Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
I open my mouth to answer but then Julian’s phone buzzes on the table between us. He holds a finger up to me, an apologetic smile, connecting the call. “Talk to me, Sybil.” I watch as Julian listens intently to whoever is on the other end and then he says, “Hold on just a second, Syb.” His gaze comes to me as he pulls the phone slightly away. “I’m sorry to cut this short, Harper, but I’ve got a minor emergency I need to get back and handle. Do you mind getting the car and I’ll have the rest of your lunch boxed and pay the check while you do?”
“Of course I don’t mind,” I say quickly, rising from my chair at the blunt reminder that I am on duty and a paid employee. “I’ll be out front.”
Julian gives me a curt smile, starts to place the phone back to his ear, but then halts. “And one other thing, Harper…”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’d very much like to hear more about Dylan when I don’t have a phone glued to my ear,” he says.
Why that causes my heart to do a double hammer is beyond me, but I give him a small smile in acknowledgment. “See you outside, sir,” I murmur.
“Julian,” he calls after me, but I don’t look back, instead weaving through the restaurant toward the exit.
The early-afternoon light adds a tinge of warmth to the air, and I turn up the block toward the garage, my breath visible in small clouds.
I’d very much like to hear more about Dylan when I don’t have a phone glued to my ear.
It shouldn’t feel like anything. It’s small talk. A professional courtesy people say and don’t mean.
Except Julian Langley, from everything I’ve observed in the last two days, doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.
Chapter 8
Julian
The Vipers are up two goals in the first period and the owner’s box is loud with the energy of VIPs who enjoy winning more than they enjoy hockey.
I stand at the half wall that splits the main suite from the balcony seats, my drink untouched on the rail beside me. Grizz sets up in the offensive zone, focus and confidence radiating from his frame. He’s different out there on the ice, like his personal force of nature brand has settled, and in that, he’s more powerful.
I call that the “Daisy effect” and I expect he’d give her the credit too.
Behind me, the room is filled with the same who’s who, the names and faces who get invites to these games. Sponsors, front office execs, a handful of league contacts I invited for the optics. City officials, other billionaires who run in my circles. It’s the same crowd every night and I have to wonder what it would be like with a bunch of non-jaded, hockey-obsessed kids instead. Obviously, Harper’s idea on how to hype up this city to host an All-Star Game has me thinking.
Glasses clink and someone laughs too loudly at a joke that probably wasn’t that funny, but I’m walled off from it, my attention on what’s really important… the game. I know I should be circulating but I stay at the glass.
Grizz takes a pass off the boards, pivots cleanly and sends it cross-ice to Coen Highsmith—a prized trade from the Pittsburgh Titans last year—who one-times it past the goalie before the man even shifts his weight. The goal horn erupts and the suite behind me surges with noise.
Three nothing.
I allow myself a private moment of satisfaction and take a sip of my drink.
The game is good. The team is cohesive in a way that felt theoretical three months ago and is now simply fact. Everything from an organizational standpoint is moving in the right direction.
The All-Star proposal is with my creative team who are adding texture and specificity to the community campaign framework, which Harper came up with in a four-minute conversation on her first day of work with me as my driver.
And that thought, predictably, leads to additional ruminations about my newest employee. It’s a conundrum why she keeps inserting herself into my thoughts. Therefore, I’m forced to examine it—what is it about her specifically?
The obvious answer is the one I discount first, not because it isn’t true but because it’s insufficient. Yes, she’s beautiful, objectively and undeniably so. But I’ve been in the company of beautiful women my entire adult life and none have taken up residence in my thoughts with this annoying level of stubbornness.
So it isn’t that. Or it isn’t only that.
My hypothesis, then, is that it’s the mind behind the face.
The ticketing crisis, for example. I’d only just met her, and she offered a solution my entire operations staff had circled for hours. She delivered it from the front seat of a Town Car and did so from a position of vulnerability. I didn’t know it then, but I later learned she had lost her primary job less than twenty-four hours before and yet that didn’t stop her from going out on a limb with me.