Chapter 7
Recalibration
WINONA
It had been a week. Between paperwork, the Rolling Hills, and…
that other thing, I needed to let off some steam.
When Friday finally rolled around, I texted Cher and Sarah to ask if they wanted to join me for an after-work drink at O’Malley's pub downtown. They both readily agreed. Cher was especially enthusiastic. She’d been sending me texts all week after I’d made the mistake of telling her a few details about the job.
It was fine, I knew how to avoid the subject of men with Cher.
This one in particular would be easy. The voice in my head laughed, but I ignored that, telling Flo we were going to have a nice, normal girls’ night out.
When I arrived at the pub, I found both women already there, a full pitcher beaded with condensation and three pint glasses on the table.
Cher poured for all of us.
“To Friday,” I said.
“And to non-assholes,” Sarah added.
I glanced at Cher, eyebrows up.
Cher grimaced, her eyes going to Sarah. This wasn't about me, thankfully.
“I guess that talk I had with Jamie didn’t go anywhere, huh?” I asked.
Jamie was Sarah’s boss. He was actually not normally a dick, especially when you compared him to recent dicks I’d known. But when it came to Sarah, he’d been acting inexplicably strange. I’d talked Sarah up to him just last week, but obviously it hadn’t done much.
“Yesterday, he just walked out of the meeting in the middle of Sarah’s update,” Cher said.
I sat up. “What?” I’d spent today putting out some fires away from the Rolling Hills, so I’d missed the regular status meeting.
“No notice, not even an ‘excuse me’.” Sarah’s nostrils flared, her jaw stiff. “He just got up and stormed out like he didn’t like how I was running it.”
“Unbelievable,” I said.
Cher swallowed her sip of beer. “Yup. Sometimes men are the biggest babies I know.”
“Sometimes?” Sarah quipped.
Once again, I thought of that grumpy asshole staring me down. And once again, I had to ignore the strange tingling sensation I felt inside as those eyes blazed in my mind.
“Honestly, these days only Ryan and Calvin are infallible,” Cher declared. “Winona’s brothers are the definition of good boys,” she explained to Sarah, who’d never met them.
“Not that it didn’t take a shit-ton of work to get them there,” I laughed. Then I bit my lip. “Actually, can I boast a little?”
“Always,” Cher said.
I tried not to explode with pride as I said, “Calvin got called by his dream restaurant this week.”
Cher gaped. “Shut up.”
I grinned. Cher loved those boys almost as much as I did. “Seriously. Just to talk, suss him out. But still.”
Sarah’s brows bunched. “Wait, I thought Ryan was the chef?”
“Calvin’s in culinary school,” Cher said. “Ryan’s the engineering genius in California.”
Besides the phone call I had with Calvin on Wednesday, this was the first time I’d felt fully relaxed all week.
It was definitely the distraction I needed.
“Ryan’s doing amazing too,” I said. “He got invited to do his co-op term at this sustainable battery power start-up he’s been obsessed with all year.
Apparently, they’re filing for patents every other day. ”
“Wow, Winona,” Sarah said. “You really did do a great job with those boys.”
Sarah knew I’d raised my brothers, though she didn’t know all the details. Even Cher didn’t know every detail.
Some things were better left in the dark.
“It’s all them,” I said, meaning it. “They worked so hard.”
“Both of them are on full scholarships.” Cher bragged about those boys as if they were her own. I loved it.
“And thank Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I said, “considering the price of tuition at these American schools.”
“She’s lived here half her life, and she still converts everything to Canadian dollars,” Cher laughed.
“Hey, it makes me happy when I think about how much our contracts are bringing in.”
Cher and I raised a glass to Sarah, who was responsible for the biggest of those contracts.
Then Cher gave a rapid-fire update of what else had happened at the Rolling Hills today in my absence.
Sarah asked about Tasha, and it was Cher’s turn to brag, pulling up a picture of her daughter, face covered in chocolate.
After we laughed about that, both women sighed. Then their eyes landed on me.
Though my two friends couldn’t look more different—Sarah with her pale, freckled skin, compact figure, and hazel eyes, and Cher with her smooth brown skin, Amazonian height, and thick dark lashes—but both had the same expression in their eyes.
A Tell me everything look.
My stomach roiled. Cher had spilled everything I told her to Sarah, of course. Which was my fault. I acted like the job in the Hills had been no big deal.
“No,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d just spent the past hour not thinking about it—a first for this week.
Cher rolled her eyes. “Really? Nothing about Mitchell Harrington, Blake Harrington’s brother?”
