by T. J. Kline
He saw the same haunted pain in Leah’s eyes. She had fought a war of her own and was trying to hide it. It explained so many of her reactions, and overreactions. Gage slumped into the leather couch in the center of the cabin living space and rubbed a hand over his eyes. Or he was reading far too much into things and she was just a bitch.
But he didn’t think so.
His cell phone rang from the kitchen counter where he’d left it, and Gage rose with a sigh. Glancing at the screen, he saw his partner’s number, dragging him back to his own problems and his own dire circumstances. He thought about declining the call again, but ignoring the issue wasn’t making it any better. It was simply making his partners more adamant about reaching him. He couldn’t continue to avoid them forever.
Before he could change his mind, Gage swiped his finger across the screen. “Hey, Georgie.”
“Gage, where the hell are you?”
“I told you I was coming to visit my brother and his family for a while.”
“You screwed up and then left us to deal with the media frenzy that followed, not to mention the lawsuits coming in right and left. You’re the face of this company, you should be the one doing these news conferences.”
The pulse in his temple pounded, and Gage felt the tension build in his shoulders. George wasn’t wrong. The two of them had built this company from scratch, starting with a few small software programs in college and expanding until they’d practically formed a security software empire. Until last year.
“George, we both know you’re not doing the news conferences either, so don’t try to bullshit me. That’s why we hired good lawyers.” He sighed. “And now that two of the companies have settled out of court, they’re all going to follow suit.”
“And what’s that going to cost us? Masters and Cooper are going nuts right now. They want your head, Gage, and I can only hold them off for so long. You can’t just skip out on this. This isn’t like you.” His voice sounded desperate, pleading.
They’d known each other long enough for George to tell there was far more to this than just Gage running away. He was hiding like a coward, afraid to admit to this mistake, let alone confess it to the world. As long as he remained out of sight, Gage could let someone else remedy the situation, and once the worst blew over, he could return to face the reality, or not.
“I’m sure they do, but they’re going to have to wait until I get back.”
“And when will that be?”
“A few weeks.”
“Weeks?” George cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, it sounded like you said a few weeks. I know that can’t be right.”
“I’m visiting my brother and his family. You remember? My new niece. You guys are just going to have to handle things until I get back.”
Gage hoped George only heard the calm determination in his voice. He didn’t want him to hear the shame ringing in it, nor did he want him to point out the disgrace Gage had brought upon them both.
Silence echoed through the receiver. Gage wondered, briefly, if the call had been disconnected when he heard George take a deep breath.
“Maybe Masters and Cooper aren’t too far off the mark, Gage. If you don’t care enough to be here to resolve this in person, maybe it’s time for us to go our separate ways.”
Chapter Five
AFTER TWO DAYS of an equestrian crash course with Jessie, Leah could barely walk the short distance from the barn to her house without limping. What she needed was a long soak in a warm bath. Leah brushed her bangs back from her eyes, wrinkling her nose at the sweat she could feel on her cheeks and the back of her neck. No, what she really wanted was to relax in Jessie’s pool. She’d made the offer the night of Leah’s welcome party, insisting it was there for anyone and that they considered Leah part of the family, but Leah hadn’t dared take her up on the offer.
Family.
Leah scoffed at the thought. She’d never had any family to speak of. For most of her childhood, it had only been her and her mother. After what that woman had done to her, if that was what it meant to be part of a family, she’d rather do without.
At the same time, the idea of belonging, of being wanted, tugged at her core, making her heart ache with loneliness. She’d always wanted those things, wanted someone to see her as valuable and worthy of love. She’d thought she’d found it when Child Protective Services had finally removed her from her mother’s machinations and put her into her first foster home, but she realized quickly that she was only a means to an end there as well.
Her first foster mother was a nice woman with high ideals, but she hadn’t been prepared to cope with the emotional trauma of a ten-year-old girl who’d endured the kind of abuse Leah had. The homes she’d bounced in and out of afterward hadn’t even cared enough to try. Most of them had either been content to collect their monthly checks and drop her off at therapy or just ignore her altogether.
It wasn’t until her high school counselor, Nicole Campbell, had pulled her into her office after Leah had broken into her algebra teacher’s car and had sex with a boy in the parking lot, that she’d finally felt like someone cared about her or her future. It had taken Nicole only ten minutes of really listening to Leah to hear the cry for help below the surface of her tough words. Within just a few weeks of constant pursuit, Nicole finally broke through. When she offered a room in her home, Leah jumped at the opportunity. It wasn’t exactly a chance to start over, but with strict boundaries enforced, Nicole had turned Leah’s life around and had given direction to a sixteen-year-old kid hell-bent on destroying her life. Losing Nicole to breast cancer just before her high school graduation had been the most painful experience of Leah’s life—more than the abuse, the rejection, or the loss of her childhood. It had also been the day she decided to close herself off from caring about anyone that much again. Caring meant getting hurt.
“Hey, where are you running off to?”
Leah spun at the sound of Jessie’s voice. As kind and welcoming as Jessie had been, she was still Leah’s boss, and it wasn’t a fact Leah was likely to ignore anytime soon, regardless of how often Jessie insisted she should.
