“So,” he said expansively, “while you’re Parker’s neutered pet…” He just loved rubbing it in. “I’ll take a nice, office job, just as you wanted.”
“Well, okay, then,” I said, pleased to hear him finally making sense.
“Thought you’d like that.” He was far too happy. “So you won’t object to taking your things out of the office. Because I’m going to need the space.”
Wait. “What?”
Dean looked at me as though I was two years old. “As the one with the big math-type brain, I’m going to sit my ass down and manage the accounts of Lights Out.”
When I simply stared, he tutted and shook his head slightly.
“You’ve been saying you’re crap at account managing. Well, move over, bro. Because I’m the new office manager.”
Shit. He’d go through the accounts. He’d find out about the second mortgage, and just how deep in the red we were. He’d find out about everything.
“Now, wait a minute,” I began. But he cut me off by turning his back to leave.
“Forget it, Rhys,” he said as he walked toward the door. “You got your way with Parker. I’m doing this and you can’t stop me.” He paused and grinned. But his eyes were cold and angry. “As you keep telling me, I own half the gym. It’s time I start taking care of my end.”
He was going to do his damnedest to make my life hell. The promise was right there in his expression. He let me see it, made sure I understood. Then the door slammed, and I let out a bark of incredulous laughter. Damn if I wasn’t proud. The other half of me was filled with dread because we’d eventually have some hard conversations, and I wasn’t exactly good at communicating.
Didn’t matter, though. I’d overslept and it was getting late. Parker would be coming by soon and frankly, I needed to prepare myself for dealing with her, let her know who was in charge here.
Dream on, Morgan. She’ll have you by the balls before you know it.
Why did I look forward to that?
Five
Parker
A selfish bonus to being “green” (other than the awesome eco-warrior status) was it kept me active and fit. To my parents’ frustration, I refused to accept the Mercedes-Benz Cabriolet they’d bought me as a reward for earning my PhD. Maybe if it had been a Tesla I’d have been swayed, but, unfortunately, despite me yelling the word “green” from the rooftops since I was fourteen, my parents couldn’t wrap their heads around what that meant.
As far as they were concerned, every young woman would love to drive around in a luxury convertible. Plus, the Mercedes had an “eco” stop/start button so why wasn’t that green enough?
I gratefully declined the car and splashed out on an electric hybrid bike when I got the job at Horus. For journeys to the office I used the bike at full power, so I didn’t arrive sweaty and out of breath. Today, however, as I rode the six and a half miles north to Chelsea, I reduced the power, meaning it took me the normal forty minutes to get there.
The truth was I was dragging the ride out, reluctant to step inside Lights Out. For the past few days, I’d lied to Jackson and my colleagues, and it was not fun. Jackson had informed our small team about the dinner date with Fairchild and how the big boss waxed lyrical over Rhys Morgan. Thankfully, only one guy on the team knew anything about boxing and recognized Rhys’s name, and even then, he wasn’t a fanboy.
However, they all wanted to know how Rhys and I met, a subject that didn’t come up at dinner because Fairchild had monopolized the conversation. Prepared for those kinds of inevitable questions, first I’d googled Rhys and then I’d learned as much as I could about his career.
He’d been a heavyweight fighter. A champion. From my research I’d discovered there were four major professional boxing organizations that held bouts. The International Boxing Federation, the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Council, and the World Boxing Organization.
When Rhys was twenty-eight years old, he became the WBC heavyweight champion. Some other guy was the heavyweight champion that year for all three other associations, so I wasn’t sure how that worked. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how any of it worked. However, I was smart enough to realize that Rhys Morgan had been an awesome boxer. It was a mystery to me why he’d retired at thirty-one,