Counting On You (Counting the Billions 2)

“Fair enough. I’ll wait until I’ve gotten some drinks in you,” Austin said, grinning at me. “Sure looks like you need something stronger than a beer. I figure we’ll head to the other side of town. Gives us some extra space to lose the paparazzi trail.”

“Good call.” I sighed, leaning back in my seat and letting Austin pick the place.

Chapter 6

Abby

ON SUNDAY, I’D BEEN so sure that I wouldn’t want to talk to Leanne about my first day back at the office, but come Monday evening, I found that I’d reversed opinions on the matter. I just couldn’t seem to puzzle out what I was feeling anymore. Watching Daniel in those meetings acting as though...well, acting as though he was a hundred percent focused on the business and not on me?

He had to act that way, I knew. But it hurt that he barely even glanced over at me until we were alone in the conference rooms after everyone else had filed out. And even then, he only asked for my advice on business matters.

I couldn’t take it personally. That was the way it needed to be. That was just what I had asked him for. But at the same time, it hurt more than I had expected it to.

I spent the whole day wondering whether I could really continue working for him. It was harder than I’d expected to put my feelings for him to the side. And not only that, but it was hard for me to focus on my job when all I seemed capable of doing was thinking about Daniel and wondering if he still had any feelings for me at all.

I definitely still had feelings for him, that was for sure. And what was more, I wasn’t sure that I could continue to deny the feelings I had for him. But what the hell was I supposed to do? I wasn’t sure I could commit to being with him. What would I have to give up in order to do so? My privacy? My chances to be taken seriously by the business community in the future?

I just didn’t know if it was worth it.

I called Leanne. If anyone was going to help me sort through my feelings for Daniel, it would be her. “Hey, honey, you okay?” she asked immediately.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “I just need some girl time. Today was rough.”

I heard the sounds of Leanne moving around and talking to someone with her hand pressed over the phone. Then, she came back on. “Ugh, I wish I could help more, but Matt ended up having a meeting at work tonight, and I’m home alone with the kids. And it’s a bit too late to call a sitter.” She paused. “But maybe we could all go to a movie together? That would at least get you out of the house.”

It wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping for, but she was right that it would probably be a good thing for me to get out of the house and have something to distract me. Besides, it wasn’t like I could blame her for not being able to offer me more. She had the kids. She had offered to clear her schedule for me yesterday, but I had told her that I might be working late.

I had really thought that we would be working late that night. I’d been surprised when Daniel was ready to get out of there as early as he did. But then again, I supposed that he didn’t want to be in there alone with me any longer than he had to be. He probably expected the press to be all over us.

I was grateful to Erin for giving me the heads-up about the paparazzi swarming outside the front of the building. I’d ended up going out the back and slipping away down an alleyway before calling a cab from a few streets over. I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to sneak away like that before the press caught on to it.

Could I really keep doing this job? I just wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to face the idea of never seeing Daniel again. But things were only getting more and more complicated.

It wasn’t just the media factor, either, I reminded myself. It was everything I had seen that night at the bar. The way he had lost his temper, the way he hadn’t seemed to really care that it was his old advisor that he was beating up.

If Erin was to be believed, Gerrard might have deserved it. But all the same, was that the kind of man I wanted to be with? Whatever Gerrard had done, whatever his relationship with the company and his boss had been, could I really believe that Gerrard had deserved to get punched out like that?

I just didn’t know what to believe.

It was a question that had been nagging at me ever since the incident at the bar, to be honest. Initially, I’d shied away from reading any of the articles about it, knowing that they probably weren’t telling the truth. But I’d desperately wanted to understand how things had escalated so quickly. The thing that Gerrard had said to me and Daniel and the way he had looked at me definitely weren’t flattering. But they were nothing to incite such a violent reaction, I was sure.

So I’d started scouring the articles, trying to learn the backstory between Daniel and his former advisor. But the trouble was, no one seemed to even know why Daniel had fired the guy. What if Daniel really had fired him just so that he could hire an attractive female in the older man’s stead?

That was always the sticking point, though. Surely if that was Daniel’s goal, he could have hired someone more attractive than me into the role. Not that I didn’t think I was pretty in my own way. But photos of Daniel out at club openings showed him with women who could have stepped right out of billboards. I was curvy. I had long since given up on the idea that I would ever look like a model.

Besides, I really didn’t believe everything the tabloids said about Daniel.

Maybe I should talk to Erin about why Daniel had fired Gerrard. But I was afraid she would just tell me to talk to Daniel. And even more than that, I was afraid that maybe she would confirm the stories that the paparazzi had put out. Did I really want to know if those stories were true?

So I had resolved to forget about it, and I had gone back to avoiding the articles about me and Daniel. That had worked fine while I wasn’t working alongside him, but now that I was back to work at McGregor Enterprises, I found that all my questions were even more pressing than they had been before. And I still was no closer to figuring out the answers.

Leanne trailed off into silence on the other end of the line, and I realized I had hardly heard a word of her explanations of the kid-friendly movies that were out in the theater at the moment. But I cleared my throat anyway.

“Yeah, let’s see a movie,” I said to Leanne. “Whatever the kids want to see. I’m good with whatever.” Otherwise, I was going to spend the whole night thinking about Daniel and winding myself into knots over my feelings for him.

“All right, I’ll text you when we have it figured out,” Leanne told me. “See you soon!”

?