Fireball Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One - Samantha

  Chapter Two - AJ

  Chapter Three - Samantha

  Chapter Four - AJ

  Chapter Five - Samantha

  Chapter Six - AJ

  Chapter Seven - Samantha

  Chapter Eight - AJ

  Chapter Nine - AJ

  Chapter Ten - Samantha

  Chapter Eleven - AJ

  Chapter Twelve - Samantha

  Chapter Thirteen - Samantha

  Chapter Fourteen - AJ

  Chapter Fifteen - Samantha

  Chapter Sixteen - AJ

  Chapter Seventeen - AJ

  Chapter Eighteen - Samantha

  Chapter Nineteen - AJ

  Chapter Twenty - Samantha

  Chapter Twenty-One - AJ

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Samantha

  Chapter Twenty-Three - AJ

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Samantha

  Chapter Twenty-Five - AJ

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Samantha

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - AJ

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Samantha

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - AJ

  Chapter Thirty - Samantha

  Chapter Thirty-One - AJ

  Chapter Thirty-Two - Samantha

  Chapter Thirty-Three - AJ

  Chapter Thirty-Four - Samantha

  Chapter Thirty-Five - AJ

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Samantha

  Epilogue: Samantha

  Author's Note

  Fireball: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

  By Lainey Davis

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  laineydavis.com

  © 2022 Lainey Davis

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Many thanks to Arwen Davis, Melissa Wiesner, Elizabeth Perry, and Yana Ilieva for editorial input.

  Cover by Dana Boulden, Creme Fraiche Design

  Thank you for supporting

  independent authors!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Samantha

  I WILL SELL this house today. I always channel Anette Bening in American Beauty when I think I have more on my fork than I can chew. I will sell this house today, I chant, symbolically referring to nailing an interview with a reporter from Forbes and meeting community leaders and all the other tasks that come with running a tech startup on the cusp of going public.

  Forbes is just another interview. I’ve done a hundred of these by now.

  Mirror check reveals my hair is looking fabulous. My skin has that peachy glow I get after a nice workout. Not a hardcore Pound workout with drum sticks—a nice stroll on the treadmill in the company gym before popping up to my office.

  I check my watch. 7:55. Just a few minutes until my assistant arrives and just a few more minutes until the reporter strolls into my space. I lick my teeth and check the mirror again. Hearing a tap on the door, I turn my head, smile in place.

  “Oh.” I shake my head, seeing my CFO, Logan, and not my assistant. “Hey, friend.”

  She struts into the room holding a small bundle of yellow flowers. “Just wanted to bring you some sunshine before your big interview.” She shrugs and sets them on my desk.

  I look up at her, awed by the gesture. “That was really freaking nice of you, Logan.”

  She winks and pats the desk. “Knock ‘em dead, Sam. I know you will!” Logan makes her exit and I pick up the flowers, giving them a sniff even though I know tulips don’t really have a scent. I never know what to do when people do nice things for me like that, out of the blue.

  It makes me uncomfortable, and I fully recognize that that’s probably really telling, in terms of my mental health. I remind myself I’ve bought Logan flowers plenty of times.

  Another tap on my door frame reveals my assistant, but she’s not alone. It’s go time.

  “Morning, boss,” Audrey says, nodding her head at the sleekly dressed man by her side. “I’ve got Mr. Childers here, from Forbes.”

  He flashes a toothy grin and I clench. I don’t like this guy. My spidey senses tell me he’s out to portray me in a bad way. But I’ll win him over. I always do.

  He hurries over to me with his hand outstretched. “Call me Isaiah, please.”

  I offer him my standard firm-grip-handshake. “Pleasure to meet you, Isaiah. Audrey, would you be able to put these in some water for me when you get a chance? I’d love to have them on my desk later.” She smiles and gestures for the bouquet.

  Isaiah starts talking. “So, Sam. Can I call you Sam?”

  I hold up a finger for him to wait as I make sure Audrey gets what she needs and is on her way. Once she closes the door I sigh and put on my public smile. “Sorry. Hello. Sam is fine. Where should we start?”

  He gestures around the room. “This is an impressive upgrade from a tiny dorm room.”

  I laugh the expected laugh and tell him about starting Vinea in my “spare” time in college, coding the software late at night when I should have been sleeping but needed to silence all the shouting in my head. Between the demands of my statistics degree program and my siblings calling me for all the things teenagers typically ask of a parent…well, let’s just say I had a lot of anxious energy to burn off.

  “Yes, I can tell you’re very … energetic.” Isaiah thumbs through some notes. “So, you’ve compared Vinea to relationship management software? Tell me what that means.”

  “Vinea has become essential for a half million scientists worldwide,” I tell him. “Our software is cloud-based. Do you know how many researchers were relying on paper? Emailing spreadsheets back and forth? Version control is a real problem, even for brilliant minds.”

  Isaiah frowns. “So it’s an online version of a spreadsheet? For researchers?”

