You can do this, she said. I believe in you.
Blake hesitated, frowning. His eyes scanned the crowd and for a moment she thought he saw her. He took a deep breath, his back straightening. Then he spoke.
“Good afternoon,” he said, the slightest of tremors in his voice. “Thank you all for coming today. As you know, I have been accused of posting some horrific comments on my Heartbook page. Comments that insult and denigrate women.”
“Yeah, you suck!” shouted a man from the middle of the crowd. Blake’s head dropped, then he looked behind him to the group of people that he had walked out with. The old woman nodded her head to him, her expression stern.
“I’ve asked you all here to explain what happened,” he went on, turning back to the crowd. “I…”
Just say it, Ellie pleaded. Just tell them you’re innocent.
Blake balled his hand into a fist, resting it on top of the lectern. He seemed to make a decision, nodding to himself.
“I am hereby announcing that I will be leaving the company with immediate effect, and will no longer be involved in any way with Heartbook or its subsidiaries,” he said. The crowd was starting to murmur, cries of anger rising into the air. “I do so with a heavy heart. But whatever you think of me, and whatever I may have done, please know that nobody else at Heartbook is guilty of the things I have been accused of. This is a good company that believes in equality and diversity. Do not let one man’s actions speak for the team here, or for the millions of people who use the network every single day.”
“Get out!” somebody yelled.
“I want to apologise to everyone who took offence at what was posted on my page,” he said, barely audible now. “Thank you, and goodbye.”
He stepped off the platform to a roar of boos and angry shouts. The reporters were all yelling the same thing: “Blake, did you do it?” But he obviously wasn’t answering any questions. Ellie stood in stunned silence. Blake had pretty much just confessed, but why? She knew he was innocent, he had evidence, or at least testimony from a trusted source. Why wouldn’t he fight to clear his name?
Unless, of course, she had completely misread him. What if everything she’d thought about him was actually a lie? It was her ex all over again, she’d fallen headlong for Josh’s deceptions, she hadn’t seen through them for months. She didn’t exactly have a track record for choosing good men, and she’d had less than forty-eight hours to get to know Blake.
But she had got to know him. She was sure of it. Somewhere in the conversations they had shared she had looked into his heart and discovered that it matched hers perfectly. They were old souls, and she loved him.
She loved him.
Ellie pushed her way through the crowd, thankful for once to be as small as she was. As she went she caught glimpses of the stage, seeing Blake walking back toward the doors of the main building. She had never seen a man look more fragile, and she longed to pull him into her arms and hold him tight, to whisper that everything would be okay.
“Blake!” she shouted, but everyone else was calling his name too and hurling insults his way. She apologized as she rammed past a news reporter, struggling through one last camera crew and a group of women with “We hate Blake!” T-shirts, and finally reaching the front. Blake was less than a dozen yards away from her, but there was an ogre of a security guard in front of her and he planted a hand on her shoulder.
“That’s far enough,” he growled.
“Blake!” she shouted past the man. But her voice was lost in the chants. Blake was striding back through the doors now and Ellie had the sudden terror that if he went, she would never see him again. He would vanish into the ether, he would spend the rest of his life in hiding, and all she would have of him was the memory of his smile, and the echo of his kiss.
“Blake, please!” she shouted. Then, remembering what he had told her about the early days of the company, “Flusher! Flusher!”
Blake paused, his head cocked to one side. Ellie called his nickname again and he turned around. The old woman who had been standing next to the stage was right behind him, trying to steer him inside the building, but he pushed her gently to the side and scanned the crowd.
“Here!” Ellie shouted. “Here, behind Shrek!”
He found her, and a sad smile appeared on his face.
“Billy, let her through,” he said, and the security guard stood to one side. Ellie started running so fast she almost fell, and it took all of her strength not to throw herself on Blake and start kissing him. That would be a mistake, she knew, and would certainly line her up for some hate mail. He ran a few steps in her direction before realizing the same thing. He stopped in front of her, lightly touching her arm as if he couldn’t believe she was there.