Sarah grimaced. “Cher. No one’s supposed to know he’s here. Or who he is. Or something.”
“The Mitchell Harrington?” Cher continued, leaning in.
My heart raced. What was she on about? I really should have shut this line of conversation down. But Cher knew something. She was dangling it in front of me, and like a sucker, I was biting.
“What do you mean, ‘The’? He’s a rich asshole. End of story.”
“Winona. I know you barely have the internet at home,” Cher said.
I rolled my eyes. I did, actually. I’d been using it a lot lately for my business applications.
“But you do have this.” She tapped my phone on the table with a fingernail.
Sarah leaned in. “Winona, are you seriously telling me you didn’t look him up? Weren’t you a little curious?”
I was, of course. But I didn’t want to spend a single second more time thinking about him than I already had. “Why would I?” I asked, hoping I sounded aloof despite my rapidly increasing heartbeat.
“Because,” Cher said. “He’s not just some ‘rich asshole’.”
I frowned.
Despite her reservations, Sarah seemed unable to resist joining in. “He’s one of the country’s biggest philanthropists, Winona.”
“What she means,” Cher said, “Is he’s a billionaire.”
I tried not to choke on my beer. “What?”
“An extremely well-known one. You might even call him famous.”
Sarah slanted a glance at Cher. “In some circles.”
Cher laced her fingers together. “Lots of circles. But listen, that’s not the most important part. He’s also—hmm, how would you describe him, Sarah? I mean physically.”
Sarah sighed. “Gorgeous.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Relief had my heart rate slowing down. They were mistaken, clearly. The man I met was a beast. An ogre. Albeit with striking eyes. And, okay, yes, a certain kind of body.
The kind they carve statues of.
But I shook my head. “No. The man I met was not gorgeous. Also, I wouldn’t call him generous, which is kind of the hallmark of a philanthropist.”
Sarah lifted a brow. “Didn’t he pay you an ungodly sum to fix his pipes?”
“That’s because he wanted me to get the hell out of his house. He may have even used those words.” Sort of.
Cher pulled out her phone. “I told you she wouldn’t know,” she said to Sarah, fully ignoring me as she tapped on her screen. A moment later, my phone buzzed, the screen lighting up.
I rolled my eyes. I wanted to ignore whatever she’d just sent me. My stomach was clenching, warning me not to. Never mind that my eyes were itching to look down.
Cher slid my phone toward me so it was directly under my nose.
“Hells bells, Cher!” I said. I reached for my phone, intending to lock it and move on. Except the message was a link, and I recognized the logo. TechBeat. This was the online edition of a glossy magazine Ryan used to get at home.
The link’s headline was WHERE IN THE WORLD IS MITCHELL HARRINGTON?
The house's voice echoed in my mind. Mitchell William Franklin Harrington.
My heart spasmed in my chest, my hands growing damp. My fingers moved on their own, tapping the message despite my brain screaming to let it go.
A browser window opened up. Unfortunately, I was a fast reader, so I took in the first paragraph without thinking.
Then I was hooked.
According to the article, which was dated February of this year, Mitchell Harrington was a thirty-five-year-old tech genius with contracts with some of the biggest organizations in the world, mostly philanthropic or medical.
He was preparing his company, which was called LoupTeq, for a ‘landmark merger’ with Zynstyr Technologies, some kind of medical research firm.
“‘But in a shock move last week,’” Cher read, knowing somehow exactly where I’d be on the page, “‘Harrington handed temporary control of his billion-dollar global entity to a single member of his staff. He hasn’t been seen at his Seattle penthouse, or at any recent charity dinners, where it’s rumored he typically drops upwards of millions in donations, though they’re always anonymous.
’ Millions, Winona. At a single dinner.”
“Every dinner,” Sarah said. “Apparently, he usually attends at least one a month.”
“This doesn’t prove anything,” I say. “I swear this isn’t him.”
It couldn't be.
Cher smirked, reading on. “‘But Harrington effectively vanished six months ago. None of his senior circle would disclose his location. His assistant, Salima Zhang, quashed rumors Tuesday that Harrington was in rehab, prison, or had fled the country.’”
Salima. I don’t call people like you. That’s Sal’s job.
I swallowed, my mouth dry, even as the fury from that comment burned in my chest again.
“‘It’s thought,’ Sarah said, reading over Cher’s shoulder, ‘that Harrington may be staying with his brother, business strategist Blake Harrington, in rural Vermont, away from prying eyes.’”
