Double-Cross My Heart (35 page)

His voice raising in volume with each word, he was yelling at her at the end of his declaration.

Staring at him in shock, a burst of anger blotted out Eden’s dismay. Suddenly trembling, scrambling mad, she spit back at him defensively, “Who the hell are you to call me names? Huh? And where did you find that report? Were you searching my apartment while I was sleeping or something? Obviously, I was wrong to expect any kind of privacy from someone like you!”

“No, not while you were sleeping,” he snarled. “You were in the shower and I searched your briefcase after I kicked it while I was getting dressed. You dropped it on the floor and it was half under the bed. I was putting my pants on when I kicked it and it sprang open. I saw the report lying in the case when I picked it up to put it on your desk.”

He sneered at her, “And don’t you think we’re way beyond worrying about invasion of privacy? You’ve been screwing me over for months! Like an evil corporate drone, you’ve been doing Michele and Wendi William’s dirty work. And boy, did you do it well! What did they promise you? Did Wendi give you a contract for the next fifty years so you don’t have to ever leave your precious cosmetics company? Don’t ever have to go out into the world? Is that why you’ve cheated and lied and whored yourself with me? For a company that doesn’t give a shit about you?”

“You have no right,” Eden spat, “to talk to me about ‘screwing’ when you’ve lied to me from the first moment we met! The first moment! Do you think I haven’t figured it out? You think I’m an idiot, so caught up in fucking you that I didn’t think to check you out?”

He stood glowering at her.

“I’ve known from almost the first,” she said, emotion thick in her voice. “I’ve known all along! You made a mistake, mister big-money-takeover-artist! You started buying Michele Cosmetics stock three months before you arranged to meet me! Three months! How stupid do you think I am? You think I don’t know that you’ve been using me—dating me, kissing me, sleeping in my bed—just to get to the company! You’re the worm! You’re the worst kind of lying, cheating prick!”

Eden couldn’t fight back the tears suddenly choking her voice, spilling down her cheeks. “You’ve played me—used me and said you loved me when all you wanted was the damned company.”

“So you screwed me back,” he said bitterly, “for Michele and Wendi.”

“No!” Wiping at the tears streaming down her face, she said, “I’m not doing
anything
for them. You must think I’m really, really stupid.”

Nauseated, her heart thundering in her chest, she said, “This is for me. I’m through doing things for everyone else. Michele taught me that lesson before you even came along. I deserve to head this company.
I
can pull it out of the slump. I can save it from predators like you. I’ve done everything you accuse me of, everything—“

She stopped, gasping back her tears, “but I’ve done it for myself—and the rest of the people working for the company you want to destroy—I’m not handing it back to Michele. The board is going to give me the CEO position…because I deserve it.”

Alex felt a tilting sensation in his head. All the while he’d been buying this company and getting vindication for her, she’d been planning to screw both he and Michele. “Why do it this way? Why not tell me to fuck off? Why lie and deceive and make love with me while you were stabbing me in the back?”

“Because,” Eden said in a low, tired voice, “because you would have told Eden and Wendi about my uncle and that would have given them a reason to fire me. I needed time, dammit. I had to have time to get ready, time to make the directors see that
I’m
the company’s best bet, not Wendi.”

“My God,” he said, sitting down in a chair across from where she stood. “You’ve been playing us both. All of us. Lying to Wendi and Michele…lying to me. Sleeping with me. All for this damned company.”

She just looked at him, unable to stop the tears coursing down her face, but her expression stiff with anger. He mustn’t see the hurt. When he looked at her there must be nothing, but enmity. Worse, much worse that he should know how totally he’d entangled himself in her heart.

Maybe she was like her mother, stupid in love, but she wasn’t stupid enough to let him know it.

“All I did,” she said, straightening, “is give the same as I got. I never wanted to do it this way. You—and Michele—decided how the game was played. But now that you taught me, I’m going to do my damndest to win.”

