If the guy giving the presentation at the front of the room proves anything, he proves that colleges aren’t doing enough to produce people who aren’t completely stupid.

God. He looks like he might have graduated last week. Yesterday, even.

He might have, but that’s no excuse for how terrible he is at running this portion of the meeting.

Irritation blooms in my chest, growing bigger by the moment.

Who the hell is this kid? Who’s his direct manager? The department head is Pete Collins, who’s watching like nothing is wrong.

I drum my fingers against the surface of the meeting table.

The guy—Shawn? Spencer?—flips to the next slide of his presentation on his tablet. “And here, what we have is a set of projections that we’ve made for the next two quarters.” He circles a point on the graph nervously with a stylus. “Oh, shoot—” The circle disappears.

Fury rises from my fingertips to my elbows. It’s all I can do not to clench my hands into a fist. It’s all I can do not to fire Pete Collins and everyone else in his department right now. Every thudding heartbeat is another moment of my time wasted. Another moment I could be running Cash Industries to my satisfaction instead of listening to this idiot stammer his way through a status report.

What the hell was Pete thinking, tapping him to do this? It doesn’t make any sense. These meetings are supposed to be run efficiently. They’re supposed to be valuable. This is just a waste of attention.

Simon clears his throat and raises his hand to his neck to adjust his tie. “So, uh—” He squints at the tablet, then looks back around at the screen. “The slides...” He flips quickly through the next few. “If you’ll give me one—”

“Enough,” I bark, shoving myself up from the meeting table. “I’ve had enough. This—” I jab my finger through the air at Simon, who has gone white. “This is a waste of my time. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.” There’s an anxious shuffling around the boardroom table. Nobody can meet my eyes. “I don’t want to see a single person in here until you’re ready to run a status meeting that doesn’t waste all of our lives.”

“Ch—” Dex, sitting to the right of me, is the only one with the balls to say anything. “Mr. Cash, did you want to run through the rest—”

“This meeting is over.” My voice is vibrating with rage. If I don’t get the hell out of here— “Everyone, get out. Go. If you can’t put together a decent meeting by tomorrow, I can’t make any guarantees about your future employment with Cash Industries.”

It’s an empty threat, and the instant it’s out of my mouth, I hate myself. I hand-selected most of the department heads. These are some of the best in the real estate industry. They don’t deserve this.

There’s no walking it back now.

I turn on my heel and stalk out of the room, jaw clenched so tight the pain seeps from my teeth into my muscles, and go to my office.

I slam the door behind me.

It doesn’t slam. In the ultimate fuck-you, its special hinges slow it down, taking the wind out of its sails. And mine.

I sit down behind my desk and steeple my fingers under my chin. With my eyes closed I can begin to focus on not flying off the handle. 

It’s not long before there’s a soft knock at the door. If it’s Dex, so help me god—

The door opens and someone steps in, letting the door whisper closed. I open my eyes. 

Julia is giving me a look, her head cocked to the side. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, Julia, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Too bad.” She swishes her way across the office and drops into one of the chairs across the desk from me. “What the hell happened to you at Emerald Shores?”

“Why do you think that has anything to do with it?” I feel cornered, defensive, because this has nothing to do with Josephine—I mean, Emerald Shores. This has everything to do with some idiot who has no idea how to function in a business. 

She narrows her eyes. “Don’t be coy.”

“I’m not being coy. I’m—”

“You’ve been different since you got back. Frankly, it’s not good.” Sometimes, Julia is the recent college graduate who still occasionally fucks things up. But right now, she’s sitting up tall, poised and righteous. She raises a hand and starts ticking things off on her fingers. “You’re snapping at everyone. You’re micromanaging all the department heads. You won’t even talk to Dex about acquiring Emerald Shores, which you approved. This is the second meeting in a week you’ve called early because you lost your temper.”

“That wasn’t my—”

“Don’t, Charlie. It is your fault. But I know you, and this isn’t...you. What happened at Emerald Shores?”

My sister’s face is full of compassion. She can be a hardass, that’s for sure, but she’s right about one thing—she knows me. She’s known me the longest of anyone at Cash Industries. I want to dismiss her, but I can’t, and we both know it.

“Josephine...” It hurts to say her name, but once it’s hanging in the air between us, I might as well tell her. I don’t want to admit this to my twenty-two-year-old sister. Not in the least. But here we are. “She got to me.”

“What does that mean?”

“She got to me, okay? We...spent the week together.” I’m not willing to get into the details. Not with Julia.

Her forehead wrinkles with confusion. “It didn’t go well?”

“Not at first. And then it did.”

“Doesn’t she live in the city? Couldn’t you—”

“She only wanted me for the money, Julia. I don’t want to say more than that.”

Julia sighs, pursing her lips. “I don’t know if I believe that.”

“Believe it.”

She leans forward, folding her arms on the edge of the desk, and for a split second I have an image of her at six, sitting across the kitchen island from me while I did my homework. “If she was just some gold digger with an agenda, why are you still so upset a month later?”

I’m already stretched thin, too thin, and the question snaps the end of my resolve. “Because I fell for her. Is that what you want to hear? I fucking fell for her. And now—” I shake my head. “Now she’s nowhere, Jules. It was a waste of energy. It was the worst possible outcome.”

“Do you still love her?”

I’m not in love. Not with Josephine. Not with anyone.

I’m not.

But with every heartbeat the hurt gets stronger.

“Yes.” It’s all I can manage.

My sister looks at me steadily, her jaw set. “You’ve got to find her, Charlie, or I’m afraid. For you. And for all of us.”

“You don’t have anything to be worried—”

“I do. Because you’re the one who keeps everything going. You have to know that.” Julia gets up and steps back a little, patting the back of the chair with a light touch. “Find her.”