I shrugged, even as my heart raced. “Fine. So what?” The article got his location only half right. They had to have gotten the philanthropy part wrong, too. The donations were all anonymous. It made the most sense, given the asshole I met.
“Scroll down,” Cher said.
I held my phone out like I was going to set it back down on the table. Only… I couldn’t help being curious. I had to admit, the story was still juicy. A billionaire losing it and vanishing. And living like a wild man right here in Quince Valley. Why?
Reluctantly, I dragged my thumb over the screen.
Then it froze. My eyes locked on the image I’d revealed, and I suddenly deeply, deeply regretted not slamming the phone down. Not dunking it in the fresh pitcher of beer the server had just dropped off.
Because there, filling my phone screen, was a photo of Mitchell Harrington.
Sarah hadn’t lied. The man in the photo was—there was no other word for it—gorgeous, if not a little severe-looking.
Clean-shaven, with his hair cropped short, the top swooping stylishly over his forehead.
I’d still argue vehemently that this wasn’t the same man I’d met.
He had a strong jaw, long nose, cheekbones almost a little too sharp.
But there were those same forest-green eyes. The same thick brows that had been narrowed at me; the tumultuous intensity of them piercing something so deep inside of me I flinched again, right there at the table.
“Impossible,” I whispered.
“He’s even got a scar on his eyebrow,” Sarah sighed. “I’m weak for eyebrow scars. You know, where the hair splits.”
So was I, normally. It was a thing. I leaned in. He had a scar on his upper lip, too. A cleft palate scar, I thought.
I closed my eyes, my chest twisting. I set the phone down, grasping my beer with both hands to hide their trembling. I wouldn’t make him human. I refused.
“David is obsessed with him.” Cher’s husband taught computer science at the local college.
“Besides the computer stuff,” she said, “he has some big medical charity.”
Cher’s voice faded as I found myself once more dragged back to that moment in his house, the way he caught the flashlight I tried to throw at him a second time, without even blinking.
The way those eyes wouldn’t let go of me. They were relentless. Overpowering.
Mean. Cruel. Rich.
“…experimenting with computer treatments for Alzheimer’s, I think,” Cher said to Sarah.
Sarah must have asked about the foundation. “Totally beyond anything anyone’s done before.”
I was sweating. Copiously. I took a swig of beer, then another.
“You okay, Winona?” Cher was smirking now. She’d caught on to how rattled I was.
“Perfectly fine,” I lied.
“I could ask Dave more about him, if you’re interested?”
“Why would I be interested?” I said. My voice was a hair too loud, a bit too shrill.
Cher’s Cheshire Cat smile widened. “I know I say this a thousand times a day, Winona. But you are single. Embarrassingly so.”
My jaw nearly hit the table. I snapped it shut instantly.
“Sweet Jesus in the garden, Cher,” I hissed, setting my beer on the table hard enough it made a loud thunk, beer sloshing onto my hand.
“First of all. I have never met a man I despised more. Second of all, the man despised me right back. Third of all, I fixed a pipe in his house. He paid me. An ungodly sum, mind you. But the deal is done.”
Cher blanched. “Winona, I didn’t mean—”
I held up a hand, embarrassed at how vitriolic my voice had been. This was Cher’s normal M. O. She just had no idea how strongly I felt about men like Mitchell Harrington.
She certainly had no idea how much he’d affected me.
She held both hands up. Sarah looked awash with guilt, too.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m sorry. I get it. Handsome billionaire. Mysterious circumstances. Me, chronically single.”
“Exactly,” Cher said, her tone slightly wounded. “It’s just fun.”
But it wasn’t fun. Not for me.
Just then, my phone buzzed in the center of the table. The screen read DISPATCH.
I didn’t need to answer it, but hell if I wasn’t going to be saved by the bell. I grabbed the phone off the table and stood up. “Excuse me.”
“You’re off the clock,” Cher reminded me.
“I’ll be right back.”
I needed a moment. I’d take the call, take a breath, and apologize to my friends. Cher would get it. She was always there when things got serious.
I turned around and slid the call open, embarrassed now at my reaction.
“Hey Jenn, ” I said as I cut across the bar to the front door, relieved to be speaking to my dispatcher and receptionist, a fully neutral party.
Only the voice on the other end of the line was definitely not Jenn.
It was deep. Masculine.
“I’ve got another leak.”
My insides turned to water as that voice sliced through me. It was as unnerving, I realized, as the eyes that went with them.
“Mr. Harrington,” I said. “How terrible to hear from you again.”