“I was going to shower, but if you need me for something, I can stay.”
“No, it’s fine, but don’t you want to go for a swim?” Leah shrugged and Jessie shook her head. “I just wanted to make sure to tell you we have a group of boys coming this weekend.”
Leah’s eyes widened instinctively as she realized this was the first opportunity she’d have to prove her value to the ranch. She needed this to go well, or Jessie might decide to buy her out of her contract.
“Don’t look so worried. It’s only four boys, and they’re only staying through the weekend. All you’ll need to do is a couple of team-building exercises for them, highlighting the benefits of working together, cooperation, not killing one another, that sort of thing.” Jessie’s eyes glimmered with humor, but Leah wasn’t sure she was joking. “These are all boys Chase has been working with. They’re in the system but not considered high-risk.”
“Oh, okay.” She bit the corner of her lower lip, wondering which exercises might work best for the group. “I guess I could plan a morning session where we—”
Jessie laughed and grasped her by the shoulders. “Don’t stress yourself out over this, Leah. Nathan will be there to help with them in the morning when they do chores, and we’ll take a ride to The Ridge. We’ll manage lunch after. I’m betting you and I can come up with something fun for them to do. We’ll reserve some time after dinner to get them to open up and talk as a group, once you get to know them. It won’t be anything too formal this time around.”
Leah nearly breathed a sigh of relief, her shoulders drooping as she released the tension that had been building. Most programs she’d applied to wanted a structured program that would adhere to rigid guidelines, but from the way Jessie was describing things, she wanted something organic. It would require more skill and finesse on Leah’s part, an ability to read the boys and their
needs in the moment, but would give the participants a far greater sense of being heard and understood. It surprised her again to find such a forward-thinking facility.
“You really just want me to let them talk?” Leah shook her head in disbelief. “Are you sure you don’t want me doing something a bit more . . . clinical? You’re paying me an awful lot to just listen.”
“Not when you think about everything you’re giving up. You’re committing to this ranch for five years, Leah. We’ve worked our way through a lot of applications to find just the right person that we thought would fit our program. It means the world to me and Nathan that you believe in what we’re doing here enough to put your life on hold.”
Leah lifted a shoulder. She wasn’t about to tell Jessie she hadn’t really had a life before accepting this job. Everything up until this point had been just stepping stones to land a position even half as promising as this one was. She wasn’t sure why others hadn’t jumped at the chance.
“I appreciate you both giving me the opportunity.”
She couldn’t help the doubts that crept into her mind. What if she couldn’t connect with these kids? What if she could and everyone figured out why? No one knew about her past. Her mother was in jail and would be for the next fifteen years, at least, and no one else cared enough to look for her. This was the new start she’d always prayed for, the second chance to find a life free from the shackles of her past.
Jessie smiled at her, cocking her head to one side, her long, dark ponytail flipping over her shoulder. “We’re happy you see it as an opportunity. I know it’s a lot of work, more than just sitting in an office at a desk seeing patients, but we hope you’ll find it worth the effort.”
A soft, muffled mew sounded from their left and Jessie paused, listening.
“What’s that?” Leah walked toward the sound.
“One of the barn cats must have kittens nearby.”
Jessie crossed her arms and waited for Leah at the porch steps. Leah had expected her to follow and try to find the source of the sound—it was her ranch and kittens, after all—but Jessie didn’t seem fazed and let Leah search for the kittens alone. Making her way around to the side of the patio, she continued to hear the soft mew but couldn’t locate the source.
“Here, kitty,” she called, squatting down in hopes the animal might come to her. With several shrubs around the edge of the house, it was likely it was a litter behind the plants.
“Don’t worry, Leah,” Jessie called from around the corner. “The mom won’t go far. She probably went hunting and left her babies under your porch where they’d be safe.”
Leah tried to move the bush aside, peering through the branches to find the kitten, but she couldn’t see anything in the dark recesses of the shrubbery. As much as she wanted to continue trying to find the poor thing, Leah figured Jessie knew better than she did. The only time she’d ever been around cats were the strays in the alley near where she grew up. She rose and made her way back to the front of the house.
“I leave food and water for them in the barns, so they’ll be fine,” Jessie said.
Leah glanced back over her shoulder at the side of the house and thought she saw a small pair of eyes peering out at her, but they were gone too quickly for her to be sure.
“What do you say we go to my office and look over the files for the boys before they arrive, so we can coordinate our efforts between the sessions with me and the horses and their evening sessions with you?”
Leah could feel herself slipping into her doctor mode, ready to read the background on each teen, so she’d know exactly what sort of issues she’d be facing when she met with each boy. This was her comfort zone, where she excelled. While she wasn’t about to let anyone know why she was so good at her job, she was eager for them to see just how good at it she could be. She would help these kids realize how much control and power they had over their lives, even facing desperate and hopeless circumstances, the same way her mentor had with her.
“Lead the way.”
