CHAPTER 52
Maddie
This is all happening so fast, it’s making my head spin.
Leaving Rhonda was hard. Yesterday, she was hobbling around on crutches while I was boarding a plane for my flight back. She still can’t travel. Her surgeon wants to see her again in two weeks.
Elsie flew me to Los Angeles and put me up in a hotel that seems way too nice for a small-town girl from Sweetbriar Hollow. She sent a text saying a car would pick me up at one tomorrow. I’m supposed to meet with her to sign some papers and go over… I don’t know what. Guess I’ll find out.
When I asked why we were doing this in LA, she said she already had a meeting scheduled with National Discovery, and because she wanted me talk to some people in the fashion district here, it was good timing.
“It works out perfectly,” she said. “I need to be in LA anyway, and this way we can start assembling your team. Los Angeles has some of the best talent, and I only hire the best.”
I should be thrilled about all of this. I’d love to go tour the City of Angels, but not by myself. Too bad Rhonda couldn’t be here. We’d go see Hollywood and Rodeo Drive and who knows what else? It all feels like some kind of fantasy, and here I am with no one to share it with. I feel so alone.
The giant jacuzzi tub in the bathroom only makes it worse. Before Riggs, I would have ordered some chocolate and a bottle of wine, put on some good music, and soaked till I looked like a prune.
That used to be my idea of heaven. Now I look at the tub and want to cry. It brings back too many memories of him.
It’s getting late, and I could order room service, but I don’t feel like eating. Instead, I do the one thing that I absolutely shouldn’t do. I know how stupid it is, and yet, I strip down to my panties, put Riggs’s old T-shirt on, and crawl into bed with my phone.
I can smell him, that unique scent of soap and charcoal and spice and sweat.
Why do I keep doing this to myself? I should burn this shirt, but I know I won’t.
I pull the covers over my legs and sit propped up by two pillows, then bring up the photos on my phone.
It’s another act of self-torture I can’t seem to give up.
The first photo, taken by Joe Emmerson, is Riggs and me on horses at Zane and Chelsea’s ranch.
We look so happy together. The next one shows Riggs sporting chipmunk cheeks from stuffing too much strawberry-rhubarb muffin in his mouth.
I laugh every time I see it. Photo after photo takes me back to the last time I was truly happy, and my heart aches all over again.
After a while, I put my phone away and curl up with a pillow, the scent of Riggs filling my nose as I drift off. I’d give anything to have him here with me right now. It doesn’t feel like I’ll ever get over him.
* * *
As promised, a town car picks me up in front of the hotel.
I’m wearing tennis shoes, jeans, and a T-shirt.
Elsie said to wear what I want, and this is what I felt like today.
Besides, I didn’t have anything better with me since I wasn’t planning on a fancy business meeting when I packed to go to New Zealand.
As the car pulls into the parking garage of a high-rise building downtown, I’m starting to wonder if I should have gone shopping for something more business appropriate. I don’t have Elsie’s badass attitude. Maybe someday, but not today.
When I take the elevator to the sixty-eighth floor, everyone who gets on and off is dressed in business attire, making me feel every bit like the out-of-place country girl I am.
The higher the elevator goes, the more looks I get, like I don’t belong. I’m eager to find Elsie, then none of this will matter. At least I hope that’s how this works.
I step off the elevator into the nicest office suite I’ve ever seen. The sign on the wall behind the reception desk says “National Discovery” in big gold letters. I didn’t realize we’d be meeting at the network’s offices, but I guess it makes sense if Elsie was already going to be here.
I walk up to the reception desk, and before I can say anything, a girl wearing a headset looks up at me with a bright smile. “You must be Maddie. They’re expecting you.”
She escorts me down a hall. I know fashion, and I don’t think there’s a suit that costs less than five thousand dollars in the whole place and I feel practically naked being so underdressed. How does Elsie do it?
The receptionist stops at a large wood door. “Your meeting is in here. Go on in.”
I open the door, and as soon as I step inside, a meeting that’s already underway comes to a screeching halt as all eyes land on me. Did I just walk into the wrong room? How embarrassing.
Then I see Riggs and my heart skips a beat. He’s seated at the other end of the room and looks as shocked as I feel. “What are you doing here?” he asks.
