Secrets Told

by Allie Everhart

  "That's fine," I say, hurrying to the door.

  He holds it open for me, his other hand extended. "It was nice meeting you, Kate."

  "Nice meeting you too." I shake his hand, then turn to walk out but my eyes catch on something on the wall. It's a plaque with words engraved on it that read, Silence is rewarded.

  They're the same words that were in the text I got after receiving the check from Walcott Investments to fund my restaurant. I never found out who sent the text and after I read it, it disappeared.

  I gulp and read the plaque again, making sure I'm not just seeing things.

  "Is something wrong, Kate?" Mr. Walcott asks, still holding the door.

  "Um, no." I look back at him. "Sorry." I step through the door into the hall.

  "It's for my financial advisors," he says as I'm walking away.

  I turn back. "What?"

  "The plaque on the wall. It's what I give my financial advisors the first day on the job."

  "Oh." I quickly nod. "Okay, well, goodbye." I keep walking, then hear him say my name. He's right behind me and I slowly turn toward him. He seems much taller when he's this close.

  "It's crucial that my financial advisors keep any and all information regarding our clients strictly confidential. If they don't, they're fired. If they do, they're rewarded." He grins just slightly. "Silence is rewarded." His eyes linger on mine for just a moment. "Goodbye, Kate."

  He walks back to his office.

  "Goodbye," I mutter, still thinking about what he said. Is that really all it meant? Those words on the plaque? Was it really just a reminder for his employees? Or was it more than that? Was it a reminder for him, as a member of that secret group? Did they give him that plaque to remind him to keep quiet?

  And if so, what does that mean about the text I received? Was it from them?

  Who are these people? And why can't I get them to leave me alone?

  Chapter Two

  Gavin

  When I walk in the apartment, I smile when I see Kate hunched over the kitchen table, furiously writing something on a yellow legal pad. Her hair's pulled back in a messy ponytail and she's wearing her glasses, which she usually only wears right before bed after taking her contacts out.

  "Still working?" I ask as I walk over to her.

  "Yeah." She doesn't even look up.

  Next to her on the table is a stack of papers. On the top is a spreadsheet.

  I pick it up. "What's this?"

  "Research." She snatches it from me and sets it back down. "Don't mix up the papers. I have them in order." She writes something on her legal pad.

  "Can you stop long enough to give me a kiss?"

  She sighs and puts her pencil down. "Sorry." She lifts her head up and I kiss her.

  "How much longer do you need?"

  "I don't know. Probably a few hours."

  "How about you break for dinner? We'll go to that Chinese place you like."

  "I can't. I need to stay focused or I'll be lost later."

  I sit beside her. "What is all this?"

  "Research on average revenue of restaurants during their first month of opening."

  "Revenue?" I smile. "That's a financial term. I thought you wanted to stay out of the financial side and focus on the food."

  "I can't avoid the business side of things. Walcott Investments won't be involved forever. At least I hope they're not. I want to buy them out eventually, but in order to do that, I have to learn more about business and how to run one, and that means learning about things like revenue and costs and tax implications."

  I take the pencil from her hand and set it down, then gently grasp her chin and turn her toward me. "I love hearing you talk business." I kiss her. "It's fucking hot. Makes me want to do things."

  I kiss her neck and her head falls to the side as her eyes close. "Gavin, I have to work."

  "You're tense. You can't work when you're tense." I undo the top button of her shirt. "Lucky for you, I have a way to relieve that tension."

  She smiles. "Which is what?"

  "Me." I kiss her ear, then whisper, "Inside you."

  She sighs, still smiling. "Why do you always do this to me?"

  "Do what?"

  "Distract me when I'm trying to work?"

  "Because I know you," I say, continuing to kiss her neck. "And I know you work better when you're relaxed." I undo another button, exposing her bra. "And I know..." My teeth softly tug at her nipple through the fabric. "...what relaxes you more than anything else."

