Kissing Kady Ch. 01

"Just what the fuck kind of game do you think you're playing, Damon?" Harold barked.

Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Damon sighed. "I don't know what you're talking about." Things between him and his dad had been tense for the past few months; Damon hadn't told him that he and Beth, while not ending things officially, had decided to take a breather.

"I'm talking about the fact that there are pictures of you and some topless woman all over the Internet and sleaze newspapers! Are you out of your damn mind!"

Damon, speechless at the realization that his not-so-clandestine encounter with Janelle hadn't been as secret as he'd thought, could only listen to his father's railing with a sick feeling in his stomach.

"I just got off the phone with Walker, Damon. He's furious. Beth is mortified; she's gone to be with her mother in Connecticut for the time being and, if you know what's good for you, you'll be getting your ass out there on the next flight, too."

His head spinning, Damon had agreed. "I'll...go as soon as I can."

"Damn right you will. And you'd better fix this, Damon. I've been friends with Walker for almost 30 years, so you had better make damn sure his little girl forgives you."

Harold hung up before Damon could reply.

Abject silence settled over him as he disembarked from the plane, gathered his bags and climbed into the back of the town car there to take him home. His condo, quiet and empty, seemed to mock him. He'd called Beth. She'd agreed to see him. He'd gone to Connecticut and apologized profusely for embarrassing her and betraying her trust. She'd cried and said she loved him. No matter what, she loved him. She asked him if he still wanted to marry her.

He'd looked her straight in the eyes and said yes.

In the month that followed, wedding plans took over his life. He was set about reestablishing himself within his father's good graces—no easy task by any means—and he told himself that now that he'd gotten all of the wild, idiotic crap out of his system, he was ready to marry Beth.

The wedding was nine months away. Everyone was astonished that it would be so soon since society weddings—which the Wallace-Moore nuptials would definitely be—usually took a year or more of planning. But Beth was adamant. She smiled at Damon whenever someone broached the subject. "I've waited too long for him, already."

For a week, Damon didn't sleep. His work suffered. He was distracted and irritable. Harold was constantly harping about him needing to get himself straightened out; the renewed wedding plans had gone a long way to smooth things out between them, but it was clear that Harold was still angry about Damon's behavior.

Damon, on the other hand, had been thoughtful. He was terribly, terribly sorry that he'd hurt Beth the way he had. He knew that even though their wedding was still taking place, people wouldn't stop talking about the fact that The Heir had strayed and the Plane Princess, as people had taken to calling Beth because of her father's stake in the airline industry, had been dethroned by a pop star awash in her fifteen minutes of fame.

His infidelity was something that Damon could never take back. And every day, he was astonished and shamed by the fact that Beth loved him so much that she was willing to forgive him for treating her so badly. All along, she'd been the better, stronger, more understanding person out of the two of them. She deserved better than to be cheated on, Damon concluded.

Then, one day, the realization came to him that Beth deserved better than him, period. And he, Damon realized, deserved better than a marriage based on convenience and simple affection.

Beth hadn't said much when he told her. He'd had to tell her. It was the right thing to do. Without a word, she took his ring off her finger and handed it to him. She kissed him on the cheek and walked out of his apartment and out of his life.

Damon sighed at the memory. They'd officially ended things a month ago and in all that time, his father had been trying to persuade him to change his mind; to reconsider. But he was unwilling to compromise on something that he knew in his heart was the right thing to do.

Now, after months of Damon trying to show Harold that he was still committed to the company and his job, his father was threatening to give away half of Damon's share. Of course, the twenty-five percent of the company didn't become Damon's until his 26th birthday—now four long months away—but having been raised with the knowledge that a quarter of the company would one day be his and, once Harold retired, 75 percent, even considering the fact that Simon might take what Damon had been raised to take over was a bitter pill to swallow.

Having been in the office since six in the morning, Damon couldn't stop thinking about the lightly-veiled threat his father had made the day before. "Prove it," he'd said. Damon needed to prove that Moore Corp. was in his blood, that it meant everything to him, or his father was going to literally give half of his life away.

Clenching his fist, Damon strode out of his office and into the smaller room where his very pregnant assistant, Phoebe usually sat. Glancing at his watch, Damon absent-mindedly noted that she wouldn't be coming into the office for another hour. He wanted to get some work done, though; something to take his mind off of the Simon threat.

There was a pile of neatly stacked manila folders on the edge of Phoebe's desk. The top one labeled, Heller Account. Damon smiled to himself; usually, Phoebe was meticulous about putting everything in its place; it wasn't like her to leave things un-filed, but since she was eight months along in her pregnancy, she'd become easily tired and distracted. Damon smiled, willing to let it go since the Heller file was the one he was looking for, anyway.

Scooping up the folder, he walked back into his office and sat down. Within moments, he'd immersed himself in the profile of the company that, for the last six months, Moore Corp. had been trying to make a deal with for a buy-out.

