrete.
46
Weston
Juliet hesitates in the middle of the sidewalk, her face going chalk-white at whatever’s popped up on the screen of her phone.
She mouths the word fuck and turns away from the entrance, her shoulders rising toward her ears. It takes her several tries to swipe across the screen and answer the call.
My heart thunders against my chest.
It hasn’t been exactly easy to move heaven and earth like I’ve been doing for the last few days. There were hundreds of permits and contracts to expedite, a new business wing to set up and staff, and a thousand other details of the kind that I normally don’t have to concern myself with. A corporation the size of Grant Pharmaceuticals doesn’t usually run the day-to-day by the man who owns all of it.
All except this time.
Juliet was right when she told me that I take what I want. I go after what I want, too, which is most of the reason that Grant Pharmaceuticals has become the juggernaut in the industry that it is. I’ve never settled for no. I’ve always chased the next deal, the most beautiful mergers, and it’s made me very successful.
Except in the most crucial of ways.
This time, I’m not in it to make money.
I will make money, but not in the way that most people will expect—my business advisers first among them.
The truth is, I don’t give a shit what those people think. I need to show Juliet that I have more to offer her—and the world—than a company drowning in profits.
She spins around toward the building again, her mouth open. It reminds me of the first time I stood on this sidewalk with her, after I chased her out of the “lecture” that I royally screwed up. Her face is turning that same shade of pink.
Say that one more time. The words are clear on her lips, and she cocks her head to the side to listen to the reply. I’m dying to know for sure who’s on the other end of the line. I think I have a pretty clear idea.
It’s only another fifteen seconds or so, and then she hangs up, dropping her phone back into her purse. Juliet bites at her lip, and her forehead wrinkles. She gives a tiny shake of her head.
Then, because she is, after all, Juliet James, she lifts her chin, straightens her back, and heads straight for the door of Anderson without a backward glance.
My heart pounds so heavily against my ribs that I wouldn’t be surprised if it burst.
This is it.
She strides confidently toward the door and pulls it open, and in the overhead lighting of the entr
ance hall I can see the bags under her eyes. She looks how I feel—exhausted and heartbroken.
Her eyes adjust to the light when she’s only a few steps in front of me, and then her entire face changes.
Juliet’s jaw drops open, and then she snaps her lips shut, covering them with her hand like she’s been caught in something illicit. The urge to wrap her in my arms and carry her out of here, back into the past before we had that stupid argument in the retirement home, is so strong that my hands ball up into fists. I can’t touch her yet. Maybe not ever.
“Juliet James.”
“Weston—” Her voice is tight, the tension between us zinging right into my heart. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.” I cross my arms over my chest and put a look of mild frustration on my face. “You wouldn’t answer my calls.”
She lets out a mortified laugh. “I—meant to.”
“But then you didn’t.”
“No.”
“I understand why.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “Do you?”
“Yes. For once in my life, I understand.”
“It wasn’t that—”
“I know why you said those things, Juliet. I know why you had to get out from under my thumb. You’re not the kind of woman who takes a deal without knowing all the consequences. And you’re not the kind of woman who wants to settle for anything but equal partnership. That’s not what I was offering.”
Two pink spots rise on her cheeks. Her mouth is curving upward in a smile, but her lower lip still trembles. “Maybe I should…” She shakes her head. “Maybe I should back off on that a little.”
I step toward her, meeting her eyes. The violet color is made more vivid by the redness there, as if she’s been crying, running on very little sleep. “No.”
One corner of her mouth rises, and her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Are you telling me what to do, Weston Grant?”