"Morning, Carl," I said, breezing through the doors of De Havilland Enterprises, removing the coffee, two sugars, no cream, from the drink holder and placing it on the front security desk.
"Morning, Lydia. Have I told you lately that I love you?"
I laughed, kissing him quickly on his grizzled cheek and heading toward the elevator bank. "Every morning, Carl. And I'll still never get tired of hearing it." I grinned at him and stepped into an elevator as it dinged open in front of me. Balancing the other three coffees in the drink holder, I switched my briefcase to my other hand and pushed the button to the upper floor.
I'd woken up this morning with a hopefulness I hadn't felt in months, a certainty that everything was going to be okay. I had a meeting with my brother at nine, and we were going to go over the quarterly reports. We'd recently won several large construction bids, and there was every reason to believe we'd win several more. Based on the numbers that came in this morning, we'd come up with a plan and even if I had to cut my own salary in half—again—we were going to get back into the black, so help me God.
Going with the when you look good you feel good philosophy, I'd put on one of my prettiest work outfits, an elegant, fitted sapphire wrap dress and nude heels and spent extra time on my hair and makeup.
Stepping out of the elevator, I greeted Charlene, Stuart's secretary, and placed a coffee in front of her. She was on the phone but mouthed thank you to me. I winked and used my shoulder to open the door of the conference room, walking inside and setting all my things down on the edge of the large mahogany table.
Once I'd gotten all my things situated, I peeked my head out the door. "Hey Charlene, has Dave in financials dropped the reports off yet?"
"There wasn't anything on my desk this morning. Do you want me to call down?"
"No, that's okay. I'll wait until Stuart gets in." I called his cell, but it went straight to voicemail, and so I drank my coffee in the conference room, going over a few emails on my laptop. When Stuart still hadn't arrived forty-five minutes later, I put my things away and headed down to my office, asking Charlene to let me know when he got in. Why did I have the sinking feeling my brother was at home in bed, nursing a hangover as he so often was on Monday mornings these days? I sighed, the hopeful attitude I'd arrived with quickly dwindling.
I walked back up to Stuart's office about noon, but Charlene just furrowed her brows and shook her head. I sighed, turning to leave, when the door opened and my brother walked in. I startled at the look of him, bedraggled and pale. "Stuart?" I asked, walking toward him. "Good Lord, are you sick? Why'd you come in—?"
"Go into the conference room, Lydia." I frowned, and started to ask him what was going on when he cut me off. "Please." That startled me more than anything. I couldn't recall the last time my brother had said please.
"Lydia, do you—?"
I shook my head at the start of Charlene's question. "No, Charlene. I'll call you from the conference room if we need anything." A pit was beginning to form in my stomach. Something bad was going on. Something I was pretty sure I didn't want to know about.
The door clicked quietly behind us. Stuart went and stood at the head of the table, his hands on the chair in front of him. I could see that a fine sheen of sweat had broken out on his brow.
"What is it?" I asked quietly. I felt myself bracing, drawing inward against whatever he was about to share with me.
"I . . ." He ran his hand through his dark blond hair. It already looked like he'd done that far too many times this morning. "Jesus, Lydia, I'm sorry. I'm so damn sorry. I . . ." he let out a long, shuddery breath and then met my eyes, "I lost the company."
I stared at him, my mind grappling to understand what he was telling me. I shook my head. "Lost the company? That's impossible." I laughed, a brittle sound. "You can't lose a company, Stuart. What are you saying?"
"I lost it in a card game. I gambled it. I gambled the company."
I blinked at him: once, twice, three times. "I don't understand," I said, speaking very slowly. "I think you better help me grasp what you're trying to say here."
Stuart raised his arms and dropped them, anger coming over his expression. "I fucked up! I bet the company in a high-stakes poker game, and I fucking lost, okay? I was with our lawyers all morning. I signed it over. It doesn't belong to us anymore. Is that clear enough for you? Are you comprehending?" he spit out.