“Don’t worry about it,” Elsie tells him from her seat on the other side of the huge conference table. “She’s with me.” Elsie pats the seat of the empty chair next to her. “Come sit down, we were just getting started.”
Hesitant, I walk around the ginormous table while older men in expensive suits, wearing ties that probably cost more than my car, watch me like I’m the most curious thing they’ve ever seen. Even Ash and Riggs are wearing tailored suits, and I hate how stupidly good Riggs looks. Damn.
Standing at the head of the room, Ash has a large screen behind him showing an image I recognize—Horseshoe Ridge. Rhonda and I love that hike. It’s one of our all-time favorite places in Oregon. What’s this meeting about?
As I take my seat, I can’t help noticing what Elsie is wearing—tennis shoes, jeans, and a white T-shirt that says, “That’s Queen Bitch to You!” in large pink letters. Honestly, to pull that off in a meeting like this makes her the ultimate bad bitch.
I wish I could feel as comfortable as she appears to feel about all this, but this whole thing is a bit of a shock. And Riggs hasn’t taken his wide-eyed stare off of me like he can’t believe what’s happening. That makes two of us.
Then, acting like my unexpected arrival is absolutely normal, Elsie’s gaze darts to the front of the room with, “Ash, please continue.”
Clearly caught off guard, Ash coughs to clear his throat. “Uhm, yes, as I was saying, the Pacific Northwest has everything you’re looking for.”
As he goes into more detail, different landscapes flash on the screen, and I recognize all of them.
One, a gorgeous place on the Oregon coast where I used to search for fool’s gold crystals with Rhonda and my mother, is so remote very few people know about it.
Another is the Deschutes River in central Oregon, followed by the Rogue River in the southwest part of the state.
Rhonda, Chelsea, Zane, and the rest of us would go whitewater rafting down those rivers when we were in high school.
Mom loved the Deschutes and would often go with us.
Seeing these brings back fond memories of her.
So many incredible scenes keep popping up, one after the other, followed by several I don’t recognize. The ones I don’t know are based in Washington and Northern California, according to Ash’s brief explanation of each.
When the slideshow ends, Ash says, “My brother will take it from here.”
Riggs stands and explains that they can do three seasons with ten episodes per season while never leaving the Pacific Northwest. “Each episode can be done in one week and we can base the entire operation out of Portland. We’re willing to absorb the cost of building a state-of-the-art studio for editing at no cost to the network.
We’re also proposing that we do one episode per month.
That way, we capture the different seasons.
To be clear, that means only one week of filming per month for ten months out of each year for the next three years. ”
He gives me a sidelong look as he returns to his seat. Can this be happening? What he’s saying would mean… we could be together?
My heart is racing so fast my hands are shaking. Could this really be happening? I want to—
“I don’t like it,” a white-haired man who looks to be about seventy-something says.
I recognize him—Randle Shaw, CEO of National Discovery. His picture was in the hall on my way here.
“Sure, these places are nice,” he says in his gravelly voice, “but we don’t want nice. We want exotic, interesting places that take our audience on a journey they could never afford to go on themselves. We’re National Discovery, for Christ’s sake! We have a brand to uphold.”
Every network executive at the table nods in agreement as grumblings echo around the room. My heart sinks as I focus on breathing. I don’t want to cry, not here, not in front of these heartless bastards.
Then I feel a hand on my knee. I look up, and Elsie is grinning. I don’t know why she is, but she leans over and whispers in my ear, “Pay attention. This is what it means to be the Queen Bitch.”
“Gentlemen,” she says as she comes to her feet.
She walks to the front of the room, and I expect something to be displayed on the screen behind her, some part of the presentation that will change their minds, but it remains blank.
Despite standing in front of all these powerful men, as tiny as she is, she looks absolutely fearless.
“What we’re proposing would save the network sixty-two percent.
Your margins would be up seventy-four percent, and that’s the low end of the projections.
How much did you go over budget in New Zealand? ”
Sheepishly, the men look to each other as they shift in their chairs.
Not missing a beat, Elsie leans down and rests her palms on the conference room table with a steely glare that says she hit a nerve and she knows it.
Then, with the badass confidence you’d expect from a self-made billionaire, she adds, “When it comes to this kind of project, it’s obvious you don’t know what you’re doing. … but I do.”