He sat on the edge of the antique desk and looked at her attentively.
“You need to play up your experience and your connections in your application,” she told him.
“I don’t have any.”
“Just stretch the truth as far as it can go. They’re going to give you an interview, and unless you kill someone in the conference room, they’re probably going to give you the job. All you need to do is write something coherent.”
“I need you to help me. Come upstairs.”
His tone was coaxing, and she wanted to sink into bed with him and forget all of her problems. Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
“I have to go,” she said, hurrying out of the room. His feelings for her couldn’t be real. But what if they were? It didn’t matter. She was digging herself deeper into a hole she had thought she already escaped. Alan was going to ruin her life. Her phone buzzed again.
“I’m going to lose my mind,” she muttered, reading the text Alan had written her.
I need that money now I can’t wait
Resisting the urge to throw the phone against a wall, she replied.
I can’t get away
The phone was silent for a moment, then it buzzed with Alan’s reply.
Make it happen
She had already gotten the cash out of her bank account. Three thousand dollars. She stuffed it into an envelope. Praying that no one saw her, she biked to the canal, where Alan was waiting for her.
“Next time, we will be meeting somewhere more private,” he said with a leer. She didn’t respond, just pulled out the envelope and handed it to him. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her toward him, crushing his mouth to hers. She struggled away, and he laughed at her.
“I need you, Kate. You ruined me for everyone else.”
“That’s your problem,” she spat at him.
“No, it’s your problem if you don’t cooperate. I see how Grant is the new rising star in this town. It would be such a shame if he came crashing back down to earth.”
Chapter 38
Grant
Grant changed then went into the upstairs study that Stefan had told him to use. He opened his new laptop and pulled up the application for the sales job.
He had told Kate he loved her. Why was she acting like a scared rabbit? Maybe she was worried he wasn’t serious about staying in New Cardiff. He looked down at the application. He had printed out the essay questions and a copy of the application form. It was very intense. Regardless of what Kate said and how he had told his father he was ready, he wasn’t sure he was qualified.
He looked Randal and Martin up on LinkedIn. Both had MBAs and Ivy League undergraduate degrees. They had done internships at companies Grant had never heard of, but when he Googled them, they sounded large and impressive.
He read the job description again—fifty million dollars in sales. That was a lot of money. You would think a junior sales associate wouldn’t be responsible for that much. What was the point of being junior? Did he really think he was cut out for this job? This life? Did he really want to do this? He thought about Kate. Yes, he did; he had to be near her. Grant had given enough of his life to the military, and he wanted something different.
He could go to college instead, he mused, Googling nearby schools. His father had said Harvard. Their website showed groups of very young—to his eyes—kids. They looked happy and well taken care of. He closed out of the tab. He couldn’t go to college. He was almost thirty. He had to make this sales job work somehow.
Grant started on the application. He filled out his work and education history, but he didn’t have anything to put in for college. He wondered if maybe that mattered, but there wasn’t anything to do about it then. Then he moved on to answering the short essay questions about why he wanted the position and what made a good junior sales associate. He wouldn’t be working in a team as he did in the military. It was all lone-wolf road-warrior type stuff. He groaned. Then he thought of Kate. If he could be successful at this and cement his position in his father’s world, maybe then she wouldn’t run from him.
After he was finished, he read the application through once more, uploaded his resume and cover letter, then hit Submit. He felt a little jittery after submitting it. He kept wanting to double-check it. He was sure it was riddled with typos. Maybe he should go with the original plan of working at the foundation. He shook his head. He had promised on live national TV that he was going to do some sort of dog-and-veteran charity thing. How was he going to manage that?
Gus stirred at his feet. Speaking of dogs. He took the corgi outside and then worked up the nerve to call his uncle Jack.
“Hello?” Jack did not sound particularly pleasant when he answered the phone. After his father told him that he had basically stolen Jack’s company out from under him, Grant wondered if Jack didn’t just hate him by proxy because he was his father’s son—and his mother’s. His mother had killed Jack’s nieces, the closest things to daughters Jack would ever have. Jack probably saw all the things he hated about Grant’s parents in him.
“Who am I speaking to?” Jack said.
