“It was just so clear. After you left the bar tonight. That I’m only completely happy when you’re with me. So I knew.”
But was love supposed to be like this? Grace wondered, as her heart broke wide open. To be so perfect in its beauty that it caused pain? She rested her head on Tyler’s chest and traced the words of her happiness on his bare skin with her fingertip.
I love you.
“Me, too.” He crushed her to him. “God, Grace. Me, too. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” His breath moved her hair. “Not to mention my business. I was prepared to fail, completely and totally. And I was prepared to succeed beyond my wildest dreams and go crazy trying to solve all the problems brought by that success.”
He lifted her head off his chest and focused on her.
“But I never thought it could happen so easily, so smoothly. Because I didn’t know there was someone out there to be strong where I might be weak. To solve problems before I even imagined they existed. Someone I could rely on and trust to back me up, in everything. You’re an amazing woman, Grace, and I don’t think you know that. I don’t think you know how incredibly talented you are, but I’m going to keep telling you until you believe it.”
With his words, the light went out. Her body felt numb and cold and she wondered that Tyler couldn’t feel the chill radiating out from her skin, from her heart.
Because it was lies. All of it, lies. She did know her own talents. But Tyler did not. He didn’t know anything about her. About the life she was even now plotting to get back for herself. For the right reasons, of course, but the fact that he didn’t know any of it turned all of the shiny golden glow of his words into muddy dross.
Talented, was she? Well, with a degree from Stanford, an M.B.A. from Kellogg and a lifetime spent working in her family’s conglomerate of restaurants, she certainly ought to be. Of course, Tyler thought she was a diner waitress making good, probably with a high-school education. He could be proud of her, because he only knew enough about her to make her look good.
How much would he love her if he knew she’d been lying to him since the day she’d walked in the door of the pub? How proud would he be, if he knew that she’d run away from her own responsibilities and obligations, leaving hundreds of people employed by the Haley Group in danger of losing their jobs? She didn’t think he’d find her so amazing if he knew the truth.
And if her dream earlier was any indication, things were about to get worse.
“Tyler, listen, I’m not what you think—”
“Stop. You are.” His finger pressed lightly on her lips. “You’re smart and capable and beautiful and caring. And I want you to be my partner. You called it your restaurant earlier tonight, and I want that to be true even when you’re not on the floor.”
She started to protest, but he talked over her words.
“I know you won’t just let me give it to you. So we’ll set something up where you can buy into the business gradually, over time, until you’re a full partner. Meanwhile, everything will just keep going like it is now.”
“Stop! Just stop,” she interrupted, rolling off of him. Knowing that she could buy his business with the funds in her smallest money market account only made things worse. The sheets were twisted beneath them. She pulled at a cover in frustration until she could wrap it around herself and get out of bed. Being naked felt too vulnerable right now.
The blanket trailed behind her as she paced, tripping her when she turned to face the bed. Tyler was sitting up, leaning against the headboard. He looked calm, but clearly disappointed.
“Tyler, there’s so much you don’t know about me,” she began, and then stopped as the gross understatement threw her off stride. She wrapped the blanket more tightly around herself and shifted her weight nervously from one foot to the other. If she had a free hand, she knew she’d be reflexively tugging on her hair at that moment.
“You’re right,” he said steadily. “But I know you’re afraid of something, or someone. Hell, I’d have started with a marriage proposal instead of a business one, if I didn’t think that would scare you off for good.” He grinned.
“Don’t joke,” she snapped, and saw instantly by the hurt in his eyes that he hadn’t been. She closed her eyes for a moment and stood silent. A night for many pains, apparently. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how I let things get so out of control. I’m a mess, Tyler. And the last thing I want to do is to hurt you or disappoint you.”
“You won’t.”
“Don’t say that. You can’t know that.”
“You said the same thing to me earlier tonight. It was true then and it’s true now. I don’t know who you were, but I know who you are now, Grace. You would never hurt me.”
“I don’t want to. But I’m afraid I will.”
There were miles between her and Tyler, continents with unassailable mountain ranges and unbridgeable crevasses. In the middle of the room, she felt very alone. The gap between them seemed impossible to cross. If only he’d waited until she was free to tell him everything. Free to come to him as a woman in charge of her own life.
But now she couldn’t even remember why she’d decided to wait. She knew in an instant that she’d made a terrible mistake. Tyler would have been able to handle anything she could have thrown at him. But not now. Not when he’d just laid his heart bare in his trust for her. She couldn’t say anything right now without shattering that moment.
“Maybe I’d better go.”
She turned to collect her clothes, only to be caught by the naked roughness of his voice.
“Please. Stay.”
