~ Cece

 

12 Years Later

It had been a long day.

Not only had I been called into work early for revisions on an article that I thought I’d finished a week ago, but I’d had also been forwarded two other articles from my department to look over to ensure my own wasn’t too similar to be printed.

Nevermind that I turned in my article first.

Shoving back from my desk, I gazed around the office. It was Friday afternoon and the minutes were literally dragging by. Everyone had to be just as restless as I was.

I did my best not to look at the clock. Instead, I concentrated on the positive things. It was a method my mother had instilled in me since I was little, and even now, with her eight thousand miles away, I could still hear her chiding me.

You should be grateful for all the good things in your life, Cecily. You have a job, a roof over your head, food in your belly…

And a boss that was literally trying to kill me with every additional mundane article he heaped atop my already overflowing workload.  Luckily for me, I didn’t really have to think when I wrote something for The Burner. It was all gossip and how-tos, made by a young, horny woman for young, horny women.

And it was killing me.

I swallowed a groan before forcing my gaze back to the computer screen. My article - How to Win Him Back When You Think You’ve Lost Him - was still staring me in the face. Taunting me. I’d been through about ten versions at this point and I didn’t know whether Jim would like this one any more than the last one.

In the past three years that I’d been working for The Burner, the irony of having a man head a women’s magazine had occurred to me more than a handful of times. Hell, it occurred to me near every damned day. Not only was Jim a man, he was a fairly ignorant one at that. Every time I suggested putting something substantial in The Burner’s scandalous pages, he talked me down in a condescending voice that made me want to off myself.

We must keep the material consistent, Cecily. The gossip columns and how-tos are what our readers know us for. It’s what they know YOU for. You wouldn’t want to ruin the reputation you spent so long building, would you?

Oh, he had no idea. I would very much like to demolish the entire structure of what I’d built over the last three years and start all over.

But that, unfortunately, was out of the question.

According to my mother, I should be thankful that I had a job - and I was. My position at The Burner put food on the table and paid for my apartment. But that didn’t mean I had to like it. After all, I hadn’t gotten a degree in journalism from Emory to be a gossip columnist. I’d always planned to be a reporter.

A real reporter that worked on real stories.

I interned at CNN, for God’s sake! With the recommendation I was given, I should have been able to work anywhere...but dreams don’t often go the way we plan them. A year after college, I was so desperate to be out on my own that I took the first job I was offered and now, here I was.

Still taking it.

Frowning, I looked over my article one last time. I didn’t think I’d be able to stand it if Jim sent it back to me again, so when I sent it, I turned my computer screen off and made my way to the break room for a cup of coffee. I certainly needed it.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t even have my daily dose of caffeine in peace. The moment I opened the break room door, I paused in the doorway at the sight of Jim taking the last bit of coffee. After watching this little routine for three years, I knew better to think that he would dump the filter and refresh the pot. He was far too self-absorbed for that.

The tall man tilted the coffee pot near vertically to get the last few drops out before setting the empty vessel back on the coffee maker. I had about two seconds in which to frown before he noticed me watching him. “Ah, Cecily! Just the woman I was looking for.”

I had been looking for coffee, but I managed to arrange my mouth into some semblance of a smile. “Afternoon, Jim. Did you get the final copy of my article?”

 

At least, I hoped it would be the final copy.  “I just got back from lunch,” he sipped at my coffee with an indulgent sigh. “So, I haven’t had a chance to look through all the submissions, but I’ll get right on it. After I let you in on your next brilliant assignment.”

It took everything I had not to turn tail and run. I was still trying to deal with my last assignment, and the next issue wasn’t even due until the following Wednesday. I’d hoped to get through the rest of the day without anything else to stress about, but Jim obviously had different plans. 

“Do tell.” I moved past him to start brewing another pot of coffee. That, at least, would keep my fingers from straying towards the man’s neck to strangle him.

“Come to my office when you’re finished with the coffee.” He looked around the empty breakroom as if it were somehow bugged before winking at me conspiratorially. “I want you to be the first to hear.”

