I swiped my handbag out of my drawer and shoved my things into it. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Jane—”
“I have plans tonight,” I said, already moving to walk around him to the door. “We’ll talk later.”
Without giving him the chance to respond, I left my office with my pulse loud in my ears. I didn’t believe a word of what he’d said, and even if he had been repeating verbatim as he’d claimed, it must’ve been a simple case of miscommunication.
My mother had stayed up late with me while I studied for finals. She’d cried tears of joy when I got my first offer letter. All my life, she’d been telling me that I could be anything I wanted. She would never suggest I shrink myself now. Not for a man, a Westwood, or anything else.
Except, as I strode down the mostly empty hallway, doubt followed me anyway, slipping into the cracks in my mind and filling the darkest recesses of my soul. Above all else, Mom had spent her life as a socialite, a rich woman who lunched, drank, and donated.
She’d never planned for her only daughter to have something silly like business ambition. That had beenDad’splan for my life.
When the elevator finally deposited me in the parking garage, I felt like my head was spinning, the weight of doubt suddenly crushing. Knowing Alex could never understand why this was such a big deal to me, I nixed my plan to go straight to his apartment and texted Zara instead.
Somehow, she’d become not only my friend, but also my only girlfriend. Considering that she came from a wealthy family herself, but had chosen to do something with her life that was about more than just mimosas and checkbooks, she would understand. She had to.
Thankfully, she replied right away, suggesting a restaurant not far from my office. I sent her a thumbs-up, told the car where to navigate to, and blindly followed its directions. The restaurant turned out to be loud, bright, and trendy, all exposed brick and hanging greenery.
She was already there when I arrived, a glass of wine in hand and another waiting for me on the table. Her eyes lit up when she spotted me.
“You look like you’re about to commit a felony,” she said cheerfully. “Sit.”
I did, gratefully picking up the glass and downing at least half of the wine in one swallow. She widened her eyes at me. “Rough day?”
“Yep,” I muttered, reaching for the menu and not really seeing it. I was holding it more to give my hands something to do—outside of wringing my brother’s neck.
She peered at me over the rim of her glass. “Okay, spill. What’s going on?”
I opened my mouth, taking a deep breath and reaching for whatever calm I might’ve had stored deep inside me. “The board is meeting next week. Sterling Westwood is being brought on.”
“Wow.” Her eyes widened even more. “That’s huge.”
“I know.”
“That’s good news, right?”
“Yeah, it should be.”
A flicker of a frown passed over her features. “But?”
“But apparently, my mother thinks I should take a step back and let my husband run my company while I simply enjoy being his wife.”
Zara choked on her wine. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I don’t believe it,” I said quickly. “I don’t. She must have been speaking hypothetically or emotionally or?—”
“Or strategically,” she interrupted quietly.
Although I could see that spark of understanding in her eyes that I’d been hoping for, I suddenly despised seeing it there. Because I’d wanted her to understand my outrage, not the ring of truth in my brother’s words.
I shook my head. “No. She wouldn’t.”
Zara didn’t argue, but she didn’t agree with me either. “Okay. Well, you don’t have to decide anything tonight.”
There was nothing to decide though, and the look she gave me said that she knew it, but neither of us brought it up again. Instead, we just moved on, but as we ordered, talked, and pretended everything was normal, I wondered for the first time not if I wanted to be the CEO, but how hard I was going to have to fight to get it.
After we’d eaten, Zara finally tilted her head, studying me like she was already sketching something in her mind. “So, I had an ulterior motive for meeting up with you tonight. I said yes because I figured there was something going on that you wanted to talk about when you texted out of the blue, but I was going to reach out anyway.”
