Forsaking Gray (The Colloway Brothers Book 1) (3 page)

A movement in my peripheral catches my attention. A very beautiful, very tall and very pregnant young woman is heading my way. “Ms. Kingsley, I’m Connie.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I say, rising from my plush chair.

As we walk—well, I walk, Connie waddles—down several long hallways, she chatters my ear off as if we’re old friends. I like her instantly.

“As you can tell, I’m ready to pop any minute. My due date is in three weeks, but it could really be any day now, so we need to get my replacement hired ASAP. I’m going to be a stay-at-home mom since I just can’t bear to leave my baby boy with anyone else. I told Wes to get on the stick earlier, but he dragged his feet, as usual. If you do get the job, you’ll really have to stay on top of him. Deadlines, meetings, calendars, lunch. All that stuff. I like him, but he’s pulled in so many directions and really is a bit of a scatterbrain, but he’s a good boss. You’ll like him too, I think.”

We stop at a closed office door and Connie takes a big gulp of air, replenishing her lungs from her long tirade. “We’re here.”

She knocks and after a deep male voice gives her permission to enter, she opens the door and walks in, looking over her shoulder to ensure I’m following. The comforting smile she offers me eases my tension a bit.

My nerves must be visible. It took me several agonizing days to make my decision to apply for this position and finally get up the nerve to go to the DMV and get an official state ID. I’ve spent most of the last two years trying to keep a low profile, taking on relatively menial jobs where they didn’t check your background or care that you didn’t have a driver’s license, but I’m tired of living paycheck to paycheck. So much time has passed that I feel it should be safe now to have a real job.

“Wes, this is your nine o’clock interview, Livia Kingsley.”

A very handsome, thirty-something looking man stands and walks around the front of his desk holding his hand out to mine, which I take. “Ms. Kingsley, pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you too, Mr. Nichols.”

Glancing at Connie, he says, “Thanks, Connie. Now go get off your feet and take it easy.”

“Gladly. Good luck,” she murmurs excitedly as she walks by, closing the door behind her.

“Take a seat.” Mr. Nichols gestures as he rounds his desk, sitting in his fancy leather, rolling desk chair. “Now, where did I put your resume?” he mumbles scanning his desk, which is in complete disarray with papers scattered everywhere. Connie may have understated the situation. It appears that Wesley Nichols is very disorganized. As Vice President of Research and Development, I’m not sure how he can afford to be.

“Here,” I offer, handing over another copy I’d brought with me.

“Thank you.” He smiles. “Point for you already.”

I study him while he studies my resume. He really is quite handsome, with wavy light brown locks and long lashes framing his dark blue eyes. He’s wearing smart-looking dark-framed glasses that make him look older than he probably is. His trim, athletic build makes it obvious he takes good care of himself. I also notice he’s not wearing a wedding ring. Too bad he doesn’t stir a thing down south. No one does anymore. I wish I could just move on and let a man fuck my brains out, but I can’t. The only man that’s stirred those feelings is a man I can never have again.

After a few quiet minutes of reviewing my skills and experience, which he had clearly
not
done before our meeting, he raises his eyes to mine. In a very unexpected and unprofessional move, he rakes them over my body, stopping too long on the swell of my breasts, which are clearly visible through the scant blouse. Suddenly I wish I’d worn something a little less…sheer.

“So, Livia…may I call you Livia?” I nod, and he continues. “There seems to be quite a gap in work experience here. Three years, to be exact. I don’t see where you were attending college during that time period either.”

It wasn’t really a question, but a statement that demanded an answer nonetheless. One I’d been fully expecting.

“Yes, Mr. Nichols. I had to take some time off work. My father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and we didn’t have the means to really afford home health or hospice care, so I had to quit my job to take care of him.”

Number one rule when weaving your precarious web of lies…always sprinkle as much of the truth with it as possible. My father
had
gotten pancreatic cancer and we
couldn’t
afford any care because he’d spent every penny he earned gambling, but that had been after I’d married Peter Wilder. I hadn’t quit my job to take care of my father; instead I’d been sold to pay a debt to the mobster that my father owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to and couldn’t pay, except with one of his daughters. Alyse, my younger sister, had been saddled with caring for our poor excuse of a father as he died a slow, painful death. For her sake, I’m glad he’s gone. But if I had it my way, he’d still be alive, suffering, which is the least he deserves for the torture he put me through.

“I’m so sorry, Livia. I hope he’s better.”

“No, he passed last year.” Also true.
And his selfish soul is rotting six feet under
where he belongs.
My shrink would be none too happy to hear me think like that, but I can’t help the way I feel. No amount of therapy will ever allow me to let go of my hatred for him and what his actions did to our family and so many others.

A sympathetic smile turns his mouth. “I’m very sorry for your loss. I lost my mother six years ago to lung cancer, so I can empathize.”

“It gets better each day,” I reply, trying to inject a little sadness into my voice when that’s the last thing I feel.

A half hour later, I’m being escorted out of Wes’s office—he insisted I call him Wes—with his hand at the small of my back, and I am told he’ll be in touch shortly. The interview went well. I was sure I’d gotten the job, even though I didn’t have much executive assistant experience. It helped that I could start right away. Dundee’s, where I currently waitress, didn’t need much notice. It wouldn’t be a hardship to replace me.

An hour later, I walk into my quiet apartment and strip out of the borrowed attire, returning it to Addy’s closet. I call Dr. Howard’s office. Luckily she had a cancellation and can get me in tomorrow afternoon.

I have to work the late shift starting at five, and it wasn’t quite noon, so I throw on a pair of sweats and crawl back into bed, hoping to get at least a couple hours of shut eye before I have to get ready.

