Teasing in Stilettos: Contemporary Romance

by Nana Malone

  "You are his fucking keeper. He's your twin brother. I know when he’s involved in shit, you’re usually right around the corner either helping him or desperately trying to clean it up.

  Which is it this time?"

  As much as that burned, it wasn't completely off the mark. It was what he was known for. He was the clean up guy. The guy that fixed it for Donovan until he couldn’t fix it anymore. "I'm done mopping up his messes. It's about the meeting the other day, the Rutherford accounts."

  "One or the both of you had better have a good fucking reason why our bottom lines don’t match up. I want an answer. And then you and I have a separate matter to discuss. Between your brother being a general fuck up and ruining this business, I don’t expect you to be a fuck up too. I want you in the office immediately.”

  His father hung up the phone without giving him a chance to say anything. Tate didn’t know what had the old man so hot, but he could take a couple of guesses. The first having to do with those accounts. Either that or Donovan had followed through on his threat to tell him about Cara, but if Donovan had told the old man yesterday after their fight, he would’ve called last night. Called, or they would have shown up for an intervention. But it didn’t matter what his father knew or thought he knew. It was long overdue for them to have a conversation.

  15

  Tate knew he should have asked the driver to pick him up because sitting in traffic right now was making him a whole new level of angry. This was bullshit. He might have made the mistake of coddling Donovan too much, but it was not something worthy of the old man coming down on him for.

  He wasn’t the screw up. Donovan was. And Tate spent his whole damn life trying to make up for that, which was bullshit. And now, he couldn’t even believe what he'd seen but it made his stomach turn. Yeah, Donovan wasn't happy working for the old man. Shit, his brother wasn't happy working at all. But to take that and do what he'd done, that was a whole new level of messed up.

  And now to have his father lumping them in together … A taxi cut him off and he blared his horn. "Move it, you fuck. I have shit to do."

  Get a hold of yourself. Control, it was all about control. Except shit wasn’t under control now, was it? Donovan was passed out on his couch sleeping off the alcohol. Not to mention that beat down you gave him. His gut churned when he thought of the look in Cara's eyes.

  He didn’t care what she said. She was afraid of him. He could see it. He'd done that. And now she needed time. He finally had the girl he wanted and she'd slipped through his fingers again.

  She only needs time. That's what she said. But he understood what that was code for. She wouldn’t be calling him again. It didn’t matter that she'd said she loved him. The last couple of weeks, none of it mattered.

  And now, the one thing he'd worked his ass off for, his father had the nerve to think he was capable of that kind of deception. That he was capable of that kind of betrayal. He was the loyal one. He was the one who did exactly what he was supposed to do.

  A bike messenger jumped into the lane and he shouted outside of the window. "There's a bike lane for a fucking reason. Use it."

  The asshole just flipped him the bird.

  Taking a series of side streets, he was in the office within ten minutes. As soon as he walked in, everyone was staring at him. He nodded good morning to the security guards but they stopped him. "Sorry Mr. Anders, but your father has asked that we collect your key card and your pass."

  His brows snapped down. "What the hell?" he snarled through clenched teeth.

  One of the guys had the good sense to back up. Donovan was known as the hothead. The one who couldn’t control himself. The one who had a hair trigger temper. What no one knew was that Tate was the carbon copy of his brother, he just restrained himself better.

  "I'm sorry sir. Your father asked us to collect your things and escort you to the office as soon as you arrived." He cleared his throat. "Will your brother be joining you?"

  He glared at them. But this wasn’t their fault. He'd been the idiot who'd trusted his brother, the idiot who thought he could control everything. The loyal instincts were still strong though. "I don't know where Donovan is."

  The security guards blinked. "Sorry sir. We confused you for your brother."

  The tension in his chest eased a bit. "Can I have my ID's back then?" Their gazes slid away. Oh, the old man had cut them both out. He understood now. "Never mind. By all means, take me to your leader."

  His father was leaning against his heavy oak desk, waiting for him. For the first time, Tate saw what others saw when they looked at his father. Foreboding, intimidating, austere. He'd spent so much of his life and career just trying to make him happy, trying to make up for Donovan's shortcomings. He'd never seen this side of his father except when he’d taken a punishment for his brother. Like now.

  His father squinted at him for a moment. "Tate, what the hell happened to you?"

  "You almost couldn’t tell us apart either, could you?"

  A flush crept up the old man's neck. "I could always tell you two apart, but right now, you look just like him. It's a little harder when you've obviously been in a brawl of some kind." His father shook his head. “What happened to you?”

  Tate gave him a mirthless laugh. That was actually a good question. What the fuck had happened? His whole life was turning upside down and he didn't know how to right the ship. "Well, Dad. As for the face, that was Donovan. He's at my place by the way. So if you want to grab the fixer for hire and go take care of that situation or whatever. He needs cleaning up."

  "Your business deal went bad and the two of you decided to handle it like a couple of brawling children?" His father crossed his arms.

  Tate was in no mood. "You know what? Why don’t we get to why you called me in, but before we start, I have something for you." He pulled out the flash drive and slapped it on the desk. "That’s the information on the dummy account for that fake client. I pulled it off of Donovan this morning. I think you'll find it interesting whose name is on the account."

