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  “He’s my son, Linny. I didn’t know until he was fourteen.” His voice is hoarse. “Diane sought me out when she moved to New York and…”

  I stumble out of my chair, swatting his hands away as he tries to reach for me. “No.”

  “We had a brief affair before I met your mother.” He pushes heavily to his feet, following me as I walk across his office to the open doorway. “I never saw Diane again until we met for lunch one day and she told me. We did a paternity test to confirm. I did love your mother, but Diane was different.”

  My mom.

  She had been so brave during their divorce, telling Bethy and me that sometimes people fall out of love. We believed her even though we heard her crying in the bath each night.

  This is why.

  “You left mom for her?” I turn and face him. “Did you leave mom so you could be with them?”

  “Diane didn’t want me.” He skims a hand over his head. “I wanted to be available in case she did.”

  Apparently, she eventually changed her mind since they’ve been happily married for years.

  “Why didn’t you tell me he’s your son?” I point my finger at him. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  My dad folds his hands together in front of him. “He doesn’t know. I haven’t told him. I will. I plan on doing it next year when I hand the reins of …”

  A low guttural cry escapes me when I realize the next words he’s about to say. I fall to my knees, wrapping my arms around myself. “Oh god. You knew all along that you’d give the company to him, didn’t you?”

  “My father wanted me to pass it on to my son.” His voice quivers. “I’m honoring that request.”

  I look up at him, grief and disillusionment clouding my view of the man I once thought hung the moon just for me. “I quit.”

  “No, sweetheart.” He scrubs his hand over his face. “You’ll stay on. You’ll keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll work with your brother.”

  “I. Quit.” I enunciate both words as I push to my feet. “Effective immediately.”

  “What will you do? Where will you go?”

  I glance down the corridor to my darkened office. “We’ll negotiate my severance. I’m taking some clients with me.”

  “We’re family, Linny. Family doesn’t abandon family.” His shoulders shake. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow after we’ve both had a good night’s rest.”

  “I’m not abandoning anyone. I’m leaving so I can salvage this.” I circle my hand in the air between us. “If I stay I’ll resent you more. I can’t, dad. I have to go.”

  “I won’t accept your resignation.” He widens his stance. “I won’t.”

  “Fire me then.” I hold my hands over my heart. “I’ve been in a relationship with Jeremy Weston since we signed the Rizon Vodka contract.”

  Shock slides over his expression. “What?”

  “I’m involved with Jeremy.”

  “You kept that from me?”

  I hold up my hand in the air between us. “Don’t go there. You have no right to go there.”

  He nods in surrender. “How serious is this thing between you two?”

  I swallow hard, tears of joy replacing those of sorrow. “I love him.”

  “You love him?” he repeats back. “How does he feel about you?”

  I start toward my office so I can grab my purse and go find West. “I’m about to find out.”

  Chapter 48

  Linny

  I stand in the rain in front of the building that houses the Faye & Sons’ offices. With thunder rolling over Manhattan, people rush for shelter.

  I don’t.

  It doesn’t scare me anymore. I don’t need my dad’s reassurance that it won’t harm me.

  I can take care of myself.

  I’ll find a job with another advertising firm, or I’ll start my own.

  I’ll land on my feet because I have to.

  Waving my hand in the air at an approaching taxi, I step back so I won’t get splashed as he drives directly into a puddle next to the curb when the car comes to a stop.

  I open the back door and slide in. “Central Park West and Seventy-Eighth.”

  Since I don’t know where West lives, I’m heading to the place where I feel closest to him.

  It’s the hotel where we took a bath together, made love and where I started to fall in love with the man.

  As the driver pulls away from the curb, I look up at the building where I’ve spent so much of my life.

  I thought all of my dreams would come true in there.

  My dreams have changed. I’ve changed and what I want most can’t be found in an office or behind a desk.

  I want a life with Jeremy.

  I hope he wants the same with me.

  ***

  I breathe a sigh of relief when the green light flashes after I swipe my key card.

  On the elevator on my way up to this floor, I had a brief moment of panic, wondering if West had given up the room.

  I push open the door and walk into the darkened suite.

  Tossing my purse onto a table in the foyer, I kick off my shoes.

  My dress is next. I slide it down my body before I step out of it. It’s wet from the rain, so I scoop it up and fold it over the back of a chair in the main living area.

  I stand in the silence shivering. I close my eyes, willing my phone to ring so I can hear Jeremy’s voice.

  I haven’t reached out to him since he walked out of the conference room earlier.

  I don’t know where his head is. I don’t know what I’ll say to him.

  “Angel.”

  Tears prick the corners of my eyes when I hear his voice. I turn quickly.

  He’s there, standing in the shadow of the bedroom door.

  “Angel,” he repeats, his voice thick with emotion. “You’re here.”

  His hair is a tousled mess; he’s barefoot and shirtless. The button and fly on his pants are undone.

  He looks just as he does when he’s about to fuck me.

  Is that what I’ve walked in on? Is there someone else here?

