by Joss Wood
“Go on, imp.”
Emily ran her tongue over her teeth. “Because of Davy, Dad found a niche market looking after the financial interests of vulnerable, wealthy adults who are incapable of managing their own affairs. A lot of their income is tied up in trusts, sometimes not, and Dad, through Arnott’s, is their financial adviser. We also pay the bills and report to the trusts or guardians on a monthly basis. Our reputation for honesty and integrity and playing by the rules is sacrosanct.”
“You’re dealing with other people’s money but, because your clients are designated as vulnerable, it’s even more important to be blemish-free,” Matt stated, quickly connecting the dots.
Emily nodded, feeling miserable.
“And, correct me if I’m wrong, Nico has something on you that will tarnish that reputation.”
Emily nodded again.
“What does he have on you?”
If she told him, there was no going back. It was like she was on the surgeon’s table, wide-eyed and awake, about to be sliced open and not knowing if it would hurt or not.
“Em...”
“He has a picture of my dad shaking hands with the head of the Russian mob on the East Coast.” Emily rushed her words, as if saying them quickly would make them less horrible.
Matt frowned. “Say again? Your dad is friends with a mobster?”
Emily was gratified to hear the disbelief in his voice. She waved his words away, agitated. “My dad doesn’t have friends, not really. But he does visit Davy at Brook Village and he struck up a conversation with another father, Ivan Sokolov, who we know as John. Nico took a photo of them and he’s threatened to start a rumor saying that Arnott’s is laundering money for the mob and that Dad uses the residential home as cover for his meetings with John.”
“Holy crap.”
Emily jammed her hands into the pockets of her gown. “Being associated with the mob will destroy our reputation, Matt. We can’t have our clients harboring even a whiff of suspicion about our integrity.”
Matt rubbed his thumb over her cheekbone. “I understand that, but a photograph detailing one meeting? Are you not giving it too much power, especially since you say it was just that one time?”
“I can’t take that chance,” Emily said, placing her hand on his chest. Just touching him made her feel stronger, more anchored. And God, yes, she felt like Matt had lifted a boulder off her chest.
Matt covered her hand with his and squeezed. “And why haven’t you told your dad any of this?”
Emily shrugged and dropped her eyes, then stared at the floor. She felt Matt lift her chin and she took a long time meeting his eyes. When she did, she saw sympathy but also a healthy dose of determination. He wasn’t going to let her off the hook.
He was going to make her admit her worst fear, the one she’d never fully been able to think. Every time the thought started to form, she pushed it away, not prepared to deal with it.
“Why not, sweetheart?”
Emily’s eyes burned with unshed tears. “I didn’t tell him because—”
She released a tiny sob and shook her head.
Matt pulled her against his chest, his big arms enveloping and protecting her. “Because you couldn’t trust him to stand in the ring with you? Because you couldn’t trust him to put your happiness before the company reputation? Because you were afraid he would insist that you marry Morris?”
Emily pushed her forehead into his chest and nodded her head, just once.
“Ah, sweetheart.”
Emily felt Matt’s lips in her hair and allowed herself to sag against him, knowing he wouldn’t let her go. She wound her arms around his trim waist, then flattened her palms against his back. “I’ve been so scared, Matt.”
“And for that, I could rip Morris’s spine out,” Matt told her, his words low but vicious.
Emily pulled back and looked up into his frustrated face. “You can’t tell anybody and you can’t confront Nico.”
“The hell I can’t.”
Emily stepped away from him, twisting the material of his shirt in her fist. “Matt, no! I told you because, well...anyway, you cannot do or say anything that will cause Nico to act hastily. Because no matter what you do or say, what I do or say, he will release the photograph and he will start a rumor. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not—it’s the perception that counts and he’ll spin a damn good story and while we try to fight it, our clients will leave. Nobody else knows about this, well, Gina does, but no one else. Promise me you won’t be the one to let the cat out of the bag.”
Matt stared at her, the muscle ticking in his jaw. Emily grabbed his biceps and tried to shake him but, because he outweighed her, didn’t manage to move him an inch. “Matt! Promise me!”
Matt looked away and when his eyes finally reconnected with hers, she saw that his anger had faded and that some measure of thoughtfulness had returned. He exhaled and rubbed his hands over his face. “What are you going to do?” he eventually asked.
Emily released a long, relieved sigh. “Frankly, I need dirt on him. Something I can blackmail him with. It’s not a pretty solution but it’s the cleanest. I thought that maybe you would have something on him, seeing that you worked together years ago.”
Matt shook his head. “He’s a prick but I don’t know of anything that will persuade him to back off.”
Emily’s heart sank to her toes. She’d been relying on Matt to give her something, anything, but it seemed she was back at square one.
Matt slid his hand around the back of her neck and rested his forehead against hers.
“Don’t look like that.” He brushed his lips across hers. “We’ll find a way to get you out of this because, one thing is for damn sure, you are not marrying that loser.”
His words were music to her ears.
“Now come back to bed,” Matt told her, gently pulling the ties to her gown open. “It’s a new day and I can’t think of a better way to start it than by making love to you.”
