by Holly Hart
“What if I came up with a better offer?”
The words just come out of my mouth, independent of my brain. What the hell am I talking about? How am I going to come up with a better offer?
“Better than a hundred million each?” Agnes asks, eyes round. “If you can do that, I say bring it on. But if you can’t, I’m afraid we’ll have to sell. If that happens, I’d advise you to do the same, before Pearce can fire you.”
I nod, trying to look confident despite the fact I have absolutely no idea how to follow through on this.
“I’ll see you in thirty days,” I hear myself say.
She leans in to give me a peck on the cheek.
“Good luck, sonny boy,” she whispers. “I’m rooting for you.”
Across the room, I see Pearce scowl. At least I have that much satisfaction.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Eight
8. SARA
I’m beginning to wish I’d dropped my phone in the toilet at the Toad & Turtle last night.
“Time for you to go to work,” Quentin says in the hallway outside the boardroom. “Obviously it would have been better if they’d accepted the offer, but that’s not realistic. You have thirty days to bring me something that will make Chance Talbot back down.”
My head is still spinning, and so is my stomach. Being hungover and meeting up with your high school sweetheart on the same day as being offered the biggest contract of your life can be a little overwhelming.
“What exactly are you looking for?” I ask as Chance emerges from the boardroom.
“That’s exactly what I was wondering,” he says with a sardonic grin. “Great minds think alike, I guess.”
Ouch. I can hear the venom in his voice.
“So you already know Ms. Bishop,” says Quentin. “That’s good. It should make things easier.”
“How do you figure that?”
Quentin smiles. He really shouldn’t – he obviously doesn’t realize how fake it looks.
“Sara is the best investigator in the business,” he says. “She’ll find whatever you’re hiding.”
You told me I was the first one in the phone book, I don’t say.
Chance’s eyes flash. I’ve seen that look before, years ago. It was followed by two other guys ending up in the emergency room.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he snarls.
“Rumors,” Quentin says. “Blackmail. War profiteering. All sorts of nasty talk.”
“You’re full of shit.”
Is he? I may not be the “best investigator in the business,” but I think I can sense when someone is being defensive. Chance is hiding something.
Quentin leans in closer to Chance. I’d warn him not to, but I don’t like him.
“What do you think the Sullivans would say if they found out the truth about their dear old dad?” he whispers.
Chance grins, but those smoky gray eyes are smoldering.
“Anyone who says anything bad about Patrick Sullivan in my presence will regret it,” he says coldly.
“Is that a threat?” Quentin asks.
“No, this is a threat: stay out of my way or I’ll fucking hurt you.”
They glare at each other for a second, ramping up the tension in my belly.
“Excuse me,” I mutter, heading for the room with a stick figure in a skirt on the door.
Inside the bathroom, I run the cold water and splash it on my face with trembling hands. This is too much to take – how did I end up in the middle of a war between the guy who’s offering me a life preserver contract and the man I’ve been dreaming about since I was a teenager?
In the mirror, I’m amazed see a woman who’s still remarkably together. All the stuff roiling around inside me isn’t showing on the surface – for now, at least. My hair is still in place, my face is about as good as it can look without makeup, and the suit I picked out actually matches and isn’t wrinkled.
Take a deep breath. Don’t puke. You can get through this. I mean, it’s only thirty days. How hard could it possibly be?
Yeah, right. All I have to do is spend thirty days digging into the privacy of the man whose heart I shattered years ago, so that he’ll end up losing the company that obviously means everything to him.
But what choice do I have? Like the Sullivans said, money is money, and Bishop & Associates needs money. Chance has to understand that.
Sure. He’ll understand being betrayed again by the girl he fought so many times to protect. The girl who practically owes her sanity to the love he showed her as a teenager.
The girl who slammed the door in his face on the night when he needed her the most.
Would he possibly understand if he knew the truth? Would he even care? It’s been fifteen years.
We’re both completely different people now. Or at least he is – chairman and CEO? Who could have imagined it? Meanwhile, I’m still the same screw-up I’ve always been.
I make one last pass over my face with a paper towel and smooth out my hair in the mirror. You can do this. Just power through. You’ve been doing that all your life, Sara. Just keep powering through.
Then I open the bathroom door and walk directly into Chance.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Nine
9. CHANCE
“Oof,” I hear as Sara walks right into my chest. Her lips graze against my neck as her breasts press against me.
“Sorry,” she mutters. “Should have been watching where I was going.”
Shit! I’m angry, but now I’m distracted by her lips. And breasts. And scent.
“You should have been watching where you were going before you got into bed with Quentin Pearce,” I say. “I guess you’re not as cautious about who you get into bed with as you used to be.”
It’s a low blow, but it’s out of my mouth before I even realize what I’m saying. Her eyes tell me I’ve made a direct hit, and as much as I’m sorry for it, I’m also not sorry.
Jesus, she’s got me all tied up in knots!
