Hardpressed (27 page)

“I’m interviewing for marketing directors. You wouldn’t happen to be interested?”

She frowned and sat back. “Are you serious?”

“Actually, yeah. Things didn’t work out with Risa. I’ll fill you in on the details later, but suffice to say, we’re severing ties completely and irrevocably.”

“Wow. In that case, yes.”

“Really? Are you sure that’s what you’d want to do?”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve spent the past two months pulling twelve-hour days for prima donna designers. Coming back to Clozpin would be like being on a tropical vacation by comparison.”

“I thought you wanted a career in fashion though?”

She gave me a half-hearted smile. “I thought I did too. I guess sometimes you don’t realize what you have ’til it’s gone. I definitely got some perspective and learned a ton, but this move feels right in every way. Heath’s going to be happier here, his family’s here to support him, and you’re here. I couldn’t think of any better reasons to make the change.”

“You won’t hear any arguments from me. Obviously I’ve been dying to have you back since you left. And frankly, with what’s going down with Risa now, I feel like I’ll never be able to trust anyone in that position again who isn’t you.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. We built this business. No one’s better suited to grow it.”

“Cheers to that.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as we left the bustling dinner with Blake’s family and escaped to the beach below. I left my sandals on the steps, and Blake and I walked barefoot along the shore as the sun began to set.

“Sorry. They’re completely crazy,” he mumbled.

“It’s okay. They’re really sweet actually.” A quiet happiness bubbled inside me at the unexpected turn this evening had taken. “This may sound strange, but why didn’t you introduce me to your parents before? You know, when things weren’t so messed up between us.”

“Like Heath said, they’re nosy and overwhelming. On one hand, I didn’t really want to share my time with you, and on the other hand, I knew that once I let them loose on you, it was all over.”

My heart sank a little. “All over?”

“Now that they’ve met you, they’re going to be hounding me nonstop about you. Don’t think for one second this is going to be your last Landon family dinner.”

I laughed. “Listen to you, Mr. Angst. You make them sound so burdensome. You’re incredibly lucky.”

Our eyes met and he took my hand as we walked. “I don’t mean it like that. They’ve always been great. I guess I was too caught up in being with you to realize that you’d probably enjoy this a lot more than I typically do.”

“I don’t have much to compare it to, but I’d give anything to have a family like yours, you know? Don’t ever take them for granted, Blake. Everything can change in an instant.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Ahead of us, at the edge of the enormous property, stood a gazebo. We walked up some old wooden steps from the beach. Inside, the structure was ornately built and offered an impressive view of the skyline. Daylight was fading now, and the ocean air cooled around us. I sat close to Blake, and he wrapped an arm around me as we settled back to take in the scenery. I rested my head on his shoulder as he traced circles down my arm.

“You were right about Risa,” I said after a while.

“Yeah. Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I think so. My question is, how did you?”

He stayed silent.

“Blake.”

He sucked in a slow breath that whistled through his teeth. “You’re not going to like it.”

“So what? Tell me.”

He pushed the errant strands of hair away from his face only to have them fall back. “I hacked your email account.”

I stilled. “What?”

“I was worried about you.”

“That’s a major invasion of privacy, Blake! Why—”

“Trust me, I wasn’t the only one worried about you. Marie even reached out to me at one point to grill me about what I did to upset you so much.”

My jaw dropped. Marie. Damn it all.

“I just wanted to take a spin through your mail to see if there was anything I should be concerned about. While I was in there, I checked out Risa’s and Sid’s, purely out of curiosity since you’d decided to shut me out of the business for the time being.”

“And you saw her messages to Max?”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I don’t understand why that specific information would be helpful to him though.”

“The investment company you told me about…the one who’s sending Trevor fat checks? It took me a while to get past all the layers of corporate privacy, but I finally tracked down the people behind it.”

“And?”

“Seems like our friend Max is using the company as a front to fund Trevor’s efforts. He’s basically been paying Trevor to run this group and be a full time pain in my ass.”