* * *
“Got a minute, Em?”
Emily looked from her computer monitor to the door and waved Gina in. She closed down her untouched spreadsheet and pushed her chair back from her desk, thinking that she really needed to do some work at some point. But since Matt left her bed early yesterday morning, she’d been less than useless, her thoughts jumping between horrified shock that she’d told him she was being blackmailed into marriage and shivery shock at the way he made her body vibrate with pleasure.
He’d kissed her from top to toe, and she’d loved every second being naked with him. The man had superior bedroom skills and yep, he’d had her screaming with pleasure.
And, better than that, some of her skills had Matt groaning and growling her name!
“Whoo boy, I want whatever you are having,” Gina said, sitting down in the chair opposite her and crossing her shapely legs.
Emily opened her mouth to tell Gina that she’d slept with Matt but, at the last minute, she hauled the words back, thinking that she wanted to keep him to herself, just for a little while longer. He was like discovering a long-awaited gift in the back of her closet and she didn’t want to share the surprise, not just yet.
Besides, if—when—their relationship blew up, because relationships always did, she wouldn’t have to give Gina any explanations.
“Your father is asking for the Morales spreadsheet,” Gina told her, glancing down at her notepad.
Emily winced. “It’s not ready yet.”
“Okay. Have you reconciled the Sheppard bank accounts?”
Emily grimaced and shook her head. Gina arched her eyebrows when Emily answered in the negative to her question. “Have you done any work the past two days?”
“Not really, no.”
Gina smacked her notepad against the edge of Emily’s desk. “Well, I’m not sending your dad th
at email. You can explain.”
Emily nodded meekly, not looking forward to that confrontation. Her dad was a hard taskmaster and being his daughter wouldn’t exempt her from a why-are-you-behind-in-your-work dressing-down.
Gina folded her arms and tapped her index fingers against her biceps, a sure sign that she was feeling anxious. Emily instinctively knew that she didn’t want to hear what Gina had to say and pushed her spine into the back of her chair. She considered excusing herself to go to the bathroom but knew that when she returned, Gina would be waiting for her.
Hell, if Gina really needed to get her point across, she’d paint the letters in the sky if she had to.
“What is it?” Emily asked.
Gina hesitated, something she never did, and Emily’s stomach dropped like a stone. “You know that I’ve been trying to dig up something on Nico, looking for a way to get you out of your engagement?”
Emily nodded. “Did you find something?”
“Nothing that would help you with Nico but I did hear about what he was like when he was working at MJR Investing. Unfortunately, I also heard a lot about Matt, as well.”
Emily gripped her hands together, fighting the urge to get up and walk away. She wanted to hear bad news about Nico but she didn’t need to hear anything negative about the man she’d given her body to, the man she might be in love with.
Might be? Nope, she was pretty sure she’d taken that fatalistic step into love already.
“Do you want to know what I heard?” Gina quietly asked her.
No, but she had to. She couldn’t, as much as she wanted to, shove her head in the sand. Emily rolled her finger in a silent gesture for Gina to continue. “Nico and Matt worked together, as you know. They both started off as traders on the floor at MJR, both, apparently, quite talented.”
“Where did you get this information? And is it credible?” Emily demanded.
“From a trader who worked with both of them. He gave me the name of someone else who also worked at MJR around the same time as Nico did and their stories were remarkably similar. Neither of them had a beef with either Matt or Nico.”
So, it wasn’t information that could be so easily dismissed. Dammit. “Go on,” Emily told Gina.
“Matt and Nico were intense rivals and constantly butted heads. If Matt got a new car, Nico got one better. If Nico took a risk on a trade, Matt took an even greater risk. Everything was a competition, nothing was sacrosanct. They were obsessed with beating each other. And when Matt was promoted to CEO, Nico resigned shortly after.”
Emily felt acid burning a hole in her stomach lining. “You didn’t mention if they competed over women.”
Gina winced. “Yeah, they did, all the time. Not over individual women, nobody mentioned that, but someone did say that if Nico dated a model then Matt would date a supermodel. There were office betting pools around who would bring the sexiest date to office functions.”
“Charming,” Emily said, feeling ghostly hands squeezing her throat. She stared down at her shaking hands and forced herself to ask the question. “Do you think it’s coincidence that Matt came back into my life right at the time I got engaged to Nico?”
Gina grimaced. “I don’t know, Em, only he can answer that. I’m just telling you what I heard so that you have all the facts.”
Gina stood and picked up her notebook, tapping it against her thigh. “Look, everyone I’ve spoken to has told me that Matt is super competitive, he wants what he wants and he doesn’t let anything get in his way. He’s incredibly focused but, as I was told, when he achieves his goal he often loses interest in what he was pursuing.”
“So, he’s only interested in me because Nico has something he doesn’t,” Emily quietly stated.
Gina threw up her hands. “I don’t know! I don’t want to believe that but neither do I want you falling for Matt and having him discard you when he’s bored. And I swear, if he does that, I’ll freaking break his knees.”
