That Was Then: A Second Chance Romance (Fated Loves Book 2)

by Zee Irwin

  Lily’s face returned to its former brightness to match the lights of her dress.

  “Since it’ll be New Year’s Eve, you know what? We should dress up and go all out. We can dig into my closet and see what we can find to wear? What do you say?”

  She nodded and was giddy, and it kind of got me out of my slump too.

  Planning a big night out for a major celebration screamed next level to me. I pulled a red dress out of the far back of my closet, perfect for Lily, and had her try it on. I rubbed my eyes to make sure what I was seeing. Bless her cute figure in the dress—and her heart. Her usual vintage attire from era's long gone, now replaced with a modern dress. I pulled out accessories next and then planned to play with her hair.

  I almost looked forward to getting ready for the party more than the actual New Year’s Eve party itself.

  Once our outfits were picked out and accessorized, I got on the phone. I invited Aggie and coached her through what to wear, then I texted Hank.

  Me: Big news! Girl’s night is now open for NYE.

  Hank: Yes. I’m there. When/Where?

  Me: O’Brien’s Pub. 8ish.

  Hank: Blowing off the other party, no prob.

  Hank: I’ll be there.

  The last piece to my plan fell in place when Emily returned with Maddie from shopping. I filled them in on our New Year’s Eve get-together, which sent a hum of excitement through the apartment that hadn’t been there in a while.

  “Em, maybe at the party you and Hank could, um—” I fished to see if she felt something for him.

  “Dance together for New Year’s Eve? Sure.” Emily shrugged and was all in. And she didn’t need any coaching from me.

  My plans proceeded with care. It would be a glorious New Year’s Eve with people I loved. I’d work to ensure their happiness and forget all about the mess of my life.

  Just me doing what I do best, taking care of others, and ignoring my own needs. Yep. It would be a perfect New Year’s Eve.

  22

  The Mess of Matilda, Part 2

  Bronson

  I ordered roses for Cassidy. After the unexpected night we had together, even after she rebuffed my ideas for our future, I had to try something. I faced an excruciating schedule of meetings all day. There wouldn’t be time to corner her at work and beg and grovel or whatever the fuck it was I could do to convince her to give us a try again. I didn’t know if the roses would have an impact, but it was worth every dollar to find out.

  Keeping up these late nights and demanding pace of work wasn’t ideal. Another month or two, I’d have new assistants on staff at my beck and call, and my workload as CEO might normalize once we got past the Tater Spud launch. Then I’d have evenings free. More time to reorder my life. More time for Cassidy, if I could finally convince her to give us another chance. At the moment, it seemed doubtful.

  The details of our car hookup last night might be the last memory I would have of us together. If I thought about it too much today, I wouldn’t be able to function in the critical meetings I had off-site. So I kept going, kept grinding.

  After the long day, with the dark night visible through the boardroom windows, I returned to the office, wrapping things up. I rubbed my eyes, trying to get the last drops of productivity out of them so I could work another couple hours. My heavy schedule of meetings, phone calls, and data analysis—my CEO workload—kept me distracted. Now, at the late hour, my exhaustion crept in, and my willpower dissolved. I wanted to see Cassidy so badly and considered stopping by her apartment. Until Matilda walked into the boardroom looking smug.

  “What is it?” I snapped at her. It’d be easy for her to call me an asshole right now because around her, I had been one for three days straight.

  “I received some disturbing news.” She slammed an invoice in front of me.

  I examined it. “Acme Printing Co. re-calculated invoice for $124,000 in overages for reprint of national franchisee coupon. What? This is a hefty overage expense. Did someone screw up in your marketing department Matilda?” Overages were sometimes common in a large corporation like ours, an issue I planned to zero in on after the Tater Spud launch. As the new leader of the company in America, I had a running list of major projects to tackle.

  “Someone by the name of Cassidy Masters. She approved the final ad the night of the party last week. Clearly doing a poor job of proofing.”

