Billionaire Mountain Man

by Claire Adams

  "I told him that you and the stockholders have been paralyzed waiting for his decision on what happens here," I said. "I let him know this morning; I told him everything. He wants to sell."

  "He can't." I shrugged.

  "He can, and he's going to."

  "Did you try to talk him out of it?"

  "He wasn't in the most conversational mood when I asked him."

  "What? Why's that? What do you mean?" he asked. Did I tell him? I mean, what did I have to lose? Nothing was going to happen between us anymore. I had made sure of that.

  "I told him that I had stalled. I had meant to tell him from the beginning, but I had dragged it out instead of just spitting it out."

  "You said last week didn't feel like the right time to say anything to him."

  "I still lied. I still made him think that I was there for a reason other than the truth."

  "Natalie," he said, then paused. "Is there something going on between you and Cameron?"

  "No," I said truthfully. There wasn't. Not anymore.

  "What will Cameron tell me if I ask him?"

  "The same thing, Mr. Hamm. There's nothing going on between us."

  "Natalie, I haven't been young in a long time, but I was once. I'm not going to ask you what happened between the two of you in that cabin. I do need to know why he said what he did." All the time I had spent with Brett lately didn't make the embarrassment of him being able to see right through me any less. Just like Kasey had said: put two people who were attracted to each other in a private space for long enough, and they would fuck. It didn't matter how uncomfortable I was with Brett knowing that about me. This wasn't about me; it was about Cameron and what was going to happen to Porter Holdings now that we had his final decision.

  "He said that he didn't want to be tied to this world anymore. He wants something different for himself, and Porter Holdings isn't part of that future." Brett sighed, leaning back in his seat. "I'm sorry," I blurted out. "I screwed this up. I should have just said it, not let it drag out and spring it on him this morning."

  "His answer wouldn't have been different if you had."

  "It might have. He was mad at me. Maybe he said some of what he did out of anger."

  "You were with him a week up there, Natalie; you know how he felt about the business. He's never truly understood why his parents wanted this for him." I shook my head.

  "Still. I should have said something sooner."

  "It's over now," he said. "He wants to sell, so that's what's going to happen. You have to start preparing the paperwork. I'll talk to the stockholders and have something for you by tomorrow," he said.

  "Is the company going to go public?"

  "I don't think so," he said, frowning. It was most likely just my imagination, but he looked worn out, stressed from the past few weeks. I hadn't made his job any easier taking as long as I had to finally talk to Cameron. Like I really needed another thing to feel guilty about. "I don't have the power to make those decisions. Cameron and the rest of the stockholders do. It's up to them."

  I nodded. "I'm sorry, again."

  "Don't apologize. This was coming. We shouldn't have expected more from Cameron than he was willing to give us."

  He said that I could go home for the rest of the day instead of staying at work. A nice gesture, but I hardly deserved it. I had been slacking off, both at the office and at the assignment he had sent me into the mountains to accomplish. He should have put me to work like a pack mule. He should have fired me, I thought sadistically. I probably would have fired me in his position.

  I had used all those trips to do nothing but get close to him, and in the end, I had lost him anyway.

  I got home grateful that I had the time off, even though I didn't deserve it. It would give me time to think, and I didn't want that. I felt like shit. I felt worse than shit. I felt like shit that had been left out in the sun for three days, rained on, then set on fire. I tried to distract myself, starting on my laundry, but it didn't really work. If I had been infatuated with Cameron before, it was worse now because everything we could have had was gone. The ironic part was it had been me finally being truthful that had done it. If I hadn't said anything, just kept the truth hidden from him...

  That hadn't been an option though, so really, we had been doomed from the start. The only place we could have been a thing was in my head.

  Would it have killed you to wait, I thought. Just kept your dumbass feelings out of it ‘til both he and you were in a place where they could become something more? If I had, then I wouldn't have been here thinking about what was never going to happen between us. There would still be a chance, but even if there wasn't, I never would have had to see him hurt and angry because of me.

  Now I know better, I thought. But all I’d had to lose was Cameron to learn that. I caught the tear before it trailed down my face. It was all my fault; I wasn't allowed to cry about it. It might have been a mistake, but he deserved better. Better than someone who couldn't tell him the truth. I'd tell myself that ‘til I believed it and then maybe, I'd forgive myself if he never did.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Cameron

  It was getting dark earlier every day. I stood on the porch looking out over the front of the cabin. It was snowing. It had been like that since Natalie had left the day before. Like she had left, and the sky just opened up. I hadn't been able to go out all day. Not that I really wanted to, but getting up and doing something that distracted me from thinking about her wouldn't have been the worst thing. It would have been great, actually; better than the alternative.

  I still couldn't fucking believe it. I should have known better, let my initial judgments of her stand because they had been true. Okay, maybe that wasn't entirely fair. She wasn't exactly who I had thought she was, a stuck-up girl who couldn't carry a conversation about anything that wasn't makeup or fashion. No, she had depth, but that didn't make her different. She wasn't. She was just another one.