  She grabs hold of my shirt. "Let's go."

  We hurry to the bedroom, kissing while ripping each others' clothes off. Kate and I have been together for almost a year now and we still have that uncontrolled passion between us. We still crave each other when we're apart. We still can't keep our hands off each other when we're together. I hope that never changes. I don't think it will. My love for her gets stronger every day which only enhances my desire for her. I think about her all day at work, so by the time I get home, I'm dying to be with her.

  "Gavin," she cries out. I love it when she yells out my name like that, and I love that I made her feel that way. That I gave her pleasure. That I know what she likes. That I know exactly what to do to make her body tremble from the force of her release.

  I feel my own release building and then it comes, a feeling more intense than I ever experienced before meeting Kate. I've always loved sex but it was never as good as it is with Kate, probably because it's not just sex with her. It's love. I'm making love to her.

  As I hold her in my arms, I feel totally relaxed and am about to fall asleep but then she bursts up, tossing the sheet back.

  "I have to go."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Back to work. I have to figure out these sales projections."

  "Right now?"

  "I don't have any other time to do it. And I really want to learn this stuff. I want this restaurant to be a success, and once it is, I want it to be mine. I want to buy it from Walcott."

  "Kate, that's not going to happen for a year or two. Maybe longer. Most restaurants aren't even profitable in the first year."

  "I know, but that doesn't mean I can't learn this stuff."

  "No, but it doesn't mean you have to learn it right now." I pull her back down on the bed and kiss her. "Why don't we order something in for dinner and just relax tonight? We've both been working a lot. We could use a break."

  "I can't. That meeting I had today got me thinking how unprepared I am for this. I barely know anything about business and yet I'm opening a restaurant in a few weeks. What if I fail?"

  "You're not going to fail. Your mom's restaurant was a success and she didn't have a business degree."

  "That was a different time. There wasn't as much competition then. I've got competition all around me. Five star restaurants with chefs that have trained all over the world."

  "They aren't your competition. Those five star places are for snobby rich people who are only going there to impress their friends. Half of them probably don't even like the food. Your restaurant is for people who want really good, homestyle food in a casual, relaxed setting."

  She smiles. "Can I use that as my tagline?"

  "You can, but I think I could do better than that." I rub her arm as she lies on my chest. "I'll tell you what. You take tonight off, spend it with the guy who loves you, and tomorrow night that guy will help you with your projections."

  Her head lifts. "You will?"

  "Of course I will. You know I'd do anything for you."

  "But do you know how to do that stuff?"

  "I took some business classes in college, so yes, I can help you."

  She smiles at me. "Have I told you how much I love you?"

  "I love you too." I kiss her. "Let's get some dinner and come back here later."

  As we're getting dressed, my phone rings. I pick it up from the nightstand.

  "It's my mom," I say to Kate.

  She stops in the middle of but
toning her shirt. She's just as shocked as I am. We haven't heard from my mom since May, when she went into rehab in California. That was almost three months ago. I've tried calling her but she never picked up. Then I got a text saying she's not supposed to talk to anyone during her treatment.

  "Aren't you going to talk to her?" Kate asks as the phone continues to ring.

  I answer the call. "Hey, Mom. Are you home?"

  "No, but I'll be there tomorrow. I want to see you. Do you think you could make time to see your mother?"

  "Yeah, of course. I want to see you too. How've you been?" It sounds stupid to ask that but I don't know what you say after someone's been in rehab for months. My mom and I have never even talked about her issues with alcohol. We didn't even talk about it when she left for rehab.

  "I would've preferred to have spent my summer traveling Europe," she says with a laugh.

  At least she's laughing. That's a good sign. Since Dad died, she hasn't laughed or even smiled.

  "You sound good, Mom."

  "I am, but being away for so long, I missed my son. I'm anxious to see you again. Do you think we could have dinner tomorrow? My flight gets in around noon."

