BlakeOnly if she called my father an angel. He was a cool guy, sure, but he was far from being an angel. And my brother sure as shit wasn’t. As the other main reason I was here, he was the furthest thing from an angel I could think of.“Let’s just call it luck, shall we?”She pouted playfully. “Call it whatever you want, but it’s just flat amazing.”“It sure is.” I wished more than anything I could ask her to lunch and tell her she got the promotion. To finally come completely clean and tell her who I was.But none of those things could happen. I knew she was too busy for lunch, I had to discuss the promotion with Dad before I could say anything, and telling her who I was now would derail our speed on the work front.I considered throwing Dad’s rule about not making any promises about the promotion out the window. She had it in the bag as far as I was concerned and I was sure I could make Dad see things my way.The results from Dustin’s investigation would be coming in any day now. W
ASTONThe hotel was insanely busy and I loved every second of it. I finally felt like I was doing my job and not simply being a placeholder management used to keep everyone happy.I was making a difference, and trying to save people’s jobs. It was an amazing feeling.As curious as I was about how Blake knew everything he knew, I couldn’t deny that I would never have pulled this off without him. He was not only the one who brought the need for these changes to my attention, but he was also the one who was instrumental in making everything happen. With everything going on, we hadn’t had a chance to talk yet.Since he’d asked me to lunch, I was hoping we could take the little bit of time we would have to finally get to that talk. There were a couple of things I had to check on in my office before I could give him an answer about lunch though.Pulling up my emails, I checked on the arrival time of the new coffee we’d ordered to stock the rooms with. Blake somehow made a deal where we got
AstonTiffany pouted her lips, disappointed in my lack of indulgence of her theatrics. The fact she had even asked set me on edge. “Seriously? I do some major super sleuthing and you don’t even care about the process.”“I don’t, just tell me. Please. He just burst in here, told me he had to go back to the office and then practically ran out the door. I’ve had enough drama for one day. What is it?”Tiffany frowned at the wall in the direction of the outside exit door. “I hope he’s okay. For more reasons than just because you’re into him. We could all be in trouble if he’s not.”“Business has been doing amazing the last few days, so don’t worry about whatever trouble we might be in and just tell me already.” Maybe I wouldn’t miss her that much. I hoped I wouldn’t, but if she didn’t tell me soon, I was going to explode.There was a severe shortage of creative murder weapons in my minimalistic office, so my bare hands would have to do. “I swear Tiff, if you drag this out any longer I’m no
BLAKEIt was late by the time I landed in Florida. My mind was in a daze. It felt like I was stuck in a bad dream. I replayed the morning over and over again in my mind, trying to change the way it ended. But it never changed.All I could hear was Danny’s voice telling me our father was in the hospital. That he’d had a stroke and I had to come home. To my dad’s home, anyway. I didn’t really have a home anymore. I guess I thought of Florida as home because that was where my father was.If anything were to happen to him—my throat threatened to close up. Breathing was hard enough as it was without those kinds of thoughts.It felt like it took ages to get to the hospital, but in reality it was only a matter of hours. Unless my watch was broken and it had, in fact, taken as long as it seemed.The roads were quiet this time of night around here. Dad’s neighborhood was one of the quieter ones and the hospital Danny told me they were at was right on the outskirts.It was dark except for the p
BlakeA white haired man stood next to the bed. He looked up from a clipboard he was holding when I entered the room. “You must be Blake. I’m Dr. Richards. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”I wondered how many people he had said that to. And how many of those family members left the hospital with only memories of their loved one.On auto pilot, I shook his hand. “How is he?”The doctor gave me a grim smile. “He’s not good, son. I won’t sugar coat it, he’s in bad shape. We’re doing all we can for him, of course.” My heart stuttered. “Of course. Do you have any information about what happened yet? My brother said it was a stroke.” The doctor nodded. “It was definitely a stroke. We won’t know the full extent of the damage until he wakes up, but with the test results we have, things aren’t looking too positive.”I blinked. This wasn’t possible, but plenty of evidence that it was all too real was right there in front of me. It was absurd. Surreal.There was a clenching
BLAKE“How’s it going today, Dad?” I sat down beside the bed in the intensive care unit, checking the wall of monitors hanging behind my father. It had to be the world’s most depressing headboard. The machines beeped and blinked rhythmically, the only sound in the glass bubble that was my father’s bedroom for the time being.I touched my hand to his forehead.It was clammy, cool.My stomach rolled. I hated seeing him this way. The man was a titan of industry, a legend whose name was associated with success and spoken with the highest regard the world over.It was getting harder to remember that with each passing day. Lying in his metal framed hospital bed, he was wasting away right in front of my eyes. More worrying still was that he hadn’t yet opened his own.It was day three of my own personal hell, waking up to come spend the day with a man who wasn’t even conscious. The doctors still couldn’t say if he ever would be again.We were playing a waiting game, waiting on a man I’d never
Blake“Wake up, Dad,” I murmured, gently squeezing his cool hand. “You have to wake up soon, you hear me? You can’t leave us yet.”Again, there was no response. I kept on talking to him though. I wasn’t giving up on him. Not now, not ever.“The McAllen Group needs you, Dad. I need you. Danny needs you too, whether he knows it or not.”I took a deep breath. Jesus, this was hard. “Come on, Dad. I need you to wake up. If you wait too long before you wake up, there won’t be anything left to save. You built this company from the ground up, but Danny’s going to tear it down from the inside out if you don’t wake up soon.”Unfortunately, I wasn’t exaggerating. I knew the plans my brother had for the company. Some of them anyway. They weren’t good.The company Danny envisioned wasn’t the one we already had. He thought it was too old fashioned.Out with the old and in with the new, he told me once when we talked about the company. To him, hotel chains were fast becoming outdated. He was convinc
ASTONSighing, I tossed my phone down onto the bed beside me and let my back fall to the mattress. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. I was so damn tired, but I couldn’t sleep anymore.Sleep was getting harder to come by the longer I didn’t hear from Blake. At first, it was worry about my job that kept me up at night. Sleeping with the son of the owner of the hotel was the single most unprofessional thing I had ever done, and I hadn’t even known it at the time.I was terrified I was going to get fired for being the worst manager the hotel chain had. I told Blake the truth about being a virgin before we slept together, but jumping into bed with a guest wasn’t a great first impression.Another worry was that he didn’t believe me about being a virgin. At first, I wondered if he was avoiding my calls because he thought I slept with guests all the time and was processing the paperwork to have me removed from my job.There was nothing in our company policies that specifically proh