“You realize there are only two weeks left of the school year . . .”

“I’m aware,” I lie. I hadn’t realized it. I’d been too busy chasing after the City Gent merger to pay attention to the school calendar.

A vision of Scarlett wandering the city unsupervised for an entire summer sends a cold sweat down my neck—yet another worry to add to the list of things that keep me up at night.

“Come on.” I hook my hand into her elbow and steer her toward the office with long, brisk strides.

Stopping outside the school secretary’s door, she jerks away from me. “Why do you care so much?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Until this year, I’d only met you five times in my life, and I don’t even remember half of those. I just have pictures,” she says. “I don’t get why you care.”

If she only knew . . .

Someday I’ll tell her. But not here. And certainly not now. She isn’t in the right frame of mind to comprehend the depth or seriousness of this situation.

“You’re not my dad.” Her voice breaks, but her expression is impressively ironclad—delivering the words like a true Maxwell.

“Thank you, Scarlett, for that much-needed reminder. I’d almost forgotten.” I get the door and escort my wayward niece inside. “Kill the attitude and get ready to apologize profusely for your actions.”

When the shit show’s over, I walk the five blocks to my corporate office, where yet another shit show awaits me. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I work from a private office in my home. My reasons have always been comfort, privacy, and convenience. Also, I’ve found that being absent from the main office as much as possible serves to make my presence that much more impactful.

Besides, my time is priceless, and I reserve none of it for brownnosers, time-wasting chitchatters, watercooler gossip, and office politics.

While I’d normally hand the “little things” off to Miranda, what happened this morning with the staff writer is something I plan to deal with myself.

Sliding out my phone, I dial Tom’s number.

“Mr. Maxwell, hi,” he answers in the middle of the first ring.

“Expected to hear from you before now.” I cut to the chase. “What’s the latest with Ms. Napier?”

I called him from the cab on my way to find Scarlett and informed him I’d like a face-to-face meeting with our audacious little staffer immediately.

“Right, so unfortunately she hasn’t been answering her phone all morning,” he says. “I’ve called her sixteen times and sent twenty texts, but they’re not even showing as read. I think her phone might be off . . .”

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I exhale and stride ahead, passing a slow-walking tourist type and a woman in head-to-toe lime-green Dior.

“I’ll keep trying,” Tom says. “But I can’t make any promises. Let’s face it: Elle resigned. I can’t force her back here, you know? Unless . . . are you offering her job back? Maybe I could try to talk her into coming back. I will say it’s not like her to be this impulsive. Then again, she hasn’t really been the same since her little incident a couple months back.”

Ah yes.

Her brain aneurysm.

I’m well aware of it—mostly because it was all anyone would talk about at staff meetings for a while, but also because someone forwarded a GoFundMe campaign to the entire company, and it was then I found myself becoming somewhat invested in her story.

But only for a short while—I had a business to run.

“I’m not offering her job back,” I say. I would never allow an employee to quit with a slap in the face and then offer them the moon and stars to return.

Tom’s end goes quiet.

“I’d simply like to have a conversation with her,” I say.

“I . . . I can send you her phone number?” he stammers. “I just don’t think you’re going to get her to come in for a good old-fashioned ass chewing, pardon my French.”

“I’m not going to chew her ass.” I sniff, approaching the gleaming platinum rotunda of my corporate headquarters. “I’d just like to talk to her. That’s all.”

“Oh . . . okay,” Tom says. “Um, I’ll make sure to convey . . . all of that.”

“I’d like to speak to her today. This afternoon ideally.” I check my watch before entering the elevator. In the seconds before the doors close, I catch a glimpse of a wide-eyed main-floor receptionist making a quick call, warning them off like she always does.

As if I didn’t know . . .

“Thank you, Tom,” I say. “I trust you’ll make this happen.”

Ending the call, I press the button for the fortieth floor and darken my phone screen, silently running through all the choice words I’m saving for one Miss Elle Napier.

If she wants the dirty truth . . . I’ll give her the dirty truth.

Tags: Winter Renshaw Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net