Dane's Storm(14)

“You told her the business is your life, right?”

I stared at him for a moment, his words taking me off guard. The business was my life, though. He was right. God, it was all I had. I was twenty-seven years old and it was all I had. Maybe that was pitiful, but it was true. I nodded.

“She’s giving me thirty days to vacate the premises.”

Jay pressed his lips together, his face taking on the expression it did when he was problem solving. After a minute, he asked, “Have you thought about calling your ex?”

A hot rush of anxiety coursed through me. “No,” I breathed, shaking my head. “No, I don’t want to talk to Dane.”

“Not even to save Thistles and Thatch? Not to save the whole wedding mall?”

“What can he do? I have to call a lawyer, but I did a search on Google, and my situation doesn’t look good. I signed that prenup. I knew exactly what it said.”

“So, you think Dane knows about this?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Audra, court cases have been won because of verbal contracts. What you and Dane had was a verbal contract. If he agrees to that, you could have a good chance against his grandmother.”

I blinked. A tiny trickle of hope ran down my spine, but so, too, did a bolt of fear. I couldn’t talk to Dane. I didn’t ever want to talk to Dane again. I . . . couldn’t. And more so, he wouldn’t want to speak to me either. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

“Call him, Audra. At least to find out if he knows about this. Best-case scenario, he doesn’t, disagrees with this awful thing his grandmother is doing to you, and can do something to stop her. Even if your legal case doesn’t look good, maybe she’ll listen to him and you can avoid court altogether.”

“If he’s not in on it.”

“Right. But you won’t know unless you talk to him.”

I bit at my lip again, feeling uncertain, but also slightly better than I had before. I’d considered calling Dane earlier, but dismissed it when just the thought gave me stomach cramps, opting instead to do a Google search on the topic of prenuptial agreements and property ownership. When that yielded bad news, I’d left Jay a voicemail and curled up on the couch. But hearing Jay’s insistence that I needed to be proactive and call Dane, and with the possibility that I did have some actual ammunition—a verbal contract—I felt a little invigorated.

Call Dane? Call Dane. I took a deep breath. It’d been seven years. I could do this. If it meant saving my business—the one thing in the world I lived for—then I could do this.

I smiled softly. “Thank you, Jay. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I could only hope my newfound confidence wouldn’t lead to more heartbreak. How much could one person survive? How much could I survive?





CHAPTER SEVEN


Audra



The bastard wasn’t taking my calls. I paced in front of my kitchen table, dialing the now familiar number, hitting the speaker button and holding it in front of me as it rang.

“Townsend Robotics.”

I halted in my pacing. “Dane Townsend, please.”

There was a pause and what I thought was an impatient sigh. His secretary obviously recognized my voice. “Mr. Townsend isn’t available.”

“You don’t say.”

A small harrumph sounded from the other line before her sugary voice said with false sweetness, “May I take a message?”

“I’m sure you know this is Audra Kelley. Again. Have you given him my other messages?”

“Oh, good morning, Ms. Kelley. Yes, every one. Mr. Townsend is a very busy man. I’m sure he’ll call you back as soon as he has a moment.”

“Did you tell him it’s an emergency?” I kept my voice calm though I wanted to shout.

“I made sure it was on the message.”

The asshole. Pinpricks of rage climbed my spine, causing me to pick up my pacing. “Please tell Mr. Townsend I called again,” I said stiffly, my jaw rigid with frustration. “Tell him it’s of the utmost importance that he calls me back. Again. Please. And tell him that time is of the essence. Again. Thank you.”

“Will do, Ms. Kelley,” she sang in my ear before hanging up. I let out an angry growl, tossing my phone onto the table. Hot tears threatened, but I refused to allow them to flow. No, I would not cry. Tears solved nothing.

He knew. He knew what his grandmother was doing and that’s why he was avoiding me. It was the only explanation. No one was so busy they couldn’t return a quick phone call after ten calls over the course of a week. Damn him. Why? I was angry, but I also couldn’t deny the deep stab of hurt. We hadn’t ended well. We’d gone down in a fiery blaze of agonizing pain. Did he still resent me so much? It’d been so long . . . surely he’d . . . moved on.

I sighed, plopping down into a kitchen chair and putting my head in my hands. I had moved on. Moved . . . forward. I’d thought so anyway, at least as much as one could move on from utter devastation. But before this mess, I still would have said I was okay. I had been excited about the successes of my company. I went entire weeks without suffering one of those days where I just felt inexplicably crushed and wanted to spend the day in bed. When I did have those days, I pulled myself out of bed anyway. Yes, I would have said I was doing just fine.