Boys Like Them

Emilia Hart was staring at the spreadsheet again, the numbers bleeding red across her laptop screen in the small corner office of Hart Publishing. The quarterly earnings were worse than she had expected. Worse than last quarter. Worse than anything her father would have tolerated if he were still alive to see them. She rubbed her temples and tried to focus, but the afternoon light slanting through the blinds made everything look washed out and hopeless.

The door opened without a knock. A man stepped inside wearing a suit that cost more than her entire month's rent, and he looked around the office like he was already calculating how to tear it down. He was tall, with dark hair and sharp blue eyes that took in everything at once. The scar above his left eyebrow only made him look more dangerous.

"This filing system is a disaster," he said without greeting. "Your ledgers are scattered across three different cabinets, and I can already tell your numbers are padded. Where is the real one?"

Emilia stood up so fast her chair rolled back and hit the wall. "Excuse me?"

"Lucas Reed," he said, as if that should mean something. "And I need to see your actual books, not whatever version you've been showing the bank."

She crossed her arms and looked him up and down. "And I need to know why you're in my office telling me how to run my father's company. Last I checked, this was still my name on the door."

Lucas walked past her and pulled open the top drawer of the filing cabinet near her desk. He flipped through the folders with quick, efficient movements. "Your father's company hasn't been yours for months. My firm bought the majority of your outstanding debt. That makes me your partner for the next six months, whether you like it or not."

Emilia felt the floor tilt under her feet. The words didn't make sense at first. She had been managing the debt, stretching every dollar, skipping her own paycheck to keep the lights on. "That's not possible. I would have known."

"You would have if you'd bothered to read the fine print on the last loan you took out," Lucas said. He found the ledger she kept hidden in the back of the bottom drawer and pulled it out. "This one looks more honest. Still a mess, but honest."

She snatched the book from his hands. "Get out of my office. Right now."

"Not happening," he said. "I'm moving my operations in here starting tomorrow. We need to be in the same room if we're going to stop this place from bleeding out completely."

Emilia felt heat rise in her face. She could hear her staff going quiet in the hallway outside. Someone had definitely heard her voice. "You think you can just walk in here and take over because your family has money? Newsflash, this is a coastal town. Your suit doesn't impress anyone here."

Lucas looked down at his jacket like he had forgotten he was wearing it. For a moment his expression changed, something softer crossing his face before the cold mask returned. "I'm not here to impress you, Emilia. I'm here to make sure you don't lose everything your father built because you're too stubborn to accept help."

She pushed past him into the hallway. "This isn't help. This is a takeover."

Lucas followed her. "Call it whatever you want. The numbers don't lie. You're running out of time and options."

The small staff had gathered near the copy machine, pretending not to listen. Emilia felt every eye on her. She had spent the last year trying to prove she could handle this on her own, and now a stranger in expensive shoes was announcing that her father's legacy was being handed to someone else. She turned back to Lucas.

"You don't know anything about this company or what it meant to my father," she said. Her voice came out quieter than she intended. "You don't get to walk in here and act like you understand what we're trying to save."

Lucas studied her face for a long moment. The hallway felt too small for both of them. "Maybe I don't," he said. "But I know what happens when someone lets pride get in the way of making smart decisions. I've seen it happen to better people than either of us."

Emilia didn't have an answer for that. She walked toward the front door, needing air, needing space, needing to be anywhere but standing under his cool blue stare. The bell above the door chimed when she pushed it open, and she kept walking until she reached the boardwalk that ran along the beach.

The ocean stretched out in front of her, gray under the afternoon sky. She stopped at the railing and gripped the wood until her knuckles went white. The salt air filled her lungs and made her eyes sting, though she told herself it was just the wind. She had grown up here. She knew every inch of this coastline. But right now the familiar view felt like it belonged to someone else.

Footsteps approached on the wooden planks. She didn't need to turn around to know who it was. Lucas stopped a few feet away and leaned against the railing, looking out at the water instead of at her.

"If you want to save your father's legacy, you have to stop playing house and start playing business," he said. His voice was quieter now, without the sharp edge he had used in the office. "That means making hard choices. That means letting someone help you even when it hurts your pride."

Emilia kept her eyes on the waves. "Is that what you tell yourself when you're buying up other people's problems? That you're helping?"

Lucas was quiet for a moment. "Sometimes. Other times I just tell myself I'm good at what I do." He glanced at her sideways. "You don't have to like me. You just have to let me do my job."

She finally looked at him. The wind had pushed his dark hair across his forehead, and he looked younger than he had in the office. Less like a corporate shark and more like someone who was carrying his own weight. For just a second she wondered what had brought him to this town, what made him the kind of person who bought debt and showed up unannounced to fix broken companies.

"I don't trust you," she said.

"Good," Lucas answered. "Trust has to be earned. Start by showing me the real numbers tomorrow. All of them. Then we'll see what we're working with."

Emilia pushed away from the railing. "Don't hold your breath."

She walked back toward the publishing house, her steps quick on the wooden boards. Behind her, Lucas stayed where he was, still watching the ocean. She could feel his eyes on her back until she turned the corner. Her heart was beating too fast for someone who had only been arguing about ledgers and filing systems. She told herself it was anger. She told herself it was nothing more than that.

The sun was starting to dip lower over the water. Emilia reached the office door and paused with her hand on the handle. Tomorrow Lucas Reed would be sitting in her space, rearranging her father's company like it belonged to him. She would have to decide how far she was willing to fight before she risked losing everything that mattered.

She took a deep breath of the salt air and pushed the door open. The bell chimed again, and she walked back inside to face whatever came next.