Chapter 4
For the first time since his dad laid out the conditions of the company’s turnover, Julien felt like maybe it was possible. Maybe he could do what so many other publishing companies were failing to do in the current marketplace and actually reverse the decline of a dying imprint.
He’d been trying to convince his father to retire for years now, but his assurances that King would be left in capable hands had only fallen on deaf ears.
It was frustrating having to continuously prove himself over and over and then just as often be found lacking.
He tried not to take it personally. Tried to remind himself it was his father’s character trait of always needing to be in control and his stubborn denial that he wasn’t the same young man he once was that was fueling his decision of not passing the baton.
But it wasn’t only Julien’s professional aspirations on the line anymore.
If his dad didn’t make an abrupt change in his lifestyle, beginning with reducing his stress levels and getting adequate rest—neither of which were possible while being a workaholic—then the next thing to go to print from King was going to be his old man’s obituary.
Julien wasn’t without feeling as to his dad’s perspective on Squire.
Grandma had been a special woman in his life growing up as well.
She’d died when he was young, just ten years old, but he could still remember the smell of her perfume, like cherry blossoms on a spring day.
His first memory of visiting the publishing house, he’d been holding her hand.
She’d brought him to her office, where a giant teddy bear sat in a corner.
They’d snuggled up together, using the bear to lean against, and she’d read aloud to him prerelease books that hadn’t made it to bookstores yet.
She’d called him her little vice president for the day and asked him his opinion about cover options and if a particular back cover copy sounded interesting or not.
Closing the imprint would hurt Julien as well, but it was the right thing to do from a business standpoint.
It was what he thought Grandma would tell them to do.
Especially if she knew the strain it was putting on the relationship between Julien and his father.
Not to mention the harm the stress was having on her son’s health.
If only he could get his dad to listen to reason.
That morning, Julien would’ve said saving Squire was impossible, especially if it was his lack of expertise steering the sinking ship.
The last children’s book he remembered reading was Walk Two Moons.
If he hadn’t written a report afterward in which he’d accidentally misspelled the heroine’s name as Salamander instead of Salamanca and his teacher hadn’t corrected him each time in bright red ink, he probably wouldn’t even remember that title.
Although how anyone could forget a name like Salamanca Tree Hiddle was beyond him and probably the author’s intention all along.
But then in walked Martha Aldridge.
Julien threaded his fingers together behind his head and leaned back in his office chair, peering out the picture window.
From this angle, he could make out a corner of one of the glass triangle spires that was the geometric rooftop of the Tennessee Aquarium.
Beyond that, a sliver of the Tennessee River.
It was weird how time worked. He hadn’t been to the aquarium since he took a field trip for biology class, and chances were things had changed since then. But if he were to step through the front doors at that very moment, he’d expect everything to look the same, the way his memory painted it.
When he’d seen Martha’s name in his schedule for the day, he unconsciously figured the same principle applied. Actually, it had taken him a minute to realize why the name sounded familiar in the first place. Once he’d placed her, however, he hadn’t put any more thought into it.
The point was, he’d not been prepared for the very grown woman who’d walked into his office.
For him, Martha Aldridge had always been the daughter of his parents’ on-property hired help.
He had vague, fuzzy memories of her as a small child at her father’s side in the gardens or helping her mother dust the furniture around his parents’ estate.
They hadn’t ever spent much time together even though she’d grown up in the little cottage just beyond the rhododendron bushes in the backyard.
He’d moved out of his parents’ house over twenty years ago, and even on his occasional visits home, he rarely saw a glimpse of any of the Aldridges, much less Martha.
In fact, the last time he remembered laying eyes on her, she hadn’t been much older than thirteen or fourteen.
Which meant he’d known she was grown now. He could do basic math. But still. Knowing and being prepared were too different things. And he had definitely not been prepared.
His mental image of Martha had been frizzy, braided pigtails and technicolor animal print T-shirts.