“You don’t understand,” she says. “I didn’t know – ”
“Seriously? You didn’t know who you were meeting here this morning? You weren’t hand-picked for this?”
Her eyes dart around the hallway.
“He’s gone,” I say. “You’re on your own now.”
“Chance, you’re wrong. Quentin didn’t know about us. How could he? We haven’t been … together in fifteen years, and that was in another city.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past that piece of shit,” he growls. “But at least I know where you stand if you’re working with him.”
“Chance, please…”
The look on her face pulls a sudden memory out of the depths of my mind – that night at the farmhouse, when she told me she never wanted to see me again. It’s like a rusty knife to the heart all over again.
I hold up my hand to let her know I don’t want to hear it.
“Look,” I say. “I have to allow you access to the offices, but I don’t need to be near you. Talk to whomever you want, just stay away from me. Is that clear?”
Those sea-blue eyes seem to be searching for the right words to say. It’s too late. It was too late a long time ago.
“I don’t think you can avoid me entirely,” she says. “There are some things we have to do face to face.”
I pull a pen and a Post-It pad from the table in the hall and write down my cell number.
“Here,” I say, handing her the little yellow note. “When you get the urge to talk to me, let your thumbs do it for you.”
She looks down at the note, then back at me with a wounded look. I’d hoped the hurt in her eyes would give me some satisfaction, but in the end, it’s just making me miserable.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” she says. “For this. For everything.”
“Tell it to Quentin Pearce,” I say, leaving her in the hallway as I stalk toward my office. “I’m sure it’s the kind of thing he’ll really get a kick out of.”
&nb
sp; Chapter One Hundred Thirty
10. SARA
Who’s that in the bed next to you, Sara? Why, that would be the devil. Don’t worry, he gave me a check for $150 grand, so it’s all good.
Yeah, as if I know anything about sharing my bed with someone. That’s a whole different issue I have to deal with some other time.
Chance let me off easy, considering what I did to him. And what I’m about to do to him. It’d be easy for me to justify both – I just did what I had to do. I always do what I have to do. It’s how I’ve survived. That doesn’t make it any easier.
I need an outlet for my frustrations, so I pull out my phone and dial the number that called me this morning.
“Sara,” Quentin’s voice says in my ear. “I assumed you were having a bowel movement, so I didn’t stick around. You’re on the clock – best get to work.”
What’s that line from The Grinch? As charming as an eel?
“You do see the huge potential for conflict of interest here, don’t you?” I snap.
“Why? Because you knew each other in high school? I thought you were a professional.”
Shit. He’s right. I better seem professional if I want to keep my job. Here I was hoping to tear a strip off him and he ends up putting me in my place instead.
“I just wanted to make sure that was on the record,” I lie. “Ethics.”
“Ethics are overrated,” he says. “Work is underrated. Get to it.”
He hangs up without saying good-bye, leaving me to wonder what the hell I’m supposed to do next. So I do what I always do when I don’t know what to do: I call Grace.
“Fuck me,” she breathes after I’ve brought her up to speed.
I’m sitting in a vacant office that the secretary, Karen, said I could use for the next month. The door is closed, of course. The last thing I want is to be overheard.
“I know, right?” I say.
“And I thought I had it bad just dealing with my hangover.”
“Speaking of that, are you in the office yet? It’s after nine.”
“Uh, not quite yet.”
“How close is ‘not quite’?”
“I’m on my way to the shower right now.”
I sigh. What else did I expect? Grace has always taken the little sister stereotype to the extreme, ever since we were kids. Of course, it doesn’t help that I feed the beast by being the indulgent big sister. We both have a lot of shit to blame on our childhood.
“I need you to let Mrs. Harrison know that I’m not abandoning her case,” I say. “I’m just sidetracked for a while.”
“I doubt she’ll be happy to hear that.”
“I doubt anyone would be happy to hear that the search for their missing daughter has been postponed,” I snap. “But life gets in the way. Just do it.”
Grace is quiet for a few moments. Pouting, no doubt. Well, too bad. I’ve got enough to worry about on my end; she can suck it up.
“Here’s a thought,” I say, trying not to sound sarcastic. “There’s a file in the shared drive called ‘Harrison.’ Why don’t you read through it and see if you can do some follow-up?”
“Well,” she says. “I guess I could try…”
“We’ve been over this, Grace. Ninety-nine percent of investigation is just making phone calls and asking questions. You can handle that.”
“All right. I just worry that I’m going to say something stupid and screw it all up. You know?”
“I do know,” I say. “We had the same mother, remember?”
She snorts a laugh. “Fine, I’ll get on it as soon as I’m in the office. So what are you going to do first?”
I’ve been thinking about that as we’ve been talking. Chance is obviously not happening. But I’m willing to bet Tre would be a lot more receptive. He was always the reasonable yin to Chance’s fiery yang back in the day.
“I guess I’m going to start asking questions myself,” I say. I’m still not sure what I’m looking for, but we both know that’s never stopped me before.”