  My stomach rolls, my hand jumps to my mouth. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

  “What the fuck?” He’s on me before I can reach my dress. “Why are you leaving?”

  He scoops me into his arms, pulling my back into his bare chest.

  All of the emotions of the day hit me full force and my knees buckle as he clings to me. “I hoped you’d be here. I thought it was our place. I’ll leave you alone with her.”

  My words tumble together in a sobbing mess.

  He presses his lips to my head. “Angel, stop. Please, baby, just stop. I’m here. It’s just me. This is our place.”

  “I… I thought…”

  “I know what you thought,” he interrupts me with a kiss to my forehead. “You’re dead wrong. I can’t fuck anyone else, angel. I won’t. I love you. It’s only you.”

  I almost collapse from the words. Those words.

  “I love you, Jeremy.”

  He spins me around in his arms until I’m facing him. I see the same sorrow in his eyes that I’ve felt since he walked out of my office.

  “Say it to my face.” He cups his strong hands over my cheeks. “Look me in the eye and say it.”

  “I love you, Jeremy Weston,” I say softly. “I really, really love you.”

  “I love you too.” His lips brush against mine. “I was just about to take a shower. We’ll do it together. I’ll wash you. I’ll take care of you.”

  I nod. “I need to explain. I want to tell you about Corbin.”

  The pad of his thumb runs over my bottom lip. “You will. You’ll tell me about him.”

  “I didn’t love him.” I press my lips to his. “I’ve never been in love before.”

  He pulls back to look at me. “I’ve never been either. I don’t know how to do this, angel, and there are things…things I have to tell you.”

  My heart races with that confession. “They won’
t change how much I love you.”

  “I pray that is true.” His voice is hoarse.

  I stare into his dark eyes. I see the pain that’s always swimming there. “Let me help you with your burdens, Jeremy. I’m strong enough to carry them with you.”

  He moves swiftly, scooping me up into his arms like I’m a bride. “Let’s wash today away in the shower and then we’ll talk. It’s time.”

  It is time. It’s time for all of our secrets to be revealed.

  Chapter 49

  Jeremy

  “Tell me about Corbin.”

  It might be buying time, but I want to know about him. I’ve been waiting all day to hear about the man who she said ‘ I do ’ to in Vegas.

  She leans back on the couch, the fluffy white robe she’s wearing opening to reveal her lean legs.

  I wrapped it around her body after we showered.

  Washing her was arousing. I wanted to drop to my knees and taste her. I yearned for her touch on my cock, but I needed the tenderness more. She did too.

  I took care of her while the warm water pelted down on us.

  We didn’t speak. There was no need for words.

  Now, that we’re dried off and sitting across from one another, words are all we both crave.

  “There’s not a lot to tell.” She tucks her legs beneath her. “We met in Vegas. I was twenty-one. He was a year older than me.”

  My foot taps on the floor as I listen.

  I pulled on boxer briefs after our shower. That’s all I’m wearing now as I sit in a chair.

  “I went there to treat myself.” She looks toward the window. “I took the trip with a bunch of girls I’d met in college. I wasn’t close to any of them, but when they said they were going to Las Vegas for a concert and they had an extra ticket, I jumped at the chance.”

  “Vegas can be hard to resist.” I smile.

  “Yes.” Her eyes meet mine. “I was a virgin.”

  That stops my heart for a full beat. “You were a virgin?”

  “Twenty-one and never been touched.” She manages a small laugh. “I had been touched, but my experience was very limited.”

  I’m not going to ask why she was still a virgin. I know why. She’s protective of herself. I could tell when she showed up at my hotel suite in Vegas that it wasn’t something she’d done before.

  “I mentioned it to one of the girls on the trip and it took all of two minutes until everyone knew.” Her eyes close briefly. “I was embarrassed. I thought something was wrong with me.”

  Jesus. I wish I would have known her then. I wish I could have been there to tell her that she was beautiful and desirable.

  “There was nothing wrong with you,” I say softly.

  Her gaze drifts to my face. “I know that now. I do, but back then it felt like I needed to change it as soon as possible.”

  “So you slept with Corbin?”

  Her head shakes. “We never did. I never saw him without his clothes on.”

  I raise a brow. “I’m not following. Mitchell said you hooked up with Corbin and then got married.”

  “Mitchell was wrong.” She looks down. “Corbin was a virgin too. He promised his parents he’d wait until he was married, so after a few drinks, we both thought marriage was a good option.”

  I smile. They were just two innocents with an attraction to each other and a skewed view of what was right.

  “We went to the chapel,” she goes on with a faint smile on her lips, “I wore jeans and a tank top. Corbin wore jeans and a T-shirt and an Elvis impersonator pronounced us husband and wife.”

  “And then?” I question with a roll of my hand in the air.

  She sighs. “We went back to the hotel room he was sharing with his friends. He kicked them out, went into the bathroom and got sick. By the time he crawled into bed with all of his clothes on, I was sobering up. I called my dad. He freaked out and caught the next flight to Vegas.”

  “It was annulled?”

