“There’s no freaking way I’m getting between Maddie and Jai. I’ve risked my life enough. And as far as telling our mother anything, you can tell her your damned self in person. Because if you don’t get your arse back here soon so we can hug the shit out of you, we’re crashing your penthouse.”
Ryder’s laughter filled him with a joy he hadn’t felt in too damned long. “Working on it, bro, working on it.”
“Work harder.”
He’d gotten used to going months without hearing his brother’s laughter, yet just like his yearly visits home, the older he got the harder it had become to be separated from his family, his people, and his home. He wanted to celebrate this victory with them so bad his teeth ached. But he wanted to simply be with them even more. “Give everyone a hug from me and save me a beer.”
Ryder’s chuckle echoed in his ear long after the call had ended and left him staring at his home screen. The iPhone’s clock was silent, yet each second boomed in his head. Three months ago while standing ankle deep in the Coral Sea, he’d stared into her glistening eyes and promised to let her go. No phone calls, no emails, no sexts. The euphoria of finding the woman of his dreams had convinced him he was invincible. All he had to do was figure out how two career-driven professionals living on opposite sides of the world could live happily ever after. At the time he’d expected her to be back in his arms within a couple of months, three at the very most, because he was just that goddamned smart. Groaning, he dropped his forehead onto his desk and cursed into the silence.
“I’m glad your mood’s improved.” Charlie’s voice drifted through the empty office.
He stared through the red haze clouding his vision to find his office manager leaning against his door and shaking her head. “I thought I fired you.”
Her smile widened. “Last week, yesterday, and again this morning.” She shrugged. “I haven’t listened to you in seven years. What makes you think I’ll start now?”
She completely ignored his stink eye and casually slid into the chair in front of his desk. He watched in stunned silence as she closed his laptop, shifted it onto the foot-high pile of files balanced on the side of his desk, and hefted her duffle-size handbag onto her lap. She pulled out a heavy paper bag and dropped it in front of him. “Bacon double cheeseburger, well done, no tomato, extra-large steak fries with added salt, and aioli on the side.” She lowered her imitation Louis Vuitton bag to the floor and leaned back before jabbing a manicured finger at him. “And if you stop feeling sorry for yourself, I might even share the mud cake I brought back with me.”
The heavenly scent of junk food had his empty stomach grumbling. He fought the urge to devour the meal, bag and all, and deepened his glare. “Weren’t you going out to celebrate tonight?”
“I’ve been out.” She raised an eyebrow. “Weren’t you going home to brood four hours ago?”
He unclenched his jaw. “You do realize I’m your boss and can do whatever the hell I want?”
She shrugged. “You do realize I don’t give a shit?”
He opened his mouth to fire back his own insult only to have her cut him off with a bored wave. “Cut the tough-guy act and eat your damned victory dinner before I slap the crap out of you.”
He weighed his chances of taking her out before frustration and a truckload of self-pity had him sighing like the whiny, little bitch he was and tearing open the bag of temporary happiness.
Charlie leaned back and watched him stuff the fat and carbs into his face until all that remained was the half empty tub of aioli, which he promptly cleaned up with the last steak fry before popping the greasy mess into his mouth. “Feeling better?”
He shook his head while licking the salt from his fingers before holding out his hand. “Cake me.”
She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. “First, you’re going to tell me what the hell you’re going to do about this Olivia situation. Because if kicking Manningham’s arse didn’t turn that frown upside down, you’re in some serious shit.”
Shutting down Carter Industries had definitely made his career hall of fame. But after the euphoria of breaking the news to his family had faded, he’d sat in his office alone and stared out at the rest of his life and seen nothing except loneliness. “Cut me some slack, woman. I haven’t slept longer than four hours for months and can barely feel my face.”
His deflection only had Charlie’s eyebrow hitching higher. “Cut the shit, pretty boy. You haven’t slept longer than four hours a night in the seven years I’ve put up with your crap, and a victory like the one we had today would’ve normally had you partying for weeks.”