With that, she turned and walked out of his office, consumed—drowning—in a wave of bitter grief that wouldn’t be stemmed
.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“What did you say?” Jessica’s voice sounded shocked. “Honey, you have to stop crying long enough to tell me why you’re so upset. Did you say Alex knows everything?”

“Yes,” Eden gulped, trying to stop the angry sobs wracking her body. “Everything. He found the actual report Roberte Bergere sent me on the cream—Alex found it and read it. He knows that the cream is good. He knows I’ve been lying—“

She broke off, fighting hard to silence a new wave of sobs. She could only pray the parking garage was empty. Alex might come out at any moment. He kept his car here, she knew. She needed to leave. Needed to drive away so he wouldn’t see her here like this. He’d think she was weeping over him and she couldn’t have that.

“He’s an asshole,” she declared through her tears. “A jerk and a worthless bastard.”
“Okay,” Jessica said in a very serious voice. “Where are you? I know you’re on your cell, but where are you? Are you driving? Because, if so, I want you to pull over until you calm down. Alex may be an asshole and a bastard, but let’s not get killed over him.”

“I’m in the parking garage next to his office building,” Eden said, casting an anxious glance at the elevator. “I’ve got to leave—I’m just so mad. I—I wanted to tell you—I don’t know, that it’s all gone to shit just like I knew it would.”

“Okay,” Jessica said, her voice almost too calm. “I’m glad you called. I tell you what, you come on over and we’ll sit down and talk about what you can do next. You need to know the next step…if he tells Michele and Wendi about you—“

“I know what to do,” Eden interrupted her. “I’m doing exactly what I planned on doing. I’m going to the board meeting and I’m laying out Wendi’s financial misconduct at her last job. I’m showing the directors the statements I’ve been given by the department managers—I’m going ahead with my plans to save this company! I have to! There are people—my employees—who’re going to be hurt if I don’t! And I deserve the job, dammit!”

“But what if Alex tells Wendi and Michele about your uncle?” Jessica asked, worry in her voice.

“I don’t care,” Eden shifted the phone to her other ear and shoved her key in the Z4’s ignition. “He can go to them and they can fire me, but they can’t keep me out of the board meeting. I’m still holding my block of stock. I have every right to be at that meeting. It’s too late for Alex to stop me. I’m ready for him!”

“Okay,” Jess said doubtfully. “I thought…you might want to reconsider…everything, but…”

“Reconsider everything?” She started the engine and put the car in reverse with a jerk. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because,” her friend said quietly, “you’re in love with Alex Holt and…you hate all this dirty fighting.”

“I don’t have any choice,” Eden said, making herself drive carefully out of the parking garage. “The people at the Michigan plant and the people in marketing and Cheryl and her daughter in college are all depending on me. Besides, why shouldn’t I have this job? I’ve been doing it for years! I have to go through with the plan.”

***

He was an idiot who’d been led around by his dick!

Pacing furiously back and forth across his office after she’d left, Alex raved at himself for his stupidity. Anyone who had any experience in business knew to distrust a person acting as a mole in her own company! How could he have not seen? Not realized how she’d been screwing all his plans!

He’d loved her! Loved her, dammit!

Unable to contain his rage, he crossed and recrossed the room. Had any woman ever wormed herself so far inside his head? Had he ever been so duped and deceived? She’d fucked him and fed him fables and he’d bought it! Taken him between her legs and groaned out her lies. And he’d come back over and over, craving her touch, longing for just the sound of her even breathing next to him in the night.

He’d loved her. Had been doing all this—since early in the process—for her. And she hated him for it. Lied to him over and over.

He came to a halt in front of the expanse of windows, anger and betrayal like barbed wire in his belly.

What an unbelievable chump he was! This was without a doubt the stupidest he’d ever been in his entire life.

