Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire #2) (41 page)

“I don’t see,” he said, and then his phone chirped, and he looked at it. “Charles.” He stood up and put a hand down for me. “Time to go.”

I’d thought about this over and over the day before. Obsessively, you might say. I’d come to the conclusion that there
was
no real choice. I couldn’t work for Cherise, a woman who hated me even more than Martine had. I’d gone back into Henry’s office and told him that I’d stay with Simon, and I’d seen the expression on his face.

I wasn’t going to stay there long. I couldn’t. It made me feel like a little girl playing Office.
Everybody wants to be somebody,
Gabrielle had said, and she was right. I loved Hemi more than I could possibly say, but loving somebody wasn’t enough to build an entire life around.

“I’m going to be looking,” I told Hemi. “And I’m not going to do it behind your back. I’m going to look for a new job, and I’m going to get one. When I do, I’ll probably be working until six-thirty, and that’s all right, if I’m learning something. And if I’m hearing the truth.”

Hemi

What was I meant to do with Hope? She was impossible.

When I was in the car with her again, was watching her leaning back against the cool leather and closing her eyes, I asked, “Better?”

Was I still narky? Of course I was. She wasn’t giving the situation enough chance to settle, that was all. Employees got their knickers in a twist. It was their entertainment. Gossip, outrage, rumors. And then it settled down and they adjusted and moved on. I’d tell her that, and then I’d tell her again, as many times as I had to until she knew it. She
wasn’t
getting another job and going back on that treadmill, wearing herself down again when she was already all but passing out from a few minutes in the heat. Why should she have to push herself that hard? Wasn’t one of us doing it enough? What purpose would it serve?

So, yes. All of that. But I still couldn’t help checking that she was all right. I couldn’t keep my feet with her. I gave up ground I didn’t have to, I broke all my rules, and I kept on doing it.

She opened her eyes at last. “Yes. Fine. I know you didn’t want to hear that, and still…Thanks for getting the car, although I’m embarrassed. You were right. It
was
too hot. And I never thanked you for yesterday, either. For listening to me in the meeting, and…after the meeting. I appreciated it more than I can tell you. For being sweet with Nathan, too.”

Sweet?
I’d been
sweet?
How was I meant to answer that? And how was I meant to stay angry with her? “You are the most aggravating woman,” I told her. “I’ve started to believe that you were put on this earth to put me to the test.”

The minute I said it, I knew it was wrong, because I was saying that she’d been put on earth for me. Minefield.

Except it wasn’t. She turned her head, gave me that impossibly sweet smile that told me she wasn’t worrying one bit about giving up ground, that she knew she could win anyway, and said softly, “Good thing you’re such a hard worker, then. And such a good man.”

Which was how she did it. Every single bloody time.

Hemi

By Thursday, things had settled down. Hope was looking for a new job, and I knew it, and I wasn’t worrying about it. I’d taken care of it, and I had enough to do.

Maybe not enough to eat, though. It was almost noon, and I was thinking about lunch, which annoyed me. I’d lost my discipline in New Zealand like any big Maori boy going home to his whanau in the rugby offseason and tucking into his mum’s cooking. I’d come back just that unfit, too, and Eugene had made me pay.

When he’d done the weekly weigh-in on Saturday afternoon, I’d been down three and a half pounds since our return. I’d felt every one of them leave, too, protesting all the way.

“Not too bad,” Eugene had grunted, marking it down on the old-fashioned clipboard he insisted on using. “Egg whites
only,
chicken breasts, and none of them tamales, because I’ll know, and you’ll just make it harder on yourself. Another week or two, and you might just’ve worked off that fat. Pound and a half to go. And if you don’t like hearing it, next time, don’t
do
it.”

Hope hadn’t tried to hide her smile, and Eugene had told her, “Get on up here yourself, Miss Little Bit.”

“I
haven’t gained any weight,” she’d said saucily, but she’d stepped up.

“Nah,” Eugene had said after the scale had offered up its proof. “You’ve lost another half a pound since last week. Haven’t put on the muscle you ought to’ve, either. You been working out too much? Too much is as bad as not enough. You ain’t Hemi. Don’t you be trying to keep up with him.”

“Thank
you,” I’d muttered, and she’d shot me an outraged look.

“No,” she’d said. “I’m
fine.
Maybe
I
ate too much in New Zealand, did you think of that?”

“Hmm,” he’d said. “Feelin’ all right?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“Not really,” I’d put in. “Just about passed out in Central Park, didn’t you.”

“It was hot.”

“Hmm,” Eugene had said again. “Yeah, I’d say you better ease off some. And
you
need to be eatin’ them tamales. Just don’t give any to Mr. Big here, I don’t care how much he whines. And if you start feeling bad, you go on and get it checked out. Meanwhile, get on the bike. Level four, and keep it there. We’ll go easy today.” He’d turned to me, then, and said, “But
you…
you get on the rower and go hard. Ten minutes. I wanna see some sweat.”

One rule for me, and another for Hope. But then, I was all good with that.

And here I was, thinking about her again, and about lunch, too, instead of what I was doing. Pure self-indulgence. I shook my head impatiently and got back into it. For about two minutes, because the phone rang. Walter.