“What are you doing here?” he said, fighting to make himself heard over the crowd.
“I didn’t want you to have to do this on your own,” she said, putting her hand on his arm too. This smallest of touches gave her courage, and she moved her hand up to his cheek. “Why, Blake? Why did you say those things just now?”
“Because I made a decision,” he replied, tears glistening in his eyes. “I could either save myself, or I could save Heartbook. I chose the company, I chose the people.”
Something exploded on the ground by Blake’s feet, what might have been strawberry milkshake splattering both of them. Blake looked up, alarmed, and the security guards started closing in. One took Blake’s arm but he shrugged them away, his eyes locked on Ellie’s.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You don’t ever have to apologize to me,” she replied. “Come away with me, right now.”
“What?” he replied. “Where?”
“I’m flying to Oregon tonight, to see my mom. The fresh air will do me good, it will do us both good. I want you to come. Forget about all this, we can escape. We can escape it all together.”
Blake’s face lit up, and he looked as if he was going to say yes. But then another missile splashed against the ground and he flinched, shaking his head.
“I can’t,” he said. “I won’t do that to you. You mean too much to me to be dragged through the dirt.”
She opened her mouth to say something else but another security guard appeared and between them they dragged Blake through the doors. Blake looked back once, his face barely visible between the men. His eyes met Ellie’s and they were the saddest eyes she had ever seen.
Then the doors closed, the men steered Blake around a corner, and he was gone.
21
“You did the right thing, Blake.”
Agnes hovered in the corner of Blake’s office, pretending to study the books that lined his extensive shelves.
“It’s the first rule of business,” she went on. “The company must come first. Today may have been the result of your blatant stupidity—I mean why anyone would make their innermost feelings public is a mystery to me, let alone somebody whose innermost feelings are as unpopular as yours. But the fact is you fell on your sword like a good soldier, and you saved Heartbook. The share price is already recovering. Because of what you did today, seventeen hundred people will most likely keep their jobs. Including me, I should say. So thank you.”
Blake didn’t reply. He was staring out of the window at the campus that lay there, stretching as far as the eye could see, right up to the glittering, sun-drenched river. It was a landscape of memories, and each one hurt like a wasp sting. He felt as if he’d built this place with his own two hands, brick by brick, and now Michelle and David had led a rebellion against him, usurped his throne, and stolen his kingdom. It was almost as painful as the day he’d lost his mother, and he grieved for this loss the way he had hers—calm on the outside, but a hurricane of sadness and anger raging within.
“Maurice is with the lawyers now,” Agnes said. “They’re drawing up the paperwork. It will be ready by tonight, tomorrow at the latest. You should really seek your own legal counsel, Blake.”
“I’m fine,” he said, tu
rning away from the window and blinking the sunshine from his eyes. “Do what you have to.”
Agnes sighed, pulling a book off the shelf and flicking through it. Blake did a double take when he saw what it was. It was his copy of The Swiss Family Robinson, the one that he had read when he was a child. What were the chances that out of all the books here, she would pick that one? Ellie had told him it was one of her favorite books, and it had influenced her designs for LifeWrite. Seeing it made him smile, and Agnes frowned at him.
“You seem almost happy,” the old woman said, replacing the book. “Why? I know it may not have sunk in yet, but you’ve lost everything, Blake.”
She was right. Practically everything he owned belonged to the company, even his penthouse. It had been easier to buy things through the corporate accounts, and his financial advisers had always encouraged him to do so for tax reasons. It had never seemed like a problem because he never thought in a million years that he wouldn’t be part of Heartbook. He would still have a fair amount of money in his savings accounts, but most of his wealth was on paper, in shares, and Maurice and the lawyers would be finding ways to strip him of all of it. After today he’d be worth a pitiful fraction of what he had been yesterday morning, and all he’d have to his name were a few books and his mom’s old furniture.
