by Holly Rayner
Stephen was waiting for her outside when she pulled up. He hurried over to her, took her by the arm, and started marching toward the door.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said. “Mom has had me working nonstop.”
“Stephen, I just got here,” she protested. “I haven’t even said hello to Mom and Dad yet!”
“They’re down in the wine cellar anyway,” Stephen said. “I think they’re arguing about what to serve. And you can help me mash the potatoes.”
She groaned. “You’re so annoying, do you know that?”
“I’m your big brother. It’s my job.”
She followed him into the kitchen. “What’s been going on with you lately?” she asked. “Did you find a house yet?”
“Yeah, there’s one a few miles from here that I think I like.”
“Not too expensive, I hope?”
“Not as expensive as this one,” he said. “But you know how it is. I want to live somewhere nice.”
“Well I don’t want you putting yourself into the poorhouse to pay for it,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it, Rhea. Mom and Dad are going to pay half my mortgage for me.”
She nodded. “That’s generous.”
“They’d do it for you too, if you wanted,” he pointed out, picking up the potato masher. He handed it to her and pulled out a fork so that he could keep mashing alongside her.
“I know they would,” Rhea said. “And I appreciate it. It just means a lot to me to do things on my own. I want to make my own way, not let them take care of me for the rest of my life.”
“You’re so stubborn,” Stephen said.
“I know.”
“What’s been going on with you?” he asked. “How’s work?”
“Work is fine,” she said. “But something else kind of interesting happened.”
“What is it?”
“Swear you won’t tell Mom and Dad?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Do you remember Zach Danes, my friend from college? You met him once, at my birthday dinner.”
To her surprise, her brother’s face darkened. “I remember him. What about him?”
“Jeez,” she said. “What’s up with the attitude? I thought you liked him.”
“Maybe I did at the time,” he said.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to be all weird about him too,” she said. “I was already worried that Dad was going to be like this. That’s why I’m not telling Mom and Dad that Zach is back in my life.”
“He is?” Stephen demanded. “Are you serious, Rhea?”
“We… we’re kind of seeing each other.” She definitely hadn’t expected such a dramatic reaction. “What's the big deal?”
“The big deal is that his father stole a whiskey formula from Dad,” Stephen said.
Rhea felt cold. “What are you talking about?”
“Dad found out about it right after we all had dinner together that time,” Stephen said. “We didn’t tell you at the time, because we didn’t want to make things awkward between you and your friend. And then Mom found out that he was going to be leaving school anyway, so we thought it would be best to just let your friendship peter out rather than making a big deal about it.”
“So everyone knew this?” Rhea asked. “You all kept it from me?”
“It was for the best,” Stephen said. “You needed to focus on school, not on drama with the company. And I think maybe Dad didn’t want you thinking there were inherent problems with managing Wilson Whiskey, because he already knew you were thinking about not going into the family business.”
“I can’t believe everyone lied to me,” Rhea said quietly. “Are you sure it was Zach’s father?”
“There was security footage,” Stephen said. “I’ve seen it myself. It was definitely the guy we had dinner with on your birthday.”
“If there was security footage, why wasn’t he arrested?” Rhea asked. “The footage must not have been very clear, right? That’s why Dad didn’t go to the police? Maybe you were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t really Zach’s father.”
“No, it was him,” Stephen said. “We didn’t go to the police because… well, because Dad was filming the employees without their consent. The footage would have been inadmissible in court, and admitting we had it would have opened us up to lawsuits from a bunch of the other workers. Dad said it was best to just cut our losses. But I’ve never seen him so angry. That formula was worth a fortune.”
“How?” Rhea asked.
“Come on, Rhea,” Stephen said, shaking his head. “You may not have gone into this business, but you understand how things work. Once Zach’s father got away with the formula, he was able to sell it to a competitor. He made a lot of money from that sale, and even though Dad still produces that particular formula, it’s gone from being one of his bestsellers to one of the cheaper varieties we sell.”
“I can’t believe this,” she whispered. “I’m sure Zach didn’t know. Zach couldn’t have been involved in anything like this. He wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “You’re not the best judge of character, Rhea. You thought his father was a good man, but he turned out to be a thief.”
“That’s not my fault.”
His face softened slightly. “I’m not blaming you,” he said. “Of course it isn’t your fault. But you have to know that you can’t get involved with Zach Danes. Dad would never forgive you if you did. He would never get over it.”
Rhea put the potato masher down. “I need a minute,” she said quietly. “I need to think. I’ll be in my bedroom.”
She took off before Stephen could object, leaving him alone in the kitchen, scurrying past the steps that led down to the wine cellar when she heard her parents moving around. The last thing she wanted right now was to talk to them. It would have been hard enough to spend all day today with them without allowing talk of Zach to come up. But now, knowing everything Stephen had told her…
She needed to hide out.
