by Scarlet West
35
Hayley
I woke the next morning with a pain in my head, feeling utterly exhausted. I rolled over and felt a sleeping presence behind me. I sighed and reached for Reid’s hand.
“Hello,” he whispered in my ear. I rolled over and looked up at him. He was a mess – his face bruised and one eye ringed in black. He smiled at me and I smiled too.
“Hello,” I said. “Is it time for breakfast?”
“It is,” he whispered. “Though I reckon you and Josh both need a day off today.”
“I agree in Josh’s case,” I nodded. “I can’t see myself getting one, though.”
“I can talk to them,” he offered.
I stroked his hair. “It’s okay. I don’t have a full day today. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” he agreed. But he sounded less than happy. I rolled over and kissed him. I looked into his eyes.
“You need time to heal too,” I said. “And not just these scars.” I stroked his face.
He swallowed hard. “I signed up for therapy, you know,” he said. “I was trying to tell you – that day when I called you.”
“You did?” I stared at him, amazed. “Reid! I’m so proud. That’s so brave. That’s wonderful.”
He looked awkward. “Well, I want to do something about this. I can’t go letting things set me off like that.”
I sighed. “Reid you’re a good man. A great man. And I am so proud of what you are doing right now.”
He shifted in bed, lying on his side. He looked up into my eyes. “Thanks,” he said.
“I want you to know that I will do whatever you need me to do, to support you in this.”
He looked at me levelly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m safe to be around – not completely. Not before I do a few months of therapy at least. Hell, I don’t know how long this stuff takes.” He gave a gentle grin.
“I don’t know either,” I said softly. “But if you want space, I understand. Josh and I can stay by ourselves awhile; after all, Joel isn’t going to be able to bother us.”
“No,” he agreed. “The cops aren’t likely to let him go.”
I thought about that. There would be legal procedures, but I was prepared for that. I had records, witnesses, everything I needed to show how mercilessly Joel had tormented us. I was sure the police wouldn’t be letting him roam around freely.
“I can’t believe it,” I whispered softly. It didn’t seem possible, but the future I had always dreamed about was finally here: A future when Joshua and I weren’t always looking over our shoulders. One where Joshua could stay at the same school and study and pursue his love of soccer. It was wonderful.
“Thank you, Reid,” I whispered. “Thank you so much.”
He drew me down to him and kissed my cheek. “Thank you, Hayley,” he whispered. “Thank you for what you have given to me.”
I embraced him and he held me fiercely to him and I could feel the tremor in his voice as he whispered into my hair. “I love you. Hayley” I looked into his blue eyes, with their ringing bruises, and felt my heart fill up. “I love you too, Reid.”
We lay like that for a long time, just looking at each other, as if it was all too much to take in. Then he kissed me.
I sighed and leaned against him and held him and knew my world had never felt so complete.
Epilogue
I was sitting at my desk upstairs when I heard the doorbell ring. The desk upstairs had become mine now – the small attic room that nobody knew what to do with and Reid had been using for storing things, we’d cleared out when we’d bought the small house a month ago.
I smiled and ran down to answer it. Reid had his own key, of course, but he always rang the doorbell to let me know he was here. I ran down to find him on the doorstep, his cheeks pink and raised in a big smile.
“I had a breakthrough today,” he said. “I feel amazing.”
I nodded and held his hand, not knowing what to say. He had been working so hard with the counselling for these months – it had been six months since he helped rescue Joshua, and me. He had spent a lot of time in counselling in that time, and I knew it was starting to help. He said he felt more like himself, and I could see a new softness in his eyes that wasn’t there before.
“I’m so glad,” I said.
He kissed my hair. “I know what I want to do now,” he said. “I want to work with veterans. I want to help other people through this, the way I have been helped.”
I nodded. “I think it’s perfect, Reid. I can’t imagine anyone else better for the job.”
He raised a brow. “Really?”
I made a face. “Of course, yes.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Hayley. That means so much to me.”
I swallowed hard. “It just happens to be true.”
We kissed, a soft and tender kiss that said volumes about our love for each other.
I waited until later, when we were sitting at the kitchen table before I told him my own news. It was my day off, and Joshua was out in the yard, practicing soccer. He was determined to get onto the team and I knew he could do it.
“How was your day?” Reid asked me.
I smiled. “I got this.” I handed him the letter.
He read it, brows raising as he ran his eye down the page. Then he looked at me.
“Hayley! It’s wonderful!”
I felt a flush of warmth in my cheeks and I had to clear my throat, to speak round the lump that filled it.
“Thanks,” I said. “I think so.”
It was. I had applied – a month after the kidnapping – to a local community college. And I had just got the news. I had been accepted to take the prerequisites for nursing school. I had always wanted to be a nurse. Now it looked like I could do it.
“Hayley,” he said. “I’m so proud of you.”
I swallowed, starting to cry. “Thank you. I’m proud of you.”
He shook his head. “You’re the one doing amazing things, sweetheart.”