“But the attacks stopped.”

“I’m not totally sure why, but my guess is that once he had an in with Risa, compromising the site was possibly doing more harm than good. Wasted effort maybe.”

“Why would he need our data though?”

“I have no idea. Have you spoken to her yet?”

“No, not yet. I’m not sure if she’ll tell me when she finds out she’s getting fired though.” I thought for a moment, trying to piece everything together. “Did she reach out to you for the meeting today?”

“No, I contacted her.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted to feel her out. With very little effort, I’d convinced her to leave your company and come work for me, and we’d made plans for a more intimate dinner this weekend. She was willing to jump ship, screw your ex, and finagle herself into my business before we’d even gotten the bill.”

“You’re an asshole.” I started to move away but he pulled me back.

“What? I was testing her. Obviously I’m not interested. Relax, baby.”

“Why would that be so obvious? A few days before that Sophia was all over you, and I didn’t see you protesting.”

“You don’t need to worry about Sophia.”

“Right.”

I stood up and walked to the other side of the gazebo. I steadied my hands on the rail, holding on tightly as anger rushed over me anew.

“Sophia was here on business, like I said. Outside of our shared stake in her company, there’s nothing there beyond friendship.”

I turned to face him. “Maybe for you, but she’s borderline obsessed with you. Do you know how happy she must have been to know that I was out of the picture finally? She’s probably counting down the days until she can be your little submissive again. And for the record, I don’t appreciate you talking about our sex life with her.”

His brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

“Sophia told me about your little heart-to-heart.” I tried not to sound as bitter about it as I felt, but I couldn’t help it. That he’d confided in her hurt me more than I wanted to admit.

“Did she say something to you?”

“Yeah, she seemed really broken up that I was seemingly unable to satisfy your kink factor.” The sarcasm was coming out thick now.

He blew out a breath. “I’m sorry.”

“I know I might not be the most experienced person with this ‘lifestyle’ as she calls it, but I never thought you’d be one to kiss and tell, especially to her.”

“She asked about you. I told her we’d broken up, and she asked if you were submissive. I didn’t go into details, but I was kind of a mess at the time. She was trying to be a friend.”

“A friend? Are you kidding me?”

“I get it. You’re jealous. She’s jealous of you too, but I can’t cut her out of my life. You’re bound to run into her now and then with our business dealings.”

I started to leave.

He bolted up to stop me. “Erica, wait.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s go back to the house.”

He stood at the entrance and blocked me. “I didn’t know what to think about why you left, all right? I thought maybe I was too rough with you that last night we were together, and that’s not a conversation I can run by too many people. Frankly, I’m still worried that
is
why you left.”

The memory of that night invaded my thoughts. The intensity of letting him hurt me, of desperately wanting him to.
What if I take things too far, and it’s something we can’t come back from?
His words echoed through me. If he’d thought that’s why I left, I struggled to imagine how much that would have hurt him to believe it.

I shook my head. “That’s not why.”

He seemed to relax a little. “I can see now that I shouldn’t have talked to her about it, and I’m sorry. From now on, she’s completely out of our personal lives. No matter what happens.”

“If you’re such great friends, was that also why she was all over you at the charity dinner?”

He scowled and half turned away, looking past me. “Christ, Erica. You know, you broke up with me, and I’m the one explaining myself here.”

He had a point. I took a breath and tried to adopt a less accusatory tone. “You said you wanted to be with me, no matter what, so if that’s something I’m going to consider, I think I should know what’s really going on between you two.”

He hesitated, his gaze fixed on me as if he were searching. I started to worry. That familiar sickness spread as I imagined what they’d done together. And I’d have no one to blame but myself. Whatever had happened between them had happened because I’d pushed him away.

“When she realized we weren’t together, she didn’t pass up a chance to try to hook up. I shot her down, of course. No matter what was happening between you and me, I wouldn’t ever go back to her, Erica. Our relationship was never exactly fulfilling, and you know how she is to some extent. Try to imagine being in a relationship with that. She’s a nightmare.”

