Page 6 of Need You
Chapter Two
Delaney sat on the phone fuming. “How can that be? How can he get to keep my name? It’s mine. It’s on my birth certificate, for God’s sake.”
“The judge was firm,” her lawyer said. “Robert gets the name and the clothing company. You get the shoe and handbag business, the homes, and the warehouse.”
“I don’t care about the homes or the warehouse, I want my name back. Besides the fact that it’s the name my parents gave me, it’s my brand, Liz. It’s the name I built the lines on.”
“I know, Delaney, and if you want me to appeal the decision, I will. But I’m not going to lie to you; Robert’s got you over a barrel. Everything was in his name. The company, the licenses, the studio, and the contracts. On paper, you’re nothing more than a fashion designer who worked for Delaney Scott. You got bad legal advice.”
“I gotnolegal advice.” Just Robert’s. “I was a starry-eyed kid when we started Delaney Scott. I ran the creative side and Robert ran the business end. I didn’t pay attention to whose name was on what. I never thought Robert and I would break up.”Stupid me thought love was forever.
“I’m sorry, Delaney. I did everything I could do. My advice: move on, rebuild in a big way, and remember that success is the best revenge.”
After the call, Delaney went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. What she really needed was a shot or two (or three) of tequila. The last year had been like a surreal dream, watching everything in her life disintegrate. First her marriage and then her company. Maybe she hadn’t worked hard enough on the former, but the business had taken everything she had and then some. All a labor of love. From the moment she’d been accepted to Parsons School of Design, Delaney had plotted her career trajectory, never veering from her goal of being a top designer. An internship at Marc Jacobs led to a design position at Donna Karan and her future seemed to write itself.
She’d met Robert, a bright and rising content marketing manager, at Donna Karan. At their first meeting she spilled red wine on his four-thousand-dollar suit and proceeded to tell him why his campaign for Donna’s new lingerie line was all wrong. The next day he sent her a dozen red Ecuadorian roses, claiming to find pushy women hot, and she fell a little bit in love. They got married a year later and it was Robert who convinced her to leave her six-figure job at Donna Karan and go out on her own. He supported her while she worked on her designs and created her first eponymous couture line, which the trades reviewed glowingly. That’s when Robert quit his job to run the burgeoning Delaney Scott fashion company.
Two years later, they launched a ready-to-wear line, Delaney Scott Every Day. Then came the handbags and the shoes, which turned out to be a significant business on its own. And now, her only business, which came with a small team of designers and salespeople and a warehouse supervisor, who was temporarily overseeing the order shipments until Delaney could hire a fashion house manager to maintain the operation. Right now, she had to develop a new line of clothing from scratch. Unfortunately, in the last year, she hadn’t been able to focus. Her designs were flat and uninspired. Just a lot of the same old, same old.
She’d moved into the Glory Junction house full time nine months ago to take cover after the divorce and ensuing court battle and to get her joo joo back. Too many people in LA wanted to gloat over her failed marriage or use it to their advantage. The fashion industry could be very opportunistic, which was a nice way of putting it. And Glory Junction was such a pretty, happy place with its surrounding mountains, rivers, lakes, and charming downtown, a combination of the old West and an Aspen-style ski town. The area attracted some of the world’s most famous skiers, avid rock climbers, and mountain bikers. For Delaney, who wasn’t much of a sports enthusiast, the town offered unrivaled peacefulness.
Except for her immediate neighbor, who drove her nuts. Colt Garner’s family was an institution in Glory Junction. Everyone loved them. The parents had founded the family’s adventure company in the late 1970s. While Gray and Mary Garner were still a big part of the operation, for all intents and purposes their sons ran it. They were some of the nicest people—Colt being the exception—in town, so she tried to be civil to him. But the man busted on her last nerve. He treated the easement part of their driveway as if it was his alone, even though she owned it. He was rude, condescending, and sour. Oddly enough, the women around here actually swooned over him. Maybe it was the uniform, or, if she were being perfectly honest, the chiseled face, the square jawline, and the mile-wide shoulders.
Anyway, she’d taken to calling him Chief Hottie from Hell and did her best to avoid him.
Delaney sipped her tea and thought about food. Since the divorce, she’d lost six pounds and her clothes were beginning to hang off her. Maybe she’d go to the grocery store later and fill her cupboards and freezer with cookies and ice cream. When had she ever been able to do that before?
What she really needed to do was plant her ass at the drafting table and come up with a clothing design that wasn’t crap. Channel the old Delaney Scott, who had so many ideas swimming in her head she couldn’t get them on paper fast enough. And at some point—sooner rather than later—she had to hire that manager to run the handbag and shoe lines, which from now on would be her bread and butter.
It was no secret that Robert had approached some of the luminaries in the fashion world to take over as head designer of Delaney Scott. It would be interesting to see what direction the company would go in. The vindictive part of Delaney wanted to see Robert and the business bomb. The part of her that had built the company from nothing, though, didn’t want to see it damaged. It was a weird predicament having someone else control a brand with her name on it that she no longer owned.
She got up, put the cup and saucer in the dishwasher, and went upstairs to her studio, a converted bedroom with spectacular lighting and a view to die for. From the south-facing windows she could see Misty Summit, the lake, and tree-dotted hillsides. Unfortunately, her cork board lacked the same great wonders. Delaney examined yesterday’s sketches, hoping that they weren’t as bad as she’d thought.
Ugh. They were worse.
Dull evening gowns that looked like they walked down last year’s runway. Her designs had always been fresh and cutting edge. Now they looked like everything else. She sat at the table and began to sketch. Two hours later, her trash can was full.
Wandering back to the kitchen, she made herself a tuna sandwich and wound up dumping half of it down the garbage disposal. She returned to her studio and spent the rest of the day trying to conjure some magic. The best she came up with was an ugly tuxedo dress. The next time she looked outside it was nearly dark and Colt had parked his police cruiser in her spot.
For now, it didn’t matter with the Tesla charged. It was his sense of entitlement that irked her. She got that he was the police chief and had to respond quickly to accidents and crime scenes, but that didn’t give him the right to use her property as his personal parking lot. He had his own driveway and a garage.
And she was in a bad mood ... a really bad mood.
Slipping on a pair of tennis shoes, she dashed down the stairs and outside into the balmy August evening. There was a light on in Colt’s kitchen, so she made a beeline for the back door and banged on it. He came out shirtless in a pair of shorts, his brown hair slicked back, wet. Her eyes met him midchest and she immediately dropped them to stare at his bare feet. Crazy, but she found them incredibly sexy. Big, tan, and sprinkled with a dusting of dark hair.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, not all that friendly.
She jerked her gaze upward and cleared her throat. Right. This wasn’t a social call. “You parked your car in my spot.”
“It’s Friday night, Delaney. You know how many times I get called out on a Friday night? Look, I’ll pay to have an outlet installed at the top of your driveway if it means that much to you.”
She snorted. “I can afford my own damn outlet. That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“Your presumptuousness. First you take the easement for yourself. Next, you’ll be coming for my name.”
He stood there, looking confounded. “What the hell are you talking about?”
