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“Well,” Liam leaned forward on the desk, “I have to say, you’ve made quite an impression among the board members here.”
“I have?” Amy asked, surprised.
“Sure.” He seemed to be holding back a smirk. “We all know who your father is,” he said quietly, as though he was telling her a badly kept secret.
“Oh,” she said simply. “I didn’t realize that would be a factor?”
“Oh, come on,” Liam brushed off her remark, “your father runs some of the shadiest deals this side of the Atlantic.”
“I know that he’s done some dodgy things in the past,” Amy permitted. That was part of the reason she was at the interview. She knew what her father expected of her. She knew that he was expecting her to take a position within his company, but that wasn’t what she wanted.
“What would happen if we were running against him?”
“Then I’d do everything in my power to ensure that we won.” Amy met Liam’s eyes. “I don’t deny who my father is or what paid for my tuition,” she told him without blinking, “but I’m sitting in this office today, asking you for a job—not him. So, doesn’t that tell you where my loyalties are placed?”
“You know, if you took this position, you’d be on quite a low starting salary,” Liam warned her. “We don’t pay what some of the big businesses do. We can’t afford to.”
“I know that.” Amy nodded simply. “If I wanted money, I would have taken a job with my dad. He’s got plenty to spare.”
Liam nodded. “Okay then.” He paused as he shuffled through some papers that were in front of him. “I can’t tell you anything now, other than we’ll be in touch.”
“Do you know how long it’ll take to reach a decision?” Amy asked, standing up.
“Sure, you should hear in the next few days,” Liam said, standing and walking over to the door so that he could open it for Amy. “I’d say the latest you’ll hear back from us is Friday.”
*********
Chapter 4
John
Stacy had gone to the beach for the day. He’d invited her so that he wouldn’t have to deal with Amy on his own, but she was starting to really get on his nerves. Somehow, the cute idiocy of her just wasn’t cute without the college surrounding them. Outside, in the real world, she was mind-bogglingly stupid and, if he were being honest with himself, it was a huge turnoff.
He walked into the quiet kitchen with an ease that only came from knowing that Stacy wasn’t around. “Oh.” He took in Amy sitting at the breakfast bar. “Do you want me to go?” he asked, because he’d planned on making himself something to eat.
“No.” She simply shook her head. “It’s cool,” she added, before taking a bite of the buttery toast, which she’d been holding close to her mouth since he’d walked in.
“Okay.” He sucked in a breath and walked over to the refrigerator. “Do you want anything?” he asked, his arms filled with eggs, bacon, and pancake batter.
“No,” she told him after chewing. “I’m good. Plus, it doesn’t look like you’ve left anything, anyway.” Her eyes rolled over the huge mountain of food he was moving over to the stove. “Have you been starving yourself or something?”
He put the food down on the side and turned back to her. “I’m a growing guy; I need to eat.”
“Well, you’ve definitely grown,” Amy agreed with him, before turning her eyes down to the empty plate in front of her.
John could feel an awkward silence fall between them. He wanted to break it. He wanted to bring up some random thing that had happened to him, so they could fall back into a conversation that most closely resembled those he used to have with her. He couldn’t think of anything, though; everything his mind threw at him sounded weird when he said it in his head.
He turned back and started to fix the eggs, so they’d be ready to go into a pan. “You know,” Amy said, breaking the silence, “I really wanted to see you after you left. I asked my mom and your dad every summer if we could go and see you, but they were always too busy traveling.”
Why did she have to talk about that? There were hundreds of ways she could have broken the silence, so why had she picked that one? “Well, maybe you should have tried harder.” He tried to sound jokey, but the true resentment he felt could be felt and heard by both of them.
“You know, it isn’t my fault that they sent you away,” Amy defended herself. “I didn’t want you to go. I didn’t want to spend eight years apart from you. You were my best friend.” Her voice sounded tense, like the words were hurting her throat as they came up. “I missed you,” she told him in barely a whisper.
John half stepped towards her, before he stopped and pulled himself back. Sure, she looked sad. Sure, she was saying all of the right things. That didn’t make anything better, though. That didn’t take away the eight years that he’d missed. “Whatever.” John rolled his eyes. “It’s been eight years. I’m sure you’ve made new friends.” He turned back to his eggs and poured them into the pan, which he’d left to heat over the open flame of the stove.
“Sure,” Amy told him. “I made new friends. It wasn’t the same, though. You were more than that to me and you know that.”
John could feel the secret that they shared getting dangerously close to being let out into the open. “Look,” he said sharply, because he wasn’t willing to let the conversation get to that point, “I got sent away. It sucks, but it happened. Maybe it’s time that you moved on with your life?”
“What, like you have?” Amy snapped at him. “What are you even doing back here?”
“I came to see Dad.” John matched the sudden attitude in her tone. “Not that I don’t have every right to be here anyway.”
“Why do you want to see Dad?” Amy pushed him. “You haven’t wanted to see him once in eight years, so why now?”
“How do you know that I haven’t wanted to see him?” John asked. He was outraged. She was right, he’d turned down every visitation request that his dad had put to him, but that didn’t change the fact that Amy shouldn’t have known about it.
“He told me.” Amy’s temper was starting to flare. John wanted to turn around. He wanted to see the deep, sexy anger that he was sure he’d find on her face, but he resisted. “He told me that he asked you a bunch of times to see him on campus, but you always told him that you were too busy.”
John wasn’t sure what to say. The truth was that he’d only wanted to see Amy. If she had been with his father, then he would have happily agreed to meet up with them, but she wasn’t, so he didn’t. He couldn’t tell Amy that, though. He couldn’t admit that the only person he missed from his family home was Amy. “He sent me away,” he settled on finally. “It wasn’t like he really wanted to see me.”
“I think you’d be surprised,” Amy told him quickly. “Your dad has missed you.”
John tried to hold back the laughte but couldn’t. He could feel Amy’s glare burning into the back of his head, but he didn’t care. “He sent me away, Amy,” he told her firmly. “Perhaps you should start paying more attention to people’s actions and a little less to what their mouths are saying.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“Well, I know I’m right.” John turned to her. “Can we drop this now?” he asked when their eyes met.
********
Chapter 5
Amy
All Amy wanted was to sit by the pool and relax. It shouldn’t have been hard. The day was fair. The clouds were few and far between. The pool had been cleaned that morning and the water was a beautiful crystal blue that lapped up against the sides. Relaxing by the pool should have been easy, but Amy was finding it impossible instead.
The sound of Stacy splashing water and squealing when John did the same back to her was impossible to ignore. Amy watched them with slow-building anger, which had started to simmer in the pit of her stomach. She rolled her eyes when Stacy leant over and kissed John. What was she doing? How needy did that girl want to be?
&n
bsp; “You should get in the water.” Stacy called over to her with a wave. “It feels so good in here.” She grinned in an overly bouncy way. Amy was kind of impressed. The girl could make her boobs bounce with just a smile—that wasn’t some easy feat.
“No,” Amy called back to her quickly. “I’m good, thanks.”
“You shouldn’t be worried about what you’ll look like with just your swimsuit on,” John called from the back of the pool to her.
Amy looked down at the oversized, sheer blouse she was wearing over her bikini. Why had John just said that? Was he trying to tell her that she looked fat? She glanced back over to him. He’d turned his attention back to the water and had dipped his head below its surface. She waited until he’d come back up before she said anything. “I’m still good, thanks,” she said dryly.