I couldn’t argue. I often wondered how they’d managed to be together as long as they had, but people did change, for better or worse. Maybe she hadn’t always been as much of a malicious cunt when they were together, but I didn’t want to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“So…” I cocked my head, waiting for him to continue.

“Since she and I broke up, she’s always been physical like that with me. Honestly, I never thought much of it until you showed up that night, and by then it was obvious how jealous you were. I took a gamble.”

“You wanted to make me jealous.”

“Nothing else was working.” He brushed my cheek with his fingertips. “Seems like making you insanely jealous does the trick though. I’ll have to remember that next time you decide we need ‘space.’” He gestured with air quotes.

I caught myself smiling, but it soon faded. Blake was talking about all these things like they were in the past tense. Our problems weren’t nearly behind us yet.

I searched for the right words. “Blake…”

He hushed me. “I have a feeling you’re about to tell me something I don’t want to hear, so how about you let me kiss you instead?”

Angling over my lips, he did, and I let him. I savored the sweetness on his tongue. I breathed him in with the salty air and let the ocean wash away all the things we didn’t want to hear or talk about. We stood there for what seemed like forever, simply kissing. We let our hands roam, eagerly but not frantically. For now, I was content to be this close. I could do this for hours.

The night had gone almost completely dark, and voices approached.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Heath called. “Mom’s going to come looking for you soon. Dessert’s ready.”

Blake groaned and rolled his eyes. I laughed and nuzzled into his shoulder, bashful and entirely too wound up to be presentable.

“I need a minute,” I whispered.

“No kidding. I’m so hard it hurts.”

“Mmm, I know the cure for that.” I slid up against him, his erection straining against his jeans at my hip.

“You’re seriously not helping. I can’t have her catch us out here.”

I took a breath and a reluctant step back. The ocean waves crashed closer to the retaining wall as the tide came in. Alli and Heath walked hand in hand back toward the house. I was so happy that she was coming back. We could do this more often, all of us together. Maybe.

“Where did you two wander off to?” Catherine asked when we got back to the house.

“They were making out in the gazebo,” Heath blurted.

Blake punched him in the shoulder. Heath retaliated until they were laughing and grappling on the floor of the deck like wild animals.

“Boys! Boys! My lord, seriously. Greg, come control these boys!” Catherine flushed, a mix of laughter and embarrassment flashing across her features.

Alli, Fiona, and I were doubled over with laughter as the two continued their wrestling match a safer distance from where we sat. Greg emerged with a giant pot of water and dumped it on them.

They cursed and finally separated. When Blake returned, he had a silly grin on his face. He leaned in to give me a hug, making his best effort to get me wet too.

“Blake, stop it,” I giggled.

“Just trying to share the wealth.”

My phone rang. I pushed him away playfully and fished it out of my purse. I froze. It was Daniel. I looked around, half expecting to see Connor, but we were completely secluded. He was probably calling to bitch at me about the interview, but it was the last thing I wanted to think about.

I ignored the call and tried to think about how I was going to handle this shift between Blake and me. We were falling hard and fast into our old ways, the normal rhythm of our relationship. I was at his parents’ house, for heaven’s sake, having a great night with his amazing family. This was way too far outside the scope of acceptable behavior according to Daniel.

He called again, and I turned my phone off. I didn’t care. I had so much love around me right now. Between Blake and me, Heath and Alli, among his warm and caring family, how could I let Daniel’s evil penetrate something that felt so right, so good? I pushed him out of my mind, unwilling to let him ruin the best day I’d had since I said goodbye to Blake. I didn’t want to think about that part of my life, at least not yet.

We spent the rest of the evening talking and listening to Blake’s family tell embarrassing stories about each other. We laughed and drank and enjoyed the beautiful night. Blake never left my side, holding my hand on his lap possessively, as if he were afraid to let me go even for a second. I didn’t mind, because I felt the same way.