Fallon’s hands trembled with anger as she placed the phone receiver in its cradle. Rising from her chair, she strode across her stylishly appointed corner office and stared out the window overlooking downtown Austin. Although she understood why her older brother, Ayden, wasn’t returning her calls, she was still annoyed he’d gone to Jamaica while she was in such a desperate state.
Stewart Technologies was on the brink of bankruptcy. As CEO, Fallon had done her best to keep the company afloat, working sixty-and eighty-hour work weeks, but she was bailing water from a sinking ship. The last few weeks she’d been unsuccessful in her attempts to secure a bank loan.
She’d gone to Ayden, the black sheep in the Stewart family, for assistance nearly a month ago. Ayden had rejected her assertion that he help the “family business.” The more Fallon thought about it, why should Ayden rescue the company started by a father who would never claim him as his son? Ayden owed no allegiance to her or any other Stewart for that matter.
Was it any wonder he’d ignored her calls?
Although she’d acquired personal wealth of her own through sound investments, Fallon wasn’t in a position to bail out the company. Her baby brother, Dane, certainly wasn’t about to, either. He, like Ayden, wanted nothing to do with Stewart Technologies. Dane was happiest in front of a camera being someone else, and it served him well. He was an A-list actor and got paid millions of dollars. Fallon doubted he’d put up his hard-won earnings to save a company he’d never wanted any part of in the first place.
What was she going to do?
* * *
“Perhaps you should let it fail,” Shana said when they met up for drinks at their favorite martini bar across town an hour later. Shana Wilson was one of Fallon’s favorite cousins on her mother’s side. Nora hated them spending time together because she tried to disassociate herself from her back-country roots. But Fallon didn’t care. Shana was loud and opinionated but down-to-earth.
Fallon stared at Shana incredulously. After all the hard work she’d put into Stewart Technologies, interning in the summer while home from Texas A&M University, learning the business from the ground up and climbing the ladder to finally sit in the CEO chair, she was supposed to give it all up? “Have you lost your mind?”
Shana chuckled. “Don’t have a coronary. It was just a suggestion. I hate seeing you stressed out.”
An audible sigh escaped Fallon’s lips. “I’m sorry, Shana. I know I haven’t been a joy to hang with lately.”
Shana had come dressed for the evening. She was wearing a glittery sleeveless top, miniskirt, strappy heels and large gold-hoop earrings. Her curly weave hung in ringlets to her shoulders. Shana was on the prowl for more than a martini and usually Fallon didn’t mind playing wing woman, but she was in a sour mood.
“No, you haven’t been,” Shana said, sipping her drink, “but that’s why I asked you to come out tonight. All you do is work and go home to that mausoleum. You are too uptight.” Shana looked around the room at the host of men milling around. “Maybe if you met a man and got some good loving, you’d loosen up a bit. I bet I know who could loosen you up while supplying you with the cash influx you need.”
Fallon sat forward in her seat. Although she loved her cousin, she doubted Shana, who worked as a hair stylist at a trendy salon, knew much about finance. “Oh, yeah? And who might that be?”
“Gage Campbell ring a bell?”
Fallon’s heart plummeted at the sound of his name. “G-Gage?”
“Yeah, you remember him? The guy you had the hots for, for over a decade?”
How could Fallon forget? She’d thrown herself at him and inadvertently set in motion a course of events even she, at her tender age of sixteen, couldn’t have predicted. “Of course I remember. What about him?”
“Word in the salon is he’s back in town,” Shana responded. “A couple of clients have come in talking about dating him. He owns a successful mutual fund business and has become quite the catch. Not to mention, he’s still as sexy as when we first saw him when we were eight years old.”
Fallon would never forget that day. She’d been prancing around on her pony when Gage and his mother Grace toured the estate with Nora. Fallon had been showing off and the pony had become agitated and thrown her. If it hadn’t been for Gage’s quick reaction and his catching her before she landed, Fallon would surely have broken something. When he’d looked at her with his dazzling brandy-colored eyes, Fallon had fallen head-over-heels in love with the twelve-year-old boy.
Fallon blinked and realized her cousin was still talking. “According to his current lady loves, he knows his way around the bedroom, if you catch my drift.”
There was no mistaking Shana’s meaning and Fallon blushed.
“Oh, lord.” Shana rolled her eyes upward. “We really do need to get you out if a little girl talk makes you blush. Perhaps Gage could help with Stewart Technologies? I hear he’s quite the financial wizard.”
“That might be so, but Gage would never lift a hand to help me,” Fallon replied. Why would he? She’d ruined his life and she only had herself to blame.
Two weeks later
“Stewart Technologies is in dire straits,” Fallon told her parents over Sunday dinner.
Thinking about the past and what she’d done to Gage Campbell had weighed heavily on her mind ever since she’d had drinks with Shana a couple of weeks ago.
Fallon had never been able to forget the hateful stare Gage had given her moments before her father had closed the cottage door all those years ago. She’d never learned what had happened to Gage and his mother after they’d left Stewart Manor. She hadn’t wanted to know because she’d been the cause of his mother losing her livelihood and the guilt had eaten her up. She’d felt so bad that she hadn’t balked when her parents had sent her to a finishing school her final year of high school to avoid her spending time with the “wrong crowd.”
“Must you be so dramatic?” Nora Stewart said, glancing at her daughter from the opposite end of the table. Even though it was just the three of them at dinner, her mother had insisted on eating in the formal dining room when Fallon would rather be in the kitchen.
Her