Page 1 of After-Hours Heir

CHAPTER ONE

WHENSYLVIEJONESwalked into her apartment she toed her high-heeled shoes off—thank God—then set her briefcase and swept it toward the wall with her bare foot as she took her phone out of her pocket and walked into the narrow galley kitchen.

It was almost time.

Almost.

She was angry and edgy. Work had not gone well. She could feel the board turning against her, their hostility getting more and more open by the day.

She wasn’t her father.

She wanted to remind them that it was her father who had been at the helm when the ship had sunk the first time. Her father had been attempting a merger with Culver Books which had been torpedoed by RedMedia, who had flagged them for antitrust violations. They’d been “streamlining” the publisher beforehand and what had remained had been little more than spare parts. Then Culver Books had gone on to acquire Martin & Burke which had created a mammoth publishing house that had effectively eaten its competition alive, including Jones & Abbott.

Who had already been bite-sized at that point.

He’d only just begun to rebuild the publishing house when he’d died and she’d been working toward getting everythingback into the black as best she could, and now she felt…something ominous looming.

Mainly, something to do with RedMedia and its tall, dark and devilish owner.

But that didn’t matter right now. Safe in her little walk-in closet of an apartment, with leftover takeout in her future, it didn’t matter.

It mostly didn’t matter because…

Ding!

Baby: Sometimes I find schedules inconvenient.

She saw the banner on her phone screen, and her heart nearly burst through the front of her chest. It was him.

The man she knew only as Baby. The man she’d been texting with for five months. The man she was falling in love with, sight unseen.

Kid: Schedules can go to hell!!!

She laughed as she sent the text and opened up her fridge. Her phone dinged again, and she abandoned the open fridge doors.

Baby: But you’ll keep yours. Tomorrow, and the next day and the next…

She sent him a middle finger emoji and began to heat up her leftovers. He was right, of course. Because she was saddled with keeping this company afloat while she basically existed as a legacy CEO even though the publishing house carried her actual name.

Baby: Did I offend you?

She scoffed at her phone.

Kid: You don’t care if you offended me.

Baby: I absolutely do care, Kid.

She called himBaby, he called herKid. A song reference that had come up when she’d first called what they were doing an illicit affair, and she’d thought it was hilarious at the time, but now it made her stomach get unbearably tight.

Kid: You care because you’re afraid I won’t send you sexy words later. Though to be fair, you could get an AI chatbot to sex you up.

Baby: It wouldn’t be you, would it?

She bit her lip and squeezed her thighs together as she turned to the microwave—the weirdest combination of activities known to man—and got her leftovers out. Then she carried them to her couch, along with the phone, her laptop and a glass of wine and settled in for the evening.

She switched to her laptop so she could type faster.

She imagined him doing the same.