Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LOTTIE
“I’m nervous.” Thane places his hand on my lower back, guiding me up the steps to Sebastian and Rowan’s front door.
“If she says no, we’ll come up with an even better plan.”
I was about to press the doorbell, but I pull my hand back. “How can you be so sure?”
His pupils dilate with intensity that steals the breath from my lungs. If he were anyone else, I might even shrink away from him, but I know it’s not a glare filled with ill intent. This is his I’ll set fire to all your enemies glare.
“Failure is not an option.” He says it so plainly, as though he’s moved through life never allowing failure.
Could it truly be that simple?
When I don’t say anything, he bends at the waist and presses a gentle kiss to my forehead. It’s such a simple kiss, a gentle gesture that’s played out countless times in romance movies, but the impact of it in real life knocks me off-kilter.
“Gross,” Kara groans from somewhere behind me.
Thane truly means it when he says he won’t allow me, us, to fail. The strength of his conviction in and for us reinforces my resolve, and he did it all with a simple kiss, a transference of strength from his lips to my soul.
“Are you ready?” He whispers the words. He’s gentling himself for me, and it’s another steel beam shoring up my foundation.
“Yes.”
The corner of his lips twitch, and then he presses the doorbell.
The front door swings open immediately. How long was Rowan standing there?
I frown at her, and she has the decency to at least appear embarrassed, but I can tell by the sparkle in her gaze that she’s not at all sorry for spying.
“Come in.” She sweeps the door open with a flamboyant swish of her arm, and Kara rushes through the door in search of her friend.
After she shuts the door behind us, she hooks her arm through mine, forcing Thane to follow behind. Rowan is not an emotive person. She doesn’t voluntarily hug or hook arms, so I’m instantly on alert.
She deposits me at the kitchen island, and Thane slips in next to me when she turns to the fridge.
Sebastian enters the room with the confidence of a man in love, and I soften a little toward him. When I matched him with Rowan, I would have bet my entire future on the fact that she would never fall in love.
It’s a bet I’m now glad I never made.
Rowan sets glasses of lemonade in front of us all, and I study her as she moves about the kitchen to sit opposite me.
It might be the longest I’ve ever seen her go without picking at the black bracelet she wears on her wrist, and if Sebastian has given her that peace, I’ll attempt to be more open to accepting him.
“I know that face.” Rowan points to me. “So lay it on me. I know you have something to say, but if it’s about me and Sebastian, you can save your breath.”
“No, I’m really very happy for you.”
Her face lights up as she leans into Sebastian’s open embrace. In a short amount of time, that man appears to have changed the very fabric of what held my friend together for years.
“Okay, then spill it because you’re making me nervous.”
I take a deep breath, then study her very closely as I lay out my situation and my plans for the future.
The room falls silent for an uncomfortable sixty seconds when I finally stop talking.
“Someone is trying to steal your intellectual property?” Rowan plays with a new bracelet, a pink one, as she speaks.
“Everyone wants it.” If I didn’t know him so well, I would think Thane was annoyed with my friend’s question.
“Even you?” There’s an edge to her voice as she glares at Thane.
“Especially me. I want what it can do for people, but I’m not trying to steal it from her.” He finally glances up, then leans over the counter to stare at Rowan. “This upsets you.”
We spend a few moments explaining that Thane experiences emotions and tone differently than we do, and she finally accepts that, but it’s Sebastian who clears his throat.
“You want Rowan to run the hotline. But what are your next steps? How do you proceed from here?” Sebastian’s fingers drum against the granite, waiting for my answer.
“I’ll prove that my father has no claim on my company. My lawyers believe they’ll have at least this first injunction thrown out within a few days, and I’ll move fast to put safeguards in place before he can file another one. Once I know that the hotline is in good hands, I’ll need to invest in a technology company, or partner with one, but I have to raise the capital for that first. I have meetings with investors already lined up.”
“I told you I’d give you the money,” Thane grumbles as he fiddles with a pencil he must have pulled from his pocket.
“Listen very carefully, Thane. And watch my face so you fully understand my meaning. If you ever attempt to throw money at my problems again, I will physically remove you from this conversation myself.”
His gaze darts back and forth across my face with his lips turned up into a smirk.
“That would be a physical impossibility. I outweigh you by at least eighty pounds, and I have over twelve inches on you.”
I feel my nostrils flare as I attempt to keep my tone light. “It was a figure of speech.”
“Not to interrupt whatever is happening here…” Sebastian says with a smile.
“She’s said something you find amusing?” Thane asks.