Emily watched Gina leave and after the door closed behind her, rested her forehead on her desk, trying to push away the emotions threatening to overwhelm her so that she could think. Taking a couple of deep breaths, she examined the facts. Matt rejected her years ago on the flimsy excuse that she was too young and drunk. He avoided her for years and, when they did cross paths, they didn’t, as per normal, exchange more than a terse greeting. Then, out of the blue, and on the very same night he discovered she was engaged to Nico, Matt pushed his way into her life and into her heart.
He’d gotten her to open up about Nico and Emily couldn’t understand why. Was it because of his competitive streak and he wanted what Nico had—her?—or was he genuinely concerned about her predicament?
Emily didn’t know and she didn’t care. All she knew for sure was that Matt would, eventually, bail out, just like everybody else did. When he got whatever he needed from her—edging Nico out, taking what he had, sex, a boost to his ego—he’d leave her swinging in the wind.
Just like her mom did physically and her dad did mentally.
God, she was such an idiot! She had told herself time and time again not to trust him, not to rely on him, not to open up to him, but she’d failed. And failed spectacularly.
She’d fallen in love with the man, something she’d promised herself she’d never do. Because love had no staying power...she knew this.
She had to stop seeing Matt, that was obvious. While she still had most of her heart intact, while she could still function, she had to cut the ties between them.
And hopefully in a few months, in a year, she would’ve forgotten how he smelled, how his eyes could switch from humorous to intense in a second, how solid and wonderful he felt under her lips and hands. In a year’s time she would be laughing about this, mocking herself because she thought herself to be in love...
Twelve months, three hundred and sixty-five days.
In the future, she’d want to smack herself for being such a naive idiot but, right now, all she wanted to do was cry.
So she did, hot, acidic tears that did nothing to soothe the ache in her soul.
* * *
It was eight by the time she left the office and Emily, not having gotten much sleep last night, was beyond exhausted, and the crying jag she’d succumbed to earlier made her feel dried out and shattered.
Her soul was tired...
From the depths of her bag she heard her phone ringing but didn’t bother to dig it out. She had no desire to talk to Nico and if it was Matt, well, she hadn’t answered his other five calls or responded to his slew of text messages, and she didn’t want to talk to him now.
She just wanted some peace, something she hadn’t experienced for the longest while. Emily pulled her key from the side pocket of her bag and walked across the empty parking lot, tempted to book into a hotel for the night; neither Matt nor Nico would find her there.
She just wanted one night to herself, for herself, to gather her strength and marshal her resources. A bottle of wine, a bubble bath, watching a romantic movie on TV with Fatty and no chance of being interrupted...
“Em—”
Emily yelped and whirled around. She slapped her hand on her heart to keep it from springing from her chest and bent over to catch her breath. She felt Matt’s hand on her back. “Sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Holy crap, Velez! What the hell?” Emily yelled.
Matt grimaced and lifted his hands. “Sorry, but you really should pay better attention to your surroundings.”
He was lecturing her when he snuck up on her? Taking a deep breath, Emily jerked open her car door and threw her bag over the console to the passenger seat.
Whipping around, she closed the door, leaned back against her car and folded her arms, handing Matt a furious scowl. “Why are you here?”
Matt looked puzzled at her virulent retort. “I’ve been cal
ling you but you didn’t answer. Are you okay?”
“What do you think? You scared the hell out of me.”
Matt shook his head. “That’s not it. Or it’s not all of it. What’s going on, imp?”
It hurt too much to hear his pet name for her on his lips. “Just go away, Matt. I can’t deal with you or anything else tonight.”
Matt reached past her to place his hand on her door, effectively preventing her from climbing into the car and driving off. “What is going on?”
When she didn’t answer, Matt spoke again. “Do you regret what happened last night?” Matt demanded, his voice raspy.
Emily didn’t immediately reply. She was being blackmailed into marriage; she didn’t owe her blackmailer fidelity. But she did regret sleeping with the man who thought of her as a prize to be won and then thrown away.
Emily, hardening her heart and her attitude, tossed her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m surprised to see you here. I thought, having achieved your goal last night, you would be long gone.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’ve had what Nico wants so you can walk away. Why haven’t you?”
Frustration tightened Matt’s expression. “You’re not making any sense.”
Okay, then she’d spell it out for him. “You didn’t want anything to do with me six years ago and you’d exchanged no more than a handful of words with me since then. But as soon as you heard that your archrival, your biggest competitor is engaged, to me, you’re all over me like a rash?”
Emily saw emotion flicker in his eyes and, at that moment, knew that it was true. He was only with her because he wanted to beat Nico. Up until that moment she’d hoped, prayed, that she was wrong, that she was overanalyzing or projecting, but there was no denying the truth in his eyes.
When he stepped toward her, she held up her hands to warn him to keep his distance. “God, Matt.”
“Let me explain.”
“What’s there to explain?” Emily demanded. “Just answer me this. If I break it off with Nico, will you be there for me? Do we have a chance at something more, something permanent?”