by BJ Harvey
FEEL
Copyright © 2016 by BJ Harvey
Edited by Lauren McKellar
Cover Designed by BJ Harvey
Photo sourced from Dollar Photo Club
ISBN: Epub - 978-0-9941257-9-8
ISBN: Mobi – 978-0-9941018-2-2
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
To you the reader.
You make everything worth it.
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
Exclusive Extract: Game Player
About the Author
Author Links
Other Books by BJ Harvey
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After I snuck out of Barrett’s bed, my world turned upside down.
I sat at my desk going over the cover proof for the new magazine when I was interrupted by loud voices arguing outside my office. I lifted my head in time to see my assistant, Carrie, rushing through the door with Gavin and two of the company’s security guards following behind him.
“Ms. Jacobs, I tried to stop them but—” she said, but was interrupted by Gavin.
He stood in front of my desk and crossed his arms, a look of satisfaction on his face. “You’re no longer CEO of Jacobs Publishing,” he said, looking at me, before turning to Carrie and saying, “And you’re fired.”
I shot to my feet, my anger shooting straight to boiling point. “Gavin, you cannot waltz on in here and fire anyone. I’m the CEO, not you.”
“You were, Alyssa, but as of an hour ago, you are not.”
Carrie gasped in shock, and my mouth dropped open as my body went still.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered loudly.
“My wife and I share assets, which means what is hers is mine. Therefore, I now have the power to take over operational responsibility of Jacobs Publishing which I am doing, effective immediately.”
“You can’t—”
“You know, Alyssa, that this is absolutely possible—and legal.”
I grabbed hold of my desk and held on tight, my body vibrating with anger as I desperately tried to stave off the shock threatening to overwhelm me.
I reached over to grab my phone. “I’m going to call my mother. Just see what she—”
The dial tone went silent, and I looked up to see Gavin’s fingers pressed down on the base unit.
“Your mother won’t help you, Alyssa. I explained to her that you are young, too young to have such a responsibility weighing heavy on your shoulders,” he explained condescendingly. “This is a good business decision. You’d hate to disappoint her, especially since you said yourself that you’d never seen her so happy. You even gave me your blessing to marry her, remember?” His smile was wolfish and not at all friendly.
“So you’re just taking over?”
“I think it’s for the best. You can stay on, of course. Maybe you’d consider moving to the editorial department.” He crossed his arms and smirked at me, and I struggled to tamp down the desire to slap him on the face.
I shut my laptop and picked it up but he interrupted. “No need for that. We’ll send any personal belongings to your new office.”
“You’re gonna pay for this,” I warned as the two security guards moved toward me.
“Oh believe me, I’ve already paid my dues. This is my reward.”
“What?” I frowned at him, confused.
“And Alyssa, just so you know, your forty-nine percent stake in the company is safe for now. But the minute you make any moves against me, I’ll see to it that your stake is so diluted you’ll be worth nothing.” He paused, lifting his hand to his chin and rubbing it. “Or I could just buy you out.”
With that parting note, he spun around and walked out the door, and I was led out of my office and into the elevator by the security guards with nothing but my purse.
I stood in shock outside the tall glass building that had my name—my father’s name—on it, and wondered what I was supposed to do. My father’s legacy had just been swept out from under my feet by a man who had—in the space of just over a month—alienated me from my only surviving parent.
I pulled out my cellphone and dialed my mom’s number, tears gathering in my eyes when it went through to voicemail. At the sound of the tone, I spoke. “Mom, I need to speak with you. It’s urgent . . .” My voice cracked and I swallowed down the lump in my throat and continued, “Gavin has just taken over and told me he has your blessing. I don’t believe you’d do that so can you please . . . please call me back.”
I hung up the phone and walked forward but stopped when the hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and I instinctively looked up to see a furious Barrett stalking toward me.
Just seeing a familiar—albeit not necessarily friendly—face made the tell-tale lump in my throat come back with a vengeance. All the anger I’d been harboring toward Gavin rushed back to the surface.
“Alyssa, we need to talk,” Barrett demanded, as he came to a stop a foot away from me. Filled with rage, I leaned forward and jabbed my finger into Barrett’s chest.
“This is your fault.”
“What?” he asked, his brows knitted together.
“I asked you in Vegas to tell me what was going on with Gavin and you wouldn’t . . .” Jab. “Tell.” Jab. “Me.” Then I jabbed him one last time, extra hard. He didn’t even flinch; he just stood there and took everything I gave him.
His hands came up and gripped my biceps, holding me still while he lowered his head to look in my eyes. “What’s wrong, Lys?”
Then, as if right on cue, it started raining, but I was too far gone to care. “It’s gone.”
“What?”
“All of it.”