  I leaned back in my chair. The night of the party . . . Cassidy appeared rather upset when I followed her into the stairwell. Did she return to her desk after I talked to her, too disturbed to proof the coupons correctly?

  Matilda pursued her line of accusations. “I think it may have even been sabotaged. I had met with her last month to reprimand her over the quality of her work. And now this.”

  Shit. Was Cassidy so angry seeing me, so tormented by our past, she found a way to piss me off? Maybe I could be held partly to blame if I had that effect on her, but a $124,000 bill was difficult to ignore. No. I didn’t believe Cassidy was capable of something as vindictive as this. But then . . . I’d seen first hand the shreds of a torn up baseball card once worth more than she’d ever make at Chick In Bun. My lungs deflated. Could Cassidy possibly have such a vile, vindictive part of her soul?

  Matilda let out a huge, fake-sounding sigh. “I hate firing incompetent people.”

  I shot up, sending my chair sailing back almost to the wall. “You will do no such thing. I’ll handle this myself.”

  She shot back at me and crossed her arms. “You? I’m in charge of this department, and I know how to handle my own employees.”

  “Clearly not well enough to train them to do their jobs properly. Maybe it’s you I need to fire.” I deflected the problem onto Matilda because I needed to believe Cassidy wouldn’t have done this despite the evidence at hand.

  “Well, isn’t this typical of a man? Thinking with your cock and not your head. I wonder what your father would say about Cassidy if I brought this invoice to him?”

  She crossed a line threatening me with Buck Maxwell. I came around my desk to her and got up in her face, using my own most threatening Buck-esque voice. “You will do no such thing. I’ll handle this. I’ll investigate and if she’s found at fault then yes, I’ll transfer her or let her go. But you’ll stay out of it.”

  I jumped out of my skin when she reached out, cupping my balls through my pants and squeezing without breaking eye contact. “Just because you’re Buck’s boy doesn’t mean I can’t bring you—and Cassidy—down.”

  I shoved her hand away. “What the? Get your things and get out. You’re fired.” I knew it. She was the prime candidate to reprise Glenn Close’s role in the sequel to Fatal Attraction, and I should never have gotten involved with her. Had she lost her mind, grabbing onto my crotch like that?

  Her eyes blazed. “How dare you! I’ve been with this company for fifteen years. I helped your father turn this company into what it is today.”

  I picked up the phone to call security. “Maybe, but this is now, and I’m running the show. Clearly you didn’t get the message.”

  An hour later, after two security guards and I watched Matilda fill three boxes of her personal effects and suffered a barrage of her slander and maliciousness, they stripped her of her building keys and escorted her out the door. I watched as the first monumental change I made to the company stood by the curb loading up an Uber car with her boxes.

  After instructing Security to change all the building alarms and door entry codes, I emailed Scotty in the IT department about changing passwords and gaining Matilda’s email account and data access to all her work. Afterward, I had to talk to Cassidy. Who was she now? My caring, adorable ex-girlfriend? Or a vindictive bitch, like Matilda?

  Cassidy buzzed me up to the apartment after I called to make sure she was home. “We need to talk. Something’s come up.” I tried to keep my voice flat but urgent, professional and not personal as she let me in. Aw fuck, I didn’t know what my voice sounded like beca
use there was so much going through my head right then.

  “My roommates are already asleep, so we’ll have to keep quiet.”

  I stepped into the low-lit living room with the tv playing some reality show. I could still make out her body outline in the yoga pants and midriff-baring BU t-shirt. Her makeup off, her hair up in a messy bun, and I couldn’t help myself. My pants grew tight, seeing this more natural side to her.

  It took me back to our college days when after classes and baseball practice, I’d find her in the library studying or in her dorm room pigging out on vanilla wafer cookies to avoid studying. She didn’t need to be dressed up for me. Simply being with her had meant the world to me. And if I was to survive the challenges of this conversation right now, I needed to stop the glory day’s train and lift my eyes up from her navel peeking out between the waistband of her pants and the hem of her top.