My blood pressure was skyrocketing, and I felt nauseated. "Don't," I said, my voice a hiss. I pulled a chair back and sagged down into it. "That can't even be legal. Surely there's a way to undo this—"
"There's not. Not unless I want a hit put out on my life. Or maybe yours. Fuck, Lydia, there's no way out of this. I was so close. It was right within my grasp. All our problems . . . solved! Right there and then," he snapped his fingers, "gone." He pulled the chair back that he'd been standing behind and sagged down just as I had. "We're fucked."
I shook my head back and forth, reeling. This couldn't be happening. He’d gambled the company? No way out? A hit . . . on his life? On mine? What the hell? "No, no, I can't believe this. No, Stuart. Maybe I can talk to the person who bet against . . . what? What is that look on your face?"
Stuart put his head in his hands and raked his fingers through his hair again. After several tense moments he brought his face up, his expression even paler if that were possible. "I haven't told you everything. I . . . Jesus—"
"Just spit it out, Stuart. It can't possibly get any worse." Only it probably could. And knowing Stuart, it would.
"The man who owns the company now," he swallowed, his eyes pools of despair, "is Brogan Ramsay."
My heart stuttered, my breath faltering. I clutched the edge of the table. "Bro . . . Brogan Ramsay?" I breathed.
"Yes, his father used to work—"
"Yes, I know who Brogan Ramsay is! How, though? I don't understand." My heart was pumping out a staccato beat in my chest. I felt like I might faint if I didn't remain sitting.
"You think I do?" he yelled, throwing his hands up again. "He's a psycho. He's been plotting this. We fired his father, do you remember?"
"We?" I hissed. "We did not fire anyone, you did." Images were assaulting my brain, unbidden. A summer twilight . . . his lips tasting me, his body pushing into mine . . . the look of . . . reverence in his young eyes . . .
"Because I was protecting you!"
I groaned, leaning my head back on my chair. I remembered it very differently, and I was damn sure Brogan did, too. But I wasn't going to argue with Stuart about this now. I needed to try to fix this. "Where can I find him?"
"No, Lydia. You're not going there."
I licked my lips. "We were friends . . . of a sort, once upon a time. Maybe he'd listen to me, Stuart. I have to try." Plus, I owed him an apology. It had been a long time coming. I'd wanted to apologize to him for so many years. I still carried it like a sliver deeply embedded in my skin. Stuart owed him an apology, too, but I couldn't be responsible for Stuart. Clearly. "Give me the address. I don't have the energy to argue with you." I felt drained, zapped completely of the hopefulness from this morning.
"I'll go with you then."
"No, I think you've done enough damage. I'll go alone."
"He's not the same as you might remember him. He's . . . different . . . dangerous. He tricked me." The last part came out sounding like a whine and a wave of disgust washed through me.
I rubbed at my eye. Dangerous? Brogan? I remembered him as sensitive and intense. "I'm just going to talk to him, Stuart. Do you have a better idea? Another solution that you haven't put on the table?" I asked angrily.
"No," he said, his shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry, Lydia. I'm so sorry." He put his head in his hands again.
I couldn't muster any compassion for him, not in that moment. "Then give me the address."
"It's a business address."
"That's fine—even better. There'll be plenty of people around."
"I don't think it's that kind of busine
ss." He raised his head, his expression a mixture of fear and dejection. But he reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a business card and pushed it across the table. I reached out and grabbed it.
**********
I followed the instructions from my GPS to the address on the business card, pulling up in front of a nondescript red-brick home in Woodlawn, a neighborhood in the Bronx known as Little Ireland. All this time he was so close? After he'd left—don't sugarcoat it, Lydia, after he'd been kicked off—our property, we'd looked for him and hadn't had any luck. It was as if his family had simply disappeared. I'd even wondered several times if his father took Brogan and his sister back to Ireland after that day. That day. I cringed, as I always did when I thought about it. I sat in my car for a few minutes, staring at the building, working up my nerve to go inside. Stuart had said it was a business address, but it looked like someone's home. Taking a deep breath, I stepped out of my car into the muggy air, straightening my dress as I crossed the street. One glance at the clouds above told me we were about to experience a summer shower.
The brass knocker had the head of a ram on it. My heart rate had sped up, and I worked to calm my breathing as I lifted the knocker and used it to rap twice.
