"Maryn and I are majority shareholders and only those working in the company own shares and—"
"They're worth fucking billions!"
14
Alyssa spotted a parking space halfway down the block from where she agreed to meet Maz and hoped the car in front of her wasn't also looking for somewhere to park. When the car drove right by the opening, she pulled into the spot with a sigh of relief. She didn't want to circle the block again; she was already late.
Story of her life at the moment.
Switching the engine off, she took a moment and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. God, she was tired. She should have begged off and gone home after work.
Jack had messaged earlier and told her to cancel but when she'd called to do exactly that, Maz had been so excited about getting together to talk about her and Ry's wedding, as well as the baby shower she wanted later this year, that Alyssa couldn't bring herself to postpone.
Although they could hold off on the baby shower plans. Maz was barely pregnant and if it wasn't for the drama with Ry's ex-wife showing up last week resulting in a crying Maz on her doorstep, Alyssa wouldn't even know about the baby yet.
She was thrilled for her friend. In all the years they'd known each other, Maz had always talked about having a family. Strangely, Alyssa had never had the same urge for family the way her friend did. Maz craved deep familial connections while she avoided them at all costs. In spite of that significant difference, when they'd first met, they'd bonded over being only children to single mothers—not that Alyssa could claim to be an only child now, hadn't been able to for almost fifteen years.
Not that she'd known about her sister before February.
Her sister. Penny.
God, it still seemed surreal that she had a sister. One that now lived with her.
The call from her lawyer they'd been waiting weeks for had come yesterday afternoon. Penny was—finally—permanently hers. Nothing Gina did now could remove her sister from her care and Alyssa was ecstatic about the news.
Well, she would be if she had the energy.
They should celebrate and they would once she'd had some sleep and asked Penny what she wanted to do to commemorate the occasion.
Alyssa never thought she'd be happy to be raising a teenager except there was no denying her own excitement over becoming a parent even if it wasn't a baby she'd been entrusted with. In her thirty-two years, she hadn't once thought about children of her own. Or marriage.
Now her best friend was getting married and having a baby, and both had her thinking of things she had honestly believed she didn't want.
Did she want to get married and have children?
She'd accomplished the first. Sort of. The second…
What would a child with Jack look like? Would they look like her or him?
One thing would be guaranteed, no child of Jack's would go without. He'd love any children he had, he would never neglect them in any way. Whatever they needed or wanted he would get—could get—he did have billions of dollars at his disposal.
Jackwas a billionaire.
Herhusbandwas a billionaire.
A fuckingbillionaire!
In the two weeks—seventeen days to be exact, not that she was counting—since Alyssa had learned her husband was worth a fortune, she had struggled to wrap her head around it. He was Jack. The guy who drove a three-year-old Jeep and worked as a rescue pilot.
She hadn't known about his other job. Being CEO and Chairman of the board for the Townsend Group couldn't be easy. And yet he not only did it while working for Mercy-Life, he did it hundreds of miles away.
How had he kept that a secret?
Whyhad he kept it a secret?
She'd listened to his explanation, his reasoning, and while she could agree on some of it—she wouldn't want to be under a microscope like Jack had been most of his life—she just couldn't quite get past the fact he'd kept it fromher.
Which was hypocritical. She knew that. It wasn't like she'd revealed her life before Sunnyville either. Not until Penny—then Gina—had shown up.
