Hardpressed (20 page)

“I don’t need time to figure out what I already know.” I brushed his hand away. “There’s nothing you can say to change how I feel. I’m going to pay you back as soon as I can, but I can’t have you involved with the business right now. I’ll talk to Sid about taking over the lease as soon as possible, but you’ll get your rent either way.” I made myself believe it and met his gaze. I couldn’t let him doubt it, risking everything because I couldn’t end this right.

He bridged the distance between us, catching my face in his palm with renewed determination. My breath caught, and I fought every instinct not to kiss him. His lips were so close. His ragged breathing matched my own.

“You love me.” He clenched his teeth as he uttered the words, as if they burned him.

I went to war with the magnetic force between us even as I felt myself slipping, losing control.
You have to protect him
, I reminded myself. His life depended on it.

“If you love me, you’ll let me go.” My heart broke at Daniel’s words used against the man I loved.

Tracing the hard line of his jaw, I felt it soften under my touch. I pressed up on to my toes to kiss him gently. One last kiss. He angled to deepen the kiss, but I pushed him back before he could.

“Goodbye, Blake.”

I was all the way down the hall when he finally spoke.

“Don’t come back, Erica.”

His words leveled me. My insides twisted at the possibility of losing any chance for our future. I turned to face him, scared of what I’d see in his eyes. His hands fisted at his sides and his jaw clenched tight, the muscles bulging.

“If you end this now, don’t bother coming back.”

With trembling hands, I opened the door to the office and disappeared inside, closing the door on everything that was most precious to me.

The rest of the week passed in a blur. I barely left the office. My once welcomed focus on work had degraded into a compulsion to keep moving forward despite my lack of sleep. Even when I was sleeping, the visions that haunted me weren’t conducive to real rest.

Somehow, the fatigue and the pressure I put on myself to keep working masked a lot of the pain. The giant gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be didn’t seem so devastating when all I pretended to care about were numbers and lists and driving the business forward with breakneck speed. Everyone at work was keeping up. At this rate, maybe I wouldn’t need Daniel’s money after all. I’d wanted to pay Blake back as quickly as possible in any case.

I was in the middle of a meeting with Risa when Daniel called. I let her know I needed to take this and waited to pick up until she had gone.

“Hello.”

“Erica, I’m downstairs. I’d like to speak with you.” His voice was cold and commanding. “Come out the back.”

I hung up and let Risa know I was leaving for an early lunch. I pushed the back door open and found Connor at the wheel of the Lincoln idling in the alleyway. Daniel was leaning against the hood smoking a cigarette, wearing his usual dark suit and white collared shirt. The picture of the politician, I thought, as my mind raced through the reasons for his being here. Marie, Blake… I couldn’t speak for the fear that had gripped me then.

“You hungry?”

I shook my head, more out of confusion than to really answer him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Let’s get some lunch.” He pushed off the car and flicked the cigarette away. He opened the car door and motioned for me to get in, his expression unreadable.

I forced myself to move. Once upon a time, I had warmed upon seeing him, even as intimidating as he had come across at times. I once welcomed our time together, and now I had to force my limbs into action to join him in the car.

“Connor, take us to O’Neill’s.”

I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm my nerves. O’Neill’s sounded innocent enough. Maybe he did just want to have lunch. All those sleepless nights had ratcheted up my anxiety enormously.

“What did you want to see me about?”

“I meant to come see you earlier, but I thought you could use some time. How are things with Landon?”

A wave of relief came over me that Blake was safe, quickly replaced by a reminder of the pain of our separation.

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him in days.” I stared out the window, hoping he wasn’t going to make me regurgitate the details of our breakup.

“Good. He seems to have accepted that, I gather.”

I shrugged, trying to ignore the ache in my chest at the thought that Blake might have given up on us finally. That’s what I wanted, right? I hadn’t heard from him all week, a fact that gave me solace and tormented me all at the same time. I swallowed against the tears that burned my eyes. Now was not the time for that.

