Page 53 of As a Last Resort

“Holy crap, you just killed that.” I could still hear the chatter from the boardroom outside in the hallway. She grabbed my arm and pulled me farther away.

My chest felt light and my fingers tingled. “I can’t believe we just railroaded Glenn and presented directly to the board without his approval. I’m most definitely getting fired for this.”

“If they hated your idea, I’d agree with you. But they loved it. Did you see their faces? They were completely bought in. There’s no way they’d let Glenn get rid of you now, even if he wanted to.”

“Your idea about the retail element. That was huge. I had no idea you had such a knack for that kind of thing.”

“More of a hobby. Oh, and by the way, don’t think I didn’t notice how you lit up when you talked about the island. We are tabling that conversation for later.”

My mind was still stuck on the fact that for the first time in a long time, I was thinking of Rock Island as home.

I had a clear view of the boardroom door as it swung open and a few people walked out.

“Hey, Richard Gere is coming straight for us,” I whispered to Ivy.

“Who?”

“Flamingo Tie.”

“Oh. Yeah, I’m sure he is,” she mumbled under her breath. I watched as he beelined in our direction. He had his eyes locked on us.

“Samantha, I’ve heard a lot about you. It’s good to finally meet you.” He extended his hand toward me.

“You too, sir.”

Finally?

“Call me Richard.” I choked back a smile. “Richard Jones. That was a pretty compelling presentation. I’m thoroughly impressed by what your team pitched.”

“Thank you, sir. They did a phenomenal job pulling it all together.”

“Now I see why Ivy is hell-bent on staying by your side. You just reinvented our whole approach with one presentation. I don’t think I’ve seen the board so frazzled and excited at the same time.” He looked right at Ivy and beamed. “Well done. Ivy, did you help pull together those retail numbers?”

Ivy crossed her arms and just smirked at him without saying a word.

“She absolutely did,” I answered after a few seconds of awkward silence. What in the hell was she doing? “Her ideas were pivotal to the plan.”

“That’s great to hear. Ivy, will you send me those numbers? I want to play around with a few things.”

“Will do, boss.” Then she saluted him.

“We’ll be in touch, Samantha.” He turned, giving Ivy a side-eye, and walked back toward the conference room door.

“Did you just salute Richard Gere?” I asked.

“Yeah, don’t think too much of it. He gets a kick out of it,” she brushed it off.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“He’s my dad.”

My mind came to a screeching halt. “I’m sorry, what?”

“He’s my dad… And he’s been super pissy about the fact I’m just your assistant , but I think he might kind of get it now.”

I looked at her with my jaw on the floor. “How did I not know your dad was on the board of directors?”

“It’s not something I put on my Insta profile.” He had a large frame and a full head of shampoo-commercial hair. She could fit in a sardine can even with four-inch heels on and had pin-straight black hair. “I favor my mom’s side. Obviously.”

It all started to make so much more sense. “So that’s how you got our time slot on such quick notice.”

“Yeah, they typically do pretty much whatever he says. Based on stock ownership, technically he owns fifty-one percent of the company.”

“All this time you’ve worked for me, how did I not know your dad was the majority owner of the company we work for?” I’m an intelligent person. There’s no way I missed this unless she was deliberately showing me smoke and mirrors.

“My dad’s always thought just because he’s this big corporate guy that I’d want to follow in his footsteps.

But I don’t want to. He says he’s worked his whole life so that I wouldn’t have to work as hard.

But that’s not who I am. I’d be miserable running some big company, sitting in a squeaky leather chair and answering to a bunch of men who don’t have enough hair and suck at golf. ”

“Does he know about your writing?” I knew she moonlighted as a writer under a pen name but we never talked about it. I tried to give her the privacy she’s always granted me.

“He knows I dabbled in college. He’d kill me if he ever read any of the books though.”

“Books? Wait, how many have you published, exactly?”

“Honestly, I didn’t think I’d stay that long with you.

” She narrowed her eyes at me, avoiding my question.

“But after the first few days of working for you, I knew you were kind of kick-ass. I’ve learned a lot from you.

Things I wouldn’t learn cushioned underneath some baby boomer who wanted to appease me because of who my dad is. So, I stayed.”

I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say. On one hand I was pissed she kept this from me. On the other hand, I wasn’t surprised at all. It seemed like exactly the kind of thing she would keep secret from me and the world.

