"Hello? Going to say something?"
"What are you talking about?" Shit. Had someone in the CFO's office finally leaked the truth? He reached for his travel mug and took a long sip of coffee, buying time.
"The television show. All about you and some hot firefighter bachelor auction dude being billionaires. It's all over the morning talk shows and even on the radio."
Spew. He shot drops of coffee all over his desk, choking, the coughs racking his chest as he set down the mug. Oh, my God. Oh, my f**king God. Dylan had been so wrong. Why hadn't they told Laura? She was going to kill them.
No. Worse.
She was going to leave them.
He jumped up, tipping the travel mug on its side, a pool of tan coffee inching its way to contaminate the papers, the stapler, the tape dispenser. Shelly grabbed the mug and uprighted it, plucking tissues from a box on the desk to mop up the mess. He was out the door as she shouted, "Where are you going?"
Getting to Laura before she heard the news was his only rational thought. If she heard before they told her...Sprinting to his jeep, he frantically searched his pants pockets for his keys before he realized he'd left them back in the office. By the time he got back there, Shelly was finishing her cleanup of his desk. The words "thank you" were about to exit his mouth as he searched for his keys, eyes methodically cataloging the desk's surface when she tipped her face up with a dismissive expression.
"Looking for these?" The keys dangled from her finger. No words. He grabbed the ring and left as she screamed, "You're welcome!" to his disappearing back.
Unlock car. Climb in. Insert key. Turn. Reverse. Gas. Thank God for autonomous responses, because he was working on muscle memory right now, the jeep racing down the mountain to go to the city, to find Laura, to –
To what? He had no plan. Punching the steering wheel, he flipped the radio to the channel most likely to be chattering about him and Dylan, a stupid DJ show known for caustic comics and nasty, biting commentary on local sports and characters.
Traffic report. Great. Now he knew everything was backed up before exit eighteen eastbound because a tractor-trailer jackknifed. How critical. And now the sports report. Another football player with CTE. Yet another arrested for abusing his wife. And now someone accused of doping. The miles passed as he balanced speeding with getting caught.
Ding! His phone notified him he had a text. He was guessing it was Dylan. Ignoring it, he just...drove. Wasn't sure where. Just needed to get closer to Laura.
Ring, ring! If Dylan was using the phone then he must know. Mike reached into his shirt pocket and answered. "Hello?"
"Shit, Mike. Have you watched the morning news shows yet?" He sounded as panicked and sick as Mike felt.
"No, but Shelly just told me everything. Fuck of a day to be there super-early for inventory."
"We need to get to Laura."
"Where is she?" The clock read 8:12 a.m. "At work by now?"
"That's what I'm guessing, too." The radio DJs started saying something about firefighter billionaires. Mike's brain couldn't process driving, talking with Dylan, and their banter. Situation f**ked up, though, if this was all over the morning commute. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"I told you we should – "
"You can chew me out later, dude. Let's work on fixing this." Steel edged his words, filling in the spaces where panic receded. Don't f**k with me right now, Mike, he seemed to say. I don't have it in me.
"Fair enough." Silence.
"She works at the Stohlman building downtown. Thirty-second floor. Meet me at the reception desk. How far are you?"
Mike ran a quick mental calculation. "Twenty minutes?"
"I'm a little closer. Probably beat you by five."
"Just get there and try to explain it before she sees it plastered all over the f**king television or hears some disc jockey cackling about it." Click. He pressed "end" and found himself practically throwing the phone out the window. His ears perked and zeroed in on the DJs' conversation.
"So this guy is just some muscled firefighter who oils up for these bachelor charity auctions and gives some rich cougar a nice night while underprivileged kids or AIDS patients or earthquake victims get an extra grand to spend on help. And now it turns out his girlfriend dies and leaves him a billion? Where can I find some rich, young woman to leave me a billion?" Mike's knuckles turned white against the tan steering wheel as he gritted his teeth and sped up.
Different voice, higher and more derisive. "OK, sure, I can see that. It's like 50 Shades of Fire, right? But why'd she leave another billion to the other dude, the ski resort guy."
Pause. A woman's voice. "Maybe she was livin' the dream?"
Derisive DJ: "The dream?"
Woman DJ: "You know. Two guys."
First DJ: "That's our dream!"
Derisive DJ: "Your dream is two guys?" The radio spilled over with giggles and full-throated guffaws.
First DJ: "Haha, no – two women! Two chicks for one dick, man. For a billion bucks, though, I might do two guys. (Laughter). Girls don't fantasize about threesomes with two guys – "
Woman DJ: "In what universe? Of course we – "
Mike cut the radio off with a sharp flick of the wrist. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Laura was about to be completely devastated. She had openly asked them to tell her their secrets, and Dylan had told him they should wait. Dylan. God damn it! He'd listened to Dylan and this – this was the end result.