GAGE FELT LIKE he was drowning in recriminations. He’d finally contacted his team of attorneys today, only to be told that his mistake was going to cost the company nearly twenty million in settlements. They hadn’t been prepared to take a hit like this. It was going to set them back by almost ten years in research and technological advances, unless they cut costs somewhere else in the budget.
A quick call to George had made one thing clear: Masters and Cooper were adamant that the cuts come from staff layoffs. George, on the other hand, wanted to figure out another way and needed Gage, as CEO, to back him against the other two.
Now, not only was he faced with a twenty-million-dollar mistake on his head, Gage could be the reason nearly four hundred of their employees were laid off. Logically, it was a simple decision that would solve every issue they faced. If he sided with Masters and Cooper, they could put the entire mess behind them.
But the decision wasn’t as simple as it sounded. These were good people, with families, people who had worked with him for years, helping to build this company into what it was today. These were people who had taken a chance on the new start-up, entrusting their livelihood to two graduate students. The risk had been accepted years ago and should have passed by now. These families should be celebrating security now; some of them were nearly retirement age. It was wrong to let them go simply because he’d made an error. It was Gage’s mistake, not theirs, and now, the company would recover but those four hundred employees might not. He didn’t want to punish their loyalty and betray them so that he didn’t lose money. But, if he didn’t, there might not be an Iconics if he couldn’t figure out a way to recover.
Gage couldn’t live with himself if he backed Cooper and Masters, even if it meant saving his own reputation. He had to figure out another way.
A quiet knock at the door jerked him back to his present, where he was busy wallowing in self-pity on the queen-sized bed in the cabin. Closing down his email and setting his laptop to the side, he headed for the door wearing nothing but his sweatpants.
He opened it to see Leah leaving. “Did you knock?”
“Um, yeah.” She hesitated as her gaze slid over him, looking like she’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
He stepped out onto the small porch when she retreated like she was about to leave. “Did you need something?”
Leah took another step down the stairs, away from him, her gaze cutting back toward her place. “I . . . no, never mind.” She’d barely made it a few more steps to her house when she turned around, suddenly far more confident than she had been just a moment ago. “Milk. Do you have any?”
“I should. Come in while I look.” She followed him but paused at the doorway, her eyes wary. “It’s okay to come inside, Leah. I won’t bite.” She leaned against his doorway, trying to appear nonchalant, but he could read the trepidation in the depths of her eyes. “Suit yourself.”
He had enough concerns weighing heavily on him without worrying about what this woman thought of him, too. Frustration made him clench his jaw. He didn’t need to care about her opinion, but he did. She’d completely avoided him over the past few days, since he’d brought her groceries, making sure they were never in the same vicinity, and when they were, she barely maintained civility in spite of his attempts at friendliness.
Gage reached for the milk in his refrigerator and turned his back to her to open the cupboard. “You need a little or a lot?”
When she didn’t answer, he faced her, grinning when he saw the blush creep over her cheeks as he caught her staring at his him, her eyes darker than usual. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she found him attractive.
Leah quickly looked away and took a deep breath. “I’m . . . I’m not sure. It’s not for me.”
He slid the plastic jug onto the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, now I’m curious.”
She pushed herself from the doorjamb. “I think I have some kittens under my ho
use. They keep meowing, but I can’t find them. Jessie said the mother was probably nearby, but they haven’t stopped crying all afternoon.” Gage slid the milk jug back into the shelf on the door of the refrigerator. “What are you doing?”
“It’s an old wives’ tale. Milk isn’t good for cats.”
He walked into his room, plucked the T-shirt from the end of the bed, and slid his feet into sneakers. Pulling the shirt over his head, he walked past her out the front door. He really didn’t need to get involved. He doubted she’d even appreciate this, but Gage tried to convince himself that he wasn’t trying to impress an unimpressible woman. He was simply trying to save the kittens. Too bad even he wasn’t buying it.
THE MAN NEARLY took her breath away. Watching Gage move through his kitchen with no shirt practically made her mouth water. The muscles of his back and chest looked chiseled from granite. When he’d turned and faced her, her heart dropped to her toes before bouncing back up to her stomach to roll and tumble, making her feel dizzy.
This wasn’t who she was. She didn’t swoon or get light-headed, and she didn’t like the way her body reacted to being near him. She had no use for men, hadn’t since she was a little girl and realized how easily manipulated they were. But Gage wasn’t acting the way she was accustomed to, and she was having a difficult time fighting the way this man seemed to make every cell in her body spark to life. She wanted to run toward him and away from him simultaneously, the conflicting reactions making her confused and irrational. Which might explain the antagonism that seemed to overflow from her whenever they spoke. She’d spent too many years perfecting her jaded apathy to let this one man get under her skin.
“Where do you think you’re going? I just asked if you had milk, not for your help. Contrary to what you might think, I have survived this long without you.”
Gage stopped so quickly she nearly ran into the back of him and threw her hands up to stop herself. When they landed on the wall of muscle, somewhere deep inside her, she felt the desire to slide her hands down his back. The corded muscles under her hands no longer reminded her of stone. He was warm, living breathing masculine perfection. She jumped backward, unwilling to allow herself to acknowledge even a moment of desire.