I was about to come face to face with Brogan, after all this time, all these years.
After a minute, I heard footsteps coming toward the door and stood completely still as it was pulled open. My breath came out in a whoosh when I saw a boy, no more than fourteen standing in front of me. "H-Hi," I stuttered, clearing my throat and pulling my spine straight. "My name is Lydia De Havilland. I'm here to see Brogan, that is, Mr. Ramsay."
The boy raised one brow, letting his gaze roam down my body in a suggestive way. I stiffened and gritted my teeth. Insolent little brat. "Is he in?" I demanded.
"Aye," he stood back and waved his arm, indicating I should come inside. I hesitated only briefly before stepping over the threshold. The foyer was nondescript, lots of dark wood and a faded oriental carpet on the floor. It was devoid of furniture or wall hangings.
I jolted slightly when the door slammed behind me, fidgeting with my purse strap and waiting for instructions from the boy. He appeared to text something on his phone, then put it in his pocket, and gave me another gesture to follow him. I did, walking down a hallway and turning into what appeared to be a waiting room. There was a large leather couch, several bookshelves lining the wall, and a coffee table with a few financial magazines on it.
I sat down on the leather couch and the boy sat down next to me. I scooted over slightly and smiled at him politely. His eyes swept my body again, a cocky smirk on his face. My God, the boy didn't even have facial hair yet. "How's the form?"
"Excuse me?"
"What's the craic?"
"I'm sorry, I don't—"
A door on the other side of the room suddenly opened and a tall, dark outline stood in the doorway. "Rory."
The boy—Rory—stood abruptly and moved around the table. I stood, too. "Sorry, Mr. Ramsay. This fine thing is here to see ya." I did understand that. I pulled myself straighter. My heart was now a frantic drumbeat in my chest as I stared at the man I'd only known as a boy so many years ago. My nerves stretched tight, tension coiling in my stomach. I was suddenly having difficulty pulling air into my lungs. He took a step closer, into the light, and it felt as if time stood still. Brogan Ramsay stood in front of me. He was all man now, tall and broad, his black hair cut shorter than it'd been the last time I'd seen him. He removed a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and I stared at his face. It was the same and yet different. I recognized the ice-blue beauty of his eyes, framed by thick, inky lashes and black, slashing brows, and the sensual shape of his mouth. But the difference showed in his strong jaw and sculpted cheekbones—the bone structure of a full-grown man. He was even more beautiful than I remembered. The girl in me swooned and melted just a little. But I wasn't a girl, I was a woman, and I stiffened my spine. I wasn't here to swoon.
His gaze finally moved from Rory to me and lingered on my face for one startling moment as my breath caught, his eyes hard chips of blue ice. I froze under his cool assessment. He looked away as if in disinterest, and I released a breath.
"I told you I require a visitor's name, Rory."
"I sent it, sir."
"You didn't."
Rory swallowed. "Phone's acting the maggot, sir. Strangest thing. Lydia De Havilland." He swept his hand toward me as if I were royalty, but Brogan's eyes didn't follow it. A small muscle twitched in his cheek.
"Get it fixed. Go now."
"Shur look it. I'm gona head on." Rory rushed from the room, not looking back. My gaze returned to Brogan, taking him in. He wore black suit pants and a gray shirt, open at the collar and the sleeves rolled up to show strong, tanned forearms, those same forearms I used to stare at as he worked in my yard.
"Hi, Brogan," I said softly, unmoving. Emotions were assaulting me, so fast and furious I hardly had time to analyze them. They overlapped, swirling together to form a ball of nerves in my stomach, a tightening in my chest. Something seemed to flutter through my veins.
"Lydia, it's been a long time. How can I help you?" His voice was deep, smooth, completely unaffected. Bored even.
I stiffened. "You don't know why I'm here?"
He paused and then turned, heading back into the room from which he'd emerged. "Would you care to sit down?"
I followed him into what I saw was his office. He tossed his glasses onto the top of a large, black desk in the center of the room and sat down in the chair behind it. I hesitated momentarily before taking a seat in the chair across from him.