“Everything.” Sebastian laughs. “I’ve known Lottie a long time. It’s nice to know someone has gotten under her skin. But to get us back on track, I might have a solution.”
Thane halts the pencil he was twisting between his fingers and lifts his head to join the conversation.
“Your plan is to invest in a technology company, but one that is not owned by Thane. However, I assume that Thane will be involved in some way?”
I nod. “He understands the technology in a way that I don’t. Not yet anyway. We’ve agreed it’s too important to be left to someone who isn’t the best.”
And Thane is the best.
“Have you heard of the Fitzgerald Group?” Sebastian asks.
Thane leans over to the seat next to him and removes his computer from the satchel at his side. He doesn’t use it often, but I think it does help him to have things in black and white.
“I haven’t heard of them, no.” I angle my body so I can see both Thane and Sebastian, but really, my attention is on the man beside me.
Thane listens intently as Sebastian explains that before his horrible ex-wife died, she made a last-ditch effort to right things by willing him enough shares in her father’s company—the Fitzgerald Group—for him to have a controlling interest.
“This is good. This is very good.” Thane mutters to himself as he pecks with his pointer fingers at the keyboard.
“What is?”
His head jerks to the left, his gaze studying every inch of my face, before the lines of concentration fall away from his eyes.
“The Fitzgerald Group is, or was, in the top ten tech companies in the United States. It’s been mismanaged.” Thane never breaks eye contact as he explains the situation to me. “But the company has the infrastructure you require, and with the right people behind it, could be wildly successful again.”
“What exactly are you suggesting, Sebastian?” These two men are seeing a future I can’t quite hope for yet.
“I want nothing to do with that company.” Sebastian is calm as he speaks, but I sense the undercurrent of betrayal in his tone. “So what I’m proposing is selling my shares, at a deeply discounted rate, to you. With the understanding that I’ll vote on behalf of my children’s shares however you need, as long as Thane has a hand in bringing that company back from the brink of bankruptcy.”
“Brilliant. That’s a brilliant plan.” Thane’s nodding excessively, and I bite back a smile. This is what he’s wanted all along—a way to help me without getting in my way.
“Why would you do that, though?” It all seems too good to be true, and I know more than most that powerful men generally have ulterior motives.
Sebastian smiles. “It’s simple, really. I love Rowan, and she loves you. If helping you makes her happy, that’s just a bonus for me. And I’ll be honest—I’ve heard rumblings of what Thane’s company is bringing to the table. If he’s doing a tenth of what the gossip has said, he’s about to change the world my children will grow up in, and I can’t think of a better reason than that. Is that a good enough answer for you?”
“Yes,” Thane grumbles. I’m beginning to realize he handles praise about as well as a minnow fighting off a shark. “A simple ‘because I want to’ would have sufficed.”
“Thane,” I gasp.
Rowan rounds the island and slams into me for a hug. “This is amazing, Lottie. Thank you for trusting me with your baby.”
In all my years of friendship with Rowan, she’s never once initiated a hug. I settle into the embrace, allowing it to mend the years of fractured friendship where we both held the other at a distance. I hug my friend and see a future so clearly that I know Thane was right all along—failure is not an option.
* * *
I’m sitting in the aisle seat of an airplane, with Kara to my right. Thane is across the aisle to my left, his fingers poking feverishly against the keyboard. His muttered rumblings seem to be irritating his seatmate.
“Brad.” The hostility Kara used to embed in that word has long lost its venom. “Don’t you own a plane? Why are we flying commercial?” We’ve been sitting on the tarmac for close to twenty minutes due to a mechanical issue.
His fingers pause on the keyboard while his head tilts to the side. It takes another moment before he turns to look at his sister.
“Oh. Yeah. I do.” It’s his version of a shrug.
“You own a plane, and you don’t fly on it?” I tried to keep the accusation out of my tone, but that’s a tidbit that’s hard to pass over.
The balding man to Thane’s left leans forward in interest.
“I forgot I had one. I don’t really care for travel. I think my executives use it occasionally, but I only bought it for the tax write-off.”
“You forgot you own a plane?” the man asks. The disbelief in his tone is understandable.
Thane growls, the man shrinks back in his seat, and I shake my head. Then a very distinct yip hits my ears, and I snap my attention to Thane.
He minimizes one screen and brings up another where a video of Hercules is clear as day.
“Did you put a nanny cam in her pen?”
“Yes.”
His nosy neighbor sits forward again and squints at Thane’s screen.
“Why?” Kara leans over me, now invested in his screen as well.