He said, “There’s going to be an article in the
Journal
tomorrow. Not good. They’re asking if you want to comment. I’ve said no, but you should take a look at the draft and decide for yourself.”

It wasn’t the first time, but it wasn’t important. “What is it? The layoffs at La Strata? They had to happen. Hopelessly overstaffed. Or am I just a ruthless investor again?”

“No,” he said. “It’s your wife. I’m sending it to you now, and I’ll hold while you read it.”

“No, you won’t. Send it. I’ll ring you back if I want to comment.”

I kept it together. Whatever it was, I’d cope. Bad press had happened before. Power and bad press went together like bangers and mash. If it was personal…well, that wasn’t new, either. It didn’t matter.

Except to Hope.

No.
I shook it off.

And then I read it. No headline, not yet. But the article was bad enough without it.

Revelations surfaced today of cracks in the foundations of one of fashion’s most successful and powerful houses, as it was learned that Hemi Te Mana, 37, iconic founder of the company bearing his name, is facing the possible loss of half his personal net worth in a marital dispute.

In a development that could have widespread repercussions for both the Te Mana corporation and the wider fashion industry, it was revealed that Mr. Te Mana has been married for the past seventeen years to 37-year-old Anika Cavendish, whom he left behind in their native New Zealand upon his emigration to the United States barely two years after their marriage. The pair never officially separated despite Mr. Te Mana’s widely reported single status and rumored connections with a series of women, beginning almost immediately upon his arrival in this country. The couple has no children.

The multimillionaire’s playboy lifestyle continued, sources allege, until his recent rumored engagement to 25-year-old Te Mana marketing assistant Hope Sinclair. Despite the lack of any public announcement, Ms. Sinclair is reported to be wearing an engagement ring into the office and to have mentioned her impending marriage to colleagues.

However, when Mr. Te Mana filed for a divorce from Ms. Cavendish last month, he was served in a separate filing with a suit demanding half the property accumulated during the seventeen-year marriage, in accordance with New Zealand family law. Such a division of Mr. Te Mana’s estimated $250 million personal fortune, retail experts suggest, could require a wholesale selloff of the corporation’s rapidly expanding holdings and seriously jeopardize its financial position.

Mr. Te Mana’s woes may not end there. The May-December romance between the Te Mana CEO and the much younger and more junior Ms. Sinclair has raised eyebrows and hackles at a company whose employee handbook features a five-page sexual harassment policy that requires immediate disclosure of romantic or sexual relationships between managers and their subordinates. As an unnamed colleague of Ms. Sinclair told this reporter, however, “Hemi has one rule for the rest of the company and another one for himself. If he puts his girlfriends on the payroll, who’s going to tell him no? Let’s just say that complaining has been proven to be more than our jobs are worth.” Another colleague noted that Ms. Sinclair’s former manager, Publicity Director Martine Devereaux, a highly esteemed Te Mana veteran of more than eight years’ service, left the company abruptly last year only a few months after the start of Ms. Sinclair’s employment as her direct report. Ms. Devereaux could not be reached for comment.

Experts agree that the potentially disastrous financial repercussions far outweigh any internal issues. Mr. Te Mana’s attorney, Walter Eagleton, refused to speculate on the situation, saying only, “The corporation is on solid financial ground, and we are confident that its future remains secure.” According to Ms. Cavendish’s attorney, Hamish McAllister, “Ms. Cavendish is not interested in vengeance, only in receiving what is rightfully hers under the law. For seventeen years, she has believed that she was in a real marriage, a long-distance one at Mr. Te Mana’s insistence, a relationship that began when she was just a teenager. We have every belief that the New Zealand justice system will follow the rule of law in its decision.”

Meanwhile, the fashion industry and over two thousand Te Mana employees worldwide can only watch and wait to see how the drama plays out.

I rang Walter back.

“She’s gone nuclear,” he said economically.

“Yeh. Aiming for that big settlement, I’m thinking.” I focused on breathing in cool air, breathing out the hot rage that wanted to enslave me. Rage was unproductive, and it had to go. I dealt with the facts, made a plan, executed, and moved on. No matter what the facts were. No matter that Anika was hitting me where it would hurt most, trying to shake the foundations of everything I’d built.

Before she took half of it.

“Settling could be worth it,” Walter said. “Without an affidavit from your roommate…” Rog had been tracked down at last in the UK, had said he “couldn’t remember exactly,” and had implied that a fair deposit of beer money—say, a lifetime’s worth—could jog his memory. Which was absolutely no help at all.

“No,” I said. “It’s
not
worth it. It would never have been worth it. If I’d offered a million, she’d have demanded twenty. Trust me, if she sniffs weakness, she’ll have my blood. That’s not going to happen. I’ll go proactive here, board meeting and so forth. And you’ll go proactive there. I don’t want ‘no bloody comment.’ Call that reporter and show him the documentation from the divorce I
thought
I had. Link to the articles about that attorney. Explain the bloody two-year waiting period. They want a story? We’ll give them a story. And go nuclear yourself. Tell them what the investigator’s found about
her
sex life, and then tell him to find out more. I want to know what her neighbors have heard, what they’ve seen. She’s been screaming over there. I know it. Find out who’s making her do it.”