  At the end of the day, she had only been after one thing. I hadn't been able to stop thinking about it: everything she had said, everything she had asked me; she hadn't given a fuck. The one thing that had mattered to her had been money. She wanted to make the stockholders happy. Acting like she gave the barest fuck about me and what was happening in my life had all been to keep the ball rolling. Make sure the company was still raking it in, make sure the people at the top's millions kept multiplying.

  I had thought that she and I understood each other. In fact, she had said that she did. Had it all been lies? Maybe not all of it but enough that I had to be suspicious of anything else she would try say to me.

  Like that's going to happen again, I thought. She wasn't coming back. What the hell for? She had said her peace and gotten her answer. What was left?

  Nothing. She got what she wanted, and now she could move on. Shame about that, though. I had really thought that there was something there with her. I had honestly considered moving back to Provo because it would be easier to see her. She did you a favor, I thought, showed you who she was before you found out the hard way.

  I walked back inside. The fire was burning out, but I didn't feel like throwing any more logs in. I flopped onto the couch, stretching out. I wasn't tired, not really, but I didn't want to get up or do anything either. I felt like shit. I hadn't felt agitated and pissed like this in a long time. She was gone; so what? She had left before. Yeah, but not like that. I hadn't even gotten the chance to tell her bye before she left. I didn't want to see her again, speak to her again, any of it, but I still fucking missed her. I hated it. I shouldn't have felt that way, but she had gotten to me a lot worse than I thought.

  Awesome. How can you never want to see the woman again but want to fuck her again at the same time? I couldn't help thinking maybe she could have said something else, maybe then... fuck it, it didn't matter. It wasn't happening. It was over. I got up and walked to the kitchen. I filled a glass of straight whiskey and threw it back in one shot. It stung going dow
n. I grimaced and filled the glass, throwing the liquid back in a single shot again. The third glass I filled higher and took back to the couch with me.

  I was already beginning to feel the first two shots as I sat down, not enough to really make me drunk, but enough to make me tipsy. I stared into the dying fire. The smaller splits burn hot; the logs burn long; she had told me that. I watched a log disintegrate into ash and crumble, the embers slowly extinguishing as the fire continued to burn out. I made a grab for one of my books: How Not to Die in The Woods; the title had gotten me. It had a lot of tips about camping, enough that it made me want to try it out, maybe when the snow cleared. I opened a random page and started reading, nursing my third glass of whiskey.

  My parents' personal library had probably over a thousand books. Their joined collection across dozens of genres had filled the room from floor to ceiling. It was still all there in the house. When I left, I hadn't really touched anything. Their housekeeper, security, and groundskeepers all still had their jobs. I didn't want the estate to completely decay before I decided to go back. All their holdings that had come to me I hadn't decided what to do with them yet.

  I was going back; this was never meant to be permanent, but Natalie had almost completely changed my plans. Funny how that had happened. She'd probably never know but honestly, wouldn't likely care if she did. My dad had known her, but I was pretty sure my mother had never met her. What would she have thought of her? If everything hadn't gone to shit at the end, what would they have thought about her?

  The whiskey must have been getting to me because I was feeling drowsy. I fell asleep thinking about my parents. I didn't want to forget them. I didn't want to get to that day when I tried to remember something about them, and it wasn't there anymore. It would be like them dying all over again.

  Evie and Grayson Porter. The last time we had been together before the airport was at their place, having breakfast. They had been kidding about my love life, talking about their trip, having a good time. That was how I wanted to remember them. It was how they deserved to be remembered.

  "Do you guys shit talk me like this in public?"

  "Of course not, dear. Only when you can hear us," Evie said, smiling at me. She was kidding. I never took her good-natured teasing to heart. More than she would do that, she'd talk about how proud she was of who her son had become.

  "That's encouraging. So it's only other people you're trying to impress, not me? Got it."

  "What's wrong with that?" she asked, taking a sip from her teacup. I thought about it for a second.

  "I can't think of anyone's opinion of me enough to try to change it."

  "It’s like it happened backward with you," Grayson said. "I've met men in their fifties more optimistic than you."

  "We talked about this, Dad."

  "I understand the way you feel, but I think you might be missing the point with this one."

  "What do you mean?"

  "What he means, Cameron, is you're judging too harshly. Too fast. There are things about the lives that we live and the people around us live that change them. You don't have to put your head down and follow anyone's lead. You can live your own life." I looked at my mother, frowning.

  "So you don't think it's a bad thing? What people do because they have enough money and power to say a big fuck you to everything that makes them human?"

  "No, dear," she said, "All this," she motioned generally to the house, "is an incredible reward, gained through decades of hard work and luck. That's what your life is, and you are the only one who can choose how you're going to live it."

  "You're in a position to do incredible things, change hundreds of lives, Cameron," my father said. "That's why you're in it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Everything we've ever done, it's been for you, son. All of this, the company, we can't take it with us when we go. It's yours."

  "I don't understand."

