11. “How You Like Me Now?” #2
“Hold my calls,” Soren said, stealing a rare few minutes for himself to enjoy his morning and ground himself as he thought over future plans.
He moved to the window.
The harbor continued its work below. Boats waited. Businesses hummed. And for once, his thoughts weren’t shielded by his father’s looming shadow. He could finally see his objectives with clear, unhindered vision.
Sipping his morning greens, Soren once again indulged in replaying moments from the weekend in his mind.
Jocelyn Collins was a force of nature, moving through the world with the certainty of a woman who needed no one’s permission or approval. She wasn’t refined or polished, which only added to her allure. She had such a raw, unmatched beauty. It was utterly rare and one of a kind.
She spoke without filter, laughed brashly, and challenged him constantly with brutal honesty most people would never dream of throwing at him.
Not only did she question his decisions, she pushed back, unimpressed by his money, position, or authority.
She was, without a doubt, the realest person he’d ever met.
To the casual observer, she was indestructible. A woman incapable of insecurity. But he knew better.
He held her trembling, naked body when she came apart in his arms, saw her fight to hide behind her defenses as he persistently stripped them away. He found her hidden tenderness behind her aggression. And he saw her in a way very few ever had.
She might retreat to sarcasm and deflection with others, but he was one of the few who could read the vulnerability underneath.
All that noise, all that bravado and cutting wit, it guarded something fragile, something she’d spent her whole life protecting from outsiders.
But now, she could rest. She could finally let down her guard and relax, trusting him to handle the rest.
He wanted to take care of her. Some scar from her past must have made her afraid to depend on others. But he’d show her she could depend on him.
This weekend, he watched her barriers crumble, saw the precise moment she realized his patience would always outlast her resistance, and then she gave in. Beautifully. Completely. Surrendering not just her body but those secret pieces of her heart she kept guarded.
She finally admitted she was his.
Even now, that awareness struck his chest like a fist closing around his heart. He was the first person she’d ever truly trusted. It went beyond sex. This weekend, he discovered the real Jocelyn, the truly unfiltered version of herself she’d fiercely tried to hide.
Soft. Vulnerable. Needy in all the right ways. Hungry for his touch. Responsive. Gorgeous. His.
Swallowing down the last drop of juice, he set the empty glass aside. Now that he had her, he could finally start envisioning a real future. Where there had been a faceless figure, there now stood the woman of his dreams. Sure, she wasn’t what he’d initially pictured, but maybe this was better.
So what if she didn’t fit the cookie-cutter wife mold? She was too damn sexy for that sort of role anyway. She was far better than any agreeable option out there. And now that he’d convinced himself this was the right move, he didn’t give a damn what anyone else might have to say on the matter.
Who would stop him anyway? His greatest critic was gone. It was time to stop trying to fill his father’s shoes and step forward in his own. Time to get out from under that oppressive shadow and allow himself to finally be happy.
Hawthorne Fishery was his responsibility now. Every decision was his. And it was damn near time he owned his authority and called the shots he knew needed to be called.
Soren returned to his desk and pulled up the Poland expansion file with three keystrokes. The system—a custom-built interface that fed real-time data from every port, vessel, and transaction across Hawthorne’s global network—loaded instantly.
The expansion proposal had been sitting in digital limbo for months, a chance to establish a direct distribution center in Warsaw that would cut shipping time to Eastern Europe by half.
It required capital investment, board approval, and the kind of strategic vision that separated thriving companies from stagnant ones.
He’d drafted the preliminary analysis himself. Three hundred pages of market research, tariff projections, and infrastructure assessments. Work that should have been divided among three brothers, delegated across capable shoulders, and distributed through the family legacy.
Instead, it lived on his screen, and his alone.
The numbers were solid, the opportunity to change the game more than anything had in the last decade. The only thing holding them back was that such a decision required the entire board’s backing.
Warren Aldrich’s vote would be the deciding factor, but he wouldn’t move without assurance that the Aldrich Shipping partnership not only stayed intact, but expanded with Hawthorne Fishery.
