Hero (Hero 1)

Ethan nodded militantly. “I’m on it, sir.”

I was horrified; my eyes flew to Benito, whose mouth had dropped open in equal horror. Caine didn’t stick around long enough to witness that, though. He was already striding toward me, and as he passed me to head for the exit, he didn’t even look at me.

I felt sick.

Benito’s tone was quiet, surprisingly calm. His words were not. “What the fuck did you do?”

My friend Rachel moved the restless child in her arms from one side of her lap to the other. “It’s been five hours. Calm down. Your boss will call you to clear this whole misunderstanding up.”

I eyed her daughter, Maisy, with growing concern. “Should Maisy’s face be that purple?”

Rachel frowned at the subject change and looked at her daughter. “Maisy, stop holding your breath.”

Maisy stared up at her stubbornly.

“Uh … she’s still holding her breath.” Why Rachel was not as worried by this as I was, I did not know.

Rachel made a face. “You won’t get a toy if you keep holding your breath.”

Maisy let out a comically long exhale and then grinned at me.

“She’s the devil,” I murmured softly, eyeing her warily.

“Tell me about it.” Rachel shrugged. “Apparently I pulled the old holding–my-breath-to-get-what-I-want trick when I was her age.”

I glanced down at my half-eaten lunch. “We can leave and go for a walk through the gardens if she’s getting restless.”

“We’re not finished calming you down.” Rachel waved at a passing waiter. “Two more diet sodas and an orange juice, please.”

I didn’t argue. Out of all of my friends, Rachel was the most persistent and overbearing. That was probably why she was the only one of them I still saw on a regular basis.

There had been four of us, close friends, in college: me, Rachel, Viv, and Maggie. Out of the four of us, I was the only one not married, and I was childless. Between them they had four kids. I’d lost contact with Viv and Maggie over the years, and now I only saw Rachel every few weeks. I’d been so busy with work and socializing with colleagues that I’d never bothered to make new friendships outside of the old or outside of my career.

If that horrible gut feeling I had turned out to be true, if Benito fired me, I was looking at a very grim future of no money, no pretty apartment, and no social life.

“Maybe you should make mine a vodka,” I grumbled.

Rachel heaved a sigh. “Benito is not going to fire you. Not after all your hard work. Right, baby?” She bounced her daughter on her knee.

Maisy giggled at me and shook her head, her dark curls flying into her mother’s face.

“Great, even the three-year-old knows I’m fucked.”

Rachel grimaced. “You can’t say fucked in front of a kid, Lex.” Our drinks arrived and she pushed mine toward me.

“Now calm your shit so we can talk about me for a while.”

I smiled a real smile for the first time in a week. “Only if you tell me one more time I’m not going to get fired.”

“Lex, you’re not going to get fired.”

“Alexa, you’re fired!”

My stomach dropped at the irate beginning to the voice mail message Benito had left me.

“I don’t know what the fuck happened this morning, but you are done. And not just with me. Oh no! Do you know what you cost me today? You pissed Caine Carraway off so badly I lost Mogul and two other magazines from the same media company! My reputation is on the line here. After everything I’ve worked for! Well …” His voice lowered, which was even scarier than the shouting. “Consider yourself fucked, because I’m going to make sure you never work in this industry again.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sucked in a shuddering, teary breath.

This was bad.

This was so, so bad.

CHAPTER 2

I stared stubbornly at my phone as I sipped a huge glass of red wine. “No.”

My grandfather sighed loudly, causing the speakerphone to crackle. “For once put your pride aside and let me help you. Or do you want to move out of that apartment you love so much?”

No, I did not. I’d worked my butt off to be able to afford to rent a place like my one-bedroom condo in Back Bay. It was beautiful with its high ceilings and tall windows that looked down onto the tree lined street. I loved the location. I was a twenty-minute walk from my favorite part of the city—the Public Garden, Newbury Street, Charles Street … Location was everything, but the fact that my apartment was cute and homey was icing on a very nice cake. It was the kind of place I’d always wanted, and I had hoped that someday I’d have saved enough for a deposit to buy the apartment or one in the same neighborhood.

Material goods didn’t mean a damn thing. I knew that. But I just really needed my pretty apartment right now. It was a comfort thing.

Did I need it enough to sell my principles?

Unfortunately no.

“I’m not taking your money, Grandpa.” I knew it wasn’t Edward Holland’s fault, but the diamond fortune he’d inherited from his family and gone on to expand with wise investments that diversified his business portfolio was the very thing that had polluted my father. I didn’t want anywhere near something so toxic.

“Then I’ll have a word with Benito.”

I thought about the fact that my grandfather had kept his relationship with me secret from the rest of his family. No one outside the family knew that Alexa Holland was a Holland—my dad had managed to keep the indiscretion with my mother that led to my birth from his family, excluding his father—and Grandpa certainly hadn’t confessed to them that he’d reached out to me when I was twenty-one and all alone in Boston.