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“Him?” she blinked.
I smirked. “Or her.” This wasn’t the time to tell her the idea of a daughter terrified me. “You can do that, Evie. You can do something a Hartwell never could. You can be the mother my baby deserves.”
She squeezed her eyes together. “I want a baby more than anything. I do. But something about your reaction in the shower. Sasha—”
“Sasha is not my girlfriend. And I reacted like a dick. But I wasn’t mad at you. It hit me that my father worked his entire life to build an empire and for what? To be a horrible dad? Godawful husband? And he didn’t take a dime with him. There was no purpose in his life. No fucking meaning in any of it.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.” I sipped my coffee. “His legacy consists of a cold wife and a son who didn’t love him. Not much to be proud of. You think the people who worked for him truly care he died? Was he proud of Hartwell Global? Did that matter more than his family?”
“He had to be proud of you, Jer. Look at you. You graduated at the top of our class with a baseball scholarship. You played in college and in the majors. That’s incredible. There’s no one else from Newton Hills who can say that. And now you…” She looked at me. “What do you do now?”
I laughed. “We didn’t get that far, did we?”
“No, we didn’t. I was the open book last night, and you remained mysterious as usual.”
“As usual?” I cocked an eyebrow. “When have I ever been mysterious?”
“Ok, maybe the better word for it is secretive.”
“There are no secrets, Evie. I’ve been open with you.”
“Then tell me what you do now. Obviously not baseball. And I know it’s not the oil and gas business. Or vacations. How do you spend your time?”
“I have an office in New York.”
“What kind of office?”
“I have projects I develop.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “See? You’re not an open book. It was a simple question, but you keep your secrets.”
I huffed. “Not secrets. I’m not used to talking about myself. The less I share, the better things usually turn out.”
She shook her head. “Why would you say that? You’d rather stay closed off the rest of your life than let someone in?”
“It’s not closed off. It’s smart.” I rotated the mug in my hand. “You know me as Jeremy Hartwell, small town baseball hero, right?”
“And a few other choice words,” she teased.
“Well, that’s not who I am in New York. I’m Jeremy Hartwell, heir to the Hartwell Global fortune. Professional athlete. Millionaire. The circles I run in care about my name. And they care about what’s in my bank account.”
“Then why are you in those circles? That sounds horrible. You have friends you can’t trust?”
“You make it seem black and white. It’s never that clear in New York. Every friend is a connection. And every connection leads to an opportunity.” I leaned into the table. “Let’s say I have a meeting with an energy drink company, set up through one of the guys I play golf with. His uncle heard we were friends and wants me to endorse one of their new drinks. On the surface that seems cut and dry. They pay me. I stand in front of the cameras holding their shitty drink. But what you don’t know is that the owner of the energy drink company has a son who always wanted to play baseball. And that son will probably show up at the photo shoot because he’s such a big fan. And of course, he’s going to bring along his girlfriend to impress her. Because that’s what I would do.” I smiled. “It turns out the girlfriend is talkative. And it doesn’t take much for her to reveal her dad owns an investment firm. Specifically, a firm that invests in athletes’ financial ventures.”
Evie’s eyes were wide. She sipped her coffee, hanging on my words.
“One thing leads to another and I have a new investor.”
“What kind of investor?” she asked.
“Very wealthy. Very influential.” I lifted my coffee. “And that’s just a sliver of one of my projects. One investor always brings more investors to the table. It’s a chain reaction that keeps my companies running.”
“But what do you do? What are they investing in?”
“In the beginning it was small. I started a chain of sports bars. That’s one piece of the pie. I also have my own baseball cleat brand. I’m trying to sign a deal to get my cleats in all the mi