  "You will, sweetheart," my mom said. My eyes opened, and I looked around the cabin. I was alone. Not only that, I had been dreaming. What the fuck. I got up. It took a few seconds to reorient myself. The fire was dead; I walked over to build another.

  I could have sworn that... it had been so real. It had been like watching them from someplace outside, then being there with them. What the hell did that mean? It probably doesn't matter, I thought, feeding logs into the fireplace. I'd miss them sometimes; that was normal. This was normal. I told myself that as I went to the kitchen to start making something for dinner.

  "Everything we've ever done, it's been for you, son. All of this, the company, we can't take it with us when we go. It's yours."

  I shook my head; I had been out here alone too long.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Natalie

  It had taken a few days, but it was ready. I had been in charge of getting the sales paperwork ready. There was an investor interested in purchasing Cameron's majority stake in Porter Holdings. He would walk out with a few hundred million dollars and never have to hear about the company again. Brett had asked to see the finished document this morning, asking me to bring it up. I was sitting across from him at his desk as he looked it over, reading the pages carefully.

  "Now all we need is his signature," he said. As recently as a few weeks ago, I would have objected to what I knew was coming, but I just didn't have the energy to. It was no use, and if I was going to argue, I wanted to argue something that I would eventually win. I wasn't going to win this one. I just sighed, looking down at the papers.

  "He isn't coming down just to scribble on some papers."

  "This is going to be the last time," Brett said heavily. The last time that he was going to ask me to do this? Probably because once he signed, he was effectively taking away the single reason that anyone from Porter Holdings had to go and see him. That was no problem for me. After all this, he could get that peace and quiet he wanted so badly. I had told the man what had happened last time, could he really think that I wanted to be anywhere near Cameron again in my life if I could help it?

  "If it's an official matter of business, I think that there might be a way to get him to be present in the office," I tried, not even believing myself as I said it. He wasn't coming. His finally being able to sign away the company wouldn't be enough to bring him down off his mountain. Nothing would.

  "You need to go to him," Brett insisted. "He made the decision when he was angry."

  "He made the decision years ago. He's felt this way most of his life. When I asked him the other day, he had been angry, sure, but not about this, about me. I'm the last person he wants to see."

  "I don't think that's true. If anything can change his mind..."

  "Brett," I sighed, not wanting to fan the man's hopes. There had been something there at one point, but it was gone now. Maybe if I hadn't completely broken him by proving him right about all the people he hated, he wouldn't be so angry, but I had. If he still felt something, anything for me that wasn't hate or resentment, I would have been more hopeful, but he didn't. "I think it's too late to hope for a change of heart."

  "It won't hurt," he said positively. He hadn't been there to see how much I had hurt Cameron; if he had been, he wouldn't have been hopeful of a turnaround at the last minute. It wasn't coming, and that was my fault. I didn't think that Cameron would make a decision like whether to sell the company or not on a whim because of a woman he liked in any case, and he did not like me.

  "When do I have to leave?"

  "Today would be best," he said carefully. Of course, it fucking would, what had I been expecting him to say?

  "The weekend is coming up. Is there a way I could go then?" I asked. No, I didn't particularly want to go back to the mountains, there was that, but I also didn't feel like missing out on more work. He just shook his head.

  "Today. We need it today if he's giving it to us."

  "The sooner we're done with this, the sooner we can leave him alone to live his best life out there," I said under my breath. I woul
d have argued, but why? I wasn't looking forward to this, and if I put it off, I'd still have to do it later. As soon as his signature was on those sheets, I never had to see him again. The thought hurt but was good at the same time. I knew how much he never wanted to see me again, and because of that, I couldn't put what I wanted before what he did.

  I had prioritized my feelings over what would have been the best for him before and knew better now. This time though, there was nothing between us to destroy.

  "I'm hopeful," he said. I wasn’t. I wasn't looking forward to coming back and bursting his bubble.

  I left the office immediately because I wanted to be back by nightfall. Spending the night wasn't even an option anymore; I had made sure of that. I hadn't felt great since coming back from Cameron's, but the reality of going back to see him wasn't doing great things for my anxiety or general sense that everything was going to work out.

  How had I managed to get this unlucky? Who would have known that just one bad decision weeks ago to hide the truth from Cameron would get me here? Ready to drive my ass back up that mountain again to talk to him. I wasn't ready, but that didn't matter. I should have thought about that before I screwed the man over. I was just fixing what I fucked up. If it had to be anyone's responsibility, it had to be mine.

  Maybe between here and the cabin, I would have talked myself up enough to face him, but right then, I needed some moral support. I didn't bother texting or calling Kasey ahead because she would probably be working on a client. When I got to her salon, she had someone in her chair. I decided that I could spare the half hour or so it would take to finish on them since it wasn't even noon yet and waited.

  "I hope you don't need me to do your hair," she said as we walked through to the back where her office was. "I'm totally booked up today."

  "I wish that was all I needed."

  "Let me guess," she said. "You're going back?"

  I sunk into the small sofa in her office. It wasn't a very big room, but it was nicely furnished. Its modern, colorful aesthetic matched the design of the main salon floor.