Well, that was what her brain said, but her heart was too crushed to do anything but yearn for him. The fickle, weak organ wanted him to tell her that she was mistaken. Needed him to tell her that no woman could ever replace her in his heart or in his bed. She really was a fool.
She rose from her chair and began to unpack her gear. Work would help her keep her mind off what an incredible asshole she’d allowed herself to fall in love with. She’d start with the section on Max or maybe Dare, because she was pretty sure anything she wrote about the band’s bass player at that particular moment would be unbecoming to his character.
A couple of hours later, she’d found her zone. Her fatigue and hurt were forgotten as words and images, audio and video clips, all came together on the page. She’d designed the software interface herself, and it was pretty intuitive—similar to making web pages. She just had to drag and drop the sections she wanted into a template form and then add her text and supporting files.
When her cellphone rang and the ringtone Logan had chosen for himself—Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”—interrupted her train of thought, she paused with hands hovering over her keyboard. Part of her wanted to answer and forget about work, but the pissed-off part of her moved her hand to her phone’s screen and rejected the call. It had taken him almost two hours to call her back. She knew how much trouble the man could get into in that length of time. Especially when he had a willing woman in his bed. She bit her lip, blinking back a sudden rush of tears. She wasn’t ready to face their inevitable breakup just yet. She’d been through too much in the past day to add another heartache to her agenda.
Less than a minute later, Right Said Fred was proclaiming himself too sexy for her party again. She took a deep breath, rejected Logan’s call, and shut off her phone, hiding it in her desk drawer so she wouldn’t be tempted to call him back or read any text messages or listen to voicemail. She needed to have her head together before she talked to him. She didn’t want to be his doormat and if she talked to him while in her current frame of mind, she knew she’d prostrate herself at his feet and gladly allow him to walk all over her.
She found it far easier to bury herself in her work than to face reality and mourn the loss of the man she loved. Perhaps she was more like her mother than she cared to admit.
She’d just found her zone again when there was a knock on her door. Some stupid part of her brain wanted it to be Logan. But that was impossible. Even if he had dropped everything and rushed to beg her forgiveness and make amends, he didn’t know she was at work and even if he’d commandeered a jet fighter, there was no way he could have flown halfway across the United States in an hour. Unless Butch had invented a teleporting device at Logan’s request, the person currently interrupting her work wasn’t him.
Toni cleared her throat and croaked, “Come in.”
She was not fit for human company at the moment. When her mother opened the door and poked her head into the room, Toni groaned inwardly.
“Are you busy?” Mom asked.
Yes, she was fucking busy. Didn’t she look busy? Nothing made Toni crankier than being hungry, except being tired. She was currently starving and exhausted. Enter at your own risk, lady.
“I could use a little break,” Toni said.
Mom shuffled into the room and closed the door, placing a hand against it and taking a deep breath before turning to face Toni. Mom dropped her shoulders in defeat and lifted a trembling hand to her lips. Toni was too stunned by her mother’s uncharacteristic show of weakness that she couldn’t do anything but gape at her.
“I’m not sure how to tell you this,” she said. “I was downtown talking to my financial advisor.”
Toni scrunched her brow. And Mom was telling her this why? Toni had nothing to do with the business’s finances. That was what accountants were for.
“Is there a problem?”
Mom moved to a chair and collapsed into it. “Some of our big projects didn’t pan out the way we thought they would. Sales didn’t even cover the advances or that huge chunk of money I paid for the rights to publish the book you’re working on.” She shook her head. “I should have negotiated better. I didn’t have that kind of money lying around, so I borrowed most of it and . . .” She shrugged as if she couldn’t bring herself to say the words that came next.
“The business is going under,” Toni said flatly. The reality of it punched her in the gut.
“Not necessarily,” she said. “I still have one ace in the hole.”
“We can put the Exodus End book out early. I’ve been working on it most of the day, and it’s already coming together. I know it will be a best-seller. Exodus End’s fans will be rabid for it.”
“That might get us out of the hole next year, when cash starts flowing in, but that’s not what I was referring to.”
Toni tried to think back to their staff meetings and which books were being released in the coming season. Besides an interactive cookbook that gave video instructions with each recipe, she couldn’t think of any projects that were big enough to cover the million dollars they’d shelled out for the privilege of publishing Exodus End’s biography. “Then what?”
“We’ll have to sell the farm. There’s a developer—”
“No!” Toni shot to her feet, sending her office chair rolling back to collide with the wall behind her. “You absolutely cannot sell Daddy’s farm.”
“I didn’t want to buy it in the first place. That was your father’s dream, not mine. He’s been gone for almost a decade. It’s time we moved on.”
“What about Birdie?” Toni would be saddened if they sold the farm, but her little sister would be lost without the routine and comfort the familiar brought to her life.
“What about her?”
“She doesn’t deal with change, Mom. You know that.”
“That’s because you’ve sheltered her, just as your father sheltered you. Life is cruel and chaotic. The only consistency in life is that things change. There’s no permanence in anything. It’s better that she learns that now.”
“Don’t you want her to be happy?”
“Of course I do. But when’s the last time anyone considered my happiness? I’ve been doing that insane commute for fifteen years because I wanted your father to be happy and then I wanted you to be happy. When do I get my turn?”
“M-maybe I can buy the farm. You can move to the city and have the money from the sale to keep the business afloat, and Birdie and I and Grandma Jo—”
“. . . can live happily ever after? Oh, grow up, Antonia. There are no happily ever afters.”
“There are!”
There had to be. Maybe it wasn’t one event or one person that gave someone happiness for the span of a lifetime, but rather a string of events and people. Maybe she had to work for her happily ever after and find happiness in each day, each moment, but that kind of bliss was possible. She knew it was possible. And something told her keeping the farm was part of her happily ever after.
“I’m selling the farm,” Mom said quietly. “I already contacted an agent. Are you going to tell Birdie or do you want me to do it?”
Toni didn’t want anyone to tell Birdie, because she would find a way to keep the farm. “I’ll tell her,” she said. That might buy her enough time to figure something out so no one would have to break her sister’s fragile heart.
“Thank you,” Mom said with a deep sigh. “She’ll take it better from you.”
Mom stood and headed for the door, and Toni remembered the reason she’d wanted to talk to her mother in the first place.
“I fired Susan,” Toni said.
“Yeah, she told me. I assured her that her job was secure.”
Toni’s jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious. Do you have any idea how she talks to me?” Even if Susan hadn’t been the one who’d stolen her journal—and Toni still felt in her heart that she was involved—the bitch still deserved to be fired for being rude.
“We need her connections now more than ever.”