Defending My Mobster (BWWM Romance) (24 page)

He stood up so fast his chair fell backwards. His hands were clenched in fists and he had a white circle around his mouth. “You don’t even know if you’re really pregnant. You just said that! All of this might be for nothing. I’m not going to sit here, in my own house, being told that I don’t have what it takes to be the best man I can be.”

A shrill ring cut through the ice in the atmosphere. Noah looked down like he didn’t know what was happening. His cellphone danced around on the counter behind him, the shrill ring surrounding us. He finally put two and two together and walked to the phone, picking it up.

I wanted to say something about his manners, answering a phone in the middle of a conversation, but he’d already pressed the talk button and had the phone against his ear before I got a chance to say anything.

“What?” he barked into the phone. A moment of silence. “Oh, Vanessa,” he said, his tone of voice changing. Something inside me steeled.

“No, I thought it was my manager. You know… Yes… I’m sorry. No, I’m…” He looked straight at me. “No, I’m not busy.”

I stood up and walked out of the room. Behind me he finished off his conversation and hung up. I was already by the front door when he came after me.

“Tamika...“

“Don’t, Noah.” I said, not letting him finish. He had nothing he could say to me that would make anything better. He’d broken it before. He was doing it again. “I was wrong. Nothing about you has changed.” I turned around, facing him square on. “And you know what? Even if I am pregnant, at the end of the day you don’t have what it takes to be a good father. You’re just as bad as your old man, you know that?”

The hurt on his face was so extreme I felt guilty right away, but the words were out there now. I would man up and mean them. I turned on my heel and stormed out the house. I remembered I hadn’t come there in the truck, I’d driven with Noah. Without missing a beat I walked down the long driveway that led to the ranch entrance. I pulled out my cellphone and dialed Aaron’s number.

“Where the hell are you?” Aaron asked. “You’re not answering your phone, I’ve been calling all morning.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen. There were ten missed calls.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Larry is here. At the hotel. He arrived this morning early.”

My body went cold.

“Can you come get me?”

I explained where I was, and after whistling through his teeth he told me he’d be there in ten minutes. I hung up and took a deep breath, blowing it out again. I looked over my shoulder back at the ranch house. I didn’t know what it was that I expected, but it was quiet and lifeless. Noah wasn’t running after me begging me to stay. He wasn’t offering to drive me home. He wasn’t apologizing. He was inside, probably getting ready to see Vanessa, the woman who didn’t want children.

No wonder he was happy with her.

I stood at the end of Noah’s driveway for ten minutes. The road was empty, with no passing cars at all. A silver Mercedes came into view, sliding around the old road, looking out of place. I kept an eye out for the yellow truck, but then the Mercedes pulled up in front of me.

The tinted window rolled down, and Larry scowled at me.

“Get in,” he said before I could say anything. Aaron sat next to him in the passenger seat, looking at me apologetically. His face was a masterpiece, with two black circles around his eyes and a thick plastic band taped down over his nose. His bottom lip was split and swollen, and he had a purple bruise the size of my hand across the left side of his jaw. With a pang of guilt I realized I’d just ditched him after the fight, and he’d had to sort out his nose all by himself.

I opened the back door and slid onto the rich leather seats. The car smelled new and expensive, and the door shut with an expensive clunk. Larry pulled off with a quiet purr, and did a U-turn, half onto the grass on the side of the road, and drove back down the road they’d come.

“Your nose…” I started, looking at Aaron more closely. He looked like death warmed up.

“Vanessa helped me find the emergency room, thank you,” he said. His voice was cold and slightly nasal. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed that over the phone.

“What the hell is going on here?” Larry barked, shutting us both up. I hadn’t expected him to wait until we got back to the hotel. “I send two of my best employees down here to take care of some sensitive business and you both disappear off the radar completely. I couldn’t get a hold of either of you. When I come down here the one has a busted nose and the other’s nowhere to be found.”

“With all due respect,” Aaron started. “I’m not an employee.”

“You’re not,” Larry snapped, “but she is.” He jabbed a thumb at me over his shoulder. “And if she wants to stay that way she’s got to pull up her socks and prove to me that she’s still an asset to my company.”

“This hasn’t been an easy job, Larry,” I said, making sure to keep my voice calm. “We’ve had a bit of trouble with the ranch office, it’s been a terrible mess and if we want to find a will..."

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore, Davis,” Larry interrupted me. “We found a will. Vanessa Bloom is named as the executor. Your job here is done.” He snorted. “A bit of trouble. I can just see what a picture the two of you are.”

“Where did you find it?” I asked, focusing on his comment about the will rather than our appearances.

“That flossy girl we hired last year, the one that we let go so soon after again, she filed the damn thing somewhere we never thought to look. Carrie found it when she was going over some tax returns. You can be damn pleased your secretary does her job so well. At this point she’s doing it better than you are.”

“I’m glad you found it,” I said, looking out the window. Ingram passed slowly by us, the houses and roads that I knew so well. We stopped in front of the hotel and got out. Larry walked in first, and we followed him like children with our heads down, as if he was the angry parent.

“I want a meeting in the conference room, now,” he barked at Carol behind the reception counter.

“It’s available for you, Mr. Witmark,” she said right away. She glanced at me and Aaron, but when I looked up at her she looked away.

“Tamika, you have five minutes to get yourself ready for a meeting. Aaron, I want you in there right now, we have business to discuss before Miss Davis joins us.”