He opened his mouth, but Charlie cut him off with a single raised finger. “Since you’ve got no other excuse for forcing me to celebrate on my own so you could mope around this office like a whiny, little bitch, I’m guessing your private pity party has everything to do with a certain doctor you’re obviously in love with. The doctor who has feelings for you despite being way too classy and nice for you.” Charlie smiled her witch’s smile and propped her chin onto her steepled hands. “The very same doctor you’ve done absolutely fuck all to win back.”
The breath he’d sucked in to tell his office manager exactly what she could do with her observations and psychobabble gushed out of him on a gust of garlic-soaked onion and bacon. “What the hell do you want me to do?”
Charlie grimaced and reared back while waving a hand in front of her face. “First of all, you can pop a breath mint or three.” She dove into her handbag and came out pumping perfume into the air before hurling a packet of mints at him. “And second of all, you can stop sulking and fight for her.”
He almost choked on the mints he’d tossed into his mouth. As he coughed and fought for air, Charlie simply pursed her lips and shook her head like a disappointed teacher. “I’ve seen you take on the government and multinational mining conglomerates with nothing more than your balls, a cocky smile, and a secondhand briefcase filled only with your lunch. I’ve watched you calmly and methodically destroy boardrooms overflowing with arrogant executives. I’ve stood beside you while you created a thriving practice that not only saved me and your family but the townsfolk you pretend you don’t care about. And I just watched you force Manningham and his team of shit bags to tap out by outthinking, out-gutsing, and outlasting the fuckers.”
She cursed and leaned forward. “And now you’re letting a little thing like the Pacific Ocean and a couple of stupid careers keep you from the first woman you’ve fallen for since meeting me.”
With each blow, he rocked back farther until the only thing stopping him from tumbling arse-backward into the wall were the fingers he’d clawed into the desk. Almost everything Charlie had said was true. He was Jarrah Mereki Harper, for fuck’s sake. The indigenous kid who’d wedgied the government and flipped the bird at the mining industry while creating a successful consultancy. Yet his partner in crime had left out one important fact. While he’d marched into battle, she’d been right beside him with a knife clenched between her teeth and a grenade tucked in her purse.
The Hail Mary plan he’d been scheming drifted through his mind as he stared into the hazel eyes of the woman who’d had his back for close to a decade. “It’s complicated.”
“Bullshit.” Charlie pursed her lips and rocked back in her chair. “Native-land title law’s complicated. Sticking it to fat cats who make up rules to serve themselves is complicated. Building a business with nothing but sweat is complicated. This is simple. Either you can live without her, or you can’t. The rest is just noise and excuses.”
Charlie sighed and dialed her death stare down to maim instead of kill. “And I’m guessing you already know exactly what you have to do. So what the hell’s stopping you?”
He was running out of time, out of options, and risking losing the woman of his dreams. But even as he turned the splintered fragments of his last-ditch plan over and over in his head, he still couldn’t get all the pieces to fit without hurting the wom
an who’d gone from irritating part-time receptionist to his infuriating corporate fairy godmother.
Charlie’s eyes slowly widened as if she’d glimpsed the scenarios bouncing around inside his head. The fight drained from her torso on a long sigh before she shrugged and broke what was left of his heart with a sad grin as she slumped back in her chair. “We both knew this day would eventually come.”
The years they’d shared flashed between them as he lost himself in her shimmering eyes. How many days, nights, and weekends had they spent within arms’ reach of each other while preparing for battles they had no right even fighting let alone winning? How many losses had they endured? How many victories had they celebrated? His name may grace their office and letterhead, but it was Charlie who’d turned his one-man show into a thriving practice.
As he tried swallowing, she hit him with the smile that had turned many an adversary into a bumbling idiot and hefted a hunk of mud cake as big as his head from her handbag. He watched in stunned silence as she reverently unboxed the treat and handed him a fork before holding up her own.