Time passed quickly for Damon who was caught up in his work. Eventually, Phoebe came waddling in, her unsteady gait making him smile a bit.

"Good morning, Damon," she said cheerily, taking off her jacket. Harold hated that Phoebe called to Damon by his first name, but since she was only a year younger than Damon, he felt it was kind of weird to ask her to refer to him as Mr. Moore. Besides, "Mr. Moore" was his father and always would be.

"Morning, Phoebe," he called back to her. "How're you feeling?"

Laughing, the petite redhead walked over to his office door and rested one hand on the doorframe, the other against the small of her back. "Like I'm carrying around a bowling ball." She grinned. "Can I get you something? Coffee?"

Damon nodded. "Yeah, that'd be great. With two sugars."

"Coming right up."

He was back into the Heller file within seconds and he didn't even hear Phoebe come into his office until she sat the coffee down on the desk next to his elbow. He took a long gulp and sighed. "What would I do without you, Phoebe?"

"Probably lose you briefcase every chance you get," she quipped. "But I guess we'll find out in a week, huh?"

Confused, Damon asked. "What do you mean?"

Phoebe rolled her eyes in exasperation. "See? This is what I mean. You forgot, didn't you?" At Damon's blank expression, she pointed at her round belly. "Maternity leave, Damon. Starting next week. I'll be gone for four months, remember?"

He did remember. Vaguely. He'd been aware of her impending departure for the last few months, but with all of the chaos in his own life, it just kept slipping his mind. "Right, right," he said, quickly. "I knew that. Iknowthat," he corrected. "Uh, did we hire a temporary assistant, yet?"

"'We'?" Phoebe's brow shot up in amusement. "I think you mean, didIhire anyone yet. And no, I haven't because you were supposed to look through the applications and let me know which ones you wanted to interview."

Again, Damon looked completely lost. "Which I haven't done yet," he admitted.

"Which," Phoebe added, "you might want to get on soon considering Friday is my last day. Are you okay, Damon? You're usually not so forgetful."

Rolling his shoulders in a futile attempt to relax out the tension, Damon closed the Heller file. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just some issues with The Boss," he said, referring to his father with the same deferential title that all of Harold's other underlings gave him.

"Oh," Phoebe said, knowingly. "Well, good luck with that. But seriously, you need a replacement receptionist ASAP."

After she walked back out to her desk, Damon let out a sigh. What he needed was way more than a replacement receptionist. He needed someone to come in and make all of his problems disappear. He needed to somehow show his father that he was serious about his job and his role as next in line to head up Moore Corp.

Short of getting back together with Beth, he didn't see anyway of doing that. His thoughts elsewhere, Damon began sifting through the pile of applications that Phoebe brought in to him. He might as well find a new assistant rather than harp on his issues with his father.

Three of the applications went immediately into the trashcan. It was Moore Corp. policy to ask for a photograph of potential employees, a very European practice that Harold insisted on, but that Damon found pointless. Two more resumes hit the bottom of the trashcan; none of these people had enough experience. He was getting a bit worried; there were only a few resumes left to look through.

Flipping to the next resume, Damon didn't even bother looking at the picture. This one had a four-year degree from Hardine University: a difficult school to get into. She'd spent a year in France during college; had three years of administrative experience, most of it part time, but she'd interned at Russell & Limbert, a prestigious law firm across town. Still, Damon wasn't sure about her. He was about to move the application over to the "maybe" pile when something caught his eye: she'd graduated from Botswick Academy.

It was the same prep school that Damon had attended. She was two years behind him according to her resume. Her name was Kadence Conway.

Didn't ring a bell.

He pulled her picture from underneath the paper clip that held it to the resume. Dark, unruly curls, thick-fringed blue eyes, clear skin and a wide-mouth. She was familiar for some reason, though he couldn't figure out why. It wasn't so much her face he remembered, or even her name, it was the eyes and mouth—the combination of the two that tugged at some long-forgotten memory.

Why couldn't he remember her? They'd gone to school together for two years. Botswick wasn't a large school, either. Barely over 1, 000 students, but he couldn't seem to place her into a single memory, not one hazy snapshot from high school.

There was something, though, that he was forgetting. He didn't know why it mattered so much to him, but he suddenly wanted to meet Kadence Conway. It was probably nerves and stress finally taking their toll, but before he could reconsider, he'd pressed a button on his phone and when Phoebe's clear voice came through, he said, "Set up an interview with Kadence Conway, please. This afternoon, if possible."

Maybe he was just curious. Okay, he was definitely curious, but this Kadence person needed a job, so what was the harm in interviewing her? And, maybe, he admitted to himself, he needed to be reminded, even in a roundabout way, of high school and a time before his life had gotten so damn complicated.