  I glance at Kate, who's fixing her hair at the mirror. "Um, yeah, I could do dinner tomorrow." I walk over to Kate and mouth the words 'Will you go?'. She shakes her head so I say to Mom, "Kate's pretty busy with the restaurant so I don't know if she'll be able to make it."

  "You're still with her?"

  "We live together. I told you we were moving in together before you left."

  "Yes, but your history with girls led me to believe this wouldn't last."

  "She's not like other girls." I smile at Kate. "She's the one. This time it's for real."

  Kate smiles back and kisses my cheek, then walks out of the bedroom. It's not the first time she's heard me say that. She knows she's the only one I want. The one I want to marry someday.

  "Gavin, please don't tell me you're engaged. You're only 22. You're too young."

  "I'm not engaged. But we've talked about it. And living together is going really well. She's the perfect girl, Mom."

  "No girl is perfect. It only seems that way because you're still in the honeymoon phase. Eventually that wears off."

  "Well, it's been almost a year and it hasn't even started to wear off. If anything, she gets even more perfect the longer we're together."

  Mom clears her throat. "I should probably be going. My flight leaves in the morning and I still haven't packed everything."

  "Call me when you get in and we'll make plans for dinner." I end the call and find Kate at the kitchen table. "Hey, no working tonight. We agreed."

  "Yeah, but now you have plans for dinner tomorrow so you won't be able to work on this with me."

  I sit beside her. "Come with me tomorrow."

  "Gavin, you know your mom hates me."

  "She doesn't hate you. And she sounded really good on the phone. Like she's feeling better." I take her hand. "C'mon. I really want you to come with me tomorrow."

  "Why don't I come the next time? You haven't seen your mom in months. I think it'd be good if it were just the two of you."

  "You can't keep avoiding her. Someday she'll be your mother-in-law and then you'll have no choice but to see her. You might as well start getting used to being around her. And she needs to start getting used to being around you."

  "It doesn't need to start tomorrow. If we get married, it'll be way off in the future, not any time soon."

  I turn her chair so she's facing me. "First of all, it's not if we're getting married but when. And second, how far into the future are you thinking?"

  She shrugs. "I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. Maybe four or five years."

  I laugh. "Five years? That's a long time."

  "We have to make sure we're ready. I don't want to end up divorced like my parents."

  "We're not your parents. Our marriage will be nothing like theirs and I don't want their divorce to be a reason for us to wait to get married."

  "So what are you thinking?"

  "I'm thinking a couple years, max. But I still have to propose." I smile. "Which, by the way, could happen at any time."

  "What?" She sits straight up in her chair. "Gavin, no. I'm not ready."

  "I didn't say it'd be tomorrow. And if I ask and you're not ready, then turn me down."

  She frowns. "I could never do that. I love you too much. I'd have to say yes."

  "Not if you're not ready."

  She stifles a smile. "Fine, I'm ready." She points her finger at me. "But don't do it until after the restaurant opens. And let it be open a few weeks so I can focus on fixing whatever needs to be fixed."

  I take the hand she's pointing at me and kiss it. "You can't tell me when to propose. I get to decide that. Now let's order some food. I'm starving."

  "You go ahead. I'm going to keep working."

  I pick up the legal pad, which has numbers scribbled all over it. "What exactly are you doing here?"

  She sighs. "Honestly? I don't know. I was trying to copy what they did here." She hands me the printout of the spreadsheet I saw earlier. "But I don't really understand it." She rubs her forehead. "I'm so confused."

  "Because you don't have the formulas. This is just a series of numbers. You need to see how they came up with these numbers. Do you have this on your laptop?"

  "Yeah." She reaches for her computer.

  "Wait." I hold her arm, stopping her. "Let's have dinner first and then we'll work on this."

  "I thought you wanted to relax."

  "I do, but I know this is important to you and you don't seem to want to wait so we'll just do it tonight."

