Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
“I need to go. I’ll come find you this afternoon when I get back to the office.” I start to turn, and Bella catches my arm. My gaze lands searchingly on her face and she jerks her hand back.
“I’m sorry. I told you the touching thing is a thing for me.”
“Just never with me.”
“Because the desk is always between us,” she says, her voice soft, free of confrontation, but there is a vulnerability to her in that moment that reminds me she is human, sweet, and caring. Things I can never be. I will hurt her if either of us gives me the chance.
“I’m just being me,” she says, “and—”
“Then go with that, Bella. Be you and you will win, which means Dash will win.” I turn away from her and start walking before I’m the one who touches her this time. Because I have more than a little to communicate with Bella, all of it naked.
Chapter Twenty
Tyler
The offices of Jones, Jackson, and Withers are only a mile from Hawk Legal.
By the time I’m pulling into the parking garage of the building, I have a text message from Bella waiting on me. Michael Sumner is the new CEO, her message reads. And thank you again, Tyler.
It’s an impersonal message but everything with Bella feels personal these days, including Michael Sumner threatening Dash’s deal. Ironically, and outside the taboo employee situation, Dash is a friend who has known me at my worst. He’d never want me with Bella and most likely we’d come to blows. Because he’d never think me good enough for her and he wouldn’t be wrong.
I forward the new studio head’s name to Dierk Jordan, who is my fix-it guy. Dierk is ex-special ops, turned CIA. He retired when something he calls “dirty” pushed him too far. It must have been really fucking dirty, because Dierk likes his work dirty. He does what no one else can do. Just for good measure, I also send the name to Reid Archer, my CFO at Hawk Legal, and a former classmate at Yale. We lost touch for seven years and one day, I walked into a meeting with a financial firm, and he was there. It was clear his knowledge of most things reached beyond our years.
One piece of advice my father gave me rings true: surround yourself with people who know more than you, and you’ll create a winning team. You’ll also eventually know what they know, if you make the effort to ensure you learn from them.
Reid is one of those people, and I credit myself for bringing him on board at Hawk Legal. In his area of expertise, he knows more than me. When I learn what he knows, he tops his experience off with more experience and more knowledge. And he’s proven to me time and time again that he’ll use that knowledge to my benefit. I take good care of Reid. He takes good care of me. And I trust Reid when I trust only a few people.
A few minutes later, I’m sitting in a private office lined with books, expensive paintings, and enough new-smelling leather to suffocate me and everyone else who visits. If I’m going to get drunk on a smell, I’d rather it be Bella’s sweet, floral scent, no matter how damn hard it gets me. Not the preferences of my father’s attorney sitting across me, studying documents he should be explaining to me.
Withers is an older man, with thick gray hair and ten years on my father, though he’s still fit and able-bodied despite the cast that speaks to his recent skiing accident. He is, or was, my father’s Reid. My father trusted him. I’m not sure that plays out well in my favor, but then nothing in the will my father wrote can be changed at this point. It is what it is. The words are written in stone unless I go to court and unwrite it, and that’s a tough, public battle. Exactly why I pray my father did right by me in death when he never did right by me in life.
With a tap-tap of the upright folder on the table, Withers clears his throat and fixes his stare on me. His eyes are thick with what I can only call dread. I am not going to like what he has to say, nevertheless, I have to hear it.
“Just get to it,” I urge.
“I know this process has been uniquely structured, but I do want to assure you your father had a logical purpose for the delay.”
A muscle in my jaw tics at the ridiculous statement. Logic was never the motivation my father used when punishing me, which was a daily ordeal. “And that would be what?”
“He wanted you to have time to emotionally cope with his death before you took on the challenges he’s made to your role as his successor.”