I waited until after he left to sigh forlornly. If experience working at The Burner had taught me anything, it was that Jim’s excitement over a project usually meant hell for me. The last time he was so excited about an article was when he sent me to a strip club to get a top ten list for ladies orally pleasing their men. The very memory made me shudder.

It wasn’t that I had anything against strippers and strip clubs, but Jim must have sent me to the seediest place in Atlanta. About a month after my article was published, it was closed down for health code violations.

This had better not be a repeat of that incident.

I gave myself a good ten minutes to prepare - just long enough for the coffee to finish brewing. No sooner had the pot topped itself off then I filled my mug and took a long swallow. The caffeine was like nirvana - so good I wondered how I’d made it through the morning without it.

Oh, yes. That’s right - I’d been called in early. No time to brew my own.

Scowling, I stalked back through the office, making my way past my cubicle and to Jim’s corner office. It took me another two minutes of standing outside to force my expression into a placid one before I knocked on the door.

“Come!”

I tried to be in Jim’s office as little as possible. He hoarded the few awards The Burner had won in its short ten-year existence, regardless of who’d won them. The way he lorded the damn things over us, you might think we were the New York Times. “You’re going to want to have a seat, Cecily. This news will knock your socks off.”

Jesus, if he told me I was getting on a strip club stage I was going to die. Right then and there. Spontaneous combustion.  I sank down into one of the hard chairs before his desk and waited with bated breath.

For perhaps a good minute longer than was necessary, Jim kept me waiting. Then, he spoke two tremulous words. “Rhett Wilder.”

For a moment, I merely stared at him. While the name certainly surprised me, it wasn’t for the reasons he might have suspected. Memories I thought I’d long forgotten rushed over me, and I found the corners of my mouth quirking upward in a small smile.

Rhett.

Jesus, it had been ages since he’d last crossed my mind. Thinking about him reminded me of better times - carefree times. When I escaped Jeb, and he snuck out of his house so we could meet in the woods at the edge of the neighborhood to see who could climb higher into the tallest pine.

I’d broken my leg once - in two places - falling out of that damn tree. It hurt like a son of a bitch and I’d been certain I’d lose the leg, but Rhett had somehow laughed, even though his color was pale, and assured me that a one-legged me was out of the question.

Then he’d stolen my first kiss.

God, how had I forgotten that?

“Well?” I was jerked back to the present by Jim’s expectant inquiry and found him looking at me as if he expected me to fall to my knees and kiss his ratty leather loafers.  “Rhett Wilder.” I repeated, the name rolling off my tongue. “What about him?”

Jim grinned. “I’m glad you asked.” He reached into the first drawer of his desk, gray eyes gleaming, to withdraw a magazine cover and slap it onto the surface between us.

On that magazine cover, larger than life, was Rhett. I’d know his face anywhere. 

So much had changed in twelve years. The seventeen-year-old boy I’d been so smitten with grew into a man - and dear God what a man he turned out to be.

Every time Rhett came on TV or the news, I made an excuse to leave the room or change the channel. It reminded me that I’d chosen to give him up, so he was none of my affair any longer. Unfortunately, such a thing was easier said than done - especially when Rhett was everywhere.

Stanford had done him well - he was now one of the richest men in the country, if not in the world. The magazine atop Jim’s desk was Forbes, and it wasn’t the first time Rhett had graced its cover - or any number of other magazines, for that matter. He was known not only for his money, but for the particular brand of adventuring that got a lot of people killed. When he wasn’t in his office, he was climbing Everest, trekking through rainforests and base-jumping off skyscrapers. He was just as intrepid a daredevil as he was a businessman, and it only made him a more titillating public figure. But that wasn’t all that struck you about Rhett Wilder.

He was, by any woman’s estimation, enough to take your breath away. The man wore tailored Armani suits like they were weapons of mass destruction, his dark blonde hair combed back carefully from a wide, handsome brow. He always sported a neatly groomed five o’clock shadow that lent him a rugged allure. That coupled with the confident gleam in deep blue eyes was enough to make anyone salivate. If you weren’t one for a man’s looks, then the fact that he was worth a cool ten or fifteen billion would do it for you. Rhett probably had every woman on the planet with a pulse after him.

