Bad Boss by Stella Rhys

38

JULIAN

“You’re not allowedin my suite if you don’t have a beer. At least hold it, for Christ’s sake."

I looked up to find Emmett trying again to make me drink. It was his fourth attempt in as many innings, and this time, his last ounce of patience was gone along with his usual grin.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he spoke over me when I opened my mouth. “Technically, it’s your suite because you own the stadium. Got that. Don’t care. If you’re gonna sit with me, you’re going to at least try to have a good time,” he said, holding the beer in my face till I took it. “Atta fuckin’ asshole.”

“Not sure that’s the saying.”

“Yeah, well it is for you.”

He left me alone for the next few innings, though I heard him talking about me to one of the many girls he’d brought in tonight.

“Yeah, he’s fine. No, don’t tell your friend to come over – trust me, that’ll be pointless. He’s just getting over a girl.” Emmett glanced at me. “She’s moving to Milan today. Or was it Paris?”

London, asshole.

Emmett knew exactly where Sara was going. He’d gotten it wrong on purpose to bait me into talking, but over a week later, I wasn’t interested. It was easier to let Emmett assume the reasons I offered Sara the job in London. Like everyone else, he figured it had to do with my particular relationship with work.

I preferred that than telling him about Turner.

He’d find out eventually anyway, once he realized that no deal went through, I still owned the resort in Biarritz, and the stadium was not partnering with Roth Entertainment, now or ever.

Thanks to Turner’s drunken 4AM calls that pulled me out into the hall during that last night in Biarritz, we were right back to where we started.

“For such a hard ass, you don’t have proper control of your subordinates, Hoult.”

“Do you even hear yourself, Turner?” I asked as we stood down the hall from my room. He was wasted, and I shouldn’t have considered meeting him out here for this conversation, but the last thing I wanted was for Sara to hear this. “Do you honestly believe that I would ask this of anyone who works for me?”

“You could. You know well that you could,” Turner slurred. He was swaying, red-eyed, and reeking of every liquor in existence, but he stuck fervently to his point. “You’re Julian Hoult. You’re like me. You have resources. You have money, possessions and connections that people won’t ever get in their lives even if they work their hardest,” Turner sneered. “Now, come on. Think of one thing you can hold over Sara’s head. It could be as simple as her job. Just tell her you’ll fire her if she doesn’t say yes. I mean for fuck’s sake, I’m asking for a weekend. One weekend. And I’ll be taking her somewhere nice. I’m not going to fucking lock her in a dungeon – I’ll wine and dine her and all that jazz. You just need to make it clear that I expect her to reciprocate.”

“You are out of your fucking mind, and that’s not going to happen.”

“Then I’m pulling out of this deal and blacklisting Empire Stadium from all future Roth Entertainment events,” Turner grinned like the fucking Joker. “Don’t believe I’ll do it? Try me,” he laughed. “But before you do that, ask yourself if it’s really worth it for some girl. I’m not fucking buying her from you and turning her into my sex slave. I want to fuck her a couple times over a weekend and move on. You know me. I like the chase.”

“Then you’ll love the fact that you’ll never in your life lay a finger on Sara.”

“Hoult. Don’t talk about her like she’s some precious little sweetheart. Trust me, she has experience in this kind of thing. You don’t know what I’m talking about?”

Evidently, Turner’s curiosity had compelled him to give Sara’s name to someone at his office in New York. And apparently, that person had found the article detailing Sara’s arrest when she was seventeen.

I felt fucking sick when I realized it.

I knew well that I was solely to blame for putting Sara on the radar of someone like Turner. His obsession with instant gratification was dangerous on its own – combined with his wealth, entitlement and resources, and you had this fucking shitshow.

It was revolting, and it took everything in me to keep from strangling him right there, especially when he called Sara an “itch” he needed to scratch. For his own fleeting want, he was willing to send her hurtling back to the most painful time in her life.

Then again, he didn’t know about her past.

But I did.

I had opened that old wound of hers that night in the Hamptons. I’d made Sara face the past she had swept under the rug because I needed to know more about her. I needed to protect her.

And in sending her to London, I hoped I was doing just that.

Even if he tracked her down, Turner’s impulses were unlikely to follow Sara to London. I had a hunch that that gratification wasn’t quite instant enough for him.

I also had a hunch that between Turner and myself, the worst was yet to come. He was unlikely to just forget and move on from the fact that I’d knocked him out during our last night in Biarritz, and left him to be tended to by hotel staff. He was proud, way too egotistical to leave things where they were, and whatever bullshit he had planned for me, I didn’t want Sara around to see it.

I didn’t want her to feel guilty the way I knew she would – like she had something brand new to repent for. I just wanted her to be blithely oblivious, like Lucie.

And if that meant the end of us then I’d have to deal. She would eventually move on. Her new life in London would make sure of that.

I would move on as well.

I’d go back to focusing on my work with everything I had in me. I would hunt for new ways to launch my stadium to the top, and I would fall back into my routine of spending every day at the office, some nights out with Emmett and Lukas, and every Sunday with my family.

I would transition seamlessly back into that reality.

That was what I told myself at least.