Love in San Francisco ; Unconditionally

by Shirley Hailstock

  “It’s a Dechamps. Can you taste the floral note in the finish?”

  Maya had looked at the stately wine bottle with its gold lettering, then taken a sip. She’d tilted her head. “Mmm. Not really. But I like it.” Rick had shoved his nose in the glass again and was swishing the liquid around and around dramatically when he jerked his head up. His brow had cocked, making Maya feel she had just given the teacher the wrong answer. She shrugged. “I’m more of a beer girl.” Rick’s eyes had widened. Thankfully, they had been interrupted by the appetizers.

  “An early flight,” he said on a sigh, pulling his hands from her body. He straightened and she took him in again, wondering if she was making a mistake. It had been a long time since she’d felt the weight of a man, and there were nights when her body seemed to be torturing her to just “go get some.” She wished she could be that girl sometimes, like tonight, when Rick looked strong and very capable of giving her some. “Maybe it’s best. I have a job interview in the morning.”

  “Leaving the firm?” she said neutrally on an inner sigh of relief.

  “Maybe. A new opportunity popped up.” He kissed her again, his hands on her face and in her hair. That was another thing: she’d gotten highlights a week before, turning her dark hair into a dynamic display of caramel-colored waves. He hadn’t noticed.

  Not completely immune to his kiss, the lower half of her pulsed, and she imagined her inner self jumping up and down and shooting flares into the air for some much-needed attention. Should she just go for it? There was a supplicant look in his eye, and on impulse, she shoved open her door with her shoulder and raised her hand to invite him in.

  “Don’t women like you do this all the time?”

  Her head jerked. Which did she address first? Women like her or do this all the time? She went with the latter. “Do what?”

  “Random sex.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re single, successful and obviously averse to getting married—”

  “What?” Maya’s voice rang down the hall. “I’m not averse to marriage. Why would you say that?”

  “Look, I’m not judging. I’m a feminist, too.” Maya’s head snapped back, but he continued. “You can’t hold a career like yours and have a husband and kids.”

  “Yes, I damn well can,” she said. She thought of her other neighbors, who were both doctors with two kids. The bags under their eyes were permanent, but they made it work. “Where is this coming from?”

  “You’re holding out because you think it will make me come back for more or respect you or whatever, but I’m telling you now that we aren’t on track for marriage. My wife isn’t going to have a career. But we could be on track for casual sex, which fits into your lifestyle.”

  She was floored, and struggled to put thoughts and words together.

  “Wow, Rick, you’re more of an idiot than I thought you were.”

  “You’re not getting my—”

  “Oh, I get it.” Her gaze flicked across the hall, where Chris and Christopher’s door was almost imperceptibly ajar. “You think I’m following ‘the rules’ or some kind of mantrap etiquette. No, I just don’t want to sleep with you. You’re not good enough for this random sex chick, so lose my number and have a good night.”

  She slammed the door in his face, then listened for the elevator doors to close. Insistent banging followed. She opened the door, knowing exactly who it was.

  There stood Chris and Christopher in fuzzy slippers with Shania and a bottle of rosé. Crying was not Maya’s thing, but one tear did slide down her cheek.

  * * *

  Two months later, Maya whizzed her Range Rover off the 405 highway, turned up the music when Britney came on the station and swerved to a screeching halt in front of her office building.

  She sang aloud, gyrating in her seat as she turned the car off and kept the radio on. She just wanted to savor the moment. First the phone call last night from the CEO to come in a little early for a meeting, then the zero traffic, and now Britney was on the radio? It was a sign that today was her day. She could tell by Dave’s voice that he had good news, that he’d taken their meeting from over a month ago to heart.

  As lead consultant for their largest client, SuperFoods, she saw potential for a combined consumer goods division, taking all of their applicable clients and assigning them specialized attention from a larger team under one chief—her.

  She’d provided Dave with a PowerPoint presentation of her ten years of achievements, a ladder plan on how to grow the business and why he should promote her to executive vice president of consumer goods. Having such an amazing work distraction right now would be great, since her search for a significant other had stalled after her last online dating disaster, Rick, and she’d been gun-shy about tapping that app again.

  Whatever. She couldn’t think about it now. Now she was going to go into the office and become a boss. The trophy husband could come later. She readjusted the rearview mirror and relined her lips: Boss Red.

  Oops, I did it again. I got that promotion. “Hi Chrissy!” She waved to her colleague’s associate account exec as she strode by her car. I’m gonna be your boss. Mhmm, mhmm.

  Maya got out of her car and brushed wrinkles from her pants, then she plopped her Jimmy Choos to the asphalt and slipped them on, noticing an obnoxious red Lamborghini a few spaces away. Maybe she should get a red Range Rover: Boss Red.

