AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That was such a rush,” she says, as we start to walk downtown. “I feel like I’ve just graduated high school and won the lottery and maybe it’s also Christmas morning and I’m eight years old.”
I laugh. “I take it you’re feeling good?”
“Absolutely amazing. I think I could do anything right now,” she says, her ponytail bouncing. She’s thrown a sweater on, but she’s still bare-legged beneath it, long legs easily keeping up alongside mine in the afternoon sun. “God, I love that sport.”
“Did you start playing recently?”
“A few years ago,” she says. Then she laughs. “Percy got me into it, but then he started to hate how seriously I took it. I found a great trainer, and started spending two evenings a week with her, and he thought that was too much. You know, on top of my incredibly packed and unnecessary work schedule.”
“Your work schedule?” I murmur.
She shakes her head. “Yeah. But it doesn’t matter, ultimately. Thank you for making it here, and for being on my team.”
I nod, and think about the anger clear in every line of her ex-husband’s body. “Looks like he took it pretty seriously back on the court.”
“He hated seeing you there with me, I think,” she says. Then she gives me a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I don’t think it’s personal or anything.”
I chuckle. “Percy Browne hating me,” I say, “doesn’t feel like much of a problem.”
“No, I don’t suppose it would. So you played growing up?” she asks. “What was your childhood like?”
“Interesting question,” I say, and she chuckles again. I don’t think she’s laughed this much before around me. It must be the adrenaline, the excitement. The thrill of victory.
“Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious,” she says. “So you grew up playing tennis with a trainer?”
“Yes. My parents made my brother and I try a bunch of different sports, to see if we had a natural aptitude for any of them.”
“Let me guess. You were great at team sports, and he did better at solo ones?”
“Yes,” I admit.
She smiles. “But you weren’t just any old team player, no—you preferred the role of team captain. Am I right?”
I look at her for a long moment.
“What?” she asks. “Am I off-base?”
“No, you’re a little too spot-on.”
She chuckles. “Okay, so you played a lot of sports. Was winning important in your family?”
“At times,” I say. “It depended on the sport and the time. What mattered to my parents was that we always gave a hundred and ten percent, to whatever we chose to pursue. Anything less wasn’t acceptable.”
“I can imagine that,” she says. “Your father must have been busy while you were growing up. He was head of the Winter Corporation before you, right?”
I tug at the rounded collar of my T-shirt. “Yes,” I say. “He was. But he wasn’t as involved as my grandfather was before him, or like I am now.”
“No?”
“No,” I say. There’s no need to elaborate on that. My father is who he is, a man with good stewardship skills but no vision. Life happened and he became the CEO, and when life allowed him to, he stepped down.
But I find, to my surprise, that Iwantto tell her more.
“My aunt was actually supposed to take over after my grandfather,” I say.
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. She was his eldest kid, and she had a real knack for the business,” I say, and then I chuckle. “You know, she drew up these wild expansion plans for the hotel when she was fourteen, and presented them to my grandfather one evening. They were so unrealistic it became a running anecdote in the family. Rooftop pools on every hotel, and underground valet parking. But it showed spirit. It was assumed she would be the one to inherit.”
