Sweet Water: Destination Billionaire Romance

by Laurie Lewis

  Nurse Maggie rushed over and closed the laptop. “It’s too soon for you to be working.”

  “I need to save my company.”

  “You need to rest that arm.” She set a bowl of fruit before her. “Eat. Heal.”

  Laurel arrived and overheard the discussion. Her eyes widened as the night nurse reported on Olivia’s condition and needs for the day.

  Once the door shut, Laurel said, “Whoa … she’s intense.”

  “You have no idea.” Olivia laughed and then sobered as she remembered Maggie’s earlier counsel. “She pushes me. I think I need that.”

  “Then we’ll follow her instructions. You look much better today, by the way. Cute outfit too, but then again, you’re gorgeous even when your face is purple and green.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Olivia, as she twisted her long dark hair for comfort. She hadn’t paid much attention to the navy-and-white striped tee and white knit slacks Maggie found in one of the bedroom drawers, but after examining them more closely, she recognized the quality of the fabric and noticed how they were designed to glide easily over her brace and bandages. She fingered the edge of the wide hem. "Hudson thought of everything.”

  “You must be very important to him,” Laurel said quietly.

  The comment rankled Olivia. “Hudson? Why do you say that?”

  Laurel gave Olivia a sideways glance, noting her ingratitude.

  “I mean …yes … it’s incredibly generous of him to buy me clothes and let me live here.”

  “Well … yeah … especially considering that he personally packed and moved his own things into the utility room so you could have the master suite. But I was talking about how he stocked the house with your favorite foods and flowers. And you should have seen his worry when he read the notes about your injuries.” Laurel flopped into a coral-colored overstuffed chair. “Ben forgets I have an egg allergy and nearly kills me with mayo every time he makes me a sandwich. He always apologizes and says he had other things on his mind, but I’m not sure that excuse is going to fly anymore. Consider what Hudson Bauer has on his mind, with his companies and charities and travels, but he still remembered all your favorites.”

  The breadth of his kindness suffocated Olivia. She had tried to compartmentalize each gift and service because the scope of his caring was more than she could bear. Yes, she needed some help, but the totality of his gifts was akin to placing a starving man before a gourmet meal. It was, in short, too much.

  “I’d like to lie down for a while,” she told Laurel, who rushed over to help. “And could you bring me that laptop also?”

  Once she was set up in the bed with pillows propping her into a comfortable position, she went to work on MMM business. Within an hour her stress levels skyrocketed, and she closed her files, finding something on Hudson’s desktop that intrigued her enough to compel her to snoop. The file name? Atmit Co-op. The link opened to a spreadsheet of universities and businesses partnering in the production and distribution of Atmit to refugee camps and villages across the globe. Links led to distribution schedules, reports of successes, and even a few letters from grateful tribal leaders.

  She remembered a conversation the threesome had while sitting at a burger joint during their senior year. The topic was their Doer Campaign, but first, they had needed capital.

  Everything hinged on getting a few Division One coaches to beta test their Arena Corp program so Hudson could accumulate data and she could tweak out the bugs before putting the software on the market. Jeff squawked when he heard they’d be giving their work away for months, perhaps years. It was then that Hudson expressed his definition of success.

  He referenced an article about starving children in Ethiopia. Their bodies had degraded to the point that they could no longer digest most foods, but they could bear, and even thrive on a life-sustaining gruel called Atmit. The basic recipe was ancient—oat flour, powdered milk, sugar, salt—and with a supplement of vitamins and minerals, children near death could be revived and saved.

  And the cost to feed a child for an entire month? Hudson had held up his double-stacked burger and shake. It was the cost of his meal. Six dollars. He said he would feel like a success if their program just made enough to save some children at six dollars a month.

  Olivia felt like those children. Love starved, unable to receive more than the kindness equivalent of Atmit. But how could she tell Hudson that? Especially when she’d hired an attorney mere weeks ago to sue him for half of his company?