“Did he mean that much to you?”

His voice was softer than I expected, and I turned to face him, blinking away the wetness. I swore I saw a flicker of pain there, though I reasoned I was only projecting my own.

I weighed his question. Blake meant everything to me, but what good would it do telling Daniel?

“I asked you a question.”

“He’s the only man I’ve ever loved.”

He tensed slightly and looked away.

The truth and his strange reaction made me feel a little bold. “I don’t really have time for these little meetings. Can we get to the point of why I’m here?”

“Watch yourself.”

He narrowed his eyes a fraction that reminded me how frightening he could become in an instant. I silently wondered who I got my temper from, though I’d never hold a candle to Daniel in that department.

“I told you I’m taking you to lunch.”

I crossed my arms, making sure I was pressed tightly on the farthest side of the seat. Connor had driven us south of the city, and we passed blocks of row houses until we were driving down the main drag of a small downtown.

“Where are we?”

“The old neighborhood. This is where your grandfather and his father grew up, before being a Fitzgerald meant anything.”

I sat back and took it in. I’d never been to this part of the city. A far cry from the clean tourist-flooded streets of downtown. We weren’t exactly in the safest part of town either. Connor pulled up in front of a tavern on the corner. A worn sign read
O’Neill’s.

I followed Daniel out and stood awkwardly beside him as he shook hands with the man who sat on a stool just outside the entrance. He was as broad and muscle bound as Connor, but with jet-black curly hair and dark eyes mostly hidden by the hair and the shade of a tweed cap. He greeted Daniel by name and let us pass.

We entered the dark room of the tavern and took a seat in the far corner. Daniel ordered us beers and a couple burgers. O’Neill’s no doubt had a limited menu so I didn’t argue. That, and I decided to pick my battles with Daniel unless I wanted to get into the habit of covering up bruises. God, was I grateful my mother couldn’t see me now.

“I’d like to talk business,” he began.

I didn’t want to get into that yet. I needed to learn more about him if I was going to find my way out of this mess. “How’s Margo?” I asked, hoping to divert the conversation away from his master plan for my life.

“As well as can be expected.” He downed a good part of his beer. I let mine sit.

“She wants me to stay away from you, you know? At the gala she told me as much. She won’t be happy to see me anywhere close to your campaign or your personal life.”

“She means well, but these decisions aren’t up to her.”

“Won’t it cause tension if I’m blatantly disregarding her wishes?”

“Margo is the least of our concerns.”

“Perhaps you could enlighten me of your concerns. Are threatening to kill Blake and liquidating my business still high on your list of priorities?”

He grinned slowly. “If you think that mouth won’t get you into trouble because we’re in public, you’ve got another thing coming.”

I glanced around quickly. The bar was sparse, and its patrons didn’t seem to be the type of people who would care much about a little lunchtime quarrel. Not to mention Daniel appeared to be a preferred customer here. Maybe these were the people who took care of his wet work, when people like Mark needed to be taken care of.

Daniel was right. Sassing him would probably get me nowhere fast. I sulked back into the seat.

He dropped a thick stack of paper onto the table and pushed it over to me. “Here’s our marketing plan. I don’t have time to read it, and if I did, I’m not sure I’d be able to make much sense of it. I’m told its very general since we’re responding to new political and local developments daily, and all of that varies. We’ll start the hiring process soon to replace the person heading things up now. It’s all for show of course, since you’re the one I’ll be bringing on.”

“What about my business?”

“Landon is out of the picture, and you’ll get your money from me soon enough. Figure out a way for it to run without you, or sell it. I don’t care which.”

“If you gave me more time, I could get in the black on my own, without your help.”

“How much time?”

“A couple months maybe. I’m not sure,” I lied. Realistically, I’d probably need six months or more.

“No, there’s no time for that.”