“Lys.” His voice went soft. All of his anger seemed to have disappeared. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Gavin. He’s taken it all, now. My company, my mom . . .” My voice cracked but somehow I stood strong, Barrett’s grip on my arms steadying me.
“I was trying to protect you,” he said. He let go of my arm and swiped a hand over his face to clear the water away. It was a fruitless effort, as the rain continued to pour down, washing over both of us.
“Protect me?” I shrieked.
We stood there on the sidewalk. It was as if the world around us had disappeared and we were the only two people left standing.
He moved in closer and tilted his head, then I remembered his role in this. Investigation or not, he’d played his part. I still didn’t know what information he had about me. I didn’t know if part of his cover was to report back to Gavin on whatever the hell it was he was supposed to be doing for him.
It didn’t matter that he’d told me everything he could last night, or that he’d taken me to his bed. None of it mattered in that momen
t. As all of my thoughts crashed together in my head, I lost it.
“Instead of protecting me, look what happened! My mother got married without me, and now I’ve just lost my company!” I yelled, not caring about the rain. My emotions were pulled one way and then another, all because of three men; the one standing in front of me, another hundreds of miles away, and Gavin – the one who fooled us all.
“It was my job, Alyssa,” he said, his voice full of regret.
“You were paid to lie to me. He paid you to find out everything about my life for what?” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “He’s taken everything, and I have no fucking idea why. What have I done to him? Why me? What more can he fucking want, Barrett?” Tears streamed down my face, and I fisted my hands in his shirt and clung to him.
“I’m going to make this right, Alyssa,” Barrett vowed, and he looked sincere, almost determined to make me believe it.
“Why, Barrett? Why does it even matter to you?” I cried.
“Because you fucking matter to me.” Then I was in his arms, his fingers fisted in my hair. The other hand circled my waist and pulled me hard against him just as he kissed me. His lips slammed down onto mine and his tongue slid into my mouth. My mind and body were at odds, but I was powerless to stop it.
Then, as quickly as it started, it was over, because two arms moved between us and violently wrenched us apart.
My eyes snapped open and went wide as I gasped in shock when I saw a stony-faced Aiden glaring back at me. I stepped toward him, and my mouth opened to say something but I stopped when I saw the look he shot Barrett.
“Lawrence, what the—” Barrett began but stopped when Aiden moved forward, reared his arm back, and slammed his fist straight into Barrett’s jaw.
Barrett lifted his hand and rubbed his jaw where Aiden had punched him, his eyes full of anger. “What the hell?”
“I told you to stay the fuck away from her,” Aiden yelled as the rain pelted down on us. By then I was soaked through and my arms were covered in goose bumps—from both the weather and the situation I’d found myself in.
Barrett turned his head to look at me. “Lys, I needed to see you. Last night, I—”
“You son of a bitch!” Aiden took a threatening step toward Barrett again. I stepped between the two men and put my palms against Aiden’s chest, pushing him back. His brows furrowed, and he looked first at me, then my hands before returning his gaze to mine.
I turned toward the windows of the building and a crowd had gathered to watch us; some held up cellphones to take photos, and others were blatantly staring. My head dropped, my cheeks burning at the spectacle we had made of ourselves. Stepping back from Aiden, I spun around to face Barrett. He stared at me, his eyes boring into mine. He went to lift his hand up to my face but stopped when I shook my head. “I can’t do this right now. I need to get out of here.”
Barrett’s hand dropped to reach for mine. “Okay.”
I took a step back, instinctively making a decision I didn’t realize I was ready to make. I saw the hurt in his eyes as he pulled his hand back. “Lys?” he asked roughly.
Aiden’s hand rested at the small of my back and he sidled up beside me. “We need to go,” was all he said, his voice low and controlled, when I could tell by his expression that he was anything but.
“You need to fuck off, Lawrence, and leave Alyssa with me.”
“That’s the last thing I’d ever do. Never again, Lucas. Never. Fucking. Again.” Aiden grabbed my hand, turned, and walked us toward a blue Honda idling at the curb.
He jerked the passenger door open for me, but I stopped and looked back toward Barrett. He stood there, watching me, his face tight with anger, yet he didn’t move toward me. It was as if any fight he might have had for me had gone. Part of me wished it wasn’t true; the other part of me was relieved he hadn’t fought for me. But even that thought tore through me in such a way I knew I would never recover from it.
When I’d stood there too long, Aiden growled and gently pushed on my shoulder, which snapped me out of my daze. I sat down in the seat as the door slammed behind me, then Aiden rounded the hood of the car and dropped down jerkily behind the steering wheel before pulling out into traffic.
Barrett’s gaze never left mine as we drove off. His body remained motionless; he never even tried to stop Aiden from taking me with him but I definitely didn’t miss the return of the war in his eyes.