  I shake my head, trying not to roll my eyes. “Vinea lets scientists track, measure and forecast their scientific work. There is so much repetition in labs, and researchers studying living cells…well there is just too much data to track and manipulate by hand. I know there’s a problem in the world of life sciences research, and I know that Vinea can solve it.”

  A buzzing sound interrupts my train of thought and I look down to see my phone dancing across my desk. My brother’s name flashes on the screen and I silence the call, turning the phone upside-down. “Sorry,” I say. Isaiah nods. “As I’m sure you know from your prep work, my focus is tailored solutions for research institutions. Academic researchers use Vinea free of charge to track their work.”

  Isaiah nods again and holds a finger in the air. “I think I’ve read that you get people hooked while they’re in school so they’re dependent on Vinea once they enter the workforce?” He arches a brow at me sinisterly. My phone buzzes again and I slap the side button, holding it in and hoping this turns the damn thing off.

  I smile again so I don’t shake him. “While it’s true I do want my solutions to spread like a vine and dig their tendrils into every lab, I want to be clear that the scientists using Vinea aren’t ‘roped in’ so much as they are transformed by how we can help them and their work. Think how much headspace these folks have to make sense of patterns and correlations once they have an accurate handle on the trends in their data.”

  The phone continues to jump across the desk, more insistently now. “Do you need to answer that?” Isaiah frowns at the phone.

  “No, please accept my apologies. It’s my family calling. I think they’re just excited for me. You know, talkin
g to such an important publication…” I try to stall as I succeed in turning off the phone. My family has no idea I’m talking with Forbes today. My brother probably needs help ordering new underwear and doesn’t know his damn size.

  “Isaiah,” I tell him, trying to take back control of the interview, “in the past year Vinea has secured over $200 million in seed investments and we have a valuation of $900 million. My investors find us because all the life sciences companies in their portfolios adopt our solutions. Because biotech company leaders and entrepreneurs become accustomed to my software in graduate school. We believe this is the future of—“

  The door to my office opens and Audrey pokes her head in, grimacing. “I’m sooo sorry, Sam. It’s the Colonel on the phone. He says it’s urgent.”

  Audrey hurries to take Isaiah on a tour of the building and I hope she catches my nonverbal cues and prayers to take him by Logan’s office. Logan can charm even the slimiest of slime balls, and Isaiah seems none too pleased at being interrupted.

  “I’m the CEO of a company,” I tell myself. “A reporter should expect my time to be in demand.”

  I’m really good at appearing confident on the outside, when it’s usually chaos in my brain. I take a deep breath and stare at the phone on my desk for another beat. The red “hold” light flashes at me insistently. I pick up the handle. “Hello?”

  “Samantha.” My father’s sharp voice makes me shiver as if he were in the room to me, yelling at us Vine kids as if we were his soldiers. “I’m not happy to be making this call this morning.”

  “Well,” I tell him. “I’m also not happy about the interruption. May I ask what’s so urgent?”

  “You did not send the notarized paperwork your brother requires in order to sell the beach house, Samantha.”

  I blow out a breath. I recall hearing something about paperwork but Audrey hasn’t put anything on my desk recently. “I don’t believe I received paperwork.” I have to speak this way to my father, as if we are colleagues, rather than father and daughter. This is how he’s always been, and this is how life was growing up with the Colonel at the helm of our family.

  “I don’t have time for impertinence, Samantha. Your brother has important real estate development on the line here.”

  I’m the CEO of an almost-billion-dollar company, I want to scream at him. I have important shit I’m in the middle of, too. But I can’t say these things to my father and my brother is incapable of hearing them. My brother never remembered to actually send me the paperwork, and we both know it.

  “Please tell Sean I’m happy to sign paperwork if I receive it,” I tell him. “As you and he are aware, we have notaries on staff here at Vinea. I can and do handle these requests promptly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a reporter waiting and I cannot take advantage of his time.”

  I’m able to hang up with my father only because there’s another person’s time to consider. I don’t have to check my email to know I’ll be receiving a frantic attachment from my brother’s attorney. It’ll be couched as a “resend” but the time stamp will show the real story.

  And it won’t matter. This will all just be another example of Samantha not doing enough to support the family in their time of need. My mother devoted everything to taking care of us, and when a pulmonary embolism took her from us in my teens, everyone just shoveled her responsibilities onto me.

  I take another deep breath and remind myself that this is why I’m a terrific CEO. This experience is what has allowed me to squeeze more hours out of every day. I stand and smooth out my skirt, taking off down the hall in search of Isaiah.

  “I’m soooo sorry, Sam.” Audrey hurries up from her desk and starts to chase after me. “He was just so mean on the phone! I thought it was a real emergency this time.”

  I squeeze her arm. “You don’t have a thing to apologize for, Audrey,” I tell her. I know how my father speaks to people. “I’m sorry you had to field that call. Now, can you take me to that reporter so I can finish what I started?”