She went into her childhood bedroom, closed the door, and sat down on her bed. Being here always made her feel as if her problems were melting away. The room had the ability to make her feel young again, as though everything in her life could be solved by a hug and a glass of juice.
But she wasn’t feeling like that today. Instead, her inner turmoil only seemed to grow stronger as she sat staring out the window.
Zach would never have been involved in such a thing. He must not have known. I’m sure he doesn’t know, even today.
But how could he not have known? If his father had sold that formula and earned a lot of money for it, as Stephen had suggested, surely Zach would have noticed—
She caught her breath.
He did notice.
He had told her that his father had won the lottery, and that that was where his family’s money had come from. But that hadn’t been the case at all. His father had gained wealth by stealing from her family.
Stephen was right.
And it had happened right before Zach had left school. Zach’s father must have lost his job over it, or left willingly. And that was the real reason Zach had moved to Philadelphia.
That’s why he wouldn’t let me help with the scholarship problem. I’ll bet he never really lost his scholarship at all.
He had almost certainly been lying to her knowingly, then, at least about that part.
Was it possible he had known about all of it? Could that be why he’d failed to reach out to her all these years? Could that be why he had decided to end their friendship?
She didn’t want to believe it. Even when she had been her most angry at him, she had never thought of him as a bad person. But if he could have participated in stealing from her family—if he had known about this theft all along and had kept it from her—
I can never trust him again.
Her father was right. Zach wasn’t the right kind of person for her to associate with. Not because of how much money he did or didn’t
have, but because he might be someone who could steal from a friend.
And Stephen was right too. She couldn’t continue to see him. Not knowing what she knew now.
She lay back on her bed, feeling as if her heart was going to break. The past two weeks had been magical. She had felt as if something she’d wanted all her life, something she had never even realized she was wishing for, was coming true.
And now I have to give it up.
What was she going to say to him? How was she going to explain this? Could she really bring up something that had happened fifteen years ago, something that his father, who was now dead, had done?
She couldn’t.
But she also couldn’t live with it.
She was going to have to end things.
Chapter 9
Rhea
Rhea was distracted from her research by the sound of the phone ringing.
She sighed, muted the device, and put it in her desk drawer. Every time it rang or chirped out a text message alert, she felt a flood of guilt.
She knew that what she was doing—ghosting Zach instead of talking to him about what she had learned—was morally questionable. But what else could she do?
She had tried multiple times to imagine having the conversation she needed to have with him. She had imagined over and over how it might go. But she couldn’t bring herself to actually bite the bullet and do it. She would have to accuse his father of a crime against her family. His deceased father.
It was too cruel.
She still thought there was a possibility that Zach simply hadn’t known anything about his father’s crime. And if that was the case, perhaps it was best if he never found out. She didn’t want to damage his memories of his father. She cared about him too much for that.
But if he had known, then Rhea didn’t owe him an explanation. She didn’t owe him anything.
Either way, though it was painful, she convinced herself she was doing the right thing by not taking any more of his calls. There was really nothing left for the two of them to say to each other if they weren’t going to talk about this. And Rhea definitely didn’t want to talk to him about this.
Then there was the matter of her family. Even Stephen, who was the most easygoing of all of them, seemed to have felt betrayed when he’d learned that she was seeing Zach again. Rhea couldn’t imagine how that information would make her father feel. She couldn’t allow her relationship with Zach to infect her relationship with her family. It was clear that she had to make a choice.
And though she hated it with every fiber of her being, family came first. She had to put her family ahead of the romance that had started to develop.
But it was so hard to let go of him!
About a month had gone by since her conversation with her brother. She and Zach hadn’t spent Thanksgiving together, as they’d planned. She kept getting ads on her social media sites from the company she’d been shopping in search of the perfect Christmas present for him, a present she now knew that she would never buy.
She was amazed—flattered and distraught in equal measure—that he was still calling her so frequently. She would have thought he would have given up on her by now.
I wish he would give up on me.
This would all be much less painful once he stopped calling all the time. And he would have to give up eventually. Sooner or later, Zach would realize that Rhea was never going to contact him again, and then this would all fade into memory.
But right now, with her phone ringing several times a day, it felt as though that might never happen.
She sighed and turned her attention back to her research. She was supposed to be coming up with interior design ideas for one of the coffee shop locations she had been working on, but she felt creatively bankrupt. Not a single good idea had occurred to her all day long.
She didn’t like to rely too much on other designers’ projects for inspiration; she knew how important it was to differentiate, to make sure that her own work stood out from the pack. But Rhea had never been great at interior design. Architecture was her forte, and it was the primary service that Green Destiny provided. The interior design portion of the project was just a supplemental service.
We need to partner with an interior design business to provide this service, she thought, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes.