Slamming out of his office, he left for home, silently fuming all the while the elevator carried him to the ground floor. Responding to the security guard’s pleasant “good night” with only a grunt, Alex stalked to his car. His footsteps echoing in the empty garage, he struggled against the urge to do violence. If he’d have had a baseball bat in his hand, he might not have been able to resist the temptation to vent his rage on the boring, useless four door sedan parked next to his car.

Although his rage envisioned her neck in his hands, he wouldn’t hurt her. No, that would be too simple, too messy and too quick. What he wanted was to get her fully in his power and teach her a lesson or two on honesty. Maybe in ten years, he’d be done with everything he had to say to her. First, he’d lecture her for twelve hours or so…and then sate himself in her, just for good measure, before the urge to harangue her some more overcame him.

How dare she accuse him of
teaching
her to lie and cheat? He was a businessman, that was all. He made money from other people’s failures. If anything, he dealt in appropriately-placed truths, not deception.

Where was the decency and honesty he’d seen in her? What had happened to the straightforward woman he’d first known her to be? How could she look herself in the mirror? What kind of woman used her body with so much skill and so little conscience?

Eden had once had a conscience.

He
knew
that, even as he wondered how well he’d really known her. Even in his rage, he couldn’t rid himself of the conviction that this whole debacle came down to the woman’s straying from her own path.

And she’d laid the responsibility for it at his door! He knew his own integrity. If he lived his life a little differently than most people, it said nothing about his honor.

Arriving home, he went to the kitchen and took down from the cabinet a bottle of scotch he’d been given for Christmas. Some business associate or other had sent it over.

Pouring himself a stiff drink, Alex drank deeply before sloshing more into the glass. He stood next to the kitchen counter and stared into space. He wasn’t a cheat or a crook, but he knew his own business. If he wanted to, he could crush her. She must be crazy to think she could win this battle…crazy or desperate….

Slouching over to the couch, glass in one hand, bottle in the other, he poured himself another drink and sat down. His brooding gaze hovering above the bottle of scotch he placed on the low table in front of the couch. He found his mind full of Eden. Snatches of memory bombarded him. He ought to eat something, he knew. Ought to stop thinking about the mess her deceit had pitched him into. God knew what amount of damage her deliberate misinformation had done to his bid for the company.

A fresh surge of anger flooded through him. How could she? Why the hell would she do this?

No wonder she’d looked so haggard and tired lately. So tense.

It made him mad as hell to think about her accusations that his actions had in some way justified hers. He knew who he was, knew his strengths and weaknesses. He’d been using all his skills for her. Maybe he’d strayed from the straight course when he’d decided to get to know her personally before laying the business deal out. But from that point on all his actions had been for her.

Why would she do this, he asked himself again? So cruelly rape his heart?

As soon as the question formed in his brain, Alex knew she’d have poured everything she was into this. She’d have been working her ass off to ensure the final outcome. Given everything she had to protect her employees, to gain control of the company.

With deep reluctance, he found himself grudgingly acknowledging her tenacity, even as he railed against her perfidy. She was a strong woman with more capacity for deception than he’d given her credit for. Others might have shied off from a plan of this level of deviousness, particularly a woman with so little personal experience with dishonesty.

The scotch sloshing in his belly turned acid. But how could she have done this to him? How did she justify it to herself? Hadn’t she trusted him to take care of her people?

With a corrosive sense of uselessness, Alex slammed back another scotch. Whether she’d excused it to herself or not, he couldn’t excuse her. She’d lied to him over and over…. Lied to his face. Deceived him at every turn.

He’d thought her a special and unmatched soul. He’d loved her…so much.

Releasing a deep breath, Alex set down his glass.

She had lied to him, but she was right when she claimed he’d lied, too,…and he’d done it first. Did that indeed justify her actions? The only reason he hadn’t come clean with her about the mugging set-up was that he hadn’t wanted her to be in doubt of the strength of his own love for her. He hadn’t wanted her to be hurt.