  Her eyes skim my face. “It was. My dad took care of everything. I never spoke to Corbin again.”

  “Your dad is a good man.” I rub my forehead. “He’s always there for you, isn’t he?”

  Her bottom lip quivers. “Something happened tonight.”

  I move quickly, rounding the coffee table between us until I’m next to her. I wrap my arm around her, tugging her into my chest. “Tell me, angel. What happened?”

  She looks up at me, her vivid green eyes unreadable. “I quit my job.”

  “Because of what Mitchell did in the conference room?” I tilt her chin up with my finger. “He was drunk, Linny. It doesn’t change anything about your work on our account.”

  Her eyelids flutter shut. “No, it’s not because of that.”

  I whisper a kiss against her forehead. “What then?”

  Her eyes lock on mine. “Tonight, my dad told me that Mitchell is his biological son. He’ll be taking over the company next year once my dad retires.”

  What the actual fuck?

  “Mitchell is your brother?” The question sounds ridiculous, even though it seems to be grounded in fact. “Your dad is handing him the company.”

  “He said that my grandfather wanted it to be passed on to my dad’s son.” She rests her head against my chest. “That means it’s going to Mitchell.”

  This woman gave her all to her job. She has talent beyond measure and her father is going to ignore all of that to hand the reins of his company over to his incompetent son just because he has a dick?

  “I’m sorry, baby.” I tug her closer. “Jesus, you’ve been through so much today.”

  She takes a deep breath. “The hardest part of this is I don’t know what to feel for my dad anymore. He’s not who I thought he was.”

  “I can help with that,” I whisper.

  “You can?” She shifts in place to look up at me. “You’ve never talked about your parents. Did your dad let you down too?”

  This is it.

  This is when I tell this beautiful woman everything.

  “We let each other down.” I stop and think about the next words I’ll say. “My father is in prison because of me.”

  Chapter 50

  Linny

  Prison.

  That’s beyond the scope of what I imagined whenever I pictured Jeremy’s family.

  There was nothing online about his parents.

  The only familial connection I’ve been able to make is that he inherited Rizon from his mom’s father.

  I got that from the Rizon website. It was written in a short paragraph about how the company was founded and its history since then.

  I ask the obvious question because I don’t know what else there is to say. “What did he do?”

  “He fucked up the lives of his children,” he says, his head bowed. “He ran an investment firm. He stole from every one of his clients. From me too.”

  I’m speechless.

  Hours ago I thought my dad had hurt me in an inconceivable way, but his failings were based on his selfish need to give his son the world.

  From what Jeremy’s saying, his father’s actions were purely selfish.

  “I interned for the firm that he ran with his third wife.” His head falls back onto the couch. “I saw things that didn’t add up. None of it made sense. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “How old were you?”

  He tilts his head to look at me. “Nineteen, twenty. Old enough to know that something wasn’t right.”

  I reach for his hand, cradling it between my own. I need him to feel reassured, to feel my presence in every way.

  “I was in college, and it happened over two summers.” He circles my hand with his thumb. “The first year I thought it was an accounting error. I mentioned it to my dad, but he said it was nothing. He called it an oversight and told me to forget about it.”

  “Did you?” I ask warily.

  “No.” His jaw tightens. “It bothered me. It ate at me. I went back the next summer and the first thing
I did was pull up that account on my computer. The numbers still didn’t add up.”

  He shifts slightly, his legs parting. I can feel the tension knotting his body.

  “I pulled up another account; my account.” His eyes close. “I had inherited a trust when I was eighteen from my mother’s family and Rizon when I was twenty-one. I was the only child; the only grandchild.”

  “Your father invested the money in the trust for you?”

  “I didn’t think twice asking him to handle that for me.” He huffs out a pained laugh. “If you can’t trust your father, who the fuck can you trust?”

  I’m not the person to answer that.

  “Was it all gone?” I squeeze his hand in mine.

  His gaze skims my face. “I couldn’t access it, so I asked him about it. He gave me some bullshit excuse about keeping it under lock and key because of the other employees. He promised he’d get me a printout of it, but that never came.”

  It’s a betrayal that’s about so much more than money.

  He moves to stand.

  “He gave me his assistant’s password to login to the system.” His hands rake his hair. “That’s why I had access to everything. The more I searched accounts, the more discrepancies I found.”

  “Did you bring it up to your dad?”

  “Hell no.” He turns back toward me. “I listened to him lie on the phone to clients. They’d call wanting to cash out an investment and he’d tell them the timing was off, or he’d need a couple of weeks to pull the paperwork to release it.”

  His hand lands on his bare stomach. “He’d take money from someone else’s account to pay out the first. It was a circle that was collapsing on itself.”

  I slide to my feet. “What did you do?”

  He takes a deep breath. “I turned him in. I went to the police, they got the feds involved, and I gave them all the evidence they needed to put Craig Weston and his wife away for the rest of their lives.”

  ***

  I stand behind him watching him.

  He’s been staring out the window for the last ten minutes since he told me that he turned his father in.