How had anyone found out about the trust? And of course the news station would use the whole firefighter bachelor angle. What a great lead. He knew the brouhaha would die down within days, and soon people wouldn't talk about it, but that didn't help him to get through this minute, the next hour, the next day – and he couldn't predict Laura's reaction here. She may already be lost. But he had to try.
The highway was packed with the tail end of the morning commute, the pike thick but moving at about forty mph. Better than nothing. What had they been thinking, keeping the whole billionaire thing from her? That night in their apartment, dinner and a movie, everyone coming clean and her open, honest request that they not keep secrets – why had they, then? Her openness had been so damn appealing and they'd flung it in her face (behind her back), still hiding like creeps with a secret that, now that it was out, really wasn't that bad. How many women wouldn't like to date someone who could buy their hometown? Who could make it so they never had to work again? What was so shameful about the money that he and Dylan had pretended to be working class saps while cashing trust fund checks?
Their stupid fear. That's what it all boiled down to. Dylan would never in a million years call it fear, but that was the word for it. He could posture and preen and flex and be Mr. Macho all he wanted and claim he was waiting for the right moment, wanted Laura to get comfortable, wanted the three to bond more before dumping such big news on her, but in the end he was just a big old p**sy who didn't want to confront the emotional landmine the money created.
And it exploded in their faces.
Construction held up traffic near downtown, making him change the channel to AM radio to hear the news report about alternate routes. Ten more minutes of inching through a mile of traffic and he was free. He hadn't been downtown that often and was unsure; Boston wasn't exactly laid out in a grid like his hometown in Indiana, but he was able eventually, with two different circlings of Laura's financial-district building, to find a parking garage and park.
$35 for a few hours? Doesn't matter, stupid, his conscience hissed. Oh. Yeah. All his old ideas about life and money didn't apply any more. Ski Instructor Mike had pinched pennies to buy time and freedom. Billionaire Mike needed to pinch himself and wake up from his stupor of denial. He and Dylan had f**ked up so badly by not telling her the truth. And she wasn't going to handle this well. It's the lying. Not the actual truth itself.
And Jill never bothered to tell you guys, either.
Taking the stairs two at a time, he raced to the skyscraper's main lobby, then searched for the right set of elevators to take him to the thirty-second floor. If Dylan had beaten him, he was upstairs already, hopefully with Laura.
Time was their biggest enemy right now.
No, he thought. We are our biggest enemy.
The murmurs coming from down the hallway were loud enough for Laura to come out of her office and poke around. She only shut her door when she needed to make calls or just had to tune out the drone of corporate life to get some actual work done on reports or code. Her half-open beige door allowed sound to travel easily from the reception area, and she heard Debbie, the receptionist, gasp and say, “Oh, that's Laura's delivery guy!”
Huh? She fast-walked down the hall to see what on earth the ruckus was about. Her delivery guy? What delivery guy? Then her face flushed hot. Dylan? Did Debbie mean Dylan? He'd posed as a flower delivery dude that day when he'd come to her office and they'd –
She flushed even more. Then her nether regions swelled with heat. Oh, my. Just thinking about hot monkey office sex was getting her –
Laura came to a screeching halt at the sight before her in the reception area, where ten or so coworkers were crowded around the lobby television. Normally set to news, this time was no different, the morning chat show that masqueraded as “news” barking out into the open area.
Except this time, Dylan was the feature of a video clip, dressed in – my, my!
Shirtless Dylan, with an oiled chest and red bow tie, wearing the bottom half of a fireman's uniform and carrying an ax? While strolling down a runway at a charity bachelor auction. She laughed; she'd seen the same clip on YouTube. But why was he being featured on a morning news show?
“Laura, that's him, right? The guy who delivered flowers to you a few weeks ago.” Debbie nudged a woman standing next to her. “I could never forget that, uh...face. Yeah,” she said with a low whistle. “That face.”
“With a chest and abs like that, who needs to look at his face?” someone said, her voice older and smoky. The women in the group laughed. The video ended and the scene cut to the co-hosts on comfy couches, two women and a man doing that chat thing that was designed to keep people watching.
"Records show that Dylan Stanwyck, firefighter extraordinaire, former model, and one of Boston's hottest bachelors, is the heir to shipping tycoon Richard Matthews' daughter's estate. Matthews' daughter, Jillian, died in 2010 and left Stanwyck, her longtime lover, a trust fund of $1.1 billion, with an annual income of more than $50 million."
Laura's stomach turned to acid. Debbie's eyes were as wide as saucers as her head bounced between gawking at Laura and staring at the television. One of the men in the room walked away quietly.
“Holy shit,” someone muttered. “A billionaire?”
“What's he doing delivering flowers?” Debbie squeaked.
"Sources confirm that her $2.2 billion estate was split between Stanwyck and Mike Pine, a local ski instructor who recently used his inheritance to purchase the struggling Cedar Mountain Ski Resort. Here's to the lucky lady who finds her way to either man as the billionaire bachelors become the hottest dates in town and Stanwyck can buy himself many times over now in whatever charity auction he pleases."