My stomach fell to my shoes. If he knew I needed freshening up, there were a lot of things he knew that I’d rather hoped he would never find out. I went to the room and took out a cream-colored dress suit with a dark brown blouse. I put it on and applied light make-up in the mirror the way I would have if I went to see an important client. I smoothed my hair down and looked at myself in the mirror.

There were times that I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. I had no idea who I was anymore. In the mirror I saw the person I used to be, the bright-eyed teenager, in love with a troubled boy, believing that love and faith would change the world. And I also saw the woman I’d become, the adult that felt that love wasn’t enough, that hard work and perseverance was the only thing that would get me somewhere, and that I was strongest by myself.

I took a deep breath and walked out of the hotel room, through the lobby and to the conference room.

I knocked on the door and Larry’s harsh voice summoned me inside.

He was sitting on the one side of the conference room table. Aaron sat on the other side. An unpleasant feeling hung in the air. Aaron looked like a scolded child, which would have been funny in another situation. Aaron was the partner of a well-to-do law firm that pulled in a lot of money a month. Larry had no say over who he was and what he did with his company. If he looked like that, what was in store for me?

I ignored the knot of nerves that had clamped down in my stomach like a fist, and walked to the table, taking a seat next to Aaron.

“Aaron has filled me in on where we are with the Hart Estate. From here on out it falls on Miss Bloom to sort it out. Tamika, you’re off the case. Aaron is going to take care of the last legal operations.”

I nodded. That meant that I could go home. I’d been wanting this since the moment our plane had landed at San Antonio airport. I tried to figure out why, then, it felt like I was being kicked out of my own home.

Ingram wasn’t home to me. It hadn’t been since my parents had moved away about four years after I’d left for Lafayette. They’d retired at the coast. I suddenly wished they were still here so I could go visit them. Ask them advice.

“Now, on the subject of us having to pick you up this morning,” he said.

“I can explain..."

“I don’t want to hear it. Not now.” He held up his hand and I kept quiet. I knew better than to fight with Larry about anything. He was my boss and I didn’t often let him bully me, but I didn’t have a lot of weight to throw around.

“I’m very disappointed in you,” Larry said and I wondered how he’d managed to sound like my father. “You know better than to get involved with clients. You’ve made this whole business a lot more difficult than it needed to be.”

“Noah isn’t exactly a client, Larry,” I said. “He dated Miss Bloom, but they had no other relation, and to my knowledge they ended their relationship last night.”

“Which gave you the opportunity to stay over?” Aaron asked. I glared at him. I had no idea where his hostility came from.

“What I do with my personal time, as far as I know, is still personal.” My voice was cold and I leveled with an equally cold stare. Who was he to tell me what to do with my life? If he’d had the chance it would have been him, not Noah, and then things really would have been bad. He was lucky he’d gotten out with nothing more than a rearranged face. His reputation was still intact.

“You’re walking on thin ice, Tamika,” Larry said to me, breaking the tension between me and Aaron. “You’re very good at what you do, and you’re one of our best employees. I’ve said this to you for a number of years. But you’re not irreplaceable. I can find another administrator. I don’t need to keep you around; I have no loyalties to someone who’s willing to throw their job away from something like an old flame.”

My cheeks were burning and my palms were sweaty. I rubbed them against my thighs, thinking that the sweat would probably stain my skirt. Larry was completely out of line. I felt humiliated and embarrassed. He was scolding me like a child, and he wasn’t doing it in private. Aaron, one of my best friends and work colleagues, was watching.

“What happens now?” I asked, looking at my hands.

“I want you to get back to Lafayette on the next flight you can book. You’re done here. Aaron will stay on a bit longer, I have some things he needs to take care of before he goes home.”

“I’ll pack my things,” I said, standing up.

“Wait,” Larry stopped me, glancing down at the papers in front of him. “I want you to let Miss Bloom know that she’s going to take over from you, first.”

“I’ll give her a ring,” I said.

Larry shook his head. “No no, we do these things in person, Tamika. Protocol. It will be good for you to fix a thing or two before you leave.”

I groaned inwardly. She was the last person in the world I wanted to see right now. Or at least, second to last. Noah came in at a screaming first.

“Fine,” I said, and turned my back, walking out of the room. Outside the conference room I leaned against the wall and covered my face with my hands, shutting the world out. I let out a shaky breath and tried to control my emotions.

Everything was falling apart.

Chapter 8 - Noah

Vanessa paced around the kitchen. Her focus wasn’t on me at all. She had the phone in her hands, looking at the screen like it was going to offer some kind of question to the answers she had inside of her.

She’d come around about half an hour after Tamika had left, giving me too much time to think about what had been said. I regretted every single word I’d said to her. But I’d been so angry, especially when she’d mentioned my father. That had cut deeper than anything. I lived every day trying to get away from him, working my fingers to the bone so that I would be the person he never was.

That bottle of Jack in the cupboard was a reminder that I could turn my back and say no. It was the reminder that when Tamika had left the first time I’d fallen so low that I’d nearly walked the same road. And that I’d managed to save myself.

And what had she seen?

The half-empty bottle, and she’d put two and two together and gotten a number that had been all wrong. If it hadn’t been for Vanessa arriving when she did, I might have taken a swig again. I’d just had enough time to shower quickly and get dressed, and she’d been there. Just in time to save myself from beating myself up.