Every woman except me. I’d already had him - once, a lifetime ago.

“We’ve been looking to do an exclusive with him for years and we finally got through. Do you have any idea what something like this will do for our ratings? I’m assigning you to the article - a series of interviews all about the mogul and his home life. I can see the headline now-”

“I can’t.”

The words were out before I could even think about them - but they were the stone-cold truth. “You have to get someone else, Jim. No way I can cover this.”

My boss’ mouth snapped shut as he stared at me in genuine surprise.  “It’s the story of a lifetime - you know that, right?”

“Not for me.” I replied almost immediately. I knew how Jim operated. Unless I put my foot down - and hard - he’d try and wheedle me into doing his bidding. Well, he wasn’t going to succeed this time. “Get Paula or Sam on it. They’d both eat it up.” Despite either woman’s propensity for gossip, the column had landed square on my lap. Jim argued that I was a better writer - and he was right.

I just didn’t want to write trash.

He leaned back in his seat to eye me warily. “You going to tell me why you won’t take it?”

I swallowed an aggrivated groan. It was really none of his business - or anyone’s for that matter. But I knew Jim wasn’t going to let me out of this one without a valid excuse - and I had never been a very proficient liar. “It would be…” I struggled to find the right words. “A conflict of interests. I used to date him. A long time ago.” I had to make sure to clarify that last bit lest Jim decide that he wanted to take this article in an entirely new direction. For a man, he had an ungodly talent for knowing what kind of gossip women gravitated towards.

Surprisingly, Jim didn’t act as if my news was a revelation. Instead, he merely crossed his arms over his chest as he assessed me for a long moment.

Please, please, just let it go. Just this once…

“What would you say if I told you Wilder knew you were the one on the story - and that he’s perfectly fine with it.”

I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard him right. He’d already arranged this with Rhett? What in the seven hells was that supposed to mean. “Rhett said he’s alright with me interviewing him?” My tone was about as dry and skeptical as it was humanly possible to be, but Jim was far from put off.

“Perfectly. I’d say he seemed positively enthusiastic about the prospect.”

Somehow, I doubted that.

I inhaled a deep breath, prepared to absolutely refuse.  “Jim, I-”

“What about a bonus?” My boss interrupted me before I could even get started and I stuttered to a halt. “Two months’ pay upon completion of the article?”

Goddamn it. The man was playing hard ball. I tried to tell myself I didn’t need the money. I was good with budgeting. I had plenty in savings and I was living perfectly within my means. But the moment he mentioned a bonus I was already thinking about what I could do with an extra two months’ pay.

The possibilities were endless.

But I’d never been an overly materialistic person. The prospect of a vacation or even a few thousand towards the car I’d been saving up for wasn’t enough to send me into the belly of the beast. It would take something else.

Unfortunately for me, Jim knew exactly what that was.

“And a good word with the higher ups.” The man’s dark gaze was crafty as he continued. “I hear there’s an opening upstairs with The Atlanta Gazette. Would that be something you’d be interested in?”

If looks could kill, Jim might have been six feet under. I had only been asking him for three years to put me onto real stories - but the fact of the matter was that The Burner didn’t deal too much in real news. The Atlanta Gazette, however...they’d faint at the idea of a romance column finding its way between their hallowed pages.

Exactly the kind of publication I wanted to work for. I could finally use my wasted writing chops on something I could really sink my teeth into - but I had to do this assignment first.

My mind was already made up. I hated that Jim knew me so well that he could all but wind me around his little finger. If it meant he’d put in a good word for me at a real news publication, there was no way I could refuse.

I looked from my boss to the magazine cover on the desk between us. What had it been...twelve years since we last saw one another? I’d refused to watch him leave our neighborhood, telling myself that chapter of my life was over.

This didn’t have to change that. If Rhett was alright with me on this assignment he probably didn’t even remember me. That anonymity could offer me at least a little bit of protection.