  “Oh, the roses arrived today. So sweet of you and unexpected.” She stood by them, shifting one rose here and another there within the floral arrangement.

  Shit. Now this was awkward. The roses were a stark contrast to the potentially bitter conversation I needed to have with her right now. God, I’m an ass.

  “Look, Cassidy, something has happened. I need you to be honest with me.”

  Her grimace back at me already set the tone. “What do you mean, honest? When have I not been honest with you?”

  I snorted. “This week you showed me a baseball card and admitted you were getting back at me when you tore it into pieces, a fact you kept to yourself all these years.” Add sarcasm to the list of what my voice sounded like.

  She stared at me blankly and blinked several times. “I don’t know where you’re going with this. You seemed fine about the card. You kissed me, even sent me roses, and now you come here late at night to bring it up like this? You know as well as I do the emotions we were both dealing with during our break up back then. I-I thought you forgave me when I told you.”

  “Well, that was before Matilda brought me this.” I presented the invoice, holding it up in front of her face. She shied back and squinted at it. “Turn a light on or something so you can read it.”

  She ripped it from my hands and took it to the kitchen light above the stove. “Oh. A hundred thousand dollars?” She lowered the invoice to rest on the stove. Slowly she faced me when I walked into the kitchen, her face sullen and pouty. “Bronson, I don’t know how the mistake happened. The night of the office party, before I went down to the lobby, I completed the last proof on the ad and submitted it with my approval code. It was perfect, no mistakes, I swear.”

  I worked myself up to fuming now. “Well, something went wrong. How could you be so careless? It’s the smallest of mistakes ending up costing the most.” My hand raked through my hair. “Shit, Cassidy, how can I protect you from this big of a mistake? If Buck finds out . . .”

  I visualized Dad in his monthly budget review with the CFO, wondering why marketing costs had increased and demanding details. I might not be able to protect Cassidy then.

  “Matilda showed me the coupons today then sent me to the printers to fix them and watch over the reprint. I was away there all day, and everything is fine now. They have the correct coupons shipping out. We caught it in time. But the extra costs . . . a hundred thousand . . . I’ve been over it a hundred times in my head and I still don’t know how this could have happened.”

  If she had been careless, if she was telling the truth and it was an honest mistake, then it could be written off as a training issue. But if she sabotaged the print as some form of retribution . . .? Matilda’s words haunted me, the doubt creeping in at the edges of what I thought I knew about Cassidy. It’d been five years, people changed, I had, even she had.

  How could I find out which version of the truth to believe? “Or was it something else entirely?” I squinted as if it would allow me to see into her like Xray vision.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, a woman who was so pissed off to rip up a collector’s baseball card could have easily left me in the stairwell to go back to her desk and sabotage the coupon print run.”

  She straightened up. “Y-you’re suggesting I purposely did this because you were back in town? What, like I was carrying latent anger over our breakup all these years? Grow up, Bronson, and get over yourself. I have more personal pride to do a job and do it well no matter what shambles my love life is in.”

  I paced out of the kitchen and laced my fingers behind my head. I couldn’t think with her staring at me like the asshole I was, and I definitely couldn’t fire her with her navel daring me to look. This situation sucked, and we were no closer to a resolution.

  She came out of the kitchen. “Am I being fired over this?”

  “I don’t know, Cassidy.”

  She stomped to the door and pulled it open. “Let me know when you figure it out.”

  I blew out a breath and moved toward her, pausing in the doorway. “Cassidy, I—”

  “Go, Bronson.” She refused to look at me.

  I left her apartment more stupefied than when I entered. I was no further ahead now than when I saw her for the first time again last week. And it sucked to be me right now.

  The next morning, the offices were quiet, with only a few essential employees on hand while everyone else had the day off for New Year’s Eve. Despite my best attempt to keep busy, the situation with Cassidy wouldn’t leave me be. I thought things through forward and backward and came to only one conclusion. I needed to let Cassidy go, but thinking about it made my stomach churn.