His words called to her. The moonlight spilled through the uncurtained window to skim a glow along the outline of his arm as he stretched a hand out to her.
“December thirty-first, remember? No questions asked until then. Just stay.”
It was wrong. With every breath she took in, she knew that it was wrong to stay with Tyler under such blatantly false pretenses. She knew that she risked everything, including his hatred when he found out the truth, if she continued to be with him now. She had so much to lose.
Her body moved toward him, pulled by the force of his desire, his love, and she didn’t stop herself. It was unthinkable to leave. Her hand found itself clasped and a final tug pulled her neatly to his side, where she’d found so much security such a brief time before. She felt anything but secure now.
“I want to help you, Grace.”
“You can’t help me with this.” Her body arced to merge with his. “Just love me. Love me no matter what.”
His promise was written in the strokes of his hands on her skin and he loved her as she wept.
Standing at the door of the penthouse suite at the Drake Hotel, her hand clammy on the doorknob, she held the memory of Tyler’s loving in her mind and took strength from it. Her heartbeat slowed, her thoughts stopped racing around in circles, her muscles unclenched. Two deep breaths and she opened the door.
Conversation halted instantly and heads swiveled toward her as the thirteen men and women in the room rose to their feet.
“Good afternoon. Thank you for agreeing to this impromptu meeting, particularly on such short notice. If you’ll all take your seats, please, I’d like to get right down to business.”
Her voice remained calm and steady, she was pleased to note as she moved to the head of the conference table around which they all sat themselves.
“I’ve asked you all here to clear up some unfortunate misunderstandings regarding the availability, individually or as a whole, of the restaurants of the Haley Group. As I understand you have had face-to-face meetings with various representatives of my firm, I thought it more appropriate to break the bad news and to express my regrets in person. At this time, ladies and gentlemen, the bottom line is that none of the assets of the Haley Group are for sale. I know you have all been led to believe otherwise, and I apologize for that.”
She paused to let her words sink in. Almost immediately, the clamo
r began.
“Not for sale?”
“I’ve got the paperwork in hand—”
“My investors are already prepared to—”
Grace allowed them to rattle on for a minute before raising her hands. Several more minutes passed until the prospective buyers settled down to silence, or at least to muttering under their breath.
“As I stated,” she emphasized, “I am aware that you have all been recently engaged in negotiations to purchase one or more of the Haley properties. And I am very sorry that said negotiations were entered into by one of our board members under false pretenses.”
A portly gentleman whose suit buttons were straining to contain a belly that evidenced a great deal of time spent in the dining industry was the first to speak directly to her.
“Madam, it was your very own fiancé who offered me first refusal on the purchase of any and all of your restaurants.”
That damn word again.
The rising level of grumbling indicated that he had not been the only one present to receive that same offer.
“Corporate infighting is so irritating, isn’t it?” She smiled coldly. “Our publicity department was mistakenly instructed to print that engagement announcement. Mr. Huntington is merely the visible president of the Haley Group, and a minor shareholder at that, who has allowed his personal greed to overstep the bounds of good sense, not to mention the bounds of his authority.”
“Are you telling us Charles Huntington is not authorized to sign off on business deals for the Haley Group?” This from a sharply creased woman in unrelieved black. Her pinched expression indicated severe displeasure, not to mention skepticism.
“That is exactly correct. As the owner of fifty percent of the corporation—” she indicated herself “—my approval is necessary for any major business decisions, and I can assure you that I have not approved any of these offers.” She smiled gently now and began the process of easing them into acceptance of this sudden about-face. “I understand, of course, that after the merry chase you’ve been led, you might be inclined to doubt my statements without some further reassurance as to their validity. Which is why I invited our corporate attorney, Mr. Franklin O’Connell, to join us today, so that he can verify what I’m telling you. Franklin?”
The attorney rose from his seat at the table and nodded. She continued.
“It occurs to me that some refreshments might be appropriate while we continue our discussion. Please feel free to speak with Mr. O’Connell while I arrange things. Thank you.”
Not until she stepped out of the room into an adjoining office did she allow her shoulders to sag with relief. She was going to pull it off. It was there to be read in their faces already. They believed her, based only on her clear self-assurance, and the questions they would ask Franklin would only reinforce the fact that she was the sole authority in the Haley Group. With exactly fifty percent of the corporation in her name, she couldn’t sell off any part of the Haley Group herself, either, but she could certainly block the moves made by Charles and her mother.
She’d just done exactly that.
Picking up the phone, she punched in the number for room service and placed her order, directing them to send the server in with a passkey, so as not to interrupt the meeting with a knock. She stopped for one last glance at herself in the mirror before heading back into the battle zone.
