Filed to story: Can’t Get Enough Of You
An asshole? Nolan?
We walked into a break room that looked a lot more like an upscale coffee house, complete with a barista station, comfortable couches arranged in a semicircle, a water cooler and a fridge, and a few tables dotted around the rest of the open space. A few employees were seated on the couches and around the tables. Some of them glanced up when we walked in. Some of them leaned forward and gossiped about me, not even hiding the fact that I was the hot topic of conversation around here.
I wanted to crawl away again, but that was no way to deal with this. I was on this team now, and I was going to hold my head up high and fill the shoes Nolan had offered me.
Even though I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that.
“Everyone,” Felicity said, raising her voice. Everyone fell quiet. “This is Izzy. Izzy, this is everyone.”
She gestured with her hand. A few of them nodded and waved in response.
“Come on,” Felicity said and led me to a coffee station where she started preparing us each a cup. “Do you see that woman over there?” She nodded to a scrawny blonde who looked nervous. “That’s Danielle. She’s had a crush on Heaton since, like, forever. But that’s never going to happen.”
“Oh. Why doesn’t she stand a chance with him?” I asked. Please don’t say he’s married, I willed.
“Because she’s not his type.”
“What is his type?” I asked, relief washing through me.
“Slutty,” Felicity said.
Blood drained from my face. What was she talking about? Surely not Nolan, the one guy who’d been everything but a dick to me all those years ago. There had to be some kind of mistake.
The conversation stopped abruptly, and when we looked up, each armed with a cup of coffee now, I realized Nolan had walked into the room. His presence filled the space, pushing into the corners, and everyone clearly revered him.
“Thank you for being on time,” he said in a clipped voice. “This won’t be long. Firstly,” he glanced at me. “I want to welcome our newest member, Carey Lowden. She’s going to be working closely with you on the new launch. If she needs help, you’re going to jump to give it to her.”
I felt self-conscious for a moment, but Nolan powered on to the next point of business.
“The vegan campaign was rotten,” he continued. “I don’t know what the hell any of you were thinking, but since when are vegans fucking different from the rest of us? The campaign sounded like you were trying to single them out.”
“I’m sorry, sir?” a man with mouse-brown hair and a flat face asked, interrupting Nolan.
Nolan shot him a murderous glance, a look that was very out of place on the face I thought I knew.
And just like that, I realized I didn’t know it at all.
“What is it?” Nolan snapped.
“Well… the responses to the campaign were very good. The numbers are up since we launched it, and-“
“Do I look like I give a rat’s ass about the numbers? I care about how people feel, Donovan. This business isn’t just about money, it’s about emotion. And if we can’t evoke the right emotion, we shouldn’t be doing this at all. It’s your job to make my food look good. Do. Your. Job.”
He turned around and stormed out of the break room.
I gasped. “What the hell was that?”
“A staff meeting,” Felicity said with a shrug. “This is a good day. You don’t want to see him when he’s pissed off.”
I frowned. I was starting to think I really didn’t want to see him pissed off.
Where was the Nolan I’d met that night? Where was the man I remembered almost every time I looked at my little boy at home? This Nolan was an asshole, just like Felicity had said.
“No one seems upset by his outburst,” I said, looking at the others who were slowly starting to disperse now that they’d been dismissed by Nolan’s dramatic exit.
“No point in crying over spilled milk,” Felicity said and rolled her eyes. “I hate that saying. But it’s true. So, we screwed up. We’ll just have to do better this time. There’s no pleasing Heaton, we can only try to do something different next time. We can only hope we’ll get it right and he won’t piss all over our work. Or fire one of us.”
I shook my head. “He sounds terrible.”
“He’s okay once you get to know him,” Felicity said. “Trust me, a lot of women want to know him despite everything he does. And he lets them. I mean, he knows them.” She winked at me.
My stomach dropped. Women? As in plural?
“Doesn’t he date?” I asked, hoping Felicity would say something that would redeem him.
She shook her head as we left the break room. “It would be hard to sleep with as many women as he does if he was dating. I mean, a lot of women would jump at the chance to be Mrs. Heaton. The guy’s a millionaire, and he’s only thirty. He knows what he’s doing, and even though he’s not one of the bigshots out there who has so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it, he has enough to keep the ladies hungry.”
We now reached my office and came to a stop in the doorway.
“So, you’re on a first-name basis with him,” Felicity said. “How do you know him?”
“Oh,” I said, thinking back to that night. To the man I thought he was back then. “We were just acquaintances once upon a time.”
“Huh,” Felicity said. “Well, you’re better off not knowing him more closely, if you catch my drift. Trust me. I’d rather work for him than have his attention in that way. That just ends in disaster.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “I’ll see you around, girl. Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything at all. I’m just two floors down.”
I nodded and watched her go. Felicity walked with a bounce in her step, as if she hadn’t just shattered every illusion I had about Nolan.
When I’d seen him the other day, standing in the conference room like a commanding captain at the helm of his vessel, it had been a shock. But it had also been an eye-opener. I’d figured out that he was involved with Appetite, and when I Googled it, I’d realize just how involved he truly was.
It had made me think. He had to have been sent across my path again for a reason. I believed in fate, destiny. And in a family that was whole.
Liam deserved to know his father, and one of the first things I’d thought after seeing him was that this was my opportunity to tell Nolan about the son he’d never known he had.
But now that Felicity had told me what he was like, I wasn’t so sure.
I entered my office and stood there, lost in thought.