“No more amazing than you are,” I said, stroking his face. “You are also working through what happened, coming out of the darkness.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “That’s exactly what I’m doing. Coming out of the darkness, and into the light.”
We kissed.
It was a few months later when I passed my prerequisites that Reid suggested we take a long walk in the countryside. Joshua jumped at the chance. He kept on running ahead and Reid and I walked slowly behind. It was my day off and I enjoyed the freedom of the countryside, and feeling the wind in my hair as I stretched my legs.
“Hayley?” Reid said to me.
“Yes?”
He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes.
“I have loved you from shortly after we met,” he said. His eyes sparked and we shared a fond memory. “I have never imagined I would feel this way about somebody, or find somebody who I feel, well, so at ease with. Somebody I love like this. I guess…” he shook his head and to my surprise tears fell. “Well, you know I’m no good at this kind of thing, even now. But…will you marry me?”
I stared at him. My heart was filling and filling until I thought it would burst, unable to take a tiny bit more in. I looked at him and felt tears fall, even as I grinned at him with a big happy face.
“Oh, yes,” I whispered. “Yes, Reid.”
We kissed and I wrapped my arms round him and held him close.
Somewhere up on the hillside, I could hear a child, whooping and yelling as he kicked a soccer ball here and there. He sounded happy, and free, just like I felt.
Billionaire Boss (Preview)
1
Adam
“Damn it. Damn, damn, damn.”
I slammed down the office phone. I swore more, under my breath, so Mrs. Halston, my secretary, couldn’t hear me. She was twenty years my senior and hated bad language. Though she was my employee, I still felt like a scolded child whenever she cast a disapproving glance my way.
She told me time and time again that a man in my position needed to have more etiquette. I needed to play it cooler even when my tempter got the best of me. I needed to be charming. I was most certainly not charming now. I was furious. And petrified. Being the CEO of my own multi-million-dollar company was not exactly a bed of roses and I was feeling the strain right now.
I felt my hand hover over the phone again, my other hand running desperately through my thick brown hair. Maybe there was something I was missing?
A million dollars, just gone?
“Damn.”
It felt like a horrible dream. I had invested a million dollars’ worth of shareholder funds in the campaign for Rockland Sportswear. And now the company had gone bust?
“Mr. Stern?”
I jumped. It was Mrs. Halston, calling me from outside my half-open door. I felt myself swear again in frustration, then bit my lip.
“What?” I called.
“I had a call from a Mr. Ludgate. Will you call him back?”
Stone Ludgate is the head of PR at my company, Synergy Sports Marketing. Given the news we’d just gotten, there was a PR apocalypse heading directly for us. I really didn’t want to have to tell Stone just yet.
I put my head in my hands and swore.
“Sorry, Mr. Stern?” Ms. Halston asked. She sounded curious and slightly offended. I groaned.
“I said, I’ll call him back later. Okay?”
“Yes, Mr. Stern.”
I got up and closed the door, rolling my shoulders, still thickly muscled, and too big for my shirt. The left shoulder – the one I broke – still hurt badly sometimes, especially when I was stressed.
And damn it, am I stressed now.
I could imagine what my investors would say at the board meeting. I could imagine word getting out that a disaster of that magnitude had occurred. We would lose clients; we would lose investor confidence.
I had to do something.
I caught sight of myself reflected in the window. My eyes – the cool blues that the press guys used to call “icy blue” eyes – were looking a bit wild. I smoothed my dark brown hair back into place.
“Damn it, Adam,” I said to my reflection. “In the field in front of a few thousand fans, you were cool as a cucumber. Here, in your office, you get all hot under the collar?”
I shook my head, turning away from the window. Almost a decade in the corporate world had taken it out of me. In a stylish black suit, crisp shirt-collar tight round my muscled throat, I was almost unrecognizable as Adam Stern, the famous quarterback. I still had the body, I consoled myself – small waist, chest and legs dense with muscle, shoulders broad: except for the slight slope of my left shoulder, where part of the bone had failed to heal properly. I had wondered, when my shoulder broke, if it was really sensible to start a business instead. Football was a heck of a lot less stressful. But my coach and the doctor and, well, everyone, had been against my playing with a lasting injury, so I’d made the choice.
“Well, you chose it, so you’re stuck with it now, Adam.”
I pulled out my desk chair, took my phone out of my jacket pocket and called Brady.
He’s the one who got us into this mess, after all.
While I waited for him to pick up, I thought about what to say. How was I supposed to tell my best friend that we were both screwed?
Brady Williams was my best friend – we’d known each other since we were fourteen years old, just starting high-school. He was always a bright kid and, so when he became a financier, I kept in touch. His decisions had helped me, and I always trusted him. The Rockland idea had been his, and it had really gone bad on us.
“Adam?” Brady said.
I swallowed hard. “Brady! Hi! How’s things?”
My voice sounded high-pitched from the stress. I made myself breathe slowly. In, out. Coach Melling would have laughed if he could see me now. At least somebody would have been laughing. I didn’t think I’d ever laugh again.