  The old man stuck in the drive and pulled up the accounts. "How did you get so lost? You were the one I counted on Tate."

  "This is bullshit, Dad. Without even talking to me, you think I’d have something to do with these accounts? The missing money? You think I’d do that? Why would I bring it to you?"

  "It's your login."

  "Look at the files. You'll see that I wasn’t even online at the times of me logging in to move money from the discretionary fund. Half those times I was out of the country, and you set it up yourself. We are the only two with access and the transfers have to be done from here. On two of those transactions, I was in China. Three of them, London. Another one in Malaysia. All incremental fund transfers happened the moment I got on a plane. I can’t remotely log in.”

  His father frowned. "You mean to tell me your brother is the one?"

  "I'm loyal. That's my problem, even when I shouldn’t be. I’m sick of it. He's broken the law now and you'll want to watch our association with the Italian. His name is on some of those accounts as well. I think they are in it together."

  His father frowned. "That's a big accusation."

  Tate clenched his jaw. "But you didn’t think twice about pulling me in here like a criminal and accusing me."

  The old man stared him down. "Your choices of late warrant me taking a closer look at you. You were the one I could count on, the one I could trust. But now you're running around with some stripper? What am I supposed to think when I find that account and your authorizations?"

  The bottom fell out of Tate's world and the ground shifted under his feet.

  “It's not like that. She's, she's not— I'm not—"

  "You want to pretend you haven’t been seeing a young lady called Cara North? I noticed the discrepancies a month ago. I wanted to see what you would do."

  He felt ill. The old man had him watched. "You’ve had me followed?"

  "The both of you. I know about you
r brother's drug problem and you and that girl." He cocked his head. "A stripper, son? Really? With all the women you've got access to, you pick a stripper?"

  “She's not a stripper. She's a dancer."

  A harsh laugh tore out of his father's chest. "It's like I've taught you nothing. You can have a woman like that on the side. I really could give a shit if she gave blowjobs as a side business. But you don’t jeopardize this family’s name and what we've worked for. That was the one rule: family first. Anders first. And you put that in danger."

  If his father had anything right, it had been that. Over the last few weeks, all he'd cared about was Cara. He knew she wasn’t a stripper now, but then, he hadn’t known and he still hadn't been able to stay away from her. "She’s a dance teacher. She’s not taking her clothes off. She handles bachelorette party events for the club."

  "You can call her what you want. A girl like that, not appropriate, Tate."

  "That’s enough." Tate tipped his chin up. He recognized what he was risking. "You want to throw me out. Okay. You want to kick me out of the company I helped build. Fine. I'll do something else. But you need to take a good hard look at yourself and this company. I've been striving to make this a conscious place. Sure, we're here to make money, but also to help people. You've thwarted every effort I've made. You have so much, but you can’t stand the idea of giving any away. You bury me under so much work I can’t even focus on what I've been trying to do. You accuse me of colluding with Donovan. I am guilty, the same as you. He's needed some help for a long time, but we've both enabled him. So I'm guilty of that. But all this other shit, the money, the embezzlement, all of it? Not my circus, not my monkeys. I have given this place my blood, sweat, and my tears. If you want to take it away from me, fine. I can go work somewhere else, go do something else. But don’t act like I haven’t given it my best. Don’t act like I haven’t been busting my ass. Don’t you act like I’m the one who’s been disloyal."

  He'd had enough. He turned to leave and his father called after him, "Where do you think you’re going?"

  "I'm leaving. Look at the flash drive. Or don’t. I'm done killing myself." He didn't look back at his father as he walked out. Now he had no brother, no family, no girl, and his job was on the ropes. How the fuck had he fucked this all up?

  He knew he said he’d give her time, but he needed to talk to Cara. The day had gone from shit to worse and he wanted to make sure she was okay. He sent the text before he could talk himself out of it. At least he had one lifeline in this shitty day.

  16

  Cara was still numb. Everything was such a mess and she had no idea how to fix it. Not to mention, Tate's future was no doubt in danger if Donovan had told their father.

  "So what are you going to do?" Serena asked. "Oh and heads up, Donovan Anders’ membership has been revoked. Tate called me himself.”

  Cara chewed her lip. “I didn't expect you or him to do that.”

  “It's done. Now onto the shit that matters. Do you want Tate?"

  Cara met her friend's gaze. "Yeah, I want him. But I don’t know. It's pretty messy. His relationship with his brother … I don’t know what’s going to happen with his family."

  "And what about everything else? You're dealing with a lot of things at once. Why don't you try looking at one problem at a time?"

  Cara ran her hands through her hair. "Well, there's the career thing. I have to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. That hadn't really been something I thought about. I love teaching, but I wanted to dance. Now that's over."

  Serena shrugged. "Honey, one audition is not the end of the world."

  "But it was the audition. The one time not to screw it up, the one time to get it right. I needed to get it right. Failing at this is killing me. It just feels like everything was on track and then bam! I run into Tate and everything feels off kilter."

  Serena studied her carefully. "Do you think that has to do with your relationship with him? Not getting a call back?"