  She gets up and sits on my lap and hugs me. "Thank you. You're the best boyfriend ever."

  We order a pizza and each have a beer, then after dinner we get to work. The spreadsheet she had wasn't helpful because it wasn't tailored to her business so I helped her create a new one that included all the variables that could affect her opening week sales. I actually had fun doing it. If I hadn't gone into politics, I definitely would've gone into business.

  "I'm exhausted," Kate says, resting her head on the table. It's almost midnight and we're both worn out.

  "Let's go to bed."

  She sits up and gathers her papers, putting them into a stack.

  "What's that?" I ask, noticing a brochure sticking out from the stack.

  She pulls it out. "It's for the Moorhurst business program."

  "You planning to take classes?" I kid. She's made it clear college is not for her. She tried it for a semester a few years ago, then dropped out.

  "Actually, yeah. I'm thinking about it."

  "Are you serious? You'd really go back to school?"

  "Not for a degree. I'd just take a few classes."

  "How would you even—" I stop before asking how she'd get accepted. I don't want to hurt her feelings but to get in a school like Moorhurst, you need to be at the top of your class in high school and Kate was just an average student.

  "Mr. Walcott could get me in," she says. "He has connections with people at the school. Plus his son went there and his daughter will be a freshman there in the fall. In our meeting today, he suggested I take a business class or two, just to learn the basics."

  "Is he paying for it?"

  "Oh. I don't know. He didn't say."

  "The classes there are really expensive. Like thousands of dollars for one class."

  "Really?" Her face falls. "I didn't know that. So I guess I won't be taking a class."

  "Hey." I lift her chin up. "If you want to take a class, I'll pay for it."

  "Gavin, you know I don't like you paying for my expenses."

  "My money will soon be your money so think of it that way. Speaking of money, I found out today I'm getting a bump in pay starting next week."

  "How much of a bump?"

  "Thirty-percent more than I'm making now. My boss said he's never seen anyone work so hard and he
wanted to reward me for it."

  "Gavin, that's great! Why you didn't tell me earlier?"

  "I was going to during our celebration dinner but that turned into a work meeting."

  "I'm sorry." She hugs me. "If you'd told me, I would've skipped working tonight and we could've gone out."

  "It's fine. We'll do it some other time." I pull back and grin slightly. "Although you could make it up to me by going to dinner with me tomorrow."

  She chews on her lip. "Okay. It's a deal. But if your mom starts talking about your ex I'm—"

  "She won't. Don't worry about it. Everything will be fine." I pick up the Moorhurst brochure. "So are you really taking a class?"

  "If Walcott offers to pay for it, then yeah. Why not?"

  "I think that's great. You'll learn a lot. The professors there are really good." I set the brochure down. "So you never really said what happened at your meeting today. Did you actually meet with Walcott or one of his employees?"

  "Walcott. We went in his office and talked. He didn't really ask much about the restaurant, which I thought was kind of odd."

  "Then what did you guys talk about?"

  "Personal stuff. He asked how you're doing. Then he talked about his wife and kids. And then he brought up Moorhurst and that's when he suggested I take a class there."

  "I'm surprised he took the time to meet with you. I've heard it's hard for even his clients to get an appointment with him, and these are clients that have millions of dollars to invest."

  "I know. I was surprised too. And what's even more surprising is that he wants to meet once a week until the restaurant is up and running."

  "And he said he'd be the one meeting with you?"

  "Yeah. He said the young entrepreneur program is important to him so he makes time for it."

  I guess that makes sense but I still find it hard to believe. I don't know Walcott personally, but I know enough about him to know he doesn't just give his time away for free. There's always a catch.

  Maybe I should tell Kate that, although right now she's really happy and I don't want to change that by telling her my concerns about Walcott. For now, I'll keep it to myself.

  And who knows? Maybe he really does have good intentions, although I've been around people like him long enough to know that's not true.