Page 29 of The Grumpy Billionaire
It was confession time. No other way around it.
“Okay then… Reid and I were in—volved. We were involved. We had a relationship. So, you see the problem.”
“What problem?” Rob gave me a pleasant smile, tenting his fingers in front of his chin, leaning back in his desk chair.
I blinked. “Obviously there’s a conflict of interest if I do the interview.”
The pleasant smile teamed up with a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “There’s no conflict. There are no allegations of wrongdoing that need investigating. This is a feature, a profile. Do a puff piece. I don’t care.”
Now Rob leaned forward over his desk. “Just get him on camera and on our air for November sweeps. Before he decides to take his offer to another station.”
I stared at him, shocked to see the desperation so plain in his eyes.
When I didn’t respond, Rob’s shoulders fell. He looked at the top of his desk then raised his gaze to me with a weary expression.
“Mara, I’ve already told the GM about it—he won’tletme keep you on if we lose this interview. It’ll look terrible on your resume to move on from a new job after only a month. You don’t want that. I’m asking again as your boss and as your friend, who would like very much to keephisjob, please reconsider. My family enjoys living indoors and having food and clothing. Please?”
I stared at the family photos and the crystal Associated Press news award on Rob’s desk, turning the situation over in my mind. I didn’t want to endanger his job, and of course I didn’t want to lose mine over this.
The boys needed me close by, and in her own weird way, I thought Mom did too. And it wasn’t fair to Rob and the rest of my co-workers for me to blow off an assignment that could benefit all of us.
Ratings determined how much money a station could charge advertisers. This story practically guaranteed blockbuster ratings—it could make our year financially. I had to suck it up and get it over with.
“I’ll do it,” I muttered, sounding like one of my little brothers after being ordered to take out the trash. “I’ll call today.”
Rob’s ready smile popped back into place. “That’s my girl. There’s the future star I hired.”
I didn’t return my boss’s smile. Instead I stood up and walked out of his office like a condemned prisoner going to the gas chamber.
* * *
I didn’t call that day.
I meant to. I did. But I managed to stay “busy” all morning and afternoon. And every time I did pick up the phone and look at that number, I was suddenly covered in a vicious swarm of mutant attack-butterflies and had to put it down again.
At home that night I went to the bookshelf lining one wall of my room, glancing over all of my favorite books from middle school and high school and next to them, my old yearbooks from Eastport Bay High.
Pulling one out, I cracked open its cover for the first time since graduating.
Senior year. We’d been featured prominently in this one, Reid and I. We’d both been athletes, and I’d always been the outgoing type, so I was involved in all the student leadership activities.
Reid had been quieter but well-liked, and of course, he’d been in the tech clubs all four years. The fact that we’d been best friends and always together meant we were pictured together on several pages.
We’d even been voted “Cutest Couple” in the Senior Superlatives section.
That was where I turned first. The attack-butterflies made another pass, but I swatted them away and forced myself to look at it. I needed to do this.
If I couldn’t manage to face him in old photographs, how would I ever do it in person?
Our faces, so much younger-looking, even just a decade ago, were pressed cheek-to-cheek in the full-page photo. I recognized the emotion sparkling in my own young eyes. I was in love, blissfully planning a future with the sweet-faced boy holding me close.
My gaze shifted to Reid’s image, and a familiar pang hit my heart. He looked happy, carefree, confident—and hehadbeen so sure of his future and of us. I studied his eyes, a shade of blue so unforgettable I’d never seen it repeated in another human being.
I hated the realization that I’d examined every pair of blue eyes I’d encountered since then searching for it.
Lower down in the photo, a trail of black marker stretched from my chest to his. A heart had been drawn on each end of the line. Reid had done that when I’d given him my yearbook to sign (I’d reserved an entire page in the back just for him).
I’d freaked out at first when I’d seen his marker drawing on the fresh clean page of my new book, but then he filled in the hollow hearts right in front of me.
