After This (Reluctant Hearts Book 1) Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, or events are used fictitiously or are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2020 Liora Blake

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  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form whatsoever. For information or to inquire about subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at www.liorablake.com.

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  First edition April 2020

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  Cover and interior design: Mayhem Cover Creations

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  Contents

  1. Alec

  2. Alec

  3. Sage

  4. Alec

  5. Sage

  6. Sage

  7. Alec

  8. Alec

  9. Sage

  10. Alec

  11. Sage

  12. Alec

  13. Sage

  14. Alec

  15. Alec

  16. Sage

  17. Alec

  18. Alec

  19. Sage

  20. Alec

  21. Sage

  22. Alec

  23. Sage

  24. Alec

  25. Sage

  Thank you!

  Also By Liora Blake

  1

  Alec

  Four words are all it takes to send my morning into a tailspin, almost before it starts.

  My office. Ten minutes.

  A straightforward text like this one shouldn’t leave a grown man wondering how quickly he can escape a ten-story building while somehow going unnoticed by everyone inside when he does. In fact, very few things in life should affect a thirty-two-year-old man this way, and certainly not a text. Especially when that text is nothing but a to-the-point request about where I need to be and when. Because taken objectively, those words are utterly harmless.

  Perhaps.

  Unfortunately, I know that a text like this one from my boss—within minutes of arriving at the office—is likely something I’m not going to want to hear. At least not before I’ve consumed enough caffeine to keep up with whatever Alessandra Rossi-Mason is about to throw my way.

  Because even though she’s only five foot two, her aura outsizes her physical being a few times over. And good luck trying to outwork her, because despite sleeping just three hours a night, the woman is always ten steps ahead of everyone else in the room. She’s tough, tenacious, and an all-around corporate badass.

  She’s also my mom.

  That last detail probably explains the low-grade panic I’m experiencing. I don’t care how old I get, being summoned by my mom always has the power to make me feel like I’m eight years old again, caught red-handed eating the cookies I wasn’t supposed to touch. But my mom’s brand of supervising—as both a parent and a boss—is built on healthy doses of love and respect. So no matter what awaits me in her office, I know it won’t involve spite or intimidation.

  Now, even if my mom’s love will always trump her badass-ness when it comes to her kids, that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. There’s no way I’m going to walk into her office empty-handed and risk her picking up on how unprepared I feel. My cute grins don’t quite work the way they did when I was a kid, so I’ll need something else to serve as a distraction.

  I slide back the cuff of my dress shirt and glance at my watch. Nine o’clock. Also known as the perfect time for a macchiato, prepared traditionally as my Italian mother prefers it. According to her, anything that’s served in a paper cup and topped with a drizzle of caramel should not be considered a macchiato. Avoiding coffee shops where that’s the norm is just one reason she paid five figures to have an espresso machine imported from Milan, where she grew up.

  After a quick stop at the espresso machine, I head down the hall toward my parents’ office suite, which comprises the top floor of our family business’s headquarters. I share this floor with them and my sister Marissa while the rest of the building houses the myriad of employees who help make Mason Enterprises one of Houston’s top fifty companies.

  Although we do business in forty states, we’re headquartered in Texas because my dad is a good ol’ boy who made it big and he refuses to live anywhere but the place that made him a success, both in business and in life. Over the past forty years, Mason Enterprises has become a powerhouse in not one but two competitive industries. Mom heads up the real estate side, where our focus is on upscale retail developments. Dad handles the oil and gas side, overseeing thousands of drill sites across the country. In short, there’s a strong chance that you have Mason Enterprises to thank for that fancy new strip mall with the big-box store that just opened up by your house, along with everything it takes to heat, cool, and power the store itself.

  So you’re welcome… or I’m sorry. Take your pick really. The truth is, we work in contentious industries, and if you ask a hundred people how they feel about a company like Mason Enterprises, you’ll probably get a hundred different answers, ranging from “I love having ten Starbucks stores within a one-mile radius of my house” to “Someone should feed you to the polar bears you’re killing each day with your glacier-melting assault on Mother Earth.” We can be controversial to say the least. Honestly, there are days when I’m not even sure which side of the argument I’m on.

  The double doors leading into my parents’ office are propped open as they always are. I stroll in and find Mom slowly pacing the length of her desk, a cell phone pressed to her ear, murmuring the occasional affirmative sound to whoever is on the other end of the line. She’s dressed in a simple red sheath dress paired with stilettos that add a good four inches to her height. Her only accessories are her wedding ring and a pair of princess-cut diamond solitaire earrings. Her jet-black hair is styled into a sharp chin-length bob that matches the rest of her refined, minimalist style.

  “What I want, Mr. Sterling,” she says in a measured tone, “is your assurance that this deal is going to be worth my time. I don’t take kindly to being sent on a fool’s errand, especially when it involves a significant investment of up-front capital. My capital.”

