Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89183 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89183 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
And suddenly, all her fears seemed foolish. He loved her.
What could possibly go wrong?
* * *
Josie fell asleep in Malcolm’s arms, but even though he loved the way her body curled around his, he couldn’t sleep. There had been an email from Genevieve warning him that Kieran Taylor was becoming increasingly difficult. Malcolm knew this stage of the negotiations was always make-or-break. Damn, they’d worked long and hard on this project, and it could be one of the biggest deals of his career.
He calculated that it was midday on Monday in Christchurch. There was no harm in checking in, even if a little voice in the back of his head said he should stay out of it and let Genevieve handle things. But as Josie said—sometimes in the darkness your mind spiraled off, and the worries and the fears that you were able to push away during the day rose up.
He slid out of bed, wondering if Josie was right, and they were moving too fast. But he’d always made decisions quickly and stuck to them.
He was Malcolm Sullivan. Success was what he did. And no, he wasn’t at all concerned about things moving too fast. The tightening in his gut be damned. It was unreasonable to expect that taking any leap would be simple, that he would just go with the flow. The way he’d been doing since the moment he picked up Josie at the airport and realized how much he liked being with her. Loved being with her. It was why he’d finally said those three little words.
I love you.
He’d never said that to any other woman. Only to Josie. And he meant it with his whole heart. He did love her. Loved her so much that he could no longer envision his life without her.
He took one last look at Josie lying in his bed, her hair spread out on the pillow, her skin still slightly flushed from their lovemaking. The copy of Walden she’d given him sat on the bed shelf, almost mocking him as though it knew he was about to check business emails late on a Sunday night. Thoreau would shake his wise head if he could see Malcolm now.
Gently, he pulled up the covers over Josie’s shoulders and then crept out into the lounge. He opened his laptop. For so many years, this computer had been an appendage, his fingers always on it, never leaving his sight for too long. He’d thought he couldn’t live without it, or his phone, but this week he’d learned to use them as the tools they were meant to be and not as his masters.
It was no wonder his family was so overwhelmed by the changes in him. He was like a new man. And all because of Josie.
Out the window, he could see moonlight on the river. A bat flitted over the glossy surface of the water, and he realized he was able to see things like this again. It wasn’t that they hadn’t happened while he’d been working all those years, it was simply that he’d stopped noticing because they had no bearing on his business deals.
Truthfully, he’d achieved everything he wanted to in his career. Once House in a Box was launched globally, he would step back.
He opened his email and, almost as though he’d known it would be there, found an email from Kieran Taylor, CEO and inventor of House in a Box.
Malcolm read the email… and then read it again more slowly. His gut clenched hard in frustration. Kieran had called a board meeting and invited his bankers to discuss moving forward with the global expansion. He was inviting Malcolm Sullivan to the board meeting, but made it clear that the meeting would happen anyway. Malcolm could read between the lines that Kieran was completely overwhelmed and suffering a massive anxiety attack over taking his product global.
But to get to a Wednesday meeting in New Zealand with time to meet the board and talk some sense into Kieran meant jumping on a plane from London ASAP. He grabbed his phone, went up to the roof deck so as not to disturb Josie, and called Kieran.
“Good to hear from you,” Kieran said. “I hope you can make the board meeting. I really want to make sure we’ve got all our i’s dotted and t’s crossed. You understand.”
What Malcolm understood was that Kieran was running scared, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he reiterated all the good points of the deal he and Genevieve had worked so hard on.
“I know all that,” Kieran replied. “But if you’re asking me to commit everything to this global expansion, I need you to commit too.”
“We are completely committed to making House in a Box a global brand,” Malcolm assured him.
“Then I want you here, on the ground, running the operation. I can’t do it. I’m stretched too thin as it is. If I have to ramp up production, I’ll need you to run the business.”