Her hair was perfect. Her hair, her makeup, her Chanel suit and heels, all fit her as if she were born to wear them. And indeed she had been. But she’d unconsciously put her hair up in the same chignon she’d worn to work at Tyler’s, and the contrast between her image there and the one that faced her now froze her in place. She felt like two separate women walking around in a single body. One of the women had to be a lie, and she wasn’t sure anymore which one she wanted to be true.
Back around the conference table, the conversation was lively but clearly bowing to the inevitable. When the waiter arrived and discreetly arranged a small banquet table along a side wall, nearly everyone accepted a glass of wine or a cocktail. The large gentleman even availed himself of several cold appetizers, the consumption of which had an immediate positive effect on his mood.
“Why don’t we remove ourselves to a more casual setting, now that it’s clear we won’t be doing any business this afternoon?” he suggested with a vague wave toward the casual arrangement of couches and armchairs at the opposite end of the room.
“An excellent idea,” Grace answered, and walked with him. The remaining investors followed more or less agreeably. At that moment, she knew without a doubt that she’d won. All that was left were the formalities.
When the glasses were emptied and overcoats and furs retrieved from the closet, when she’d shaken the last hand and bid a firm goodbye to Franklin, she closed the door with a click behind the last well-wisher. A couple of drinks and some charmingly prepared snacks, and they had been uniform in cursing that shameful Mr. Huntington, praising her decision to postpone any further discussion of business for the time being, and begging, every last one of them, to be kept in mind if she decided in the future to reconsider selling.
She’d won. The cold sliver in her heart at how she’d been forced to connive and conspire behind the backs of her onetime boyfriend and her family would go away eventually. Franklin was prepared for her resumption of directorial control as of Monday morning. Grace had taken back her life.
She had less than three days to figure out how to break it all to Tyler.
The golden rays of the setting sun shot through the windows of the Tyler’s Bar & Grill and lit up the liqueurs in their glass bottles like rows of jewels reflected in the etched mirror behind them.
To Grace, the slowly dimming light was like a relentless time bomb, ticking out its countdown in a graphic visual display of her eroding time until confession.
She’d managed to avoid intimate conversation with Tyler during the past forty-eight hours, accusing herself of lapsing back into cowardice with every passing minute. As for Tyler, he hadn’t questioned her about a thing, including her late and hurried arrival to work on Friday night. He’d simply greeted her with a grin and gruff, “Get to work, or I’m taking a percentage point off your partnership.” Even with the joke, she could feel him taking a step back from pressuring her, and wanted to tear her hair out with remorse and frustration. His consideration balanced against her deceit seemed an unfair trade.
But for two days she’d taken guilty pleasure in pretending that all was well between them. She’d smiled until her face ached while she worked in perfect harmony with Tyler at the restaurant, and luxuriated in two nights of falling to sleep, tired but cherished, in his arms. When he’d asked her to run the restaurant for him early Sunday morning so he could take care of some long-delayed personal business, she’d agreed with alacrity, happy to be able to pay back some of the debt she owed him.
The bar phone rang, its attached light blinking as a visual reminder. She delivered a Manhattan to one of her regulars at the bar and snagged the phone on the third ring.
“Tyler’s Bar and Grill, this is Grace. How can I help you?”
“Gracie? Merci. Thank God it is you.”
“Paul?”
The front door swung open and Tyler strolled in, his casual smile instantly brightening at the sight of her behind the bar. He nodded at his customers, dropped a word or patted a back as he passed them, and ducked under the counter to join her. A loud noise dragged her attention back to the phone.
“Paul? I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening. What are you so frantic about?”
“Frantic? Frantic? I show you frantic. If I catch that stupid fiancé of yours, with my hands around his neck, I show you frantic. That boy, idiote, he—”
Tyler was advancing on her with slow, deliberate steps, and the look in his eye drained her of all ability to think. Her muscles grew weak. She fumbled with the phone as it began to tumble from her hand.
“Paul,” she interrupted, “don’t worry about Charles. He
can’t do anything now. I’ve taken care of it.” Her lover’s arm curled around her waist and yanked her against his body. “Got to go. Call you soon. ’Bye.”
“But, Gracie, it is necessary to tell you—” His words vanished as she clicked the off button and dropped the phone to the floor.
“Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.”
“How’s my bar doing?”
“F-fine,” she stuttered as his thumb grazed the side of her breast in a slow rise to brush lightly over her lips. Her mind refused to form complete sentences. “Brunch, good. Slow afternoon. Picking up again now.”
“I’ve missed you all day,” he whispered before replacing his thumb with his mouth and short-circuiting her entire system. Her body and brain were still reeling as he pulled slowly away from her with a last caress.
“Who’s Charles?”
“My ex,” