by Kara Isaac
And those were his good points.
“Okay, I’m sorry. It wasn’t me. I didn’t mean to. I’ll never do it again.” Jackson interrupted her thoughts, hands held up as if in surrender.
Where had he come from? Why was no one using the front door? “What?”
She looked around. Mr. Duff had disappeared into thin air. It was like the guy was actually a wizard.
“You looked like you were about to hit someone or something. Thought I should get my apology in before I lose use of my remaining eye.”
He wasn’t wrong there. In the two hours since she’d last seen him, his right eye had swelled almost shut, showcasing some beautiful shades of purple.
“You’re a real comedian today, aren’t you?” As hard as she tried, she couldn’t keep the laughter out of her voice.
A smile tugged at the side of his mouth. “I like to think it’s one of my many, many talents.” She was glad he was only operating at half strength, because having only one of his blue eyes staring at her intently was unraveling something inside of her.
Get a grip, Allie. Every other compelling reason why nothing could happen with Jackson aside, developing a thing for a guy who was only in the country for three weeks was romantic stupidity.
“I’m sure you like to think so.” Oh man, what she had meant to come out as cutting had somehow come out as teasing. She had to get this back onto appropriate neutral ground. Maybe they were too far gone to find their way back to mutual disdain, but at the least, she had to keep it strictly professional.
The sound of her phone buzzing cut through her muddled senses. A welcome interruption, for once.
She swiped the call on without even looking at the screen. “Hello, Allison speaking.”
“Ah, my darling wife. It’s been a while.” The smooth British accent had always been able to send chills down her spine. Except now the reason for them had changed.
Trying to maintain a calm exterior, she mouthed “Sorry” to Jackson before forcing her feet to walk away. Fast.
“Don’t call me that.” She didn’t even bother to ask how he’d gotten her number. She’d bet a hundred bucks he’d palmed her sister’s phone when Susannah wasn’t looking.
Opening the front door of the inn, she stepped outside and headed for a nearby bench from which she could see anyone approach. This was one conversation she couldn’t have overheard.
“Why not? It’s what you are.”
She took a seat on the cool wooden slats. Her body still throbbed from the tumble down the hill and now this. At a rapid rate, today was turning into a cataclysmic combination of disasters and suffering. She should warn people not to travel on the same plane as her this evening. Her life was obviously doomed.
“What do you want, Derek?”
“Nothing.” He pretended to sound hurt. “Can’t a guy call his wife to say hi?”
She let out an unbelieving laugh. “Normal guys, sure. But we both know you aren’t that.”
“Ouch. That’s not the sweet Allie I knew.”
“Yeah, well, she’s long gone. Thanks to you. Disappeared the day she discovered she’d been conned and her marriage was a sham.” Why was she talking about herself in the third person? That was just weird.
“C’mon, Allie.” He pulled out the slick, charming tone that had worked so well at getting him whatever he wanted in the past. “You’re the only girl for me. How many times do I need to tell you the whole thing with Julia was a stupid drunken mistake? That I honestly thought it had been annulled.”
Allie looked across the lake surrounded by hills dotted with multicolored hobbit-hole doors. She tried to fight the memory of the time she and Derek had stood in this very spot. One of the most magical days of her life. Blissfully newlywed and convinced she’d snagged the perfect man. No idea the truth was that Derek had snagged her for money to escape mounting gambling debts to people who extracted late payment with their fists. Or worse.
She blew out a breath and forced herself back to the present. “We’re not talking about this again, Derek. I don’t want to hear it.” She’d long since stopped trying to make sense of the lies he spun to explain his way out of his web of deceit. “Look, we both know that sooner or later you’re going to run out of stalling tactics and the court will rule in my favor. Why do you keep throwing away good money? Let it go. Let’s move on already. We could part as . . .” Her sentence trailed off. Part as what? Friends? Not in this lifetime.
“Except I don’t want to. I want to stay married. Build a life with you.” He paused, as if granting her a split second to say something.
She said nothing. She had learned long ago that the only voice Derek had any interest in listening to was his own. Sure enough, he kept on going.
“Seems ironic, doesn’t it, that I’m the one fighting to save our marriage while the so-called Christian is the one trying to destroy it?”
She clamped her mouth shut, forcing back the desire to scream at him that one couldn’t destroy something that had never truly existed in the first place. Her gut twisted. He was right, though. If—when—the annulment came through, it would legally be as though they had never married in the first place, but a court ruling would do nothing to change all the other regrets she would have to live with for the rest of her life. The ones that snuck up on her and placed her in a choke hold at moments when she least expected it.
If she’d listened to the internal nudging she’d felt telling her to tread cautiously and keep her eyes open when it came to Derek, she wouldn’t be in this mess. Instead, she’d let herself get swept away by the fairy-tale romance, only to wake up and discover she’d drunk from a poisoned chalice.
Her hands gripped her phone so tightly her fingers hurt. “Don’t call me again. If you’ve got something to say, send it through the lawyers.” And with that, she hung up. Whatever the purpose of his call, one thing had been achieved: the noose of her past was still tied firmly around her neck.
Twelve
ALLIE LOOKED ABOUT AS THRILLED as if she’d taken a call from the tax man. Not that it was any of his business. Not that he cared.
Jackson stared at the ceiling of his hotel room, his face throbbing. Putting a tentative finger to his cheek, he winced. He wouldn’t be surprised if the guy had fractured his cheekbone.
The last time he’d had a black eye, it had been the result of a brawl at a frat party. One he’d inadvertently started after the president had taken exception to Jackson chatting up his girlfriend. Not that he’d known she was.
See. Right there. Girls. Causing Jackson Gregory nothing but trouble since he was five, when Mandy Larson had tattled on him for drinking out of her juice box.
He closed his good eye and groaned as Allie approached. She’d spent the rest of the afternoon reserved, going through the motions. Didn’t even crack a glimmer of emotion when little Miss Light Fingered got busted trying to pilfer a special-edition mug from the inn, only to find out they were each being given one as a memento.
At least they had the night off. After flying back to Wellington, he’d been relieved to discover there was nothing planned for the evening. His uncle had accepted an invitation to dinner with Ethel. Or maybe Mavis. Jackson really needed to figure out how to tell them apart. Anyway, the upshot was that the other spinster looked like she was about to have a stroke and Jackson was free for the evening.
He logged onto Skype and checked his watch: after midnight in Iowa. His sister was a bit of a night owl, but it was probably a little late to call, even for her.
As if connected by telepathy, his computer screen started ringing. He looked up, expecting to see his sister’s family on the screen. Instead it was a somber-looking man in a suit. What was George doing calling him now? It was late in L.A. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
He hit the answer button. “What’s wrong?” No point bothering with social niceties when t
he guy charged by the minute.
The liquidator’s grainy face peered back at him. “Mr. Gregory. Where are you?”
“I’m in New Zealand.”
The guy looked at him as if he’d taken a shuttle to Pluto.
“I sent your secretary an e-mail.” Jackson tilted the laptop screen so he could see a bit better. “How is winding everything up going?”
“We’re getting there. Looking at about twenty-seven cents on the dollar once expenses are taken out.” He gave as close to a smile as Jackson suspected accountants could. “Your car did well at auction.”
“Thanks.” His Corvette Stingray C7 had been his pride and joy. The day he’d driven off the lot with that baby, he’d truly thought he’d made it.
George cleared his throat, pushed his glasses back up his nose. “I wanted to give you a heads-up that some of the investors are talking about coming after you personally.”
“Me? Why? What for?” Not that he had anything anymore worth them coming after—unless they literally wanted the clothes off his back.
“They seem to have formed a view that either you were negligent in some way or the product was never as close to market as you claimed.”
Opening the minibar, Jackson passed over the hard liquor in favor of a Coke and snapped the can open with a satisfying crack. “Well, they’re right on the first point. If you can call not considering your girlfriend in cahoots with your biggest rival negligent.”
“Your refusal to go after Ms. Thomson for corporate espionage isn’t helping anything.”
“How could I? She wasn’t an employee. She was my girlfriend. And you know as well as I do that trying to sue her would cost far more money than the company has.”
He hadn’t breathed a word about Nicole to anyone. However, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that when the girlfriend of one businessman shows up on the arm of his closest rival at the same time the first man’s company goes bust, there might be a connection.
“Meanwhile, Rob is raking in the millions from your stolen property.”
Jackson sighed. “I know that. You know that. He knows that. Nicole knows that. But how could I ever prove it? The guy is clever. I guarantee he falsified stuff for months to make it look like the system was something his company had also been working on.”
He took a long pull of his soda. “Do I have anything to worry about?”
The guy shrugged. Must be nice to have a job where you could earn four hundred bucks an hour to do a shoulder workout. “Who knows? This is America. People have been sued for way less. I told them that even if they went after you personally, there’s nothing there. You’re the first company owner I’ve ever worked with who sold all his assets to make sure there was something to be distributed to investors.”
“What was I going to do? Drive around in my fancy car and enjoy my flashy condo while they got nothing?” He might have been far from perfect, but he still had a good grasp of the Ten Commandments, and he was pretty sure that fell under “Do not steal.” In spirit, if not in law.
“Um, yeah. That’s kind of how it usually works. Do you not know how much the higher-ups at Enron pocketed while driving the company into the ground?”
“Yup. And I have no idea how they live with themselves. So what’s my share?”
George consulted something off the screen. “Once you clear off the secured debtors and pay me and the taxman, you get fifty-one percent of the remaining amount.” He scrunched his face as he did some mental arithmetic. “Don’t quote me, but I think that would be about thirty grand right now.”
“I don’t want it.” There was no way he could take any of the money before a few critical investors had their money back. The ones who had trusted him not with their excess, but with savings they really needed. “Can you give it to some of the others?”