Even if I wasn’t sure what I needed to protect against.

“...Fine.”

“Excellent, Cecily. You have no idea how happy you’ve made me. You’re going to be the one who turns this publication around!” I didn’t even have to look at Jim to know he was grinning triumphantly. The man had all but entrapped me for what he perceived to be the good of the magazine - as was his prerogative.

But a promise was a promise. If I delivered what he asked, it might mean my ticket out of here. I was willing to do almost anything for my chance to rise above The Burner - even if that meant confronting my ex.

“Will that be all, sir?” I managed to look him in the eye when I said it, the confident gleam there irking me more than a little bit. I needed to get back to my desk so I could start mentally preparing myself for this assignment - if there even was such a thing as preparing oneself to face one’s high school sweetheart after an uncertain split and a decade of distance.

“I just need you to sign some paperwork for me.” The man pulled out a stack of forms that fairly boggled the mind. “These are nothing, really. Just an agreement that you understand the terms of the interviews. You’ll be staying in the guest suite at Wilder’s mansion for convenience sake and it should only take about a month to get the goods. No big deal.”

I don’t think I actually processed the information until I had signed the papers and all but been booted out of the man’s office. By the time I returned to my own desk, however, I’d sorted everything out in my head.

The guest suite at Rhett’s mansion!? I was going to be staying on the same premises as him? Sleeping under the same roof? Dear God, what on earth had I agreed to?

The notion, I insisted to myself, was hardly proprietary. It wasn’t like I had any machinations on the man. I just wanted to do my job and be done with it. I couldn’t imagine what people would think when they caught wind of this though. The famous Rhett Wilder boarding a reporter at his mansion?

Even I didn’t believe that when I heard it.

Of course, it didn’t help that Rhett’s reputation preceded him. He was something of a womanizer - every week he was headlining with a different woman. Models, prima ballerinas, fashion icons - there was no one beyond his reach. After all that, I could only imagine that having me in his house would be rather dull. I could hardly be as exciting as an Italian opera with an award-winning soloist or skydiving over the Andes Mountains.

I sank down in my chair, running fingers through my dark hair to loosen it from the strict ponytail I’d chosen that morning. I was starting to get a headache. The less stress on my scalp, the better.

A quick glance at the clock told me that all of half an hour had passed since I got up. That confirmed it. Today was officially crap.

A quick roll of my finger across my mouse cleared the screensaver from my computer and I found that I had two new e-mails. One of them was a coupon for a sale at a nearby mall, and the other was from Jim.

How the hell had he read my article that fast? It was humanly impossible. I opened the email to find that he’s requested that I cut the article by two hundred words and had to take a few deep breaths to keep from internally combusting.

Positive. Think Positive.

Jim had given me an assignment that had the power to put me on the career path that I actually wanted. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. With any luck, I’d only have to deal with him for another couple of weeks.

That was what would have to keep me going. I wouldn’t think about Rhett or our past history - only the future.

“You little bitch.” I nearly leapt out of my seat when my coworker, Anita’s hands came down firmly on my shoulders to squeeze almost painfully. She spun me around to face her and I found her exotic, tanned features gazing at me with a mixture of longing and jealousy. “Rhett Wilder? How the hell did you manage that?”

Shit. How’d she find out? I only just found out. “I didn’t. Honestly, Jim just mentioned-”

“Cece, you sly little dog!” Beth popped her head into my cubicle before I could even begin to defend myself. It was just my luck that the biggest gossip in the office overheard my conversation. “Rhett Wilder all to yourself? I’m jealous enough to keel over on the spot.”

And she wasn’t the only one. Word traveled around the office fast and within the hour, every female on the floor was crowding my cubicle, demanding how I’d pulled off an assignment with one of the most eligible bachelors on the planet.

It was a butt-ton of attention that I didn’t need. After all, I had an article to edit (again) and a decade’s worth of mental preparation before me. In the middle of all the interrogation, the prospect sunk in - really sunk in. I was going to see Rhett for the first time in over ten years.

And I was fucking terrified.