The Dating Plan(83)
Liam held Organicare’s pitch deck over the recycle bin. In anticipation of his acceptance, the partners had cleared out a corner office, and he was packing up his things to make way for the new associate they’d just hired. Eric and Kevin had rejected the pitch outright, and he didn’t blame them. He’d done his best to help Tyler come up with ideas for restructuring and refinancing, but the rebrand to something so overtly feminine in the current market had turned the partners right off. Daisy had been right about her colleagues’ cutting-edge proposal, but Tyler wouldn’t bite. He was too afraid to take the risk. Liam had seen it before. Good inventors weren’t always good businessmen. Sometimes they needed someone else to run the show so they could get back to doing what they did best.
His phone buzzed on his desk and he glanced at the screen. Brendan again. Christ. His brother had called six times this morning, no doubt to harass him about the distillery. Still trying to process his promotion, and the implications of a life in New York, he just couldn’t deal with Brendan right now.
The pitch deck thudded into the recycle bin, and he stared through the glass window at the gray, overcast city. When he’d left San Francisco on his motorcycle ten years ago, he’d never intended to wind up on the East Coast, but it seemed that no matter how long he rode, he couldn’t get far enough away. A chance encounter with well-known venture capitalist Tom Robertson in a biker bar in Oregon had decided his fate. He’d helped the weekend warrior repair his motorcycle, shared his opinions on several start-ups, and the next thing he knew, he had a job as an assistant at Evolution.
Tom was a self-made man, with only a high school diploma, who had started Evolution in his garage and turned it into a multimillion-dollar venture capital company. He believed Liam had an instinct for the business and liked his risk-taking nature and unconventional attitude. He’d taken Liam under his wing and the investment paid off. Although Liam was the only associate at Evolution without an MBA, or even a college degree, he was now an Evolution partner. He had it all. An office in the clouds. The title on his business cards. The respect of his colleagues. The achievement of a lifetime goal. He could finally stick it to his old man.
Except the old man wasn’t around to see it.
No one was around. He had a few casual friends in New York, but no family. No one who really cared. There were no aunties beating down his door so he wouldn’t be alone. No cousins warning him that “extra hot” meant raging inferno. No families dressed in shark suits trying to poison him with home-cooked meals. No sly relatives overcharging him for giant swords. No one had come to the hospital to see him.
But then, he hadn’t told anyone he was there.
He’d always blamed his family for not reaching out, but he had never reached out to them. He thought they hadn’t helped his mother when, in fact, they hadn’t known about the abuse she suffered. Not a day had gone by after the night of the prom that he hadn’t thought about Daisy and her family, but he hadn’t even considered getting in touch. Secrecy had been such a huge part of his childhood that it had become ingrained in his life.
His phone buzzed again and Brendan’s name appeared on the screen. He might as well get the call over with. Once he officially accepted the offer, he wouldn’t be in a position to run the distillery. And even if he was, he couldn’t meet the terms of the trust. There was only one woman he wanted to marry, and he’d left her behind.
“Liam! Thank God.” Brendan let out a loud breath. “Lauren!” He shouted. “I’ve got him. He answered the phone.”
Liam’s pulse kicked up a notch at Brendan’s frantic tone. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve been trying to get you all morning,” Brendan tripped over his words. “We went to the hospital and your apartment building. I didn’t have the address for your new office so I called New York and the receptionist was new and she said you worked in San Francisco, and she just gave me the same number . . .”
“Did something happen to Jaxon?” His pulse kicked up a notch. If Jaxon was hurt, and he was thousands of miles away . . .
“Jaxon? No, he’s fine. He’s playing out in the backyard. We were worried about you. Lauren saw something in the news about a motorcycle accident, and they mentioned your name. They said you were a hero and you’d saved Daisy, but no one we talked to knew where you were or if you’d even survived. When we couldn’t get in touch . . .” He let out a ragged breath. “Where are you? Are you okay? They had pictures of your bike and it was destroyed.”
Liam swallowed past the lump in his throat. This wasn’t Brendan. He didn’t care. He hadn’t been there for Liam when they were young. Why would he want to be there for him now? “If you’re worried about the distillery . . .”
“The distillery? Fuck the distillery,” Brendan said. “I’m calling about you. I was an ass the last time we met, and then Lauren read about the accident, and all I could think was that you were gone and that was the last time I would have seen you . . .” He choked up and Liam heard Lauren’s soothing voice in the background. “Why didn’t you call us?”
Liam rubbed his chest, trying to relieve the tight feeling. Was this a joke? He couldn’t remember the last time he and Brendan had had a civil conversation, other than their brief interactions when he would pick Jaxon up or drop him off. It was a big leap to even contemplate that his concern was real. “Why would you have expected me to?”