Trust in Advertising (62 page)

Would he ever get the chance to take her on a romantic walk, tuck her safely 374

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under his arm, and tell her how much he loved her and kiss her under the stars?

Or was he destined for a life without love?

He passed in front of Ghirardelli Square and found Lexi’s winding path through the riverside park. His steps became more tentative as he approached the shadowy figure sitting on the bench in the distance. There was no calming his thundering heart, his ragged breathing, or the pain in his chest. Every time she wiped a tear from her face, Vincent felt like his heart was being ripped out.

He could tell the moment she heard his footsteps because her whole body tensed, but she didn’t turn toward him.

“Go away.”

The strangled plea knocked the breath out of Vincent. She sounded so lost, so hurt, that for a second he contemplated doing exactly as she asked. Leaving would be the easier thing to do. But that was the coward’s way, and Vincent was done being a coward with his heart. He sensed that he had one chance to make this right with Lexi or he would lose her forever, and that was something he was not willing to risk. With painful slowness, he sat down beside her on the bench and prepared for the pitch of a lifetime.

He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t stand to see the pain in her face or the anger in her eyes, so he sat silently beside her, breathing slowly as he looked out over the water and prayed for strength. The reflection of the moon shimmered in the gentle waves of the bay while car lights twinkled in the distance as they traveled over the Golden Gate Bridge. If he hadn’t made such a mess of things, the setting would have been romantic, but under the current circumstances, it was eerie and fragile.

“I—I’m sorry.” Such simple words, ones that couldn’t possibly convey the depths of his sorrow or regret, fell from his lips. All he could do was hold his breath and wait for her reaction. Thousands of thoughts pulsed through his head—explanations, reasons, justifications—things he wanted to blurt out in an attempt to gain her forgiveness, but he realized they were all nothing more than excuses for his horrible behavior, excuses that didn’t fix a damn thing between them. The one thing that could begin to repair this situation was absolute honesty.

He owed her that at least, no matter how difficult it was going to be to tell her every detail of his mistakes.

The only sounds that came from Lexi were tiny sniffles. Occasionally she would raise her hand to wipe away a stray tear from her cheek, and the material 375

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on her dress would rustle. Other than that, she remained completely silent with her arms folded tightly over her chest, as if he wasn’t even sitting beside her.

“I want to tell you what happened.” The words tentatively slipped out.

Vincent kept his head focused forward on the water, but he watched out of the corner of his eye to see if she was getting ready to bolt.

“I can’t,” she shook her head and jutted her chin into the air defiantly. “I can’t talk to you right now. I won’t.”

Vincent braved a glance in her direction, and it nearly stopped his heart. Her eyes were dead, flat, and unrecognizable. Her cheeks glistened with the moisture from the thousands of tears she must have already shed. Her chin and lower lip quivered as she struggled to keep from sobbing. Keeping his movements smooth and slow to not spook her, he slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. When he offered it to her, his hand shook.

With her eyes fixed on her lap, Lexi unfolded one of her arms and tentatively reached for the handkerchief, taking great care to not touch Vincent in any way.

She took the square and pressed it to her cheek, her head shaking gently from side to side in the darkness.

“I know you don’t want to talk.” Vincent chose his words carefully, not wanting to do anything to upset her further. “But would you agree to just listen for a little bit?”

Vincent counted seventeen chirps from the crickets around them before her shoulder raised and lowered in a shrug of indifference, seventeen long painful chirps before he finally allowed himself to exhale in relief. She had given him his chance, and now he had an unknown amount of time in which to explain his actions.

Proceeding with great caution, he began. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for doubting you. I believe you. I know you’re not the mole and that you’d never do that to me.”

Her only reaction was to wipe away a falling tear. Another trailed close behind it down the apple of her cheek, followed soon by another as her crying picked up again.