“It’s been one hell of a ride, junior.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Olivia dropped her forehead onto the door and pushed it open as she staggered into her apartment. The darkness greeting her was almost as depressing as the silence cloaking the empty lounge and even emptier bedroom. She didn’t bother turning on the lights. What was the point? She wasn’t bumping into anyone, and the only place she was headed was her bed before she got up and did it all over again.
She dumped her laptop bag on her Frisbee-size dining table, kicked off her gorgeous, if completely ridiculous, blood-red pumps, and yanked the ID tag off the way-too-expensive and equally impractical silk blouse she’d spent a fair chunk of her first paycheck on. The shoes, the top, and the satin bra she wrestled off beneath her blouse and hurled onto the sofa had been stagnating on her wish list for nearly a year. In a mad fit of retail therapy, she’d not only emptied her wish list and then some, she’d also bought enough organic food to turn her once barren fridge and pantry into a Whole Foods. The only problem was her normally waist-stretching appetite had disappeared, and the only man she wanted to tempt with her sexy new wardrobe was probably sitting alone in his office on the other side of the Pacific.
A fresh dose of guilt joined the fatigue and loneliness knotting her belly as she stared at her fridge. If she was as mature as she pretended to be, she should’ve hoped he was enjoying life and living the dream. The truth was far less noble. A part of her far larger than she wanted to acknowledge desperately hoped he missed her as much as she missed him. Four months. Four endless months and her need for him only grew more desperate.
With her appetite deteriorating almost as quickly as her pride, she cursed her weakness and turned to the tiny dining table that served as her home office. Home. She swallowed the lump in her throat as she scanned her desolate apartment. Thanks to her newfound wealth and pity-fueled late-night online shopping binges, she’d transformed her apartment from practical and homely to vibrant and funky, and she still felt like a stranger.
She allowed herself a few deep breaths and few more muttered grumbles before straightening her shoulders, sticking out her gloriously unrestrained boobs, and spinning back to her laptop bag. She’d just returned from an unforgettable vacation with an unforgettable family in an unforgettable land while having an even more unforgettable man turn her inside out and upside down. She’d also started a fancy new job she absolutely loved. Instead of sulking like a spoiled reality star, she needed to suck it up, sit her ass down, and transfer the mountain of work she hadn’t done today onto tomorrow’s already crowded to-do list.
The workload wasn’t a surprise. She’d known what she was marching into and accepted that with the prestige and possibilities came sacrifices. If anything, she should’ve been grateful for having something to focus on to get her head back in the game. The real game taking place in her real life. Not the fairy tale haunting her dreams.
She unclenched her fists, sucked in another fortifying breath, and opened her laptop, only to groan and slam it shut the instant she peeked at her inbox. She could hop in the shower and try to wash some life back into herself before taking Gail, Serena, and Mark up on their offer of drinks and some long overdue dancing. But she liked her new partners in crime way too much to ruin their evening with her sulking. It’d been hard enough to maintain her happy face during work hours. The last thing she needed was breaking down and sobbing into her Cosmo in front of her team about how perfect her life was. “First-world fucking problems.”
Her curse echoed through the silence as she almost ripped her blouse to shreds scratching twelve hours’ worth of itches while glaring between her empty bedroom and empty kitchen. Her last meal had been an egg-and-lettuce sandwich eight hours ago. And like everything she’d forced herself to eat lately, it’d tasted like cardboard. She turned and glared at her fridge again. If she wasn’t working, or going out, she should at least cook herself a proper dinner before crawling into bed.
Raucous laughter, merciless teasing, the heavenly aromas of mountains of home-cooked food prepared with love and devoured with even more. The memories and sensations swamped her as her gaze trailed over her kitchen’s sterile countertops and unused cooktop and settled on her pathetic excuse of a dining table.