"It has been a long time," I said, replying to the comment he'd made a few moments before. "I'm glad to see you're well, Brogan." I cleared my throat. "What exactly is this business?" I asked, sweeping my hand around, indicating the building as a whole.
"I'm in life insurance." There was some kind of amused gleam in his eye I had no idea how to interpret. I noted he no longer had any trace of an accent. I wondered if that had come naturally, or if he'd worked to rid himself of it. Either way, it seemed a shame. I'd always loved the lilting sound of his speech, the way he sometimes threw in Irish slang that I had no idea how to interpret. The way the boy, Rory, had just done. I remembered laughing and asking him what certain sayings meant. I'd known a few . . . long ago. Sometimes they still came back to me, unexpectedly. He'd called dandelions piss-in-the-bed. What are you doing down there? I'm clearing out the piss-in-the-bed.
I cleared my throat again. "Insurance. Oh. Okay. Well, good. Obviously you're very successful."
Brogan tapped his fingers on his desk as if impatient. "As to your previous question," he went on, apparently ignoring what I'd just said, "yes, I do know why you're here. I imagine it's because your brother is still a coward and a moron. Sending his sister to do his bidding? To clean up his mess?"
I swallowed, heat flooding my face. Outside thunder rumbled. "He didn't send me. I insisted on coming. But yes, I am here to clean up his mess." I licked my lips nervously.
"And how exactly are you going to do that? Are you offering to purchase the company back? There'll be a surcharge now, of course."
Surcharge? "I . . . I can't. We don't have the capital to do that. I'm hoping we can come up with some other arrangement."
He lifted one dark brow. "And what did you have in mind?"
I looked to the side and then back to him. Truthfully, I hadn't arrived at a plan before rushing over here to beg Brogan for mercy. And now I saw the folly in that. "We were friends once, Brogan. I'm hoping you'll—"
He suddenly slammed his fist down on his desk, his face contorting into a mask of fury. "We were never friends. You tricked me and lied to me. You cost my father his job. You have no idea what you cost my family."
I swallowed heavily, shaking my head. "I . . . I know. I did trick you. It was an awful, selfish thing to do. I've wanted to apologize for so long, I even—"
"I have no need of your
apology, Lydia."
"All the same, Brogan—"
"No," he gritted out harshly. Rain began pelting against the windows. "You don't get to throw a sorry at me in order to assuage your own guilt. I don't want it. Keep it for yourself, princess." He added the old nickname mockingly.
My God. He hated me vehemently. After all this time.
I studied his face, hard and set in his anger. "Stuart was right. You did this on purpose. You planned it. You tricked him into losing the company to you."
"Tricked him? Hardly. Your brother's problems are of his own making."
"I know that, Brogan. Believe me, I do. I'm under no illusion as to my brother's weaknesses, his vices. But please, we employ so many people. They all depend on us for their livelihoods."
"Ah, now you care about peoples' livelihoods? How refreshing."
I opened my mouth to respond, but he interrupted me, plowing ahead. "Anyway, what makes you think I'd put anyone out of work? Except, of course, you and your brother. As the new owner, I've taken it upon myself to look into De Havilland Enterprises. At first glance, it appears things could be turned around if it was being run by someone who wasn't a gambler, a drug user, and a fucking self-serving waste of oxygen."
My heart dropped. He might not take the company apart, but the business my father had worked his fingers to the bone for would no longer be in our family. It would have broken his heart to know . . . oh God. And all because of something I foolishly did seven years ago.
I pulled in a lungful of air, a lump forming in my throat. Whether Brogan agreed or not, I had thought we’d been friends . . . once, long ago. Before. I searched his face for the kind, sensitive boy he'd once been, but saw nothing of him in the hard lines of this man's face. I didn't know him anymore. This man was a callous stranger.
"There's nothing I can do, is there?" I asked. I licked my lips, pulling the bottom one between my teeth.
Brogan studied me, his gaze skittering to my mouth and back to my eyes. Tapping on his desk again, he appeared to be weighing something, some decision. "How much do you want ownership of De Havilland Enterprises back, Lydia?"