He wasn’t expecting a woman with soft, full curves in a pair of high heels that accentuated her feminine form to walk through his door.
Nor for the way his pulse had skipped a beat, tripping over its imaginary feet, then picking up speed at that first sight of her.
Her figure and clothing weren’t the only things to have changed either.
Her face had matured over the years as well, age rounding out the apples of her cheeks and defining the plumpness of her lips.
Her eyes too. He hadn’t remembered the honey tones being so rich or captivating.
Honestly, he couldn’t have been held at fault for the way his gaze kept inadvertently taking her in, cataloguing all the changed features and enjoying the view.
He was a forty-six-year-old man, so he knew what his reaction to her had been. Physical attraction, plain and simple. Martha Aldridge had grown up to be a very beautiful woman.
Guilt should be gnawing at him. One of the many jobs he’d had over the years in the company was proofreading for their romance imprint, Queen.
He was familiar with this trope, the May/December age-gap conflict.
And when he considered the fact he’d been starting college when she was still in elementary school, yeah, the age difference did have a certain ick factor.
But neither of them were kids anymore. They were both adults.
Thirty-eight and forty-six just didn’t seem all that taboo or off-limits.
Of course, there wasn’t a reason to read into anything.
His feelings were only a chemical-based physical attraction.
And as stated, both he and Martha were adults.
Two adults were capable of acknowledging the good looks of the other without anything romantic occurring between them.
On top of that, they were now in a soon-to-be-legally-binding working relationship, as soon as his assistant, Tomiko, emailed the contract for Martha to sign.
Julien didn’t mix business with pleasure.
Oh, who was he kidding? He didn’t mix business with anything.
He was well on his way to following in his workaholic father’s footsteps.
It was why he was still single at forty-six.
He’d been married to proving his worth to his dad for as long as he could remember, and there was no way that relationship status was changing any time soon.
Especially not now that he was so close to his goal.
A knock sounded at the door, drawing Julien’s attention back to the present. He straightened in his chair and lowered his hands from behind his head. “Come in.”
The door opened, and his mom peeked her head in. The diamond earrings Dad had given her for their thirtieth wedding anniversary dangled from her ears, almost as dazzling as the smile she flashed him. “Sorry to interrupt.”
He stood and walked over to her, giving her a quick hug. “You’re not interrupting, though I am surprised to see you. What’re you doing here?”
Though King Publishing was a family business, started by Julien’s great-grandfather with almost everyone with the same surname having a hand in the operations, Tabitha King had never been interested in joining the publishing house’s ranks. She rarely made an appearance at the office at all.
She held up a take-out bag from Whitebird. “I’ve brought dinner.”
Julien frowned. “Dad usually has Sasha grab him a burger from Urban Stack on Tuesdays.”
“I’m well aware.” The wrinkles around her pink-stained lips deepened as she scowled her displeasure.
“I can’t force him to cut back on work, but I can make sure he starts eating a little better.
” She looked at Julien, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
“This is all a part of my new plan. Step one: bring him food and guilt-trip him into pausing work to have dinner with me here at the office. This forces him to take a break and makes him eat something healthier than greasy pub food that doesn’t even require a fork.
When he’s once again used to sitting down for a meal and putting business aside for an hour instead of working through dinner, I’ll chip away at the location.
Eventually I’m hoping he can start making it home for the evening meal again. ”
“We all have our dreams, don’t we?” Julien teased.
She poked him in the arm. “At least I have a plan. What’s yours? He has to retire, Julien. We have to convince him.”
Julien rubbed the back of his neck. “I know, Mom. I’m working on it.” Had been for years, without success.
But the stakes were higher now. Julien had caught his dad lying on his office sofa with the shades drawn and the lights out.
His dad had tried to brush it off. Headaches happened to everyone, he’d said.
And the time he’d stumbled into the wall, he’d blamed his lightheadedness on missing breakfast and barked for someone to bring him a banana.