Home > As We Are (The Baker’s Creek Billionaire Brothers #5)(8)

As We Are (The Baker’s Creek Billionaire Brothers #5)(8)
Author: Claudia Y. Burgoa

I feel his assistant resisting the urge to high five me.

“Do not post that or you’re fired,” he orders.

“Oops,” I say, touching the tips of my fingers to my lips. “I already posted it.”

“You are fired!” He shouts. His cheeks turn red with rage.

“Oh, no. You don’t get to fire me. I quit and we,” I pause to shoot a glare at the still naked woman on his desk. “We are over.”

I storm away from the scene. My head is about to explode with anger, sadness, and worse, the uncertainty of what’s going to happen next. Randall barges right behind me. I swear if he comes too close I’m going to use my self-defense training on him. I’ll give him at least a bloody nose.

“Hadley, give me the team’s social media logins. You can’t possibly think that posting my privates on social media is right. We can get fined.”

“I blurred your ass, your dick, and her tits.” I say, finally looking up at him. “She has a nice rack, no wonder you keep offering to upgrade mine. How much did that cost you?”

“Stop,” he commands. “Keep Suzie away from this fight.”

I laugh derisively. “I’m just wondering, did Suzie come back or did you call Suzie?”

He ignores me and asks, “Do you know what that's going to do to the team’s reputation?”

“I’m busy,” I say, ignoring him right back. I know I’m being petty, but I don’t have it in me to care.

He paces around the office. He halts right in front of me and says, “Hadley, what you did was childish.”

I throw the last frame I have on top of my desk in the box. This is the last item that ties me into this office and the team. It’s over, not only with Randall, but with a job that was fun but didn’t have anything else to give me. Then, I finally feel calm enough to look at him without wanting to claw his eyes.

“Stop it. I’m sick and tired of your, ‘act your age,’ bullshit.” I spit, jabbing my finger in his face. “This is the behavior of a woman who just found her boyfriend of three years bare ass naked fucking another woman. I have feelings. You don’t get to dictate how I behave or what I feel. Not before and definitely not now. What you did is called cheating. If you wanted to break up with me, you could’ve just said, ‘it’s over.’ You are the one who needs to start behaving like an adult.”

His nostrils flare. Randall hates when he’s told that he’s a man child, which he is. It bothers him but he doesn’t do anything to fix it. The guy would be no one without his family’s money—and jobs. He’s too tied up in them to even consider our relationship as more than some fling with a twenty-something-year-old woman. This is part of my latest reflections and realizations. Our relationship was a dead end. I knew it was over, of course I did. But, because I cared about him, I was trying to work things out or make our separation painless for both of us.

Clearly he never cared enough about me.

“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you,” he says, looking toward the closed door. “Suzie and I–we have a history together. You can’t compare a marriage with what you and I have. We were different.”

“What did we have, Randall?

He stares at the floor.

“I thought it was a committed relationship. Three years living together. That’s a lot more than just having a fling.” I’m furious about this situation. What the hell man? I don’t want to know anything about Suzie, and yet, I still find myself blurting out, “Do you still love her?”

Why am even I asking that? It’s not like I’m in love with him. This is college all over again. I dated a guy for a couple of years and, when we graduated, he went back to Oklahoma to marry his high school sweetheart.

“It’s complicated,” he responds and I want to punch him on behalf of Suzie and myself.

We deserve better than a man like him. “For fuck’s sake, you’re almost forty. Own your actions and your emotions.”

I grab my haphazardly packed box with an angry sigh. “Goodbye, Randall. It’ll take a week or so to figure out where I’m going to live. Stay with your cousins, your parents, or wherever you’ve been sleeping with her.”

“I’m confused,” he says with hesitation. I come to a halt, and look over my shoulder. “Why don’t you wait until I work through what’s happening to me?”

I pivot and glance at him, wondering what else there could possibly be to think about when he’s obviously moved on. “What does that mean?”

“I care about you. Why don’t you stay at least until I get someone to cover your position?

I blink a couple of times at the sheer audacity of what he just said.

“You’re priceless,” I say with a bitter laugh.

He’s confused? I’m sure once he secures another social media director the confusion will dissipate. I might be younger but I wasn’t born yesterday.

“At least, give me the login information for the social media account. We need to do some damage control.”

Ah, so that’s why he was sugarcoating everything. I grin. “Remember that time when I proposed to hire an intern?”

He nods.

“If you had an intern, you wouldn’t need the login information from me. Unfortunately for you, you ignored my suggestion. And even more unfortunate, I’m petty.” I walk away with my chin up and a big smile.

He didn’t take anything away from me and I got to have the last laugh. His uncle is probably going to fire his ass or demote him. Not to mention, the fit his mother will have when she finds out that there’s a naked picture of him on the internet is going to be perfect. It’s such a shame that I won’t get to watch it all happen.

“Hadley!” He calls after me as I walk toward the exit. “Take that fucking picture down or you’ll regret it.”

“Afraid that your boss might find out what you do in your office?” I ask, not slowing down a bit.

I’m enjoying this as much as I enjoyed my last vacation in Puerto Vallarta. If only I had a piña colada to celebrate the moment.

“Goodbye, Randall.”

“What happened to your motto, don’t be an asshole?” He calls, in a last-ditch effort to stop me. I ignore him and step through the automatic doors to breathe in the fresh air, the sunshine, the roar of cars on I-25.

“My family is going to fire me,” is the last thing I hear as the sliding doors close behind me.

 

 

Chapter Five

 

 

Hadley

 

 

It’s official. My life is over.

I might as well dig a hole right next to the swings, crawl inside, and die there.

Who wouldn’t want to die in a park?

This is no ordinary park. It has two sets of swings, three types of slides, and two sizes of monkey bars. The evergreens surround the playground all year long. When the snow coats the ground, it looks like an enchanted wonderland.

My life might be over but at least I’m in one of my favorite places.

The last thing I wanted to do was to come back to Baker’s Creek, and yet, here I am. Sitting on the swings like I used to do during high school when I was done with homework and I couldn’t sleep.

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