Counting On You (Counting the Billions 2)

“Was everything okay today?” I couldn’t help asking. Maybe it was nothing to do with the situation between us to begin with. Maybe she just wasn’t feeling good, or maybe I was throwing her back into the fray too quickly. We’d made a lot of progress on a few of our projects over the past couple of weeks, and I couldn’t really expect her to be up to speed with everything on her first day back.

“Yeah, everything was fine,” Abby said, her tone giving me absolutely no idea of how she was really feeling.

I got to my feet as she headed toward the door. But what could I really do? What I wanted to do was to catch her before she could leave, to pull her into my arms, to hug her, to let her know that it wasn’t going to be this difficult forever.

But it wasn’t as though I had any sort of plan for fixing things between the two of us. And not only that, but hugging her at this point would only have made things more difficult in the long run. No, I had to let her go, and I knew that. I didn’t say anything as she left the office, shutting the door carefully behind herself.

Then, I sighed and dropped down into my desk chair, putting my head in my hands. “I need a fucking drink,” I muttered under my breath. I never could have imagined that one day around her like that would make me feel so exhausted. I felt like I’d been through an emotional roller coaster. And it was going to be the same thing all over again tomorrow.

I picked up my cell phone and called Austin. “Hey, man, you free tonight?” I asked the moment he picked up.

Austin laughed. “I wondered if you were going to call me,” he said, sounding amused. “I’ll meet you at the usual place.”

“I’ll be there in ten,” I promised him. It was one of the perks of working in the same part of the city as my best friend. We went out for drinks regularly after work, and it never took too long to get to our favorite place.

When I got outside, though, I was bombarded by paparazzi. Flashbulbs went off left and right, but they seemed more interested in asking questions: “Where’s that blonde bombshell you were with?”

“Is she still your advisor?”

“Did you and Abby James break up?”

I scowled at all of them, hoping beyond hope that Abby hadn’t had to deal with any of this on her way out. This shit was entirely the reason that Abby had broken it off with me in the first place; she didn’t want to be part of the circus that was my life. I couldn’t blame her. Couldn’t even get away from the office now, with the way that they were pressing in all around me.

But no, she must have gone out a different way or something. The paparazzi knew what she looked like, and they wouldn’t be asking me if she was still my advisor, or what had happened

with her, if they had already seen her exit.

Or maybe Abby had been smart and come out in a disguise or something. I wouldn’t put it past her. She was definitely smart enough to figure out something like that, and she knew that this was a very real risk when you worked in this building. They’d went after her one morning when she was on her way into the office before. She wouldn’t take chances of having a run in anymore.

“What happened between you and Abby James? What a whirlwind romance!”

I felt my hands clench into fists. Not that I would ever dare hit one of these guys. Gerrard was one thing, and I was still trying to recover from that one. He might not have pressed charges, but my reputation had definitely taken a hit over that one, no pun intended. Punching out one of the paparazzi, while his buddies clustered around us, would ruin my reputation for good. I’d probably have to give up my rights to the company and everything.

My father would be rolling over in his grave, I was sure.

But I was starting to lose patience with them. All I wanted was to get away from the building and to forget all about Abby for the night. Not that I would really be able to do that. But I didn’t need every journalist in the city of Chicago asking about my relationship. If it wasn’t for them, maybe Abby and I would still be together.

I was relieved when a car skidded to a stop at the curb with Austin in the driver’s seat. He leaned over and threw open the passenger-side door, yelling at me to get in. I managed to duck through a line of surprised journalists, flinging myself into the car. Austin peeled away from the curb, laughing like a madman.

“Did you see the looks on their faces?” he asked as we sped down the road.

I shook my head, but I was grinning in spite of myself. “How did you know I was going to need a rescue?” I asked him.

“Same way I knew that you were going to call and need a drink tonight,” Austin said, snickering. “Your ‘blonde bombshell’ of an advisor came back to work today, didn’t she? It hasn’t exactly been a secret.”

I frowned. “I didn’t tell anyone about that.”

“She got spotted walking into the building this morning, apparently,” Austin said, shrugging at me. “Someone’s been watching your office ever since the thing with Gerrard, from what I can gather. But yeah, it was splashed all over the place. So anyway, how did that whole thing go?”

I groaned and pressed my fingers against my eyelids. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “At least not until I’ve got a few beers in me.”

I hoped Abby didn’t know that she was back in the news again already. I didn’t even want to think about what the press probably had to say about her return to McGregor Enterprises. Or about her two-week absence. But at the same time, I hoped Abby did know about all of it so that she would be prepared for the press trying to corner her again.

This whole thing was such a mess. If I had thought I could hire private bodyguards to keep the press away from her, I would have done that. But I knew that Abby would hate that even more than having the paparazzi hound her.

Would this all be enough to get her to quit? She had told me that she would be back the following day in the office, but was that contingent on not reading about herself in the papers that evening? I sure hoped not.

How fucking ridiculous was it that she had been gone for two weeks and the press still hadn’t given up on following her? Didn’t they have anything better to do with their lives? But of course they didn’t. They never did.