Soren briefly considered how much Olivia’s feelings might play into her father’s decision, then chided himself for being ridiculous. This was business. His personal relationship with Warren’s daughter shouldn’t come into the discussion whatsoever.
Not to mention, he’d done nothing wrong.
He’d made no promises to break. If Warren wanted to judge him on something, it should be the company’s stability and its numbers since the transition after Magnus’s death.
His father had always been a businessman first. So much so, he viewed his fatherly role as provider as a complete substitute for being anything else in their lives. Although he did make some unscheduled, winning appearances as a bully when the mood struck.
All their lives, Soren and his brothers had lived under the oppressive shadow of a man who never handed out a word of praise, yet always felt he had an endless right to criticize their every move.
If they had any worthwhile input on the company, it was either completely ignored or watered down and regurgitated as Magnus’s own concept, which was fine, because by that point, the ideas were usually so bastardized the ingenuity was lost.
Over time, he and his brothers lost interest in the company, their father’s approval, and healing the lifelong ache for his praise that would never come.
Then the son of a bitch died.
Scrolling through spreadsheet after spreadsheet, cross-referencing cost projections against the company’s current cash reserves on a split screen, Soren processed his father’s death the way he always had, with distant disregard.
Times were different now. He was moving the company into a new era of trade, one that retired the old ways of doing business in anticipation of a new age grounded in boundless technology and possibility.
His dad never understood that technology would inevitably change the world with or without his approval.
Had he still been here, the fishery would have rapidly fallen behind due to his stubbornness.
The world was changing faster than people realized, and anyone who hesitated to change with it was bound to be left behind in the approaching technological boom.
Twenty minutes dissolved into the span of a fleeting moment. His mind worked on two tracks as he calculated numbers and contingencies while circling the issue of his brother’s disinterest like a shark circles blood in water.
Initially, Greyson had chosen the sea over the boardroom, disappearing for months at a time to travel with the fishing crews. But that life didn’t suit a family man, so he gave it up after he and Wren settled down.
When he didn’t trade his deck boots and gloves for a suit, Soren confronted him.
Grey said he had work to do at the house in preparation for the baby, which was true. But that didn’t mean he’d eventually show up in a suit and take a seat behind a desk.
He hoped Grey would eventually take his place in the company, but with every passing month he became less hopeful that would ever happen.
His brothers didn’t need the paycheck, so there was no urgency to mend their career paths. Resentment still simmered because while they were taking their damn time, he was there every day figuring out ways to make them wealthier than they ever dreamed.
Grey, he could forgive for taking some time to build a strong family foundation.
He wanted to be a good father—better than the one they grew up under, and Soren supported his decision to be more involved with Wren and the baby at home.
But Logan. Logan simply wasn’t interested.
Had never been interested in any meaningful way.
He checked the time. The advisors would be starting shortly, and Soren wanted to sit in.
Closing the files and locking his screen, he strolled through the corridor.
Greyson’s office sat behind glass on the north wall, with a dust-coated desk and an artifact of a filing cabinet from before the company went green.
Logan’s office sat adjacent, pristine and untouched as a showroom.
Honestly, he should give the spaces away, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up hope.
The corridor leading back toward the conference rooms was immaculate and silent, all sharp angles and climate-controlled air that smelled faintly of new carpet and wood polish.
Soren moved through the newly renovated halls with unwavering authority.
His confidence boost from the weekend rested like a hard-earned chip on the shoulder of his designer suit.
She was his…
His.
The thought carried him down the hallway, past the C-suite offices, and through the bullpen where junior analysts bent over screens. He fished out his phone and checked the screen.
Still nothing from Jocelyn.
His thumb hovered over her contact, debating if he should just make the first move. It was nearly noon. He’d expected her to text by now.
A joke. A complaint. Something.
The twinge in his gut wasn’t quite concern. Not yet. More like the slow build of anticipation stirring his nerves. Eventually, she’d text.