“Well, if you officially decline it, then I have to evenly distribute it among everyone according to their entitlements. But if you have certain people you’d like your share to go to, then put it in writing and I’ll arrange for the checks to get cut to them.”
“I’d like to split it three ways between the Slatts, the Mortans, and the Wades.” Ten grand each wasn’t going to come close to paying back what they’d invested, but at least it was something.
“So what’s the remaining debt add up to?”
“Four point six million, give or take fifty grand.”
Add his parents’ debts on top and he needed a nice even five mil to make good with everyone he needed to. Improbable, but not impossible.
“Thanks, George. I’ll drop by in a couple of weeks when I’m back. Let me know in the meantime if anyone decides they do want my pants.”
The man’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure a court would literally award them your clothes.”
Sarcasm. Lost on 99.9 percent of all accountants.
Jackson closed his laptop screen. Just what he needed on top of everything else—a potential lawsuit.
Five million bucks. He rolled the figure around in his head. There was a number to focus the mind. Unless the spunky but inconvenient redhead had stacks of cash sitting around, it was time to focus on what he was here for. And it wasn’t her.
* * *
Allie slouched back in her chair at the hotel bar, nursing her lime and soda. It had taken her the best part of an hour to write the report for the head office detailing Jackson’s newfound occupation of lifesaver.
If only he’d dodged the punch, she would’ve been able to justify not writing the report, on the basis that no one had been hurt. But any injury was a mandatory form 44, and even she couldn’t pretend he didn’t have any of those when half his face was the color of an eggplant.
She blew out a breath and tried to stop her mind from playing the image of him striding out of the lake like he was some kind of Middle-earth version of Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy.
Then, because she was clearly a glutton for torment tonight, she’d Googled Derek and discovered that in the last two years, he had reinvented himself as some kind of PR maven. He even had his own website, with enough schmancy photos of him to fill a fashion catalogue.
She almost threw up a little in her own mouth when she read on his “About” page that he was “happily married to his lovely Kiwi wife.”
She stared at a Google montage of images of him with the who’s who of Auckland. How could they all be so stupid?
Allie took a slug of her soda and tried to pretend it was something stronger. She even contemplated asking for a table in the restaurant and ordering the entire dessert menu.
“Penny for them?”
She looked up at Louis, who was leaning against the back of the chair beside her. She hadn’t even realized he’d been standing nearby. “Pennies aren’t legal tender in New Zealand, I’m afraid.”
He smiled. “True. And from the look on your face, they were the kind of thoughts that would be worth a lot more, anyway.”
Flagging down a passing waiter, he ordered a black coffee, then came around the chair and sat down across from her. “The heart isn’t always wrong, you know.”
Her head jolted. “I’m sorry?”
“My wife. She left me. Took our two kids and disappeared when I was on a work trip. It was years before I saw them again.” He leaned back in the chair and folded his hands behind his head like he was talking about the weather.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. The sixties, when the world got a bit too drunk on the concept of free love and doing whatever ‘felt’ right. I blamed myself. So I decided that because I had such poor judgment of character when it came to her, I could never trust myself again.”
Allie took a long sip of her drink, because she didn’t know what to say. The man clearly had some intel on her, but she wasn’t planning on offering up anything more if she could help it.
�
�The truth was, I was right to blame myself, but not because of that. I was so busy making money, building my empire, that I neglected my family. That was the real reason she left. I was just too pigheaded to see it.” He tipped some sugar into the cup that the waiter had placed in front of him and gave it a stir.
“I’m sorry.” Again. For the third time. What else was there to say?
He propped one ankle up on the other knee. Not bad flexibility for an old guy. “My biggest regret is that since then, I’ve met a number of wonderful women. Many of whom I’m sure would have made me very happy. But I never allowed myself to open up to any of them because of what she did. And so here I am. An old man with a lot of money, but no one to share my life with.”
She opened her mouth to offer a feeble attempt at disagreement, but he shook his head as if knowing what she was going to say.
“It’s probably too late for me. But it’s definitely not for you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Louis gave her a long look. “So you fell for a scumbag. It happens. Don’t spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for it. Just because your heart was wrong once doesn’t mean it’s always going to be. I’m not saying don’t be careful. Do your due diligence. But there are plenty of good guys out there, Allison. Give them a chance.”
“I . . . I don’t even know if I’m free to.” She gripped her hand in her lap nervously. “There are lawyers and a court case, and it’s all a big never-ending debacle.” Her greatest fear clawed at her. What if, at the end of it all, she lost and the court sided with Derek? Then what?
“I know.” He responded to the question that was obviously written across her face. “I have a private investigator check out the people I deal with.” He leaned forward in his seat. “But, unless your lawyers are incompetent, one day it will all be behind you. A distant memory.”
They better not be, given how much they charged her if they so much as thought in her general direction. She swirled her straw around her now empty glass, the remaining ice clinking in the bottom.