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Chapter 1
Alexander Hudson flippeda pen through his fingers while staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows in his corner office overlooking Lake Michigan.
Chicago was his hometown, although he certainly hadn’t been born on this side of it.
In fact, in order to get here, he’d had to do the opposite of everything every person who knew him expected him to do in life.
Succeed, for one.
He sighed and turned his face away from the view and walked to his desk. He picked up the water that sat there, took a swig, then walked back to the window, the pen never stopping its movement around his fingers.
Normally, Saturday mornings were his favorite morning to work. There was little noise in the offices, he was seldom bothered, the phone didn’t ring much, and he and his administrative assistant, Clara, had all the time and privacy in the world to lose themselves in their work.
Except today, Clara wasn’t here.
Twisting on his foot, he strode back to the desk, then turned and started back to the window without taking a drink.
She had wanted to go home.
Like Chicago wasn’t her home. She belonged here. Belonged in the office with him, helping him, taking his notes and instructions, looking up information, making coffee, grabbing lunch, sending emails, and...giving a little sunshine to his soul.
He pursed his lips. Turning abruptly, he strode to the other wall, past the large windows and the beautiful view. Barely seeing it. He made a lap around his office, large and luxurious, the kind of office he could only dream about as he ascended the ladder, coming from the slums of the city one small step at a time. Through hard work, determination, and perseverance, he’d earned this corner office. And he’d worked hard to keep it.
But somehow, the success that he’d always thought would feel so good didn’t really feel like success. He didn’t have the satisfaction, didn’t feel happy...except when he was around Clara.
She had a smile and way about her that was friendly and cheerful, even on his grumpiest days.
It was far, far different than anything he’d experienced growing up. He really didn’t know anyone else like her. She trusted way too easily, which he scoffed at, warned her about, and finally had tried to protect her from. From herself.
She was so different from everyone else he knew. Most people were sarcastic and self-focused. People who would say if someone was too cheerful or too happy or too eager to please, they had self-esteem issues that needed to be worked on.
He’d spent enough time in therapy to know that.
But sometimes, he wondered exactly what his therapist knew. After all, from the little bit that he talked to her about personal issues, she didn’t seem to have a very happy life herself.
That had made him dig deeper, and eventually he quit going. She’d been divorced twice, had been currently fighting over custody of her two children—not fighting for custody, fighting to not have it—and had been suicidal.
He considered himself a little bit crazy to be thinking that he could go to someone like that and get life advice for himself.
He wanted life advice from someone like Clara. Someone who seemed happy and cheerful, someone other people enjoyed being around and who seemed content and at peace with her life.
His entire life, he was looking for that contentment and peace. He hadn’t found it yet.
That wasn’t his problem this morning though.
His problem was he suspected that Clara wanted to quit.
It was something he’d heard as he was passing the water cooler the previous week. Normally, he didn’t walk around without reading something. After all, there was no point in wasting any time. So normally he had his head down and didn’t pay attention to the people around him. But when he heard Clara’s name, his attention had been diverted. It was just a snippet of information. But the line that he’d heard, “Clara is out of here soon,” had made his heart drop like a rock and his hands tremble.
There wasn’t anyone else who worked in the office named Clara. Not that he knew of anyway. But just in case, he checked.
Clara Landry, his administrative assistant, was the only Clara in the company.
And apparently, she was quitting.
Just a few weeks ago, he had asked her to move to the Cities with him. He was starting a new office there, and it would take six months to a year to get things up and running. He didn’t want to do it without her. Actually, he really didn’t want to do much of anything without her. Funny how she’d come to be indispensable to him.
He hated that. That was why he didn’t get close to people. Because they never stayed. He’d been abandoned by way too many people who were never supposed to leave him, way too many times in his life, and he should know better than to get complacent now.