The nights were always the worst. It probably explained why she worked until she was too exhausted to think and, more importantly, feel. But the nagging ache she’d hoped would fade with time only intensified.
The edge of her phone poked out of her bag and called to her like a siren summoning her to her demise. With each passing day, the temptation to break the very same contract she’d forced Jarrah to swear to grew until she could no longer look at her phone without losing herself in his eyes. The warmth and security she craved lay just one call away. And then what?
From what she’d weaseled out of Abi and Ryder, her cowboy would probably be buried under mountains of contracts or stuck in a boardroom somewhere. And what if he wasn’t? What if that huge lawyer brain had realized what they’d shared had been as good as it got and it was time to move on to less complicated and more local pursuits?
AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” shocked her out of her nightmare. Yanking out her phone, she stared at the going-away present her big sister had covertly saved onto her phone. Eight beaming faces. Three black, four white, one brown; three men, five women. One incredible family smiling into the camera from beneath eight bedraggled Akubras while flipping her the bird. Smiling despite the tightness in her chest, she hit answer and brought the phone to her ear.
“So, Dr. Olivia Williams, Cedars-Sinai’s team leader of neurocritical research, you ready to give up that fancy high-paying job of yours and come home where you belong?”
Christ, Olivia still had to check her business card to make sure she didn’t screw up her title before every meeting, yet Abi spat it all out without even taking a breath. It was probably due to the fact her sister used the same damned greeting every time she called, which averaged out to every second day and twice on weekends.
Olivia couldn’t help smiling as Abi repeated the same offer Naya had made the day before. The scheming old girl had tried to tempt her back into the Outback under the pretense of checking if she was eating enough.
“As I told that evil mother-in-law of yours, there’s no way in hell I’m ever coming back to that dusty, fly-infested oven you call home.”
“You’ll be back. Only a matter of time. How was your week?”
Olivia lowered her phone and glanced at the date only to realize it was Friday, and another week had passed. Her surprise slowly surrendered to the sad truth of her life. The last four months had blended into one never-ending cycle of tossing and turning through the night and working through the day. “Same as last week. Only busier.”
“Busy good, or busy bad?”
And wasn’t that the million-dollar question. With each fourteen-hour day, Dr.
Williams had fallen more and more in love with the challenges and opportunities of standing at the forefront of treatments that could save thousands of lives while plain-old Olivia Williams, the chick slowly shriveling away, had no freaking idea what she felt.
“The research we’re doing is even more game-changing than I thought. The more I learn, the more I’m blown away. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg. It’s amazing, Abs, truly amazing. I’m so lucky.”
“You trying to convince me or yourself?”
The long pause before her sister had spoken confirmed Abi hadn’t bought Olivia Williams’s reassurances, but Dr. Williams’s enthusiasm had been genuine. If her sister lived in L.A. and a certain cowboy hadn’t stolen her damned heart, Olivia would’ve been the happiest woman working eighty-hour weeks. “I’m not trying to convince anyone. The job’s kicking my butt, but it’s fantastic. I still can’t believe they hired me. I’m so busy most days and so exhausted most nights I hardly have the time to think about…”
“Hardly have the time to think about what?”
Think about what my mind-reading sister and her sweet man are doing. Think about what the Harpers are having for dinner. Think about how Wingarra and the muster are going. And dream about the man I left behind.
Olivia clamped her eyelids shut and shook the visions from her mind. Forcing herself to relax, she opened her eyes and unclenched her jaw only to have a sigh dribble from her mouth.
Olivia expected another curse-filled pep talk from her big sister. Instead of trying to convince her to be patient, or that things would get easier once she settled into her new job, made new friends, and started her new life, Abi simply sighed right along with her.
“You going to be okay?”
Abi’s whispered words dragged Olivia out of the darkness she’d tumbled into. Of course she was going to be freaking okay. Work would drop back down to manageable-crazy as soon as she got her head around everything. “My job will settle down once I get into the swing of things.”
A Choice of Fate Page 24
