She opened the calendar on her phone. Her day was full of follow-up meetings with five different investors. By the end of the day she intended to start working on putting the plans she had outlined about the expansion of her company into full gear.
She couldn’t focus on any other outcome—couldn’t waste her mental energies speculating and in turn proving the contentious article right.
Only then would she deal with Diego. There was no way anyone else would have known or leaked the news to the media. She had confided in only one person.
Wasn’t this what Diego had intended all along? She was a fool if she’d thought even for a moment that he wanted anything but her ruin.
* * *
Kim clicked End on her Skype call and leaned back in her chair. Her day had only gotten worse since Liv’s phone call. That had been her fifth and last unsuccessful investor meeting. Not one investor was ready to wire in funds.
Whereas the invoices for the new office space she had leased, for the three new state-of-the-art servers she had ordered, for the premium health insurance she had promised her staff this year mocked her and the vast sum of numbers on the papers in front of her was giving her a headache.
She leaned her head back and rubbed the muscles knotting her neck. Her vision for her company, her team’s livelihood, both were at stake because she had weakened.
Hadn’t she learned more than once how much she could lose if she let herself feel?
The number of things she needed to deal with was piling up. Panic breathed through her, crushing her lungs and making a mockery of the focus that she was so much lauded for. She forced large gulps of air into her lungs.
Breathe in...out...in...out... She repeated it for a few minutes, running her fingers over the award plaques she kept next to her table, searching for something to tune out the panic.
Pull yourself together, Kim. There are people counting on you.
It was the same stern speech she had given herself at thirteen, when she had discovered her mother’s packed bag one night. And the note to her father that had knocked the breath from her.
She had survived that night. She could survive anything.
She had to go on as before—for her company’s sake and for her own sake. If she lost her company she had nothing. She was nothing.
She picked up her cell phone and dialed Alex’s number. He was someone with whom she had always tossed around ideas for her business, someone she absolutely trusted. And someone she had been avoiding for the past month...
But she needed objective, unbiased advice, and Alex was the only one who would give it to her. She would exhaust every possibility if it meant she could go on with the plan for expanding her company.
* * *
Diego cursed, cold fury singing through his blood as he stared at the live webcast on his tablet. Reporters were camped with cameras and news crews in front of Kim’s apartment complex in Manhattan.
He rapped on the partitioning glass and barked her address at his chauffeur.
His gaze turning back to the screen again, he frowned at a sudden roar in the ruckus. And cursed again with no satisfaction as he recognized the tall figure. Her ex had arrived. Diego could almost peek into how the press’s mind would work.
The news about her pregnancy on top of the scandal last month, when her twin had been found with Kim’s ex—the press would come to only one conclusion.
That the unborn child—his child—was Alexander King’s.
This was not what he had intended when he’d had his head of security leak the news of her pregnancy to the media.
He stared at the tall figure of Alexander King as he walked into the complex without faltering, despite the reporters swarming around him. Acrid jealousy burned through him. He slammed his laptop shut, closed his eyes and sought the image of Eduardo’s frail body.
Which was enough to soak up the dark thoughts and send some much-needed reason into his head.
He had done this before—let his obsession consume his sense of right or wrong. He had let it blind him to the fact that Eduardo had needed his help, and instead he’d turned on him.
He couldn’t do that again. This was not about what Kim could drive him to. It was about what was right for their child.
* * *
Kim took a sip of her water as Alex finished a call. She had emailed him her proposal and set up the appointment. Now she wished she had waited for the weekend. Stupid of her not to expect how much the media would make of Alex visiting her alone on a Friday evening at her apartment.
She had never been more ashamed of herself. It had taken everything in her to ask Alex for his help but she had no other options. A flush overtaking her, she plucked up the daily statistics report her website manager had sent her.
Based on the turnover of her company in the last quarter, and on her expansion proposal, investing in her company was a sound opportunity for any shrewd businessman. Except for the scandal she had brought on herself.