Snuggling under the covers, I try to clear my thoughts of Gray, of Peter, of my father, of my fucked up life. Like every single day for the past five years, I try
not
to remember that I should be happily married to Gray Colloway and teaching third graders. I try
not
to imagine how beautiful our children would look with Gray’s piercing hazel eyes and my dark hair and full lips. I repeat Dr. Howard’s words:
One day at a time.
I try
not
to fall into that empty pit of lonely, murky, desolate despair when life hands you a shit deal and you’re helpless to change it.

Instead, I try to be strong as sleep’s fingers pull at my consciousness. Only I know my dreams will once again be filled with what could have been but will never be.

Happiness.

I’d thrown that chance away when I gave myself to the devil to save my sister from the same fate.

Chapter 3

“What the hell is up with you, man?” Asher asks.

Plenty.

“Nothing,” I grumble.

Apparently not listening to a word I’ve said, he continues, “Bullshit. You haven’t been acting like yourself for weeks. I’ve had to repeat myself three times already, and the Board of Director’s meeting is in just two weeks. Did you even hear what I told you about a possible accounting discrepancy in the CFC business?”

“No, sorry. Go on.”

Sighing and scratching my stubbly chin, I lean back in my chair and stare at my younger brother, Ash. He starts talking again, but I’m unable to focus, my attention elsewhere entirely. I watch his mouth move, but don’t hear the words.

When our father, Frank Colloway, died several years ago, I took over his consulting business, which we now call Colloway Financial Consultants, CFC for short. Asher and Connelly, my younger twin brothers by a year, followed in my footsteps, both graduating with an undergrad and MBA in business and, together, we not only run my father’s successful financial consulting business, we have substantially expanded it in a very short period of time. CFC was the initial company, but we’ve purchased two more in the last three years.

Asher is now CEO of CFC and Conn took over as CEO of Wynn Consulting, a Human Resources consulting firm that we acquired last year. A new security company we bought six months ago rounds out our three current companies under GRASCO Holdings, where I now act as Chairman of the Board.

At just thirty years old, there was no doubt I was young for my position, but there was also no one as driven to succeed as I am. I threw myself into my career, sometimes working eighteen hours a day, only to get up early the next day and do it all over again. One of the reasons I offered as many of the on-site amenities to my employees as I did is because
I
needed them. I eat, breathe and sleep this company, and I expect my employees to do the same. If you give them everything they need at work, free food, free gym, free dry cleaning, free on-site clinic, then they work harder and longer and are more loyal. It’s a win-win for all, really.

In some strange way, I owe my success to Livia Kingsley. After the woman I loved more than life itself crushed my soul by disappearing the day after I proposed, never to hear from her again, I threw myself into my father’s company and climbed the ladder quickly. When my father died of a heart attack three years ago, the board easily named me CEO.

But my brother isn’t wrong for questioning me. Ever since I laid eyes on Livia Kingsley two weeks ago at the Shedd Aquarium fundraiser, I’ve been a fucking emotional mess. She is all I can think about and it
is
affecting my attention at work. Truth be told, she has never been far from my thoughts and, in part, the reason I work as hard as I do is to eradicate her from my brain. And most of the time it works…until I lay in bed at night.

I went through all the gut-wrenching stages of grief and loss when she up and left me. At first, I simply didn’t believe it was true. I repeatedly called her cell, her father, her sister, her friends, her work. I was relentless. Livvy loved me, she’d agreed to be my wife, there was no way she would simply desert me the very next day with no explanation. The note she left said she’d be back soon. She wasn’t.

It didn’t take me long to move onto anger, and fuck, was I ever. I told myself that if I ever saw her face again, I wouldn’t be responsible for the vile and cruel things that would involuntarily spew forth. I was a sleeping volcano, seething with fury and rage and hate just below the surface and it was actively seeking an outlet.

I eventually hired a private detective to see if he could turn her up because I’d convinced myself something must have happened to her. I was sincerely worried about her safety, and I didn’t believe the bullshit her father was trying to cram down my throat about her leaving of her own accord, that she’d changed her mind about marrying me. But it was like she was a fucking ghost. She was gone, with absolutely no trace. I constantly scanned the obits, convinced I would come across her name because the only way she would possibly leave me was through death.

After a bout of brief depression where I drank everything and fucked anyone I could get my hands on in a desperate, but failed, attempt to forget, I finally moved onto acceptance. That was, by far, the hardest part. I had to finally accept that it was
me
. That
I
wasn’t good enough for Livvy, and she thought her only recourse was to flee. That was a very bitter, and ego-bruising pill to swallow.

“For the love of Christ, come find me when you get your head out of your ass,” Ash complains as he slams my office door.

I ignore his outburst, turning my chair toward the glass windows that overlook the Chicago Loop, lost in thoughts of my angel. Every day of the past five years without Livvy in my life has been bleak and dark. The pain has lessened, but only marginally.

Over the past few years, I’ve tried not to think of the days that I was once happy. But since I saw Livvy a couple weeks ago, I’ve done nothing else
but
remember. As I stare out into the crystal blue sky, I let myself drift back to the first time I saw her.

Conn, Ash and I walk into Rocky’s, in my opinion one of the best pizza joints in Detroit. We’re all home from college for the holidays and I’m happy to spend some time with them.

We’re shown to a table and take a seat, looking over the menus that the hostess left with us, but I already know what I want. It’s the same thing I get every single time I come here. Deep-dish pepperoni with black olives and green peppers. I may not be creative, but I certainly know what I like.