  I set the macchiato in the center of her desk, then smooth the front of my dress shirt and straighten the lapels on my suit before settling into one of the leather chairs opposite her. Mom glances at the cup, then moves her calculating gaze up to mine. I give her my best charming grin, to which she responds by raising one eyebrow suspiciously.

  Shit. So much for gaining favor by way of a macchiato. Evidently my thoughtful, caffeinated gesture won’t get me out of whatever I’m here for.

  She allows Mr. Sterling the courtesy of the last word before politely saying goodbye and then hanging up. I don’t know what deal she’s working on with Sterling, but I do know there’s little chance she allowed him the last word as some act of deference. In the end, Alessandra Rossi-Mason always has the final say.

  She drops her cell phone on the desk, slips gracefully into her chair, and eyes the macchiato before taking a deep breath. I keep my mouth shut and do nothing but sit up straighter, waiting as she takes a sip of the coffee. She lets out a measured exhale and sets the small porcelain cup down on its saucer before fixing her attention on me.

  “I need you to go to Colorado.”

  It takes a moment for me to process her statement, but when I do, I say the first idiotic thing that comes to mind.

  “Me?” I actually point at myself, as if she might need a reminder of whom she’s talking to. She answers by way of another raised eyebrow. My second reply sounds almost as dim-witted as the first. “Why?”

  She takes a
nother sip of her coffee. “While I’d like to respond by saying ‘Because I said so, topolino,’ I won’t do that to you. You’re a grown man, after all.”

  I give in to a little eye roll. That claim would hold more water if she hadn’t just used an endearment from my childhood. Topolino means little mouse. The name suited me as a toddler, given my penchant for burrowing into small spaces—under beds, behind furniture, and inside storage cubbies—whenever I wanted to eat the cookies I’d absconded with.

  After setting her cup aside again, she leafs through a stack of files on her desk, finally pulling one out and sliding it toward me.

  “But the real answer to your question is: Tate Marshall.” She sighs. “He’s made a mess out of an acquisition there. I need you to go clean it up and close this deal.”

  Ah, Tate Marshall. That explains a few things. He’s our resident slimeball. But for about ten percent of the high profile clients we deal with, Tate has just the right amount of smarmy bravado and greasy charm to become their best friend, even after he’s purchased their property for twenty percent under market value, wrecked their boat, and fucked their wife. For the rest of the more lucid people we do business with, he makes them queasy and/or homicidal.

  I happen to think that Tate and his macho bullshit are a waste of good business cards. Unfortunately, he also has thirty years’ worth of very wealthy allies in the real estate industry, which means it’s better to have him working for us than against us.

  That doesn’t explain why I’m now involved in his latest fuckup though. I reach for the file folder, although it’s strictly out of reflex. Mom put it there, so now I’m picking it up because that’s what she expects. I do my best to scan the pages inside as if I’m actually digesting what’s on them, but all I’m really doing is wondering if this is some sort of joke. If it isn’t, then I’m really confused.

  My job at Mason Enterprises is simple: I’m the good-times guy. My business card says “Alec Mason, Vice President, Public Relations and Community Impact,” but that’s only because it sounds more professional than “Good-Times Cruise Director.”

  My easygoing personality is a big part of why my job here is to make Mason Enterprises look good. It doesn’t hurt that I was also blessed in the looks department, enough that Houston magazine put me on their sexiest bachelor list for the past five years. Those lists don’t make any difference when it comes to how I live my life, but they are good for the PR side of our business—even if that once involved letting a photographer shoot pictures of me shirtless, holding a sledgehammer in one hand and a hard hat in the other.

  When I’m not half-dressed between the pages of a magazine, my job entails making sure we throw the best fundraising galas, host the most exclusive grand openings, and charm the hell out of every business journalist between Houston and Dubai. And while my job probably seems like a lot of fluff and flash, our family’s reputation matters to me, which is why I’m the best person for this job.

  That said, I’m also the worst person to do anything related to acquisitions. I’m the last guy we should send in to close a deal even when I have all the right college degrees to do the job. But despite that and how I practically grew up in my parents’ offices, I’m not made for the cutthroat dynamics of sales. All that drama isn’t my style—and everyone in this room knows that.

  I close the folder and take a deep breath.

  “But why? Tate is basically a jackass dressed up in a good suit, so this isn’t the first time he’s blown up a deal. There has to be someone on his team or a regional rep better suited to this. Hell, you could send Marissa. She knows more about how to get a deal to the table than I do.”

  “Send me where?”

  Mom glances toward the open doorway at the interruption. My sister strolls in, wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and work boots, carrying a hard hat in one hand and a set of rolled-up site maps in the other. Our dad is a few paces behind her, dressed the same way, sans the hard hat. Instead, he has a tan Stetson perched on his head. Both of them have streaks of oil on their shirts and a sweaty, windblown look about them that indicates they’ve been out on a drilling site, probably since dawn.