“Things aren’t bad, Adam,” Brady said. He paused. “Well, not too bad. Cassidy was having a tough time just earlier. We had to have quite a chat. But I think I managed to help, at least a bit.”
“Oh?” I really wasn’t that interested. Cassidy was his little sister, six years behind us. I hadn’t seen her in years. As much as I liked Brady, I wasn’t in the mood for catching up.
Thinking of Brady’s kid sister, a picture flashed into my mind. She was a scrawny, bespectacled kid, I recalled, with freckles and with braces. She was too childish – and we too immature – for us to see her as anything much besides a nuisance. She had followed us around when we’d been trying to make our own club house in the Williams backyard, or sneaking off to practice football in the park. I remembered teasing her about her braces.
“Metal-mouth,” I’d called her, as she fumbled a catch of our stray football.
She’d stared at me, those brown eyes – exactly the color of her brother’s own – stiff and defiant. If she was going to cry, she wasn’t going to let me see it. She’d picked up the ball and tossed it at me, and then turned around and walked swiftly away, back into the shade of the shrubbery.
I’d turned away, shaken by her response. She was a weird kid. Hard to understand.
Later, when I’d gotten heavily into the sports, she’d been too obsessed about her grades to pay either of us much attention. She’d gotten taller, and lost the braces, but she still hadn’t held much interest for me, and I certainly hadn’t been of interest to her. I wondered, idly, what had happened to her. She worked in Chicago, now, I remembered – she was something to do with finance, like her brother.
“Is she okay?” I asked out of obligation.
“Um, yeah,” Brady sounded unconvinced. “You know she’ll manage. She’s tough.”
“I guess,” I said.
“What’s happening with you?” Brady asked, bringing me back to the present.
I swallowed hard. “Um, well that’s a bit hard to explain, right now. You see…”
“What is it, Adam?” Brady sounded concerned. “You sound stressed.”
“Remember Rockland Sportswear?” I asked, deciding I should just get it out into the air.
“We pulled major funding for the campaign, yeah?” Brady sounded happy.
“Yes,” I said, “Google them.”
“Sorry, what?” Brady sounded confused.
I sighed. “Just do it, please Brady.”
“Okay, okay.”
I waited while he went away from the phone momentarily. My chest was tight. I made my hands unclench. Telling my investors was going to be tough. Telling Brady was somehow tougher.
“Adam?” Brady’s voice was a whisper as he came back to the call. “Are you serious?”
“I didn’t say it,” I said tightly. “Google did. But, yes, it’s serious.”
“They’re bankrupt? Really?” He sounded as shocked as I felt.
“Yes,” I said. I tried to sound casual. “Maybe our advertising campaign didn’t help them too well.”
“Oh. My…”
“Yes,” I cut him off levelly. “Exactly.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “What are we going to do?”
I sighed. “I was hoping to ask you the same thing, Brady. I don’t know.”
I looked round my big, plush office, trying to find some sort of inspiration. Pictures of NFL players grinned down at me, interspersed with advertising from our campaigns involving them, and other hallmark companies and teams. What had I gone and screwed up like this for?
I heard Brady speak.
“This could kill the company.”
“Yes,” I said, feeling annoyed. “I am aware of that.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
We were both silent for a long while. I could feel myself start to go from mind-racing desperation to a sort of numbed-out apathy. We couldn’t do anything. We were doomed. Oddly, thinking that made me feel more peaceful.
“Adam,” Brady said softly after a long moment. “I’
m sorry.”
I swallowed again, harder this time. “It’s okay, Brady,” I said.
I was touched, but I couldn’t let him take all it on himself. It was my fault, too, after all.
“I am just as much to blame,” I said after a long moment.
“I feel terrible,” Brady said. “I mean, this business means the world to you.”
“Yeah,” I chuckled, grim-faced. “It does.”
Brady – of everybody I knew – had understood from the beginning why I had to start Synergy. Leaving the game – which had been my life – would have been impossible, if I hadn’t found some way of keeping ties to it.
I remembered Brady and I sitting together in a bar, talking about the plan.
“I need to find something else to do,” I’d said. “Something in the corporate world. Marketing, or something.”
“You can do that for sports?” Brady had asked.
I stared at him. “You know what?” I said, slamming my hand down on the table, as the inspiration flared. “I think we can!”
“Whoa, Adam,” he said, grinning. “Slow down there a minute, man! I’m a banker. I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
“But you can help me. Like, find investors and stuff? You know all about business.” I felt a rush of excitement that I hadn’t felt in years. It felt almost like when I’d been on the field, hearing the yells and cheers, smelling grass and sweat and ozone and feeling that impossible, indescribable rush of the challenge.
He chuckled. “I wish I did know all about business. I reckon I know nothing.”
But we’d got talking from that moment, and that was when the idea had been born. Using my degree in marketing, I had founded a sports marketing business as a way of keeping in touch with the world I loved, broken shoulder or no. And now, that one link was being threatened? Broken?
I couldn’t face it. When I was at my lowest ebb, the business had saved my sanity. And I couldn’t repay it by ruining it. I couldn’t lose it, not now.