She would suggest the idea to the partners, and hopefully they would see that it was a good one. If they had professional interior designers to handle projects like this, Green Destiny’s team would be able to focus on what they did best—the actual builds.
Too bad Zach’s company isn’t EcoInteriors.
She shook her head. Why was it that every train of thought led her back to Zach? It didn’t matter what she was trying to focus on. She always wound up dwelling on him.
It wasn’t as if she could have used his company, even if he had been in interior design. She could never communicate with Zach again. That part of her life was over, and she knew it.
She was just having trouble internalizing the feeling.
And the worst part was that New Year’s Eve was getting close. They hadn’t made plans, of course, but when they had been seeing each other, Rhea had allowed herself to fantasize about the idea of finally having someone to kiss when the ball dropped, something she had never experienced before. It was a silly thing, almost meaningless, really. But she had been looking forward to it.
Now it looked as though she was going to be alone on New Year’s Eve, just as she always was.
She fished out her phone and looked at it. She had received two more texts since she’d put it away.
“Come on, Rhea, just call me. Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”
“Can’t we work this out? I really don’t know what I did wrong. I don’t want to lose you again.”
It was heartbreaking. She believed him when he said he didn’t know what the problem was. But did that mean that he didn’t know what his father had done? Or did it just mean that he didn’t know that she had found out about it?
There was no way to be sure.
And it didn’t matter anyway. She would still have to distance herself from him. There was no other alternative.
“What’s up, Rhea?”
She looked up. Kaylie was leaning on the doorframe of her office.
“Can I come in?” she said.
“Sure,” Rhea said. “Of course you can.” She shoved her phone back in the drawer. “Business or personal?”
“Personal,” Kaylie said, dropping into the seat opposite Rhea. “You’ve been walking around like your puppy ran away today. Are you okay?”
“Just today?”
Kaylie frowned. “Is it still about that breakup?”
“Yeah,” Rhea admitted.
“I wish I’d gotten to meet the guy,” Kaylie said. “It seems like you really liked him.”
Rhea nodded. She wondered, not for the first time, whether she should just admit to Kaylie that the guy in question had been Zach, their old friend from college. But, as always, it seemed like a risky idea. Kaylie had liked Zach. If she knew that he was in town, she would probably want to meet up with him, and Rhea wouldn’t fault her for that. But a connection between Zach and Kaylie would bring Zach right back to where Rhea didn’t want him—in her life.
“It’s just hard,” she said, hoping to distract from the identity of her ex. “Being alone around New Year’s. You’d think I’d have gotten used to it, but I guess I haven’t.”
Kaylie nodded. “I get it,” she said. “This is the first time I’ll have had a boyfriend for the day.”
“You’re kidding,” Rhea said. “I didn’t know that.” Kaylie always seemed to have boyfriends. She had never been unlucky in love the way Rhea had. “Weren’t you coupled up all through college?”
“Well…” Kaylie shrugged. “I tended to break up with them when we went home at the end of the semester. Long distance is hard for me.”
Rhea nodded. She could hardly criti
cize her friend for that, given the way she and Zach had pushed each other away when he had moved to Philadelphia.
Of course, there was another factor involved in that.
“Come on,” Kaylie said. “Let’s go down to the cafeteria and eat some lunch. You’ve been working hard all day. You deserve to take a break, and I don’t think you ever would if I didn’t bully you into it.”
Rhea laughed. “You’re probably right,” she admitted. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. Probably sit up here glued to my computer all afternoon. Let’s go eat.”
Her phone vibrated, shaking her desk.
Kaylie hesitated. “Do you want to get that?”
“No,” Rhea said firmly.
“Oh,” Kaylie said. “Do you think it’s him again?”
“He’s been calling me all day.”
“You don’t think maybe you’d feel better about all this if you talked to him? Got a little closure?” Kaylie suggested gently. “I don’t mean to tell you how to live your life, it just doesn’t seem like you’re very happy with the way things are going right now.”
“I need a clean break,” Rhea said. “Sooner or later, he’ll have to take the hint. I just need to power through whatever this phase is.”
Kaylie shrugged. “You’re the boss,” she said.
The two women made their way downstairs and into the cafeteria. Rhea had packed a lunch, and she pulled it out of the fridge and began to open it up on the table. Kaylie went to the vending machine, perused the offerings, and bought herself a bag of potato chips and a soda.
Rhea laughed when she saw her friend’s choices. “That is not lunch, Kaylie.”
“I’ll get a lot of veggies in for dinner,” Kaylie said. “I slept in this morning, and I had to choose between a balanced meal or being on time to work. I ended up eating a microwave burrito on the drive so I’m still kind of full.”
“You can just call me if you’re running late, you know,” Rhea said. “It’s not that big a deal. I’m not going to fire you over it.”