  Marissa tosses the site maps to Dad. He catches them in one hand while removing his hat and running a free hand through his graying blond hair. At nearly sixty, Dad still looks and behaves a lot like the college kid who would have made it to the NFL if a shoulder injury hadn’t destroyed his career. Instead, Byron “Buzz” Mason finished his geology degree, went to work in the oil fields, and then started his own small drilling company. Forty years later and he’s the head of a national conglomerate with drill sites from coast to coast.

  He and Marissa are cut from the same cloth. The two of them love nothing more than tromping around in the oil fields, praying that the ground will give up what they’re betting it will. But Marissa is also next-level smart, with more engineering degrees than any one human being needs. She’s also an avid knitter, a CrossFit junkie, an expert trap shooter, and a collector of obscure, dorky vintage cartoon memorabilia. Basically, my sister is a hundred different high-performing people, all rolled into one.

  Marissa flops into the chair next to mine and starts to loosen the laces on her work boots. Mom quietly mutters a few oaths in Italian when she spots the mud Marissa and my dad tracked into the office yet again.

  Mom sighs. “No. I need Alec to go to Colorado. This doesn’t play to Marissa’s strengths. It requires more finesse. Someone who’s more…” She pauses, searching for the word she wants. “Agreeable. Being agreeable isn’t your forte, my dear.”

  Marissa tugs on the elastic holding her hair up in a messy bun and then shakes out her long, wavy dark hair. “Agreeable? Yeah, that’s absolutely not my fucking forte.” She stands up and starts out of the office, patting me on the head as she walks past. “This one is all you, little brother. Although if you need me to come out there and be disagreeable, send me an SOS. Hell, that way while I’m there, I can finally say I’ve trained at altitude.”

  Of course. Leave it to my overly ambitious sister to figure out a way to get a Mile High workout in, even while she’s saving my ass and making some property owner’s life miserable.

  “Duly noted,” I mutter.

  There’s no point in delaying the inevitable, so I flip open the folder again. A triumphant little smirk crosses Mom’s face as she looks over my shoulder, locking eyes with Dad while sending him a wink. They’re still crazy in love and prone to the kind of PDA that made my teenage years a study in daily awkwardness.

  They met going toe-to-toe on the purchase of a greenfield site, when Mom had just relocated to Texas and was working at a commercial development firm, trying to make a name for herself in a new country, doing a new job. When they crossed paths outside the seller’s offices, Dad jokingly questioned her ability to turn the site into anything other than a “very pretty parking lot.” She responded by peppering him with a few choice expletives he’d never heard before, and after that, Dad was smitten.

  True love, basically. Either that or an episode of Dallas.

  After another long look at Dad, she returns her attention to me. “Do you need more details on Tate’s transgressions, or can you fill in the blanks on that topic?”

  “No,” I grumble. “He did one of three things: said too much, drank too much, or pushed too much. He’s not exactly innovative when it comes to being an asshole.”

  “Well then, that saves us some time.” She reaches for a pair of reading glasses and slips them on while flipping through a file. “The other reason I’m sending you is because you speak cars. Race cars, to be specific.”

  There’s clear distaste in her voice when she utters the words race cars, in the same way most people might say root canal.

  I snort. “So do you.”

  “True. Except I despise them. They’re noisy, flashy, and overpriced. The three things I hate most in life. Negotiating this deal requires discussing race cars with a smile on your face. Do I look like I’m smili
ng?” She points at her own face, where her mouth is pinched into a taut line.

  I squint a little and peer at her, then shake my head slowly.

  “Not unless you just left Dr. Hamilton’s office.”

  My quip about Houston’s top plastic surgeon does what I hoped it would, forcing Mom to give up her scowl in favor of a small smile. In our social circle, Dr. Hamilton is more esteemed than Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela combined. He also has a tendency to be a little heavy-handed with the Botox, and that means nearly all the women we know haven’t moved their foreheads in decades.

  Mom shakes her head with a quiet chuckle and then sighs. All that really matters is that she isn’t thinking about racing for a moment.

  While my dad’s story is a bootstrapping, come-from-nothing saga, Mom’s is far from it. Her great-grandparents built a textile dynasty in Milan, and her father used that fortune to indulge his passion for ludicrously expensive race cars, which he eventually parlayed into his own successful Formula One racing team. Unfortunately, that also made his daughter an afterthought in her father’s life. If she wanted the privilege of being ignored by him in person, that meant tagging along to every race, surrounded by the noisy, dirty mechanical beasts she came to hate. Being part of Italian racing royalty means Mom grudgingly knows her fair share about cars, yet she despises everything about that world.

  With my curiosity piqued, I give the file my full attention. “Rocky Mile Raceway” is printed in large, bold letters on the cover sheet, along with an aerial photo of a racetrack. From what the photo shows, this track is nothing like the ones the Rossi family is accustomed to. It’s obviously run-down, and even worse, it’s a dirt track. Dirt tracks aren’t exactly the pinnacle of racing arenas. They’re simply what you find in small towns where there’s nothing better to do on Saturday nights than go drink beer and watch your buddies wreck their shitty race cars.