  Her nausea returned.

  Hudson had done it. He had followed through on his dream. He was a Doer. What had happened to her? She wondered if it was too late to find herself again.

  * * *

  Three hours had passed when Olivia awoke. She texted Laurel, who came in moments, stretching and yawning, an embarrassed grin on her sun-kissed face.

  “I feel a bit guilty about getting paid to nap on a porch overlooking the Pacific Ocean.”

  “Join the club.”

  Laurel readjusted the hair clips holding her brown curls away from her face. “We should do something nice for Hudson.”

  “What does one do to thank a billionaire?”

  “I wonder how often he gets to eat a home-cooked meal. No man can resist good food with friends.”

  Memories of shared meals flashed across Olivia’s mind. “His favorite meal is barbecued ribs and corn on the cob. His mom had her own recipe for a sweet and spicy rub.”

  Laurel’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Ben is a grilling master. He’ll be our cook.”

  “Do you think he’d help us?”

  “Help prepare a thank-you dinner for the high school billionaire friend who’s paying me enough money to make double payments on Ben’s truck? Uh, yeah! He’ll tell the tale for years.”

  Olivia laughed. She outright laughed, enjoying the stability of making a plan. Of having something to look forward to. Of having friends again. “We’ll have to see how long Hudson will be in town.”

  Laurel nodded. “Okay.”

  The doorbell rang, and Laurel got up to answer it and Olivia followed in her wheelchair. “It’s a delivery,” she called back to Olivia. “A big box!”

  The women watched the delivery man uncrate the item, revealing a strange-looking motorized wheelchair with wide rubber wheels.

  “It’s for the beach,” said the delivery guy. He looked at Olivia in her current chair. “I assume it’s for you.”

  “Wow,” squealed Laurel. “Hudson thought of everything!”

  After a brief demo, the man drove the unit to the back porch and parked it. Then he had Olivia sign the delivery slip before he stepped into his truck and drove away.

  A sinking feeling hit Olivia. How could she accept another gift from the man she blamed for ruining her life? Could she sue Hudson and throw him a thank-you dinner? She rolled away from the table and over to the French doors that overlooked the sea.

  Laurel stood and moved to stand beside her. “You look upset. What’s going on?”

  Olivia looked down at her hands. “You might not think much of me when I tell you.”

  Laurel sank into a coral-colored chair as Olivia wheeled around to face her.

  “I’ve got a lawsuit pending against Hudson.”

  Laurel froze, seeming not to breathe or blink or move in any way. She whistled, long and low. “Does he know?”

  Olivia’s shook her head. “I just gave the lawyer the go-ahead a few days before the accident.”

  “May I ask why you are suing him?”

  Olivia’s eyes began to sting. “Jeff and I helped get Hudson’s first company started, but Hudson cut us completely out the night we eloped. We were impetuous, and we probably would have ruined the chemistry of the team if he hadn’t gone, but we deserved some compensation.”

  She wheeled away from Laurel and back to the French doors and the Pacific horizon. “Jeff and I tried to duplicate our previous success, but none of our efforts could recreate the magic we had when we were
with Hudson. A few months ago, when I found out I was pregnant, I knew something had to change. I didn’t want to drag my baby around the country, scraping a life together each month.” She turned her head to Laurel. “I wanted what you have; I wanted a home. But Jeff said he didn’t want children. He wasn’t ready to take on a regular nine-to-five job and abandon his dream of landing a big deal. So I panicked. I searched the Internet and found an attorney who takes cases in return for a portion of the settlement. I asked him to petition Hudson for a percentage of his company’s net worth.”

  “Wow.” Laurel flopped against the chair back. “Did Jeff agree to that?”

  Olivia shook her head again. “He didn’t know anything about it until the day of the accident.” She started to cry. “After leaving you guys and spending time with Joey, I was determined to convince Jeff to settle down and be a father.”

  Laurel handed Olivia a tissue, and she took a moment to pull herself together.

