Her stomach fluttered at the thought of seeing him again.
She hadn’t spoken to him since the kiss. Hadn’t seen him since the day he’d been working on the shrubs and had overheard her high school friends belittling his mother and mocking him.
“He’s totally fuckable,” Anna agreed with Trina. “But not the guy you bring home to meet your father. Isn’t that right, Cass?”
She internally agreed, if only because her parents were snobs. But she didn’t want to admit the fact out loud. Derek was listening and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
But her friends pushed.
And Cassie caved. “No, definitely not good enough to bring home to Daddy,” she said, dutifully and as expected.
As she uttered the words, she nearly lost her lunch.
She’d satisfied her bitchy friends … and hit a decent guy where it hurt.
Still, she’d gathered her courage to face him and had shown up that night as he’d asked. She’d planned to apologize. To explain, if she could, about the pressure that went along with being friends with such pushy, mean girls. To tell him more about how she couldn’t wait to go to college and get away from it all, and admit she wanted to make new friends. And if he accepted her apology, she’d hoped to kiss him again.
Years later, her lips still tingled at the gentleness with which he’d touched her that day. The roughness of his lips at odds with the soft kiss.
But Derek had been MIA. He’d left her sitting alone on the lounge chair by the pool, looking over at the guesthouse, wondering if he was watching her through one of the windows.
Laughing at her embarrassment.
She’d deserve it if he had been. Eventually she’d stood, and with one last look at where he lived, she’d walked back inside the house.
A few days later, she’d left for college. She made new friends, nicer girls she felt comfortable with and who made her feel like she fit in. Not people she was stuck with just because they were part of her family’s social circle. She lost touch with Trina and Anna and the others, barely sparing them a thought over the years. Good riddance, she’d believed, on the rare times when they’d crossed her mind.
And over the years, she’d watched Derek West’s sudden, meteoric rise in the tech world, along with his partners, Lucas Monroe and Kaden Barnes. All three were co-creators of Blink, the social media app that had taken the world by storm. She didn’t miss the irony that they’d ended up in the same arena, Cassie focusing on the online tech magazine of Storms Consolidated.
An interview with the most behind-the-scenes partner of Blink would help revitalize the magazine and put them back on the map. She intended to request one.
The sound of footsteps and voices startled Cassie out of her musings. She rose to her feet as the board members walked into the room.
She shook hands with the men and women she’d known most of her life and exchanged small talk as she waited for her father to arrive.
Even this boardroom held good memories for her as a child. Not with her father, he was hardly the doting parent, but with her grandfather. Alexander would often bring her to work with him and let her sit beside him at the head of the table. He’d used a gavel to call meetings to order, and he’d bought her a mini duplicate one so she could emulate him. Even then, she’d known what she wanted to do when she grew up.
Today she would finally have her chance.
Once everyone had filled the room, her father entered, and after he, too, said his hellos, they took their seats. As her dad began to talk about his love for the company, her heart began to race with hope and excitement.
“The time has come for me to step down. My wife deserves more time than I’m able to give her while running this company.”
Cassie smiled. For all her parents’ faults when it came to enabling her brother and treating her, the girl, as less than, they did set an example as a couple who truly loved one another. Daniella often mentioned her desire to travel, and maybe this was her father acceding to her mother’s wishes at last.
Her father cleared his throat and continued. “You all know we recently had an offer to buy Storms Consolidated that we turned down. This company was started by my father, and I intend to keep it in the family.”
Hidden by the table, Cassie clenched her hands together in her lap, her pulse pounding. Even the board members murmured amongst themselves, some casting furtive glances her way. She wouldn’t let them down.
Christopher expounded more on the importance of the family business, never once mentioning Cassie by name. She swallowed hard but knew he had a flair for the dramatic. And he was building up to his announcement, after all.
But the longer he spoke, the more her unease grew, and she didn’t know why. Except for the fact that she was sitting right here. And he hadn’t once looked her way or met her gaze.
“So I announce my replacement with the hopes you will give him the support and respect you’ve always accorded me.”
Him? Who? Cassie’s stomach churned and twisted painfully.
“I’m excited to welcome my son, Spencer, home from Europe. He’s excited and ready to tackle all the growth and changes sure to come.” Christopher gestured to the door and began clapping as Cassie’s brother walked into the room.
Spencer, looking tan from his time abroad, stepped up and said a few brief words, but nothing that happened next registered.
Blindsided. Devastated. Hurt. Every one of those words described her after the stunt her father had just pulled. And the sad thing was, he didn’t even know it. When it came to Spencer, her father saw potential if only he helped him. And because Christopher was old-school, if his choice was between his daughter and his son, the male heir won out. Cassie’s qualifications, her dedication, her drive … none of it mattered.