Chapter 1
Cooper
“How about here, sir?” Suzette holds the frame against the white painted wall in a spot where the fading summer sun shines in through the open window behind my desk. “Look at how handsome you are in this magazine cover. I can’t get over it!”
The thirty-year-old mother of two giggles and winks at me when I roll my eyes. She’s talking to me like she would one of her little boys, despite the fact that I’m only younger than her by two years.
I dismiss her enthusiasm with a wave of the hand. “You know how much they touch those things up. The picture barely looks like me. My tie wasn’t even red when I did that photoshoot, it was black.”
Suzette just shakes her head, ignoring me as she inches the frame a little to the right. “Maybe here would be better? In the evening light like this, you look quite scholarly. Like a professor or something.”
“I’m not a professor, Suzette, I’m a CEO,” I grumble. “Leave it there and I’ll hang it later.” I wave my hand, dismissing her constant fussing.
She’s been trying to find the perfect spot for the frame for a good forty-five minutes. There’s no need to spend so much time on office décor, despite the fact that it’s office décor with my face on it. We had more important matters to focus our energy on.
Suzette nods, hiding a smirk. With a pencil, my assistant lightly marks the wall where the corners of the heavy wooden frame should be placed then sets it down on the floor with a quiet thud. Stepping back, her eyes trail over the walls of my office, perched high up on the thirtieth floor of my very own skyscraper. An abundance of certificates, magazine covers and awards are already hung proudly, as well as quite a few framed photos of Rosco, my silver-furred Husky.
Suzette smiles when she focuses on a photo of him, tongue lolling from the corner of his mouth and large snout tilted happily toward the sky. “Your dog is so cute. My boys have been begging for one but we just don’t have the time. I think I would go insane if I had to walk a dog and keep the kids alive. Parenting is hard enough.” She turns toward me, grinning in a tired but gratified way. “I just keep telling myself if I work hard enough, they’ll end up like you, successful and smart.”
“That’s nice of you to say,” I offer uncomfortably, unsure how to react to being a role model to children I’ve never met. Especially when I didn’t have very good role models myself as a child.
Unfortunately, my parents aren’t where I got my famous drive and ambition. If anything, the only thing I inherited from them was a fear of commitment. Their toxic marriage ended in divorce when I was sixteen, but it seems I still haven’t healed from being used as a bargaining tool to inflict pain against each other. It led to my early emancipation and continued aversion to personal relationships—something Suzette endlessly tries to remedy by setting me up with hordes of her just-so-happens-to-be-single friends.
The woman can’t take a hint. If she wasn’t the best damn assistant I’d ever had I wouldn’t put up with her pushy personality. Currently, she’s laughing at my expense, taking in my stiffness with delight, before gesturing back to the framed magazine cover.
“It really is a remarkable photo,” Suzette purrs. “You should let me show it to some of my girlfriends.”
I roll my eyes and stare at the massive frame now leaning against my wall.
‘30 Billionaires Under 30!’ the headline reads, my face proudly smirking out from the glossy cover. I inspect my photographed tie, trying to pick out any fine black stitches that might’ve been missed in photo-shopping it red, but it’s flawlessly edited. It’s perfect enough to make me almost doubt that I’d been wearing a black one tie, despite the fact that I’d never owned a red tie in my life.
“I read your interview yesterday, Cooper. I can’t believe I’ve been working here for two years and I never knew the whole story. I knew you built Townsend Tech from the ground up but I didn’t know your family had nothing to do with it. I always assumed . . .” She trails off abruptly, clearing her throat. “Well, you know,” she settles on saying uncertainly.
I appraise her, noting the anxious twitch of her lips. “That I had a trust fund to fall back on if I failed?” I reply, suppressing a smile of my own as I complete her thought.
She sheepishly nods and offers an apologetic shrug. “I had no idea that you started this tech firm with nothing more than your own grit and determination. It’s so impressive, especially with how young you are.”
“Thanks,” I offer with a smile.
She sidles toward the door, her face clouding. I can tell when she has something to say—something I’m probably not going to like. She clears her throat, hands finding her hips before she slowly winds her way back toward me.
“Yes, Suzette?”
“It’s just, well I had lunch with an old college girlfriend last week. She’s sweet as can be. Went to Yale to get her master’s. She’s a lawyer and super successful. She’s sought after by every divorcee looking to stick it to their cheating husbands.”
“And why does this concern me?” I ask without emotion, trying not to let it strike a nerve.
Suzette may have read the article, but she doesn’t know how nasty my parents’ divorce was and that dating a divorce lawyer is the absolute last thing I’d ever want. So I do what I always do—pretend not to know where my personal assistant is headed with her calculated banter. It’s the same tedious direction every non-business conversation goes—my personal life.
Or lack there of . . .
Suzette clears her throat. “Well, I was just thinking . . . it confuses the heck out of me that she’s single—a clever, ambitious lady like her. And as she was telling me that she just hasn’t been able to find the right guy, you popped up in the back of my head. Like fate. Like it was meant to be—”
“I’m sorry, Suzette, but you know I’m not dating right now. I have too much on my plate. I haven’t had a weekend off in . . . I don’t even know how long. I haven’t celebrated my birthday or even Christmas in just as long. This company needs my constant attention, and the little bits of leftover time that I have go straight to Rosco.”
“Yes, but you’ve been saying that for the past two years. You don’t have to work so hard, Cooper. Not anymore. Don’t you see that? You’ve made a hugely successful tech firm that doesn’t need your constant supervision. You have the best managers and accountants and personal assistant,” she pauses to wink and point a thumb at herself before continuing, “that money can buy to help you carry the load now. You need to take some time for yourself.”
Again I shake my head, folding my hands firmly on the desk in front of me. When my mouth forms a hard line, she holds up her palms in surrender.
“I know, I know! Mind my own business. But I had to try,” she mutters quietly. “I don’t want you to end up alone. My husband and kids, I don’t know what I’d do without them. They’re my whole world and my reason for living. I love working here with you but the second I get home, I know that’s where I’m meant to be.”