I leaned in, hoping to persuade him. “Daniel, I could help you find someone for this position. Someone with the same background who can bring the same qualities to the table that I can. I don’t know why—”

“Erica, this isn’t a negotiation.” His voice sharpened enough to attract a couple looks from the bar. “You’ll be working for the campaign. Working for me. I can see now that you’re trying to figure a creative way out of this. As you do, be sure to keep one thing in mind. I don’t care what Landon means to you. He could be the father of your children, and I wouldn’t hesitate to remove him from the equation. Not for a second would I hesitate on that choice. Do you understand? Because I thought I’d made myself pretty clear last time.”

The bartender dropped off our burgers and vanished again without a word. I stared at the plate with no appetite, sickened by the threat.

“Erica.”

I closed my eyes and delivered my next words as calmly as I could. “I understand you perfectly. If you’re hiring me to use my brain, however, you might want to tell me at what point I should lie down and let people walk all over me. Or are you the only person who’ll be doing that?”

“This isn’t about you, you little bitch.”

He slammed his hand down on the table, attracting a few bored stares from the bar again. Frightened, I sat back in the seat to gain a few more inches of distance from his anger.

“This is about something far more important and far more successful than you’ll ever be. My family.
Our
family. We’ve spent generations crawling out of places like this so that we could do something bigger. You’re going to be a part of that now. A small, albeit important, part, and the sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be. Now eat your burger.”

“I’m not hungry,” I murmured.

His eyes became so cold that I immediately picked up a fry and started eating it. We ate in silence and occasionally our eyes met, cool blue mirrors of each other’s. I’d be lucky to escape his wrath on the drive back. This wasn’t like bickering with Blake or keeping people on the right track at work. I was poking the giant, and he wasn’t sleeping. Daniel might have been proud of my accomplishments, but I didn’t have the luxury of being Daddy’s little girl who could get away with mouthing off to him like that. Not when Blake’s life was at stake. I’d have to somehow learn to shut the hell up or play the game differently, because meeting him head-on wasn’t taking me very far.

*

Connor dropped me at the office after a mostly silent ride back, save Daniel’s promise to let me know about what time to come into the campaign headquarters so I could meet with the staff there. I made a mental note of it and spent the rest of the drive staring out the window, feeling my life slipping away.

I walked in to find Risa pulled up next to James’s desk, smiling and chatting away while he shifted his focus uncomfortably between his computer screen and her. Something about it set me off.

“Risa, can I speak with you?”

She sat up straight, as if I’d broken the spell between them that existed only in her mind. She followed me back to the office.

“This needs to stop,” I said bluntly, unable to soften my delivery.

“What?”

“This thing you have for James. We can’t have these kinds of distractions. I need you focused on work, not spending half the day at his desk flirting.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She frowned and tucked her hair behind her ear nervously.

“I know we don’t have an official policy on relationships in the office, because frankly I didn’t foresee that being an issue, but now that it is, I see why companies put these things in place. Set your sights on someone else. I need him working and I need you focused.”

Her jaw snapped shut and her face turned beet red. I couldn’t tell if she was more embarrassed or angry, but calling her out had taken her completely off guard. I’d brushed her off before, but never reprimanded her directly like this. I simply didn’t have the patience to dance around it anymore. Not today.

“What about you and Blake?”

I’d been pent up with wanting to tell Daniel what I really thought about him for the better part of two hours. I really should have picked a better time to speak with her, but here we were. I spoke slowly, trying to maintain my composure.

“He’s an investor, not an employee, and my relationship with him isn’t any of your business.”

She pursed her lips and tapped her toe on the floor.

“Okay, let’s move on. Any updates?” I said, hoping to neutralize the tension and get back to work.

She stared at me for a second before taking in a deep breath.

“I’m attending a fundraiser on Saturday. It’s for a foundation that supports tech education for inner-city kids. Max thought it might be good for us to have a presence there.”

“Sure, that sounds like something we could get behind.”

“I thought so too, but I wasn’t sure if donations were in the budget or not.”