“I was wrong. I let my own issues cloud my judgment, and I reacted like an angry child in the middle of a tantrum. I saw you earlier tonight talking with Reid. He looked,” Vincent paused, trying to think of the right word, “
pleased
with himself as he walked away. I didn’t like seeing him, huddled in a private corner of the room with you, touching you. I’m not proud, but it made me 376

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incredibly jealous.” He worked very hard to keep his voice calm, even though as he spoke he pictured Reid’s fingers gliding down Lexi’s arm, and he wanted to punch something.

“He propositioned me
again
.” Lexi’s voice was barely above a whisper, strangled by her sadness but still full of anger. “And for the record, I said no
again
.”

Vincent’s heart broke. “I know you did, sweetheart. I know. This was all me.

I acted like a monster. I let my past screw up everything I have in the present and possibly my future. I was stupid and hurtful. There’s no reason you should pay for my previous or current mistakes with women. With Jade—”

“I’m not
her
.” Lexi wouldn’t even allow Jade’s name to come out of her mouth.

“You’re right. You’re nothing like her. You are kind and good, beautiful, intelligent, witty, and a light to everyone you’re around. She’s a parasite, a user, a manipulator, and a liar. You two are worlds apart and, frankly, I can’t believe that someone as wonderful as you would even give a man like me the time of day. I’m a grumpy, suspicious, cold-hearted bastard, and if I were you I would have told me to take a hike a long time ago.”

“Believe me, the thought has crossed my mind.” Lexi’s despondent eyes stayed fixed on the water in the distance. “I’m considering it right now, as a matter of fact.”

A hair blew across her cheek, and Vincent instinctively reached out to tuck it behind her ear, but stopped short when Lexi flinched as his hand approached.

She turned on him, and he saw the utter rage in her eyes. His hand froze mid air then limply fell back.

In the past when Vincent had hurt her feelings, she came at him with such vengeance, happily putting him in his place and telling him to go to hell. But now, her answers and comments were so brief, so clipped. It terrified him. It was as if she didn’t care anymore, like she had already made up her mind that she was done with him. Forever.

Panic set in and he started rambling, hoping that something he said might make her stay or at least listen a little longer until he could form a coherent thought. “The truth is, my track record with women sucks. It has since high school. You know about Jennifer and how that ended. With Adria it was more of the same thing, times ten. Of course, she brought the business into it, playing me so she could get stature and success in the company before she left and 377

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took a ton of clients with her. She was conniving from the moment we met in college, and I should have known better. The signs were all there, but I didn’t listen to my head.

“I thought I was in love, whatever that meant at the time, and refused to believe anything bad about her. I felt like such a fool when she walked out on me. I’ll never forget the sight, her laughing as she ran down the laundry list of clients that were going to follow her to her new agency. She even implied she was sleeping with a few of them to ensure their business. To this day, I don’t know if it was true or just to turn the knife a little deeper in my heart. Either way, she enjoyed telling me all about it, in graphic detail.”

Lexi’s tears finally stopped falling as she quietly listened to his depressing autobiography.

“I should have known better with Jade.” Lexi’s hands balled into fists in her lap at the mention of Jade’s name. “In the beginning, she was kind and sweet.

No. That’s not true—she stroked my ego, and I liked it. She told me how bril iant I was and … God, she was working me from day one.” His shoulders slumped forward as his hands scrubbed over his face. “She was always interested in the business. Asked a ton of questions, who our clients were. She wanted to see all the campaigns I was working on, and she would sit there and tell me how great they were. She constantly visited the office and snuck into client meetings. I’m such a fool.”

His entire relationship with Jade played back in his head in vivid color.

Warning flags waved everywhere, but he had been so busy working and enjoying the emotional distance that he never noticed what was going on around him. He had completely underestimated her intelligence, allowing her to play the role of stereotypical airheaded model to his dashing young businessman. Every warning his family and Sean had given him, every lie she had told, every coincidence screamed at him until he thought he was going to be sick.

Half to himself, he continued. “She kept getting jobs on accounts we lost.