“Why? Mrs. Perez tried to kill me with peanut butter. You think I trust her not to poison Hercules too? That’s all I need. Could you imagine the backlash? Thane Wilder kills beloved pet would be all over the news.”
“Someone tried to kill you?” I cast Mr. Nosy a mind-your-own-business glare, but he ignores me.
“And you really think you’re going to give her to the shelter?” Kara laughs next to me. “You know, I looked up the Maltipoo breed. They tend to pick one person to attach themselves to, and based on what Mrs. Perez said, Hercules never bonded with the guy who had her before.”
Thane frowns at his sister. “What do you mean, bonded?”
“She only stops yipping and howling when she’s in your lap, or when you’re holding her or paying attention to her.”
“She’s a spoiled pain in the ass. I didn’t do that to her. She came that way.”
“But she settles with you because she feels safe.”
“A dog cannot feel safe with a human.”
“They absolutely can,” Mr. Nosy inserts himself. “They don’t call dogs man’s best friend for nothing. They take comfort from you just as you take comfort from them.”
“I most certainly do not take comfort from this ratdog.”
Kara and I exchange a look that calls out his bullshit like a flashing neon sign.
“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have put a nanny cam in her pen. You care if she feels safe.” Mr. Nosy is really pushing it now.
“Don’t you have a movie to watch or something?” The threat in Thane’s tone does nothing to deter his neighbor.
“No way. You folks are a lot more interesting than anything I can find on the boob tube.”
“The boob—what the hell are you talking about?”
Hercules howls, and Thane’s attention is immediately sucked into the screen. “See? Look at this.” He angles his computer screen my way. “What is she feeding her? Is that a lasagna? Hercules has a very strict diet, and I left explicit details in a laminated folder, and now she’s feeding her… What is this?”
I can’t argue with him. It does appear that Mrs. Perez is feeding Hercules from her very own plate of ground meat and pasta.
“This woman is a menace. She’s not fit to dog sit, and she will never babysit for us. Never.”
I’m not the kind of woman who has ever imagined herself a mother, but in this moment, I so clearly see a tiny Thane in my arms that I swear my uterus bounces around in anticipation.
“I’m sure that Hercules is perfectly safe.”
He ignores me and presses a button on his computer. “Mrs. Perez. What the hell are you feeding Hercules?”
Poor Mrs. Perez startles and stumbles back. “Thane?” She glances around at the ceiling and walls while Hercules dances in a circle, searching for her master.
“I left instructions on Hercules’s diet. Have you lost them?” His temper is getting the best of him.
“Where are you?” She crouches down, toward the pen, and spots the camera almost instantly. “Well, I’ll never. You really do love this dog, don’t ya, son?”
“She’s in my care until the shelter can take her in.”
“And you love her.”
“Why are you feeding her that?”
Mrs. Perez tuts. “She’s missing you, so I gave her a little treat. I called the vet and he said it’s fine. It won’t hurt her a bit. It’s just a little ground beef I had left over from my dinner. No need for you to get your knickers in a twist.”
“I don’t wear knickers, Mrs. Perez.”
The older woman fans herself while Kara and I choke on a laugh.
The flight attendant moves to our row. “We’ll be taking off soon. Please put away larger electronics and store your seatback trays.”
“Stick to my notes, Mrs. Perez.”
She waves him off, and I know she has no intention of doing that. “Have fun, dear.”
Thane slams the top of his laptop down. She’s going to do whatever the hell she wants to, and he’s not happy about it.
“From now on, we take my plane, and Hercules will come with us.”
My cheeks hurt from smiling. “Until she goes to the shelter, of course.”
“Of course.” He slides his laptop into his bag, then stands to put it in the overhead compartment.
“He’s never giving that dog up,” Kara whispers at my side, tucking her face into my shoulder to stifle a laugh.
“Never,” I agree.
Thane sits with a huff for me and a glare at Mr. Nosy.
“Now it’s time to put our plan into motion.” His head rolls against the headrest of his seat, his gaze locking on mine. “Are you ready to make your debut, sweetheart?”
Am I ready to face my father? No.
Am I ready to face an unknown industry? Also no.
Am I ready to let Thane lead me into the future? One thousand and ten percent.
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
He reaches across the aisle with his palm up and places it on my armrest. I lower my hand to his. Skin to skin, his long fingers wrap around mine. This man is going to drag me, push me, toss me over his shoulder, and carry me into this next phase of my career, and the only thing he wants in return is a better life for everyone who has ever had to struggle as he has.
I’ve long stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now I’m just trying to keep my laces tied so I can keep up.
Thane is my future, and my future is finally looking bright.