  “He was furious about the baby. But when I told him it would be all right because I had filed a suit against Hudson, his entire face changed. He swerved the car to the shoulder and raved for about ten minutes. At one point, he twisted sideways and grabbed my shoulders. Something snapped inside him in that moment. He actually got tears in his eyes.”

  “I don’t care about his feelings. Was he abusive to you?”

  “Not physically. His weapon of choice was silence.” She wiped her own eyes again and continued. “But this fight was different. Afterwards, he laid his head on the steering wheel and rolled it back and forth for a long time. I just sat there, worried he was having a nervous breakdown. Then he sat up, looked at me, and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”

  “This what?” Laurel asked as she leaned forward, closer to Olivia.

  Olivia shrugged as new tears fell. “He just kept repeating that, and then he opened the car door and walked away.”

  “Onto the highway?”

  Olivia nodded. “Across traffic. I think he was trying to get to the opposite lanes to hitchhike a ride away from me.”

  “And that’s when—”

  Olivia broke down again. “I caused this. I pushed him too far, and I’ve blamed everything on Hudson.”

  Laurel offered a half-smile. “I don’t know anything about your past. It’s just that … none of this sounds like Hudson. He doesn’t seem very concerned about money, and betraying friends doesn’t sound like something he would do either.”

  “No. No, it doesn’t.” Olivia’s head fell into her hands.

  “Call your attorney. See if you can put a hold on that suit.”

  “All my contact info and notes were on my old phone. I don’t remember the name of the firm or the attorney’s number.”

  “Oh, dear.” Laurel went to the bedroom and retrieved the laptop for Olivia, who opened it and powered it up.

  “I’ll try searching the web for sleazy attorneys.”

  “It’ll be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

  Olivia offered her a lopsided grin and nodded. “Then we’d better get started.”

  7

  Forty-three text messages and countless emails were waiting for Hudson when he awoke in his hotel suite. He handled what he could from his phone, but he was both relieved and disheartened when the computer and phone he ordered for Olivia arrived by courier. She would now have the last things she needed. It was time for him to step back from her life and return to his.

  He jumped in his SUV and headed for the beach house. It would be a quick visit, a chance to say goodbye before he returned to work. He knew he was fooling himself into thinking he could walk away easily and unaffected. But he had done what he could. The rest would be up to her. And the future? That would be up to her as well.

  Laurel answered his knock and seemed startled by his arrival. “Oh! You’re here!” She glanced back at Olivia, who Hudson could see was at the table, up to her eyebrows in a bowl of some concoction. Spread before her were spices and sugars. “We’re, uh … just finishing up something before taking the beach chair for a test ride.”

  “Yes. Thank you so much for the chair, Hudson. It’s … it’s incredibly thoughtful,” she rambled, as she blew an errant strand of hair from her eyes because her good arm and fingers were busily engaged in an attempt to hide the containers. When the hair refused to comply, her face scrunched, and she committed two reddened fingers to the task of taming it, all the while continuing the conversation. “We’ve been charging the battery for a few hours now.” She placed a tea towel over the mess and wheeled herself away from the table and toward Hudson.

  His knees felt like gelatin as he took in Olivia’s present state—the fading blue-green bruises and two bandaged wounds on her face accented by a red spice mix splotch on her forehead that matched her reddened fingers. A mussed ponytail framed her playful face, and his mother’s now red-stained apron covered her like a shield. He felt his heart slam to a near stop as the moment transported him back eleven years. All that was missing were his parents and a stack of ribs on the counter.

  His lips felt thick and sluggish as he tried to return her small talk. “You’re very welcome.” He glanced back at the table of ingredients. “Is that Mom’s rib rub you’re making?”

  Olivia’s shoulders slumped. She glanced at Laurel and said, “You’ve done so much for me, and by helping me, you’ve helped Laurel, so we wanted to make you a thank-you dinner. I remembered how much you loved ribs and where your mother kept her cookbook with the recipe for the rub.” Her eyes grew wide, and she paled. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Can you stay for dinner tonight?” asked Laurel.