  She smiles and gestures down the hall toward the conference room. I freeze, because I momentarily forgot that we invited all these people to come in today. My community relations manager said it would be good for Isaiah to see how Vinea gives back and builds partnerships, and make it easier for the reporter to grab quotes from people all at once. I can only imagine what Isaiah will try to worm his way into getting them to say.

  I groan and then form fists, squeezing a few beats and releasing, trying to redirect all the energy flying around inside my body. Then I push open the door, stick a smile on my face, and head into the room, keeping my eyes fixed on Isaiah and his smarmy smile.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AJ

  FROM: VINELLI, KELLIE

  Sent: Monday, August 28

  To: [All Staff]

  Subj: Morning Middle School Memo!

  Good Morning Faculty! Who’s ready for action?! We had a terrific first week last week!! Today we’ve got standardized tests in ELA so don’t forget those positive incentives!! And let’s not forget that AJ Trachtenberg will be representing Franklin Middle School at the Vinea Community Conversations meeting! Thank you, AJ!!! Can’t wait to hear your report!

  Have a great day On Purpose!

  Kellie Vinelli, Principal

  I don’t care what my colleagues say. They sent me to this meeting because they didn’t want to be here. See also: how I got chosen as science department head for Franklin Middle School.

  You’ll be a great representative for our kids, AJ!

  You’re the best one to remind all those folks about our students, AJ!

  Pure shtuss, as my Bubbie would say.

  It’s rough being a realist in a workplace where people overuse exclamation marks.

  I sigh and straighten my tie, then reach for my folder and climb out of my compact Honda Fit.

  Yes. I’m 30 years old and I drive a Honda Fit, even though I’m 6’-1”. No, I don’t think a man at my stage in life should be driving something flashier. No, I don’t care that my sister drives a Range Rover.

  I live in the city, I parallel park in the city, and I’ll always choose fuel efficiency and dependability over prestige. I grunt at the haters who aren’t actually here today and make my way inside the Vinea campus.

  Who calls their workplace a campus? It’s obnoxious, as is the perky person assigned to greet me, but I do accept the coffee they’re holding out, because it smells amazing.

  Hold on…yep. Tastes amazing, too. Okay, I will agree to release one layer of surly attitude in exchange for coffee this good.

  “Let me just give you a quick overview of our campus.” The greeter, a person whose name tag says Shane (They/Them), gestures to the left. “We’ve got all-gender restrooms throughout the building. There’s a space out back for service animal relief if you need that, and we have a multi-sensory room on each floor.”

  It gets harder and harder to stay irritated with Vinea the more Shane lists the accessible features of their workspace. Pardon me. Their campus. I nod in thanks as they guide me to the conference room, snagging a coffee refill on my way in the door.

  I thumb through the handouts for today’s meeting. Community leaders from all over Pittsburgh were invited to sit down with Vinea to see how the company might be able to “give back.” It feels like they want a tax break to me. I clench and release a fist as I remember my students. My seventh grade science students would love to see a space like this, to just be in the building and peek at computer scientists and their support staff.

  I have to remember my students. Not everything is about me and my corporate cynicism. Get it together, Adriel.

  I smile at the guy who sinks into the seat to my left and shake hands with him when he introduces himself as the leader of an organization that finds summer jobs and internships for teens in the city.

  I nod and tell him, “I really hope Vinea can sponsor a few positions for you, man. This would be great experience for science-minded kids.”
>
  He nods back. “From what I understand, they agree to just about everything, as long as it’s a good cause.”

  I scratch at my stubble, wishing I’d made more effort to shave today. Our principal said the same thing—told me to ask for anything and they’d probably give it to us. I’m just planning to ask for a field trip for the kids. Why didn’t I think bigger?

  Before I can dwell on it too long, the conversation around the table gets started. The Vinea staff are leading icebreakers while we wait for the CEO. Sam, the handout says, will be joining us for a “community conversation.”

  I try to focus on what folks are saying, but I’m distracted when the door pops open and a breathtaking, blonde-haired woman slips into the room. She’s flanked by a scowling man in a suit and another Vinea employee, who waves at Shane.

  “So sorry to keep you all waiting,” the blonde says. “I’m Samantha Vine and I’m here to learn from you all.”

  Samantha—Sam. She is not at all what I was expecting, and that rattles me. I thought I had learned by now not to get attached to expectations. Shane starts leading introductions while I chastise myself for assuming the CEO was a man. I work really hard to overcome these sorts of preconceived notions. I take my role as a teacher seriously, and I take it even more seriously that I teach in a school district where more than 80% of my kids are living in poverty and food insecurity. My students deal with people’s assumptions day in and day out, and I want to be one person in their life who wants to know them for who they are.

  But also, this woman…she does not look like the CEO of a tech company on the brink of blowing up to the elite tier. This woman looks like a model. Someone who’d fit right in with Carnegies. From her perfect hair to her impeccable clothing, she’s a picture of wealth and poise. Just like all the women in my past who’ve always judged me and made assumptions, had their own expectations based on wealth and status. Just like all the jerks who judge my students.