Page 4 of Never Let Go

My heart slammed into my ribs. “No, sir. I’m managing just fine. The account is in good hands with me, I assure you. This may be the first estate I’m handling by myself, but I got tons of exposure at my old firm, and if I do run into any trouble, you’ll be the first to know. I’m not too proud to ask for help.”

“See to it that’s true.” He drew in a deep breath and fiddled with his glasses before he refocused on me. “Where are you with it?”

“Well, sir, I’ve already met with Mrs. Chesterfield as well as most of the other people Mr. Chesterfield left anything to. I’ve only got one more family member to meet with. The grandson. He’ll be here soon.”

Mr. Harrison blinked back surprise, then nodded. “Well, you’re certainly proving to be efficient. Let me know how it goes with the grandson. Thank you, Ms. Lowe.”

“Of course, sir.” I waited for him to let go of the chair and leave before I dropped back into my chair and exhaled deeply.

Everything I’d told him was true. I really had met with everyone else and I really did only have one client meeting left to go.

The only thing I hadn’t told him was that the name of the grandson who was inheriting the bulk of the estate was hauntingly familiar to me. Foster O’Brien.

Nerves invaded the center of my being and I sucked in another breath. As familiar as the name was to me, I knew it couldn’t be that Foster O’Brien. There was no way it was my Foster O’Brien.

Not that the guy had ever been mine. A nervous tremble worked its way through me and I breathed out slowly before I inhaled again. I needed to get a grip on myself.

The fact that Mr. Chesterfield’s grandson had the same name as the boy I’d had a crush on back in college couldn’t be the reason why I fumbled the ball this late in the game. It was a mere coincidence. It had to be.

For starters, my Foster didn’t have grandparents. He hadn’t had any family at all, other than his brother and his parents. Or at least, not any other family that I’d known about. And I would’ve known if his grandfather had been Foster fucking Chesterfield. Everyone would’ve known if he was a Chesterfield.

They were one of the most affluent families in all of Seattle. I’d watched Foster O’Brien pretty darn closely for the two years we’d been at college together. There was no way I wouldn’t have noticed if he’d been related to one of the richest men in town.

I took yet another deep breath, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t about to come face to face with the one who’d gotten away. Okay, okay. He didn’t get away. He hardly even knew I existed back then, but still.

Foster O’Brien had been my white whale. A senior when I’d been a junior, we’d both lived in the honors dorm and I’d been determined to tell him I had feelings for him before he’d graduated, but I never managed to scrape together the courage.

I’d also figured that he’d have asked me out if he’d been interested at all, and he hadn’t. Instead, I’d watched from afar as he’d accepted his diploma, and then, with one last, quick, platonic hug, he’d been gone and that had been that.

I sighed. Even platonic was a stretch when it came to Foster. We hadn’t really been friends. In fact, I wasn’t even completely sure he’d known my name. At most, we’d been dorm mates. Acquaintances who said hello when we’d passed each other in the foyer and hung out in the common areas from time to time.

That had been the reality, but in my dreams, we’d been so much more than that. For two whole years we’d lived in the same dorm, and for all that time, I’d secretly pined for the emerald-eyed god who slept down the hall.

Foster O’Brien had been gorgeous, with rich brown hair and vivid green eyes, an Adonis belt to rival the original, and a pretty darn amazing brain too. He’d been the complete package, and as far as I was concerned, no one else ever had or ever would measure up to him.

It was silly, I knew that, but it was also true. Sadly, I’d met the one who had ruined everyone else for me at the tender age of twenty, nothing had ever happened between us, and then he’d disappeared from my life as if he had never been in it.

“Ms. Lowe?” My secretary’s voice yanked me out of my thoughts and I blinked hard, forcing a smile to my lips as I tried to hide just how far down memory lane I had been. “Your next meeting is here.”

“Yes. Thank you, Beth. Show him in.” I stood up and smoothed my palms over my navy pencil skirt, mentally putting myself back together and getting my head in the game.

An effort that worked rather well until my next meeting walked into my office and it turned out I’d been wrong.

Foster O’Brien, the grandson of Mr. Chesterfield, was in fact the god who had slept down the hall from me back in college. My heart skipped about a hundred times as the man I never thought I’d see again walked into my office, my palms immediately pools of sweat.

Oh, God. Oh, shit. Fuck. No! How did this happen? I hadn’t even touched up the makeup that I’d applied at seven a.m. this morning. Foster, on the other hand, still looked like he’d walked right off the pages of a sports magazine shoot.

Twelve years had passed since he’d stood on that stage at twenty-one, but the years had made him even hotter. That dark brown hair was just as rich and luxurious as it had been before, but where it used to flop over his forehead to give him a certain boyish charm, it was now styled away from his chiseled face.

Those eyes still shone like precious jewels, but at thirty-three, the faintest of lines were starting to appear around them and it made him look wise. As did the way his features had matured and hardened.

Wearing a slate-gray suit and a sky-blue shirt with the top button undone, he looked every inch the smart, handsome player he used to be—and every inch the multimillionaire he was about to be.

If he isn’t one already.

I blinked slowly as Beth showed him in, and when she shut the door with a snap behind her, I cleared my throat and reminded myself that I needed to keep this professional. This account was huge for the firm and for me, and I couldn’t allow him to derail me.

In that moment, I made a decision and I knew it was probably a little bit immature, but I pretended not to know him. That way, our past wouldn’t be able to complicate the settlement of his grandfather’s—and one of the firm’s biggest—estates.