  There was a time I thought we could fight our way back from the heartache of the past, work through it all and get on solid ground. We could forgive and find a fresh way forward, together. But all hope had left me. This was business, nothing personal, but it broke my heart.

  I could at least try to tackle the simple crap on my list of things to do and then leave the office early, go to the hotel, and drown my sorrows in solitude. But Tony and some of our old buddies texted, inviting me out tonight for New Year’s Eve. I already told them I wouldn’t be good company. I looked at my mile-long list of things to do. Next up: Confirm with IT regarding Matilda's passwords.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Scotty in IT. Even counting the rings to three helped keep my mind off Cassidy. Somewhat.

  “Scotty here?”

  “Hey, it’s Bron. Do you have a status update on changing Matilda’s passwords and gaining access to her accounts?” It wasn’t the best decision to fire my marketing VP on the cusp of launching Tater Spud. For the time being, I planned to take over her job plus mine until I could find the best replacement.

  “Yep. All done. Well, except for this one.” I heard Scotty rustle some papers. “This print approval passcode. It was the most recent one she changed last week. Do you still want it updated?”

  “I would think in this situation, we change them all, no matter what, right?”

  “Okay, boss.” I heard him strike some keys on a keyboard. Then something struck me.

  “Hold up. Can you tell when Matilda changed the print approval passcode?”

  “Hmm. It says Thursday night, ten o’clock.”

  The evening of the Chick In Bun party? “Scotty, I’m going to need printed proof of the passcode change.”

  Next, a brief call to Tommy at Acme Printing also confirmed the time of the last file upload at quarter after ten on Thursday night.

  My flashback to the bar Thursday night, with the vision of Cassidy dancing with Hank before I punched him, proved our whereabouts at that particular time.

  The situation now pointed to only one culprit. It must have been Matilda who changed the passcode and maliciously messed up the coupons.

  The missing piece of the puzzle stared me in the face. It couldn’t have been Cassidy and fuck me for even thinking she’d deceive me. I still didn’t understand what was happening or why, but I wouldn’t waste another minute on Matilda.

  Relief washed over me lik
e the first gulp of cool water after a long run. I doubted Cassidy, and it wasn’t her. But even worse, I accused her.

  I had to find her. I had to make things right between us again and give another apology and another explanation. Fuck. Why did it seem like we were on a nonstop roller coaster with all these ups and downs, and how could we get off the ride?

  23

  New Year’s Eve

  Cassidy

  I met Aggie at the pub a half-hour before Adam arrived and, armed with a few makeup items in my purse, I led her straight to the bathroom. I knew she’d require a little help from me to make Adam’s eyes sparkle. At least she didn’t wear a turtleneck.

  “So tell me what you and Adam have planned for New Year’s,” I asked to distract her from any talk about work. I wanted nothing to do with work talk tonight because it would tempt me to drink too much to drown my sorrows. No, tonight the focus was on fun and helping my friends enjoy the last night of this year together. I’d deal with work crap in the New Year, if I still had a job, of course.

  I unbuttoned her pale blue cardigan sweater, a nice color choice for the night, revealing more of her white camisole underneath. She had on tight jeans and tall booties accentuating her legs. I pulled her belt off and reattached it around the waistline of her sweater, which did a number on accentuating her waist. But her hair remained a frizzy mess, so I focused on her makeup.

  “Adam’s sweet, Cassidy, but . . .” she trailed off. Her shoulders lifted up to her ears, her face twisted.

  “But? That doesn’t sound good. Talk to me.”

  Aggie lowered her voice. “He’s a sloppy kisser. And,” she brought her hand to shield her mouth. “He’s kind of small.” She held out one hand, showing a short measurement of some sort.

  I had to chew on the end of a makeup brush to keep from giggling. “Oh! Well, is there anything you can do to talk to him about it, maybe coach him to improve or how best to, um, use it?” A little sparkly eye shadow on the eyelids, a cat-eye of liquid eyeliner at the corners of each eye, there, almost done. “They say it’s not the size that matters but how a man uses it.”