“Why are you here?” I asked Aiden but still stared in the direction of Barrett.
“Harrison gave me a heads up that something was going down with Gavin. He tried calling you but couldn’t get through either last night or this morning. Guess I now know why,” he retorted.
I hadn’t checked my phone since leaving Barrett’s place, it didn’t even cross my mind. I was too preoccupied with thoughts of Barrett and Aiden and the mess I’d created for myself. It also hit me that Aiden could’ve been in Seattle last night while I was with Barrett and with that, my heart sank further.
I knew Aiden; I knew how he was. He’d come to help me, he’d taken time off work to see me—he was always helping me. As much as I wanted him, I knew then that in no way did I deserve him or his protection.
I still felt I knew nothing about Barrett. He’d answered my questions, but I hadn’t spent enough time with him to know the man outside of a dream rooftop date and spending hours naked in his bed.
Aiden had seen Barrett kiss me. He’d seen me melt into it as I gave in to the temptation of the man I’d been naked with just hours earlier. A man that wasn’t my long-term lover. A man that I had the feeling Aiden couldn’t stand.
I faced the most unlikely of conundrums at the most inopportune of times. I had a company to win back and a mother to save, and both of those took priority over deciding which man I wanted to be with. But most of all, I felt the need to escape my life and the turmoil surrounding me.
It felt like I’d been punched in the stomach and had my heart torn to pieces in the same breath.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What are you sorry for?” Aiden replied, his voice tight.
“For kissing him.”
“He kissed you.”
“But there’s more—“
Aiden sighed loudly and pulled to a stop at a set of traffic lights. “Aly, right now I have a very loose grip on keeping it together. My gut is telling me to take you to San Francisco and get you out of this place, while my heart is still—”
I turned my head to look at him. “You have no idea how good that sounds but I should stay and fight Gavin . . .”
His head jerked toward mine. “Let’s do it then.”
I blinked when his words registered in my brain. “What?”
“Let’s go straight to the airport and get out of here. We can be at my house in three hours.”
“Are you serious?” I whispered.
“Deadly. One thing you should know by now is that I protect those I care about. It’s not just my job; it’s the man I am. Ever since you called me from Vegas, I’ve been wanting to take you away from all of this and look after you. I’ve just been waiting for you to let me.”
“Aiden, we need to talk . . .”
“Not now we don’t,” he said through gritted teeth, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. “I may have let you go, Aly, but I also said I’d fight for you. I need to be in the right head space—and hundreds of miles away—before you tell me anything pertaining to that man.”
“You and Barrett knew each other before you saw him on the plane, didn’t you?” I asked and waited with baited breath for his answer, but when it didn’t come, I pushed on with another question I needed the answer to, “How did you know where I was?”
“I came to find you. I wanted to know you were okay. I went to your place last night and you weren’t there.”
That’s because I was in bed with the man who had a piece of my heart.
He hadn’t answered my question about Barrett but one look at his tight j
aw and I knew he wouldn’t answer me. “Okay,” I said softly and leaned my head against the passenger-side window as the light went green and Aiden started driving again.
Twenty minutes and two packed bags later, we’d left my apartment and were on our way to the airport. Four hours after that we arrived in San Francisco.
My mind was a blur, and my emotions were all over the place. All I could think about was my mom. I’d tried to call her before getting on the flight and again as soon as we’d landed, but there was no answer.
My phone notifications went crazy as soon as I turned it back on with text after text and call after call, all from the man I’d left behind. There I was with Aiden, hundreds of miles from home, having left Barrett standing in the rain outside my office looking lost.
With everything crumbling around me, I felt as if we had yet to reach the eye of the storm. The dark clouds that loomed over me continued to get lower and thicker, making it impossible to see a way back to clear skies—and a smooth life.
“Are you okay?” Aiden asked distractedly as he turned his car off outside a contemporary townhouse in Oakland. I didn’t miss the tightness in his voice, and when I dragged my eyes from the screen to look up at him I could see he was tense.
I hesitated for a moment, deciding whether to lie or tell him the truth. I chose the latter. “Not really.”
“We’ll get you settled inside, and hopefully you can try and relax.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to relax until I can get in contact with my mother. I have a really bad feeling about all of this.”
It was then that the Aiden I knew reappeared as he reached out his hand and gently squeezed my thigh. “I can help you with that, too.”
His small smile didn’t reach his eyes and I knew then that there were a lot of difficult questions I would have to answer. I also knew that there were a lot of things Aiden needed to explain to me.
He shook his head and quickly moved his hand away before he got out of the car, rounded the hood and opened my door.
“I’ll get our things,” he said, moving away from me and with bags in hand, he walked ahead of me up a concrete path toward a dark green painted double door, not saying anything more.
