LOVING YOU WAS NEVER THE PLAN

CHAPTER 1: The Stranger in My Father's Chair

The first thing Isla Verran noticed about the man in her father's chair was that he didn't look sorry to be there.

Everyone else around the boardroom table wore the same expression they had worn for three months: careful, sympathetic, a little afraid. They said "the transition" instead of "your father's death." They called her "Miss Verran" and slid papers across the glass as if she might shatter if handed them too quickly.

The stranger only leaned back, one ankle resting on his knee, and looked at her like she was the one thing in the room worth reading.

"You're late," he said.

"It's my company."

"Is it?" His voice was low and unhurried. "The board voted this morning. I was under the impression it's mine to run now."

Isla's gaze went to the head of the table, where Harold Pryce, the board chairman, suddenly found his coffee fascinating. "Harold?"

"Isla, sit down. Please." Harold cleared his throat. "This is Adrian Cole. The Meridian Group's investment depends on him taking the role of CEO. Without that investment, we can't make payroll past March."

She heard the name and felt the floor tilt a few degrees.

Cole.

She had grown up with that name hissed through her father's teeth, never spoken at dinner but always present, like a stain on the wallpaper. Richard Cole, her father's first partner, the man who had helped build Verran Hotels from one tired seaside inn into forty properties across three continents, and who had been pushed out before she turned ten. A snake, her father used to say. He tried to take everything from us.

"Cole," she repeated.

"Richard is my father." Adrian Cole didn't flinch. "I assume you've heard of him."

"I've heard enough."

"I'm sure you have." A faint, humorless smile. "I'd be disappointed if you hadn't."

She sat, because her knees demanded it, not because Harold had asked. Up close he was younger than she had expected, maybe thirty-one, with dark hair pushed back as though he had run his hands through it and then forgotten about it, and a charcoal suit that fit like it had been made for him alone. His eyes were gray. Not soft gray. Storm-window gray, the kind that gave nothing away and noticed everything.

"Let me save us all some time," he said, addressing the room but looking at her. "I'm not here for a family feud. I'm here because Verran Hotels is eleven months from bankruptcy, and I'm the only person willing to put money in who isn't planning to carve it up for parts."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"I expect you to read the numbers." He nodded at the folder in front of her. "Page nine. Then tell me I'm wrong."

She did not open the folder. Instead she stood, hands flat on the table. "My father spent thirty years building this company. You have been in this building for three hours."

"Two and a half, actually."

Someone coughed. Someone else looked like they wanted to disappear into the carpet.

"Miss Verran," said the man at the head of her father's table, softly now, "your shares make you the largest single shareholder. Under the terms of the agreement, you keep them, if you stay on as Chief Creative Officer for twelve months and work with me. Walk out today, and the board can dilute you. It's all in the contract."

She stared at him. "You wrote me into a contract?"

"I wrote you into the company," Adrian said. "There's a difference. Your father's best instincts are in every hotel on this map. I'd rather have the person who understands them beside me than outside the door throwing stones."

It was almost kind, the way he said it. That made it worse.

"I'll sign," Isla said, and watched surprise flicker across his face for half a second before he buried it. "But understand something, Mr. Cole. I'm not staying to help you. I'm staying to watch you. The moment I find out what you really want from us, I will make sure everyone in this room knows it."

"Good." He picked up a pen and held it out to her. "I'd expect nothing less."

Her fingers brushed his when she took it. A small, accidental contact, nothing at all.

She signed anyway, as if her hand were on fire.

When the meeting ended she walked out first, head high, heels sharp against the marble, and did not let herself breathe until the elevator doors closed. In the polished steel she saw her own reflection: dark hair coming loose from its pins, cheeks flushed, eyes too bright.

Anger, she told herself. That's all it is.

Her phone buzzed. A message from her aunt Margaret: Julian is expecting you at dinner on Friday. Wear the green dress.

Isla closed her eyes. Julian Hale. Her father's oldest friend's son, her aunt's favorite solution to every problem, the polite, sensible fiancé-in-waiting that everyone assumed she would eventually accept.

She had one year to survive Adrian Cole, one family expecting her to be obedient and one company to save.

It was going to be a very long twelve months.

CHAPTER 2: Rain on the sixteenth floor

To be continued .......