Chapter 13: Zach

Being back in Denver felt like a rude awakening. When we returned on Saturday I was still in vacation mode, not worrying about the press or my life back at work. Sunday without Hailey was strange after we’d spent a whole week in each other’s company.

By Monday morning I was back in my usual routine, focusing on business the way I always did, but it felt foreign.

I knocked on my father’s office door and took a step back. He opened it quickly and let me inside.

“Oh,” I said. He was usually busy when I wanted to see him.

“Zach,” he said, smiling. “Welcome back.”

I thanked him and followed him into his office. He was in a good mood and it took me by surprise. I wasn’t used to seeing him happy.

“Sit down,” he said, waving at the chair, a little bit of his demanding nature showing. Good. I knew that side of him better. I sat down, perched on the edge of the seat with my knees wide and my elbows resting on them.

“You look refreshed,” my father said, sitting down behind his desk.

He always sat down behind his desk when I was in his office. He treated me the same as all his other business associates and clients. I was just another run-of-the-mill kind of thing.

“I feel refreshed,” I said, joining in on the small talk. “It was nice to go back to Aspen. It had been so long.”

My father nodded and glanced toward my mother’s little shrine on his bookshelf. I didn’t need to tell him why it had been good to go to Aspen. He knew.

“How are things looking here?” I asked even though I knew. Not much could have changed since the last time we spoke. I felt like we had nothing new to talk about. Awkward silences and arguments were the only things we ever shared. Even our small talk felt forced. We weren’t even friends anymore.

“Good, good… Are you and Hailey working well together?” he asked.

God, ‘working well together’ was such an understatement. She was a pain in the ass when it came to work – there was almost no pleasing her and she would never let up on me when everyone else was willing to cut me some slack – but outside of work, she was everything I wanted in my life. It was almost scary. I nodded. “Yeah, we are.” The answer was so watered down in comparison to my real feelings for her.

My father nodded. “That’s good. I could see on the first day – when she dragged you to go shopping – that she knew what she was doing. And let’s face it, a woman who knows how to handle you is rare, eh?”

My father laughed. I chuckled along without emotion. It wasn’t funny.

“She is good at what she does, I’ll give her that. I didn’t think anyone could clean up your image and she did in record time. There are no more emails, no more threats. It’s amazing what a few good suits and no women can do.”

I wasn’t smiling or laughing with my father anymore. His words were insulting. He was talking about my life, my character, like it was something that needed to be cured. Fixed. I knew I’d been doing things he didn’t approve of, but I approved of them. After all, wasn’t it my life? I understood the changes were for the sake of the business, but my father made it sound like he did me a personal favor by bringing Hailey in.

In retrospect though, it looked like he was. But I would never let him know.

I got up from my seat and walked to the full-length window. I jammed my hands into my pockets and looked out at the Denver skyline, my back to my father.

“You haven’t slept with her, have you?” my father asked.

The atmosphere was immediately tense. I froze. A fist of iron clutched at my stomach. The air was sucked out of the office and I struggled to breathe. I focused on my facial features – conjuring up the blankest look I could find – before I turned around.

“Of course, I haven’t,” I said, looking my father square in the eyes. “She’s not exactly my type. Trust me, you don’t want to be with a woman who knows your suit size. That just gives the illusion of commitment.”

The air was so thick I could run my fingers through it. I scrutinized my father’s face, trying to tell if he believed me. My father nodded, satisfied, not cracking a smile at my joke. I had forced it, trying to sound nonchalant. Of course, he could joke all he wanted, but me? That was something different.

“Good,” he said. “That’s good. It would be ironic if you slept with the woman who was supposed to help you get away from being a playboy.”

Really? I hadn’t realized that was what my father wanted Hailey to do. How exactly was she going to keep me from fucking around? I mean, shit, she’d done just that, but really? That was her job?

My father’s phone rang and he picked up the receiver. He would never let his secretary take a message if I was in the office. I was not important enough. I turned back to the view and stared out at the maze of buildings spread out below my feet.

Being back felt all wrong, tense, tight. I felt like we slowed down in Aspen, found a life with a different pace and now that I was back in the city it was hard for me to get back up to speed again. It would just take time, I told myself. It was like a short version of jetlag. I had the holiday blues or something. It was nothing serious and it wouldn’t last.

I suddenly pictured Hailey’s face, her body, her smile. Her smile was something that didn’t have any place in this drab business world. She fit into the Aspen scenery perfectly – laughing, smiling, delicate, and beautiful.

That last night, when I woke up to find Hailey missing from our bed, it was nearly three in the morning. I went downstairs to find her and she was curled up on the couch, wearing only a robe. Asleep like that, on the couch, she seemed impossibly frail. I picked her up and carried her back to bed with me, holding her gently against my chest. I wanted to protect her, namely from bastards like me.

Someone knocked on the door. I blinked and looked around. For a second, I had forgotten where I was. My memories of Aspen faded away, to be replaced by the cold, tense air in my father’s office.

“Come on in,” my father said, placing his hand over his phone receiver. He continued with his conversation. I glanced toward the door. It opened slowly and Hailey stepped inside.

My heart sped up when I saw her. She looked beautiful, as always, back in her business attire. She wore long black pants and a red blouse with capped sleeves. It was her version of power dressing. Her blonde hair was pulled back off her face and it made her look younger somehow. She was clutching a notepad between her fingers.