  "I mean, I know this isn’t Tate’s fault but I got too caught up in him and I lost focus and that's hurting me now."

  Serena pursed her lips. "Okay, I'm going to be blunt because I think you need to hear it."

  Cara swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure she could handle blunt right now. But then again there was a reason she'd called Serena. "Okay, shoot."

  "Would you have even had the Gilbert audition? I mean, you say they have them every year, but you have to be invited. And he made sure you got an invitation."

  "No, I know. He got me the shot but I failed, and I feel like maybe if I'd gotten it on my own then I wouldn’t have felt so guilty or maybe I would have worked harder." She shook her head. "I don’t know. I just know that I feel ..." Her voice trailed. She had no idea how to say it. "Like I'm not in control and it hurts. I was so happy when he said he loved me, but then my immediate thought was, what if he changes his mind? What if he realizes I'm not good enough? What if he sees that woman he thinks he loves doesn’t exist?”

  Serena rolled her eyes even as she patted her hand. "Don’t you know by now? That's the doubt demon that comes with love. It tries to chip away at you, but if your relationship is strong you'll survive it. We all have that doubt. But that person you have to trust isn’t him. It's you. You made a mistake once, picked the wrong brother and now you’re scared. That’s totally normal.” She changed course. “What do you love most about dancing?"

  "Everyone thinks it's the being on stage and all the adoring people. But it's really about being able to make someone feel something. The first time I saw a show, I cried. I just wanted to be able to do that."

  "What makes you say that? You do that every day with your classes." Serena touched her hand. "And the Gilbert Dance Company isn’t the only dance company around."

  Serena had a point. She'd been so fixated on Gilbert ever since she was a kid, she hadn’t thought about other options. Even if her original dream wasn’t going to happen, she had other options, a whole new world in front of her if she wanted to take it. All she needed to do was trust herself.

  Her phone buzzed in her bag and she dragged it out. A text from Tate.

  I know you said you needed space but I need to talk to you.

  17

  Cara trudged up the stairs to her apartment. Talking to Serena had helped, but she still had to make a choice. Trust that Tate wouldn’t hurt her, trust that he wouldn’t leave her. Her whole world had fallen apart after Donovan. They were brothers, twins. Would he do the same thing?

  As she rounded the corner to her studio, she froze.

  Against her door, Tate sat, resting his head against the cheap oak. "Tate?"

  He brought his head up and those stormy grey eyes she'd fallen in love with leveled with hers. "Hi."

  Suddenly, the weight she'd been carrying around for the last several hours melted away and she knew she wanted to be with him. She wanted him to love her. She wanted to trust in him. He may look like Donovan, but he wasn’t. She knew that better than anyone. Or at least she should. "Hi."

  "I know you said you needed time and I want to respect that, but I had this awful feeling that if I didn't come and see you, if I let you go, that you would run and I wouldn’t see you ever again." He shook his head. "I wasn’t going to let you walk away again. I wanted to be loyal to the right person this time."

  Tears pricked behind her eyes and she blinked rapidly, hoping to quell them. "I just … With you and Donovan, I figured it was easier if I stepped out of the way. I didn't want to be the reason you had to make that kind of choice again." The first splash of a hot tear was the pioneer for the others. Once that one breached the threshold, she couldn’t stop the rest. One after another, they rolled down her face.

  He stood slowly, unfolding his long body with the grace of a cat. "I knew something was wrong that night. He’s my brother. My twin. But I saw the look of fear on your face. I should have known, I should have done something. I should have believed you. I was loyal to the wr
ong person. I didn't come after you. I know that. I knew it then and I’m so sorry. I think about it all the time. I don’t ever want you to be scared of me."

  She swiped at the tears with the back of her hand. "You love him, of course. He's more than just your brother; he's the flip side of your coin. You have a life, a family, one that I don’t fit into. I know that. You’re like the Gilbert Dance Company to me. I don’t quite meet the standard."

  "That’s not true, Cara. You have to trust me, and if you don’t trust me now, that's okay. I will prove it to you. I will continue to show up for you."

  “I want to trust you. I hate that I’m always wary of people. I hate that it stops me from being able to love. I love you so much, I feel like I’m tearing my own heart out by not being with you. But I am so scared. All I've ever wanted to do is dance. All I've ever wanted to do is move people. And the one place I wanted to do that was Gilbert Dance. But now, I'm drifting and I have no idea what I’m going to do. I don’t trust my own instincts.”

  He stood firmly in front of her. Reaching out, he lifted her chin up with his index finger so she'd meet his gaze. "I love you. I'm not going anywhere."

  "Tate," she started.

  "No, listen. I've been protecting the wrong things. I quit today. My father, he was going on about what a disappointment I was and the more I thought about it the more I realized I've been killing myself to be what everyone else wanted, focusing on the wrong thing. I love my father. I also love Donovan, but neither of them are seeing clearly. The shit Donovan has done, and my father, if he isn’t complicit, he's at the very least enabling. I want to help people. I can’t do that at Anders. I've been holding onto that job for so long, keeping the family together. That's not what my mother would have wanted. I'm going to stand on my own."