Dean stared numbly at the phone he had just hung up, unable to believe his ears. The wolf, understandably, was in torment. How could a woman he had claimed, claimed!, be so matter of fact about rejecting him? It just seemed unethical.
Not only that, but he had really begun to grow into his feelings for Janie. He was starting to look forward to seeing her every day, to speaking to her. The way she spoke and laughed and wore her hair had all begun to drive him crazy in the funniest, simplest way. It was nothing like the feelings he’d developed for other women over the years. In fact, they couldn’t do any more to drive him up the wall if they had tried. No, Janie was different. And the idea of having to spend his life without those little moments that had begun to drive him was actually terrifying.
“Mr. Resner, it’s your ex on the phone. She says she has something important to tell you.”
Dean growled deeply. From one woman rejecting him to another.
“What?” he snarled into the receiver.
“Nice to speak with you too,” Kiera said. He could almost see the sneer on her face and felt half-tempted to strangle her. But he had never laid a hand on a woman, at least, not a hand that harmed rather than pleasured her, and he didn’t plan to start now.
“Seriously, what do you want? It’s kind of a bad time.”
“Isn’t it always a bad time with men like you?” Kiera asked pointedly.
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, so could you just get to the point before I hang this fucking thing up and unplug it?”
His temper seemed to delight Kiera and he regretted showing his claws to her immediately. It would only fuel her sadistic fire and motivate her even more to strike out at him.
“I recently heard through the grapevine that you and that little woman friend of yours were going to be working with a team of at-risk youth, and I thought you should know that-”
“That’s not going to be happening anymore,” Dean snarled. “Any other plans you’re hoping to trample today or are we done here?”
He could almost taste Kiera’s bitter disappointment and wished he was in a better mood so that he could relish it. Unfortunately, as it stood, he was miserable and she simply recovered by saying, “Well, that’s a shame. It’s always nice to do a good deed. You know. Repay your debt to society.”
“I don’t have any debt,” Dean said. “Unlike you.”
Kiera laughed brightly. “Always a pleasure,” she said, and hung up the phone quickly.
Well, whatever she had called to piss on him about had backfired. At least that was something. He pushed Kiera out of his mind quickly and bent over the reports for the month. Things had been taking a downturn since his divorce had begun to hit the tabloids. For some reason, housewives and fathers who wanted their sons to be like Dean Resner seemed to think twice about using his gear when they thought that he didn’t have a stable romantic life. It didn’t make sense, but numbers didn’t lie.
“What have you gotten yourself into, old boy?” Dean sighed at the wolf. It whined pathetically and Dean felt a sharp jab of pain. He couldn’t let himself waste his time by pining away for Janie. The pressure had been too much on her and she had bailed. It was just like all the other women. He didn’t know why he had allowed himself to think that, somehow, this time might be different. It was obvious that he simply was not the kind of man made for love. He would just have to try his best to keep his sights set on the business. Unlike other people, the fruits of his own labor never let him down. And so that was what he was going to rely on from then on.
***
The next few weeks without Janie at the office left Dean swamped with paperwork and phone calls. Everybody was scandalized by the tabloid reports of his tryst with Janie, and her disappearance from the scene made it look even more suspicious. What the hell had she been thinking, leaving him in hot water like this?
To make matters worse, the coach and the kids from the football team had showed up at the office that morning, and he somehow had to find a way to deal with them without coming across as the surly asshole he was feeling like.
“Nice to meet you all,” Dean said politely to the team. He had been frazzled when he heard the news and had scrambled to set them all up in the biggest empty meeting room he had at the building. Now, about thirteen fidgety middle-schoolers were sitting in swivel chairs, swirling themselves around and looking at Dean with wide, awe-struck expressions on their faces. The coach rose and shook Dean’s hand.
“Thank you for taking the time to see us,” he said. “I know it’s not a great time.”
Dean smiled tightly. He could say that again.
“It’s no trouble at all,” he said instead. “I’m happy to lend a hand.”
But, of course, the hand he had been planning this all out with, the hand of the photographer that was supposed to portray him in a great light, was nowhere to be seen.
Dean spent the rest of the afternoon answering questions and signing autographs for the kids, and all of it left him feeling drained and irritable. He swore he would bite the head off of the next person who spoke to him, but was surprised when that person was a young wolf shifter who looked at him closely, as if he were able to see right into Dean’s soul.
“How did you know that things were going to get better?” the boy asked, his sad eyes locked on Dean.
This was the question that Dean had been terrified to answer for himself. He had been dreading something like this the entire time Janie had been telling him about the engagement. But now that it was out in the open, hanging, frail and vulnerable in the air like the child himself, Dean was glad to hear it spoken out loud.
“I didn’t know that it was going to get better,” Dean said, smiling at the boy. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. All I really knew was that I was in control of whatever happened to me, and if I worked really hard, I would achieve my goals and everything I tried to build would get built, one way or another, as long as I kept trying to build it.”
The boy’s tired eyes lit up and he nodded, as if all of that seemed to make sense to him. It was a rewarding feeling, being able to speak to the kids so candidly, and once that boy’s question had been answered, Dean realized that he was actually glad to be able to face his past and see just how true it could be to rely on your own merit and work hard for the best results.
He left the meeting with a slight boost, but his chest constricted painfully as he ventured down the hall and past the room where Janie had originally been assigned. She wasn’t there anymore. Nobody was there to know that he had done the thing he had most feared doing. He was just as alone now as he was then, and sank into a dark depression.
The depression didn’t lift until he checked his email and grinned at the unexpected surprise waiting for him there. His friend Larry had always had a bad habit of hacking and sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong. But now, for the first time, that annoying little habit seemed to have the answer to all of Dean’s prayers.
Maybe things were finally looking up, after all.