Every wicked hot memory of my time pressed tightly on top of her perfect body came rushing back, and it was all I could do to keep myself on lockdown. A raging hard-on in my father’s office wasn’t going to do anyone any favors – least of all… me.

I smiled at her. Her eyes met mine, but she didn’t return the smile. Instead, she glanced at my father who was just hanging up the phone.

“Hailey, thank you for stopping by,” he said. So, he’d invited her along for a meeting. I was suddenly irritated. Hailey wasn’t smiling at me. My father was insulting me. And I was stuck in the middle, like an unwilling guinea pig.

“Sit down,” my father commanded. It was nice to see it wasn’t just me he treated that way. “Let’s get right to it.”

Hailey walked to the other seat that faced my father and sat down. I walked back to my own chair and sank into the leather. It creaked as I moved around.

“Right,” he began. “We have a press conference coming up and I need to know that it will be a success.”

Hailey nodded and scribbled something down. I fought the urge to groan. I was getting sick of being paraded around like the Company’s spokesperson. I was only the CFO and I shouldn’t have to deal with the public so often. The only thing I should have been made to think about was money and I was good at that. After all, money was the one, stable thing in my life. It was consistent, steadfast, always the same.

“How are we going to approach this?” my father asked Hailey without so much as a glance in my direction.

Hailey was the one to look at me. Her eyes met mine for the briefest of moments before she turned back to my father.

“Zach knows what he’s doing,” she said. “I’ll draw up a few notes for him to go over. Just simple things about the way he addresses the press – the media can be our friend or our enemy, we need to approach that correctly – but other than that, I’m sure he’ll know how to handle himself.”

She was throwing me a bone. I told her at the last press conference that I knew what to do. I had them eating out of my hand, too, until she’d pulled me away from that brunette. At least, she was telling my father that I was capable. Finally, someone who was willing to take my side against him. Hailey may have been cold toward me, but we were in my father’s office. She couldn’t exactly lean over and kiss me. But I knew she still thought of me the same way. Why my father had to treat me like a wayward teenager was beyond me. I might sleep around, but I produced results all the fucking time. Day in and day out.

“Well, if you think he can do it,” my father finally said after Hailey pointed out one or two other things. “I trust your judgment. You have proven yourself so far.”

Hailey offered my father a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and thanked him.

“I believe it will go well,” she said with confidence.

“That will be all, Hailey,” my father said, dismissing her. She got up and I watched her walk away.

“You’re distracted,” my father said once Hailey was out of the office. This was true. Hailey was one hell of a distraction and not just because I knew how fucking hot she was naked.

“I just need to get back into it,” I said. “Back in the swing of things after being gone.”

My father pinned me with a hard stare. I fought the urge to squirm. No matter what I did, no matter how much I tried, I would never please him completely. Sure, he seemed pleased enough earlier and that was great. But I would never be good enough, not the way that I craved to be.

That was reason enough to do my own thing.

And Hailey was someone I was very interested in doing.

“I have to get started on my work,” I said, getting up. “I have a week’s worth of things to catch up on.”

My father looked at me, his watery green eyes giving away nothing. I nodded when he didn’t say anything and walked to the door. I looked over my shoulder just before opening the door, scared he might still be scrutinizing me the way he used to when I was a teenager and I’d done something wrong. His eyes were already on his desk though, busy with whatever was in front of him. His was mind was somewhere else, somewhere far away from me.

Of course.

When I opened my office door, Hailey was leaning over the desk writing something down. The angle exposed her most flattering profile and I smiled. I had vivid images of doing nasty things on my desk. When the door clicked closed, Hailey straightened and turned around.

“I thought we would never get some time alone,” I said, walking toward her. “It’s so good to see you again.”

She smiled tightly at me. “I’m glad everything is back to your normal routine,” she said. “I will be here tomorrow morning at seven as usual, to practice that speech of yours.”

I frowned. “You know what they say about all work and no play.”

Hailey didn’t even smile at the joke. She walked around me and headed toward the door.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have time to play,” she said. “I still have to check in with my own boss and there are a lot of things I need to cover before we can even start on your speech. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She left the office, closing the door behind her. I stared at the door between us for a second or two longer, willing her to come back. When she didn’t, I kicked one of the guest chairs opposite my own.

Was she really going to be like this, acting like nothing happened and just moving on? What did I do to deserve this treatment? We had the best time in Aspen. She told me she didn’t want it to end. And now? Now she was doing exactly that – ending it. In fact, she was acting like it hadn’t even started. I had made a fool of myself being open with her, thinking nothing would have changed. And now? Now there was nothing. Nothing at all.

I was Zach Nettles, CFO of Daybreak Solutions, son of Ken Nettles and the late Nora Nettles. The woman who started all this. I wasn’t someone who could just be shrugged off. Was it just office bullshit? Her trying to behave in the office? Had to be.

I dropped down in my chair and turned to look out the window. Women were impossible to figure out, but damn if I didn’t want to know what made her tick.

I tried to shake off my questions about her being so offhand. It wasn’t anything to worry about. If I pulled her close and kissed her, she’d lean in and open up wide for me. Period.

Of that I had little doubt.