Chapter Nine
Drew
Boston, Massachusetts
Two days later, I was back at my office, but my mind was still in a warehouse in West Side Manhattan.
I was supposed to be reviewing quarterly projections, but every time I looked at a line of data, I saw her. Every time the air conditioning hummed, I felt the phantom pressure of breathable mist.
Bella Holliston. Why can’t I think about anything but you?
It wasn’t the way she looked in that fitted black suit, although that was a tantalizing image I was fighting to delete from my memory. It wasn’t the way she’d risen to meet and then overcome each challenge set before her.
That was impressive.
More than impressive. It was armed forces training-model level courage. Impossible to not respect.
Or find attractive.
No, what kept tormenting me was what her expression had revealed when I told her I essentially had no new information. She’d believed that if she made it through those challenges I would reward her with quality intel.
She’d trusted me.
And I’d betrayed that trust.
Our families had a long history of swiping at each other and normally each exchange felt justified. But this . . . this had left a bad taste in my mouth.
It had been difficult for me to look myself in the mirror that morning.
I’d considered being summoned to The Beacon as a power play, but what if it had been more than that? What if that should have clued me in to how serious she felt the situation between Nora and Brady was?
What if I was missing something big? I needed facts. I called Nora’s Dean. He knew nothing. So I reached out to a few people where Brady went to school and applied pressure. Still nothing.
I eventually got creative and called in a favor and was directed to someone in the IT department at Brady’s school—a man a mutual friend trusted. What did he know about a video involving a Holliston?
“The video?” the man asked, his voice hushed. “Yeah, I heard about it. A clip from a frat party. It’s grainy as hell—shot from behind. It showed a girl half-carrying a drunk guy out of a room. You couldn’t see their faces clearly.”
“Who was the girl?” I asked, my grip tightening on the phone. “Does anyone know?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he replied. “There was a record of a non-student being involved in some brawl then barred from campus that night, but that’s been reversed and the name was scrubbed. The school servers are clean. No names, no records, nothing. It’s like it didn’t happen.”
I hung up, staring at the Boston skyline. A brawl? My sister? That didn’t make sense.
If the video was that poor, why did Bella think it was Nora? Or Brady? Did she know something I didn’t, or had she jumped to conclusions?
Nora often called me an overprotective brother.
Maybe I was, but she would walk into a lion’s den with a steak in one hand and flowers in the other and expect everything to go well simply because her intentions were pure.
Life didn’t work that way, but so far I’d made sure every damn lion she’d met knew that, for her, it would.
My sister didn’t brawl.
Nora was sunshine and smiles. Hell, she even liked Firebrook Valley. She described it as a glorious place where everyone knew everyone else’s business—where she could be the daughter of a billionaire as well as someone who worked shifts at the town’s only coffee shop.
I saw it as the battleground two financial titans had chosen for their annual summer pissing contest. It was a town that didn’t like the Hollistons or the Burkes.
A memory from a summer ten years earlier came to me.
Bella’s father, Gabe, had just made a scene at the town council meeting, insulting local contractors as well as my father. The whole town was whispering in the aftermath of the latest clash. I’d walked past the old candy shop near the river and saw Bella sitting on the back steps.
She wasn’t crying, but she was alone, her shoulders rigid, eating a bag of root beer barrel candy as if she were finding solace in the bottom of a real beer.
I’d almost stopped, tempted to ask if she was okay, but she’d looked up, and the resentment I saw in her eyes was enough to convince me she deserved whatever discomfort she was feeling.
She was a Holliston, and my father would have lost his mind from news of me talking to her. But I wasn’t a child anymore and I also wasn’t someone who sat around and did nothing when faced with a problem.
And my current problem?
I can’t forget what it was like to, even if it was only for a few minutes, care about Bella. Regardless of the history between our families. Regardless of how low her opinion of me might be. It didn’t feel right to leave things the way we had.
I didn’t want to be “even.”
Firebrook Valley’s candy shop was closed now, but the memory was wide open. I buzzed my secretary. “Miller, I need you to find a specialty confectioner. Old-fashioned root beer barrels. The good ones. The kind that stings a little.”
“When would you like it by?”
“Now,” I muttered.
I instructed Miller to deliver it to Bella’s Manhattan office. We were two rational adults who didn’t need to go back and forth the way our fathers did.
I pulled a monogrammed blank card from my desk and picked up a pen.
Bella,
There is no feud between us.
I shouldn’t have implied I had more information than I did. None of the challenges were meant to embarrass you, and if any of them did, I’m sorry.
Thank you for bringing a potential issue regarding Nora to my attention.
Drew
I handed the note to him with instructions to have it, along with the candy, hand-delivered today.
Would Bella enjoy them or toss them in the trash? I had no way of knowing.
And, sadly, sending her the candy and the note did not stop me from thinking about her on and off for the rest of the day.