“I’m grateful you stayed. Even though it scares me how good of a liar you are.”

“It’s called storytelling, and don’t get all emotional on me. New York is a right to quit state. I’m going to circle back and see what I can find out. We’ll catch up later.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon holed up in my office pretending I wasn’t checking my phone every two minutes. Robby’s head popped in the doorway.

“I can’t stay long.” He leaned against the doorframe. “Don’t want Glenn to see me congratulating the enemy, but you nailed it, Leigh. For real.” There was a genuine smile on his face.

“Well, we’ll see if the board thought so too.”

“Oh trust me, they were like kids on Pixy Stix after you left. You killed it.”

“Thanks for doing that in there, letting me finish even though Glenn was trying to get you to railroad me.”

“It was nothing. What you had to say was good. I wanted them to hear it.”

“Plans after work?” I asked, hoping my olive branch would be seen as a completely platonic gesture. “We’re either grabbing a glass of champagne to celebrate or a whiskey neat if I’m walked out at some point today. My treat, as a thank-you.”

“Oh man, I’d actually love to but I’ve got this thing.” For the first time ever, Robby blushed. He rocked back on his feet as he met my gaze.

“Okaaay,” I drew out, happy to leave it at that.

“It’s a girl, actually?” It came out as a question. “I met her down in Florida and it turns out she’s going to school up here at NYU.”

“Oh wow, okay. That’s great.”

“It’s Charley’s niece, Sherry? You probably didn’t meet her. She’s not a local.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“She’s pretty awesome. She’s more brazen than me, if you can imagine that.” His face turned a shade deeper. His eyes darted around my office like he was looking for buried treasure. “She has a good head on her shoulders. I think I like her. Like, a lot.”

“Well, I didn’t think I’d ever see the day you were twisted up about a girl. I’m happy for you. I hope it works out.”

“And she’s hot,” he added as Ivy crashed into my office.

“Hey!”

“That’s my cue.” He turned around, beet red, and headed out. “See you, Leigh.”

“What was that all about?” she asked as he beelined down the hall.

“Growth, Ivy. Growth.”

She shook her head. “Dad’s petitioning to steal you.”

“I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

“Nothing’s final, but the idea is Robby would keep his promotion, obviously, but Dad’s going to recommend you head up a whole new division for boutique hotels using your strategy for the Lighthouse Collection. Finding the properties, retrofitting them, everything we talked about in the meeting.”

This was it. It wasn’t what I expected—it was something better. I’d be able to find and negotiate multimillion-dollar deals and cherry-pick those I thought would make the best developments for the collection. I’d have a whole team at my disposal, and be able to find the unearthed gems of tourism.

And Rock Island wouldn’t be turned into a neon dumping ground for high-density polyethylene.

The quaintness of the island would be preserved.

Locals would grow their businesses, not lose them.

And new visitors would love and appreciate the island for what it was, not what millions of dollars of development could make it.

I should have been screaming at the top of my lungs, wanting to down a bottle of Dom and dance on top of a bar. It was officially a champagne kind of a night. I should have been over the moon.

But I wasn’t.

This is what should have made me happy.

But it didn’t.

Something was missing.

As I looked down at my desk, all I could think about was how proud Austin would be if I told him.

He’d scoop me in his arms and tell me we were going to celebrate.

He’d set me on the couch and tell me not to move.

He’d make dinner from scratch for me and tell me how I deserved it, and how there wasn’t a single other person in the world who deserved it as much as me.

Then he’d kiss me once, then twice like he couldn’t get enough.

Then we’d forget about dinner as it got cold and spend the whole night wrapped up in each other.

She sighed. “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”

I shook my head to scatter the thoughts. I had finally let myself live a little instead of being scared that everything would fall apart if I made a wrong move. All my life I’d been running from that place and now, it was somehow finding a way to seep in through the cracks.

I had Austin to thank for that. For the first time, I let myself see something other than the hurt that’s always been there. It’s like I experienced a whole new place with him and now I couldn’t shake it.

I didn’t know if I wanted to.

“I don’t see you just up and leaving everything to move back there. You’re not exactly the damsel-in-distress archetype that gives up your entire life for some guy whose widowed mother owns a family Christmas tree farm.”

“Oh, I’m definitely not, but I’ve got an idea. Can I ask you one more favor?”

Her eyes twinkled. “Always.”