That’s been going on for months now. In the back of my head, I thought it was odd, but she’s a well known model, and she fit the campaigns. I chalked it up as my loss being her gain. I think we even joked about it once. She’s probably been laughing at me this entire time.” He took long, deep breaths, trying to calm his now raging temper. He was glad he’d already ended things with Jade because if he ever saw her again, it would be difficult to not rip her to shreds.

“I’m glad you see what an evil bitch she is. Of course, you still believed her.”

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“Lexi, I’m sorry. God, you must be so sick of hearing me say that by now. I wish I could say something that would erase my abhorrent behavior, but I can’t.”

The wind blew through the trees, the leaves rustling together as Vincent tipped his head back and stared up at the sky. “I can only tell you honestly what was going through my head and pray that when I’m done you’ll consider what I’ve said.”

She settled back on the bench and sighed, which Vincent took as an encouraging sign, so he cautiously continued. “Jade was the one who originally told me about the mole. Looking back, I think she did it because she sensed I was getting ready to end things with her. My feelings had changed, and my attention was directed … other places. She picked up on that and wanted a way to keep me in her good graces. She knew helping me with a crisis at Hunter was the way to do that.”

Lexi sat like a statue and listened. She showed no reaction to Vincent’s words. It seemed she was more interested in tracing the monogrammed letters on the handkerchief, which she had neatly folded into a square. But he kept talking. “She told me someone from Hunter was selling ideas and that she had found out some information from her friends during tone of their trips. A friend of hers was dating someone at Reid, and Jade was supposedly working her for details. At least that was the line of bull she fed me.” He raked his hands down his face.

“She’s sleeping with Reid.” Lexi’s voice sounded stronger, more annoyed than sad now.

“I know that now. Frankly, they deserve each other. They’re both vile parasites who thrive by sucking the life out of others. I hope they’re absolutely miserable together for many years to come.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lexi nod her head in agreement.

That, in his opinion, was progress. As a strong breeze flew in off the bay, he snuck a glance in her direction and saw that her arms were covered in goose bumps and she was shivering. He slipped out of his suit jacket. “You’re cold.”

Lexi gave no response. Her eyes stayed fixed forward, even as he laid the jacket over her bare shoulders. Her hands held onto the lapels of the coat, pulling the ends closer together to keep it in place. Vincent left his arm draped across the back of the bench, his hand lightly brushing against the fabric of his jacket.

There was no way she could feel it through the thick material, but for him, it felt like he was doing some small thing to comfort her. He saw her turn her head to the side, her cheek nuzzling against the warmth of the jacket, and he smiled.

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“I decided to try and flush out the mole by calling in key people on our design team and assigning them each a unique project to oversee. Some were real accounts, others were dummy accounts I made up with the contact phone numbers going places like Sean’s cell phone or Erik’s. If anyone from Reid or Parketti called to set up an appointment, then the person in charge of that specific account would most likely be the mole.”

“All the meetings you had,” Lexi mumbled as Vincent nodded his head.

“Yeah, the parade of people. I was assigning them something to watch over, with the assumption the mole would pass the juicy tidbit I gave them on to their contact at Reid or Parketti. That was my big plan to catch the mole.”

Lexi turned and glared at him. “You set me up with Excalibur.”

There was a pause and then his head began to bob up and down. “I did. I didn’t want to, and I went back and forth about it.” Lexi made a small sound of disbelief. “It’s true. That’s why I talked to you days after everyone else. You were the last person I assigned something to, but I had to do it, just to be sure.”

Lexi turned away from him, but Vincent could see her thinking things over in her head, remembering the timeline of events and making sure he was telling the truth. He knew if he lied, or if she remotely thought he was lying, she would be gone, so he made sure every word was accurate.

“Martin Johnson is an old family friend and business associate. He’s the one who sent the text about the mole. I’d asked him to be on the lookout for campaigns similar to the one I’d shown him for Excalibur. We are going to be working with him in the near future; that part’s true. But the campaign itself—that was all a lie. The materials I gave you were from a presentation I worked on in college, one Adria never saw. It was an early version of my final senior project. I needed something fast, and I had saved copies of it, so I updated it at the last minute when I decided I should give you a project too.”