Chapter One Hundred Thirty-One
11. SARA
“So this is pretty weird, huh?”
Tre chuckles as he guides me to a chair in his beautifully understated office with a view of the Chicago skyline.
“No,” he says, taking his own seat. “‘Pretty weird’ would be running into you at Wrigley Field. I think this qualifies as pure Twilight Zone.”
I smile. Tre always did know how to make people feel at ease. It's almost like he’s the anti-Quentin. I sometimes wonder whether I might have fallen for him instead of Chance under different circumstances.
Who am I kidding? It was always going to be Chance. He was the only one who’s seen me at my absolute craziest and never ran away.
Until that final night, when he wanted to run away with me, and I couldn’t do it.
“So what’s the Sara Bishop story in a nutshell?” Tre asks. “What have you been up to since you, uh… since you graduated?”
Since you walked out on Chance and broke his heart, you mean.
“It’s been a long and winding road,” I say. “First, I took journalism at Moorehead College in Pittsburgh…”
His eyes narrow. “Really? An all-girls school?”
I give him a wan smile. “You remember my mom, right?”
His eyes widen. “Ah, yes,” he says. “How could I forget?”
He doesn’t know the half of it. But that’s another story.
“Anyway, after that I worked as a freelancer and met a guy who was looking for his birth family. Turned out he was rich, and he hired me to do research for him. After I reunited him with his peeps, he gave me a bonus and I used that to start Bishop & Associates.”
“Wow,” he says. “So you specialize in due diligence now?”
Should I tell him? I don’t know how long I can keep up the act of knowing anything about business.
“Well…” I say.
He holds up a hand and smiles. “It’s okay, Sara. It’s actually pretty standard to hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of key people during an acquisition. In fact, it usually means that the buyer is pretty confident about the financial side of things. But when people like Pearce are putting up billions, they don’t want any surprises.”
Tre can’t imagine how much of a relief that is.
“I’m glad to hear that,” I say. “I’m not a good enough actress to pull off being a business expert.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to Chance and let him know, though he probably already suspects as much.”
I wince. “Yeah, about that,” I say. “He’s not exactly receptive to my being here. Do you think you might be able to stand in for him and answer some basic questions?”
He spreads his hands wide. “Shoot. That’s what I’m here for.”
“Okay,” I say. “I told you about me. How about you tell me about you and Chance?”
“Pretty straightforward. I went to Harvard on a football ride, Chance joined the Marines.”
That’s not really surprising. Tre’s brains and skill always made up for his lack of money, and I would have been stunned if Chance hadn’t ended up in the military. He had his sights set on being a soldier from a young age. I always assumed it had something to do with growing up in the foster care system. He wanted a structured life to make up for the chaos he lived in after his parents were killed.
So many nights I’ve lain awake in my bed, wondering what my life would have been like if I’d gone with him that night at the farmhouse instead of sending him away. Seeing him today made my heart ache with what could have been.
“What about Atlas?” I ask, shaking off my woolgathering. “How did this all come about?”
Tre smiles. “That’s a bit longer of a story. You heard them talk about Patrick Sullivan in the meeting. Well, Sully was one of the private security contractors that popped up during the invasion of Iraq. Chance did some after-hours work with him for a few years, until Sully offered him a ful
l-time job when he mustered out.”
“He offered him a job as CEO?”
“No, as a specialist. It was Chance who suggested changing the focus to war zone humanitarian work. There was so much need for experts who could get in and out of hot areas and help the people caught in the crossfire. So they expanded the business together.
“I bet you had something to do with it, too,” I say.
“I helped with the numbers, but it was really their dream. Atlas grew exponentially after that. When Sully passed away a few years ago, he left thirty percent of the company to Chance. The rest of the family voted to make him CEO and chairman.”
“Wow. That says a lot about their relationship with him, wouldn’t you say?”
Tre shrugs. “They’re family. You know Chance never had a real one, outside of me and Moms.”
I know better than anyone. The two of us spent long nights in each other's arms, talking about our fucked up lives. Chance was shuttled through a dozen homes in the ten years before high school, so when he turned sixteen, he just started sleeping on Tre’s sofa, or breaking into the rec center and using the storeroom there. His foster parents at that time were a pair of real winners; they didn’t give two shits about him as long as they got their monthly check.
“The Marines must have really turned him around,” I say.
“I think the best word would be focused,” says Tre. “You know how smart he was, even though it was never reflected in his grades. And I’ve never known anyone with willpower like his. The discipline from the Marines honed that natural talent into something he could use like a tool to get whatever he wanted in life.”
He sweeps a hand at the Chicago skyline outside the window. “Atlas is the result.”
So is that Roman statue of a body, I’m assuming.
“I assume that applies to women, too,” I say, not really wanting to know the answer.
Tre nods. “Chance has had a pretty steady stream over the years,” he says. “But they never seem to last more than a few weeks. I guess he’s a little too… intense for most women.”