“You’ve lost everything, Blake,” Agnes said again. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m listening. But you’re wrong, I haven’t lost everything.”
“How so?” Agnes asked, one eyebrow shooting skyward.
Blake checked his watch, then grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the chair. He walked to the shelves and pulled out the copy of The Swiss Family Robinson, clutching it to his chest.
“I have this,” he said. “And right now, that’s all I need.”
Agnes looked at him as if he was mad, and he almost felt it. But it wasn’t a scary madness, it was an exciting one—like the rush just before a skydive. He didn’t feel afraid of what might happen, he felt strangely free. It was as if he’d been wearing a weighted coat for decades, and had only just taken it off.
He had spoken the truth. The book was all he needed. Not because of what it was, but because of what it meant.
“Please excuse me, Agnes,” he said, leaning over and kissing the old woman on the forehead. “I have somewhere I need to be.”
“But you can’t leave,” she protested as he walked past her. “The paperwork, we need you to sign it.”
“Fax it to me,” he replied over his shoulder.
“But I don’t know where you’re going,” she said. “Blake? Blake!”
He stopped at the door and took one last look at his office—an office that he knew now had been more like a prison cell. There’s so much more to life than work and money, he heard his mom say. And she was right. He smiled at Agnes, a smile that was so full of warmth and happiness that she couldn’t help but smile back.
“I’m going to Oregon,” he said.
Ellie scrambled through the heaving airport terminal, struggling with the weight of the bag around her shoulder. There were people everywhere, and muffled tannoys going off every few seconds, and it gave her the same sense of claustrophobia as the crowd had back at the Heartbook HQ. She couldn’t wait for the moment she climbed down from the plane in Oregon and drove out of Portland International, heading for the hills and the forests where their family farm was based.
At this rate, though, she wasn’t going to make it. Her mom had booked her onto the seven o’clock flight, and thanks to the heavy traffic around Heartbook and an accident on the freeway she was cutting it way too close.
“Come on,” she muttered to herself. “Where are you?”
She checked the boarding pass again, her bag sliding off her shoulder. She heaved it back up, looking for Gate 33. It had to be around here somewhere. Spotting a map on the wall, she walked toward it only to jump back as an electric transport buggy zoomed past, its horn blaring. She checked that the coast was clear, then ran to the map, seeing that she was in completely the wrong place.
“This isn’t happening,” she said, panic starting to set in. If she missed this plane then she couldn’t exactly afford to buy a ticket herself, and she didn’t have the heart to ask her mom to buy another one. She’d end up slinking home and spending the weekend in her apartment, probably sobbing into a tub of ice cream.
She understood why Blake had done what he had done. But it still broke her heart. No, it hadn’t just broken it, it had shattered it—partly because she knew how hard it had been for him to stand there and admit to something he hadn’t done, that it had broken him, and partly because she had seen in his eyes the simple fact that he would withdraw himself from everything now, including her. Even though he hadn’t said goodbye, that’s exactly what it had been.
“Move it, sister,” said an elderly woman who was walking surprisingly fast. Ellie apologized, breaking into a jog as she headed back the way she’d come. It had just gone a quarter to seven and they’d already made an announcement to any latecomers that the gate would be closing imminently.
It was almost five minutes later that she flew through the seating area and skidded to a halt in front of the gate. There was nobody in sight other than the airport employee who stood there—Shelby written on her name badge—and as soon as she saw Ellie she shook her head sadly.
“I’m really sorry, hon,” she said in a thick southern accent. “Gate’s closed.”
“Please,” said Ellie, panting for breath. “I got lost. The plane’s still there, can’t you let me through?”
It was still there, and there were still people climbing the steps. Shelby glanced at it, then she shook her head.
“Would it help if I told you I’d just lost the love of my life?” Ellie said, thrusting her ticket and her passport onto the desk.
“I really can’t,” said Shelby, glancing at the ticket before handing it back. “I could lose my job.”
It was official. This was the worst day of her entire existence. Ellie picked up her passport and sat on the nearest seat, putting her head in her hands.
“Hey, honey,” said Shelby. Ellie looked up. “I’m gonna make a call, see if I can get you on the next flight, okay? Just sit tight.”
She walked away, and Ellie was suddenly alone in a pool of quiet. She fished in her bag, pulling out her phone. Mom wouldn’t be angry, she’d just be disappointed. And so was Ellie. Disappointed in her life, disappointed in herself. The Ellie Mae curse seemed to have doubled in power, and she wondered how much worse it would get.
The tannoy squealed on again, a muffled voice spilling out of it. Ellie half listened, watching the plane outside as the doors closed. She couldn’t believe how close to escape she’d come, only to be denied it at the last hurdle.
Something caught her ear, and she cocked her head, listening to the tannoy.
“That’s Ellie Woodward to the main desk. Thank you.”
Were they talking about her? She stood up, wishing she’d been paying more attention. Where was the main desk? She scanned the terminal and spotted it right in the middle, racing over and hovering impatiently in the queue until she was called forward. It was the same girl she’d spoken to before, Shelby, and she smiled at Ellie.
“Hi,” Ellie said, sliding her bag up onto her shoulder again. “I’m Ellie Woodward, I think you just called for me.”
“I did,” said Shelby.
With any luck they’d let her onto the next flight. She could text mom and ask her to pick her up an hour later. The girl typed something into her computer, frowning.
“I’m really sorry, but there are no seats to Portland tonight.”
Ellie’s heart crashed into her shoes. Why had she called her over just to give her the bad news?
“But that’s not why I need you. You’ve been requested. Hang on.”
Requested? wondered Ellie.
“Yeah, it’s definitely you. Come on, I’ll take you.”
&n
bsp; “Take me where?” Ellie asked, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Shelby said as she slipped out from behind the desk. She climbed onto an electric trolley and patted the seat next to her. Ellie got on, clutching her bag to her chest. They drove away, weaving through the crowds and heading out of the terminal. Ellie’s mind was a whirlwind of confusion, she couldn’t understand what was happening to her.
“You say the love of your life broke up with you today?” Shelby asked.
“Yeah,” Ellie said, holding on tight as they went around a corner. “I mean no, not really. We weren’t even together. I just knew there was something special about him. I felt it. It’s never happened before. I’ve never met anyone I clicked with so easily.”
“He sounds amazing,” said Shelby.
“Yeah,” said Ellie. “But no. It wasn’t to be. Too much going on in his life. He pretty much said he would never be able to see me again. There aren’t any happy endings for me.”
“I wouldn’t read too much into that,” Shelby said with a grin. She steered them into a much quieter part of the airport, stopping the trolley by an empty seating area. Where were they? Were they going to throw her on a transport plane?
“Come on,” said Shelby, climbing off the trolley and leading the way through the gate. Ellie followed her down a set of stairs then out into the warm, still evening. There were three planes in sight, and all of them looked like the kind of private jets you saw in the movies. The one right in front of her had its engines running, she could feet the pulse of it tremble through the tarmac and into her feet. The door was open, a small staircase leading into it. Somewhere deep inside her sparked the smallest flame of hope.
“Whose plane is that?” she asked, and Shelby smiled again.
“You don’t need me to tell you that,” she said.
As if on cue, Blake appeared in the plane’s doorway. He looked around, found Ellie, and the most beautiful smile appeared on his sculpted face. He looked different, somehow. He looked younger, but wiser. He looked stronger, but softer too, as if part of his stony façade had melted away. His warm, caring eyes took her in and his smile seemed to grow even more. It was as if that smile was actually radiating heat and Ellie bathed in it, a surge of happiness fizzing up inside her.
My Antisocial Billionaire: A Clean Billionaire Romance (My Billionaire A-Z Book 1) Page 12