  He remembered the evening flight he’d had Alejandra arrange. “Possibly.” Did he want to get more invested here? A conspicuous silence set in before the gears of his mind began turning again. “I, uh, I brought a laptop for you.” He carried it to the table and set it down beside his own. “Do you need to transfer any files before I take mine back?”

  “No. Since I had reliable Internet access, I saved everything to the cloud this time, but thank you for letting me borrow it. Do you have a project for me? I’m ready to get to work.”

  His gaze moved to her restrained arm. “Are you really?”

  “Yes, I am. Really.”

  “Okay. Then show me what you’ve got.”

  She straightened to her maximum height in the chair. “You’re making me interview? You of all people know what I can do.”

  He sensed something more than pride in her response, so he dug in to see where the subject would lead. “You said you want to pay me back. Well, if you want to work for The Bauer Group, you need to interview.”

  Her head drew back. “I was volunteering to work on one of your humanitarian projects.”

  “Well, I’m offering you a job with a salary instead.”

  “You want me to work for you?” Her lips drew tight, and her eyes darkened. “So we’ve come full circle, right back where we began. Fine, then.” She wheeled to the table Laurel had cleared and wiped down. Laurel handed her a clean rag to wipe her hands on; then Olivia turned on the new laptop. “Is the password the same as the one on yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’m in. What task would you like me to perform?”

  Hudson at least knew where her anger was aimed—at The Bauer Group. But why? He played on. “We’re sponsoring some microbusinesses in Lebanon. How about framing a website for them?” He pulled a memory stick from his pocket and handed it to her. “Open the file titled ‘Rashaya.’ There are photos you can use. Dazzle me,” he sniped back.

  With her left arm in a sling, the work proved tedious, but she used a platform with pre-made backgrounds, and soon a tidy, functional site began to emerge. The resulting work disappointed Hudson, who knew that anyone could cut and paste images and links together to form a working web page. It took artistry to personalize a site, to evoke emotion in visitors so they became intimately invested. Liz had o
nce possessed such skills.

  Once her background was set, Olivia opened the photos of the refugees. Hudson watched her very visage fill with compassion as she studied each haunting image of survivors of the Syrian War. She chose several, placing them on the landing page, and soon the cold, functional electronic palette reflected the emotion Hudson saw etched on Liv’s face.

  Her work drew him closer until he was collaborating on the project. “We need investors and mentors,” he muttered, thinking aloud to himself.

  “So this is really a fundraising vehicle.”

  Her voice became as soft as velour, and Hudson knew the photos of ragged men, women, and children were responsible for the change. “Not exactly. Attracting mentors is more critical.”

  “Then we should use some of these other photos.” She opened another screen and pointed to several images from the many pictured. “These characterize the people and their handicrafts.”

  “I agree,” said Hudson, as he sat beside her, introducing her to the people in the images. “Their stories are all so compelling. You’re bringing them to life, Liv.”

  He noticed the color warming Olivia’s cheeks, and in an instant, he was eighteen again, working beside the awkward coed from his stat class. Her beauty and intelligence had not dimmed, but there was a new strength and grit to Liv now, and his proximity to her brought a return of the ache that sent him running first to Columbia University and then Mexico eight years ago, places that didn’t remind him of, or smell like Liv. He dug his nails into his hand hard enough to cause pain, to break the spell and set his attention back on the screen.

  An hour passed in a blink before Liv pushed back from the table to stretch her back. “It’s coming along,” she said, as if to distract attention from her physical discomfort. “If I can copy the files from that thumb drive, I’ll have this ready for prime time in a few days.”

  Hudson didn’t mention her obvious pain. “Go ahead. This is beautiful work, Liv. You haven’t lost your touch. In fact, you’ve actually improved over the years.”