  She was still humming when she plopped her things in her office and knocked on Dave’s closed office door.

  “Come in,” Maya heard through the mahogany. With a smile, she turned the knob.

  “Good morning, Dave.” Her smile faltered. Dave was sitting at his desk, while a light-haired man sat across from him. “Oh, sorry. I thought you said come in.” The man was staring at her and recognition flashed in Maya’s mind. Rick? The jerk she’d dated just months ago. Rick the di—

  “Don’t be shy. Have a seat.” Dave smiled. “I want you to meet someone. This is Richard Shade. Rick, this is Maya. She’s the one who came up with the idea to consolidate the division. SuperFoods is our best client because of her. I want you two to really make this division soar.”

  “It’s great to meet you, Maya.” Rick kept it neutral as they shook hands, but his gaze held a sickening glint.

  “And you, Rick.” She tried to keep the sneer from her voice and focus on what the hell was going on. She turned to Dave. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. How are we working together?”

  “Rick is going to head the division as executive vice president...” Her ears actually shut down. As did her facial functions. But she was blinking. A lot. “He’ll be accompanying you on your trip to New York next week so you can introduce him to SuperFoods.”

  Several responses flickered in her mind. In the first, she let out a string of curse words with her middle fingers up in the air. In the next, she puked all over Rick and his shiny shoes. Another had her screaming at the top of her lungs, running down the hall and bashing Rick’s car with a baseball bat.

  “Oh. That sounds great,” she managed, nodding like an idiot. “Well, I should get back to work. Welcome aboard, Rick!” she said too loudly, with a plastic smile.

  Somehow the hallway to her office stretched a million miles.

  “Maya? You okay? He just told you, didn’t he?” Dave’s executive assistant, Carol, stood with a concerned look on her face. Carol was like the office mother. She knew everything and she took care of the employees, acting as confidante and guide. But, at the end of the day, she worked for Dave.

  “You knew about this and didn’t tell me?”

  She looked stricken. “It happened quicker than you think. He considered you, Maya. He did.”

  “I know that guy, Carol. I dated him!” She frowned.

  Carol’s brows rose. “That’s not Rick the d—”

  “In the flesh.”
<
br />   “Oh, no. The one who—”

  “Yep.” Maya turned toward her office, wondering how her life had gone from Boss Red to shit brown in twenty minutes.

  To make matters worse, Rick stood in her office thirty minutes later offering her a gourmet cup full of shit-brown coffee he’d ordered on his expense account. There for a minute, and he’d already been set up with an expense account? She wanted to throw it in his face. Instead, she smiled and reached for the cup.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem. They are still setting up my laptop, so I thought it would be a good time to talk. You look well.”

  “Thank you.” Her record needle was stuck. When she stayed silent, he lowered his lids and leaned forward.

  “Look, I know we didn’t part well, but I want you to know it’s water under the bridge. I really liked your presentation.” God help her. “Great ideas. I mean, the ladder plan was aggressive and there is no way you can hit those numbers in a year—” She wished she had an electrocute button attached to his chair. “—but with some tweaks I made, Dave is totally on board. I’ll email you a copy. We can do this. Together.” Maya sipped her coffee, praying she was dreaming.

  He looked at his watch. “Well, I have a breakfast with the chiefs. We’ll touch base before New York.”

  “Thank you,” Maya gritted out as he sauntered out of the office. She sipped her coffee, annoyed that he remembered how she took it. One sugar, no cream. She should hand in her two weeks’ notice. She should get up and walk out. She should—

  “Hey, Maya, this package was delivered to the legal department, but I think it’s for you.” Jen, the head of their legal team, slapped the package on Maya’s desk with a thud. It looked like it weighed a hundred pounds, was stamped like it had been around the world twice and was torn open at the top. “I didn’t mean to read it,” she apologized.

  “What is it?”

  Jen hesitated, and Maya gave her friend a confused look. They had both started at the company around the same time, which had led to them being friends outside of work as well. “Some of it is in French, but from what I could make out, I think it’s an inheritance.” Maya’s mouth turned down as she reached for the package and pulled out reams of paper with tiny writing. It definitely looked legal. “I—I think someone died,” Jen stammered.

  * * *

  It was an unseasonably warm March day in Paris. Normally Nicolas Rayo would have taken a long lunch with a friend; instead, he sat on the other side of the desk of James T. Bauer, Esq., and tried to focus. Albert Belcourt was dead. It still didn’t seem real, and yet there he was, listening to the last will and testament of the man who had been not only a business partner, but a second father.

  The old lawyer adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “To Luca Nicolas Rayo Dechamps I leave my wine collection, valued at two million euro. Your father and I curated it together, and with him gone, I know of no one else who could take better care of it.”

  Nic smiled in spite of his sadness. The collection held several of the first wines Nic’s father, Gabriel, and Albert had ever produced. Speaking of... “Can we get to the part about the business?”

  James shifted uncomfortably. “In a minute, there is more I must read.”

  James droned on in legalese and Nic took a patient breath, wondering if his father and Albert were looking down on him from their vineyard in the sky, laughing.

  In their twenties, Albert and Gabriel had built a successful vineyard, selling their grapes to France’s most prominent winemakers. Eventually their vineyard grew into a wine brokerage, selling not just their own grapes, but selling and buying grapes for other wineries.

  “This will be yours one day. Hard work will keep you honest,” his father had always said in response to Nic’s refusal to go into the family business. Sure, wine was in Nic’s blood. Gabe had been a vintner, Nic’s uncle and cousins were vintners and his mother was a sommelier. But Nic had taken his own path into real estate, eventually investing in a hotel. He was successful, despite his father’s refusal to consider buying and selling buildings as “hard work.” Seven years ago, when Gabe had passed away and left his only son half the business, Nic assumed it was his father’s last effort to “keep him honest.”

  Nic was pulled from his thoughts by a change in James’s voice. “I also bequeath to Nic my art collection with the hopes he will cherish it.” The lawyer looked up from the pages. “There is a notation that if you don’t want the paintings, they can be given to a museum.”

  “I want the paintings,” Nic murmured, wishing James kept a stocked minibar in his office.

  Albert had welcomed Nic as an equal partner when Gabe passed, but Nic had given up his voting rights to act as a silent partner. His activity in the business had been minimal until a few yeas ago, when the landscape of the wine industry began to change and the brokerage took its first loss. Plus, Albert had been getting older, slowing down, so Nic had taken on a little more each day. Gabe would have been proud—running two businesses was hard work. But, without Albert, that model was no longer sustainable, which meant something had to give. Unfortunately, his numbers told him that liability was the vineyard, and if he could put that in someone else’s hands, then he could hire someone to manage the brokerage. He just needed to take over Albert’s shares.

  So there Nic was, waiting to hear that sole ownership of the business Albert and Gabriel had built from nothing would be dropped into his lap like a hot potato.

  “And last but not least, to Nic, who was like a second son to me, I leave my Oscar Wilde first editions.”

  James pulled his glasses from his nose, closed his folder and then smiled under his thick moustache. “There you are, my boy.”

  Nic frowned. “There I am what?”

  “Your inheritance. That’s all for you.”

  “That’s all? You haven’t even mentioned the business. My shares of the business.” Nic tried to keep a handle on his rising voice.

  “Oh, right...right.” James opened his folder and flipped back through the pages. Nic leaned forward, ready to jump up and leave when the shares were declared his.

  The lawyer cleared his throat. “Yes, now it seems that Albert had bequeathed his shares of the business to his only daughter, her identity to be revealed only if she decides to accept the offer. If she refuses, the shares are to go to the next living partner, which is you.”

  Nic’s mouth dropped as he processed what he’d just heard. “Daughter?” He leaned forward. “A daughter? Albert doesn’t have a daughter,” he murmured as he ran a hand through his black hair. Nic whirled on James, who was tidying his mustache in the reflection of his business card case. “Does he?”

  “He does. I have initiated contact with her and will be in touch about her decision. But it seems unlikely that a young woman with no knowledge of her father would take on his business. Preposterous, really. If you’re lucky she’ll just say no. Which is what I expect. But if she has any business savvy at all—”

  “She’ll want payment for the shares,” Nic interrupted.

  “Exactly.”

  “Draw up the paperwork.”

  “Excuse me?” James blustered.

  “Albert clearly wants his daughter to have something of his. It wouldn’t be right to just take the shares. I’ll offer to buy them.”

  “That might be quite expensive.”

  “I’ll make it back, and then some. I have a plan, and it doesn’t involve a partner. Call me when you know something.”

  The busy streets of Paris were like a blur as he marched past the cafés and boutiques of the Marais. Not even the smell of the street crepes could pull him from his thoughts. He wasn’t sure if he was angry or sad, shocked or resigned. A daughter? It didn’t make sense. That business should be his. He wasn’t going to let some stranger get her hands on it. How could Albert do that to him? Nic stared into the dista
nce, focusing on nothing. How could Albert just up and die on him?

  And there it was again, that tightening in his chest. He needed a drink.

  Correction, several drinks.

  Copyright © 2019 by Tamara Lynch

  ISBN-13: 9781488034312

  Love in San Francisco & Unconditionally

  Copyright © 2019 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  Love in San Francisco

  Copyright © 2019 by Shirley Hailstock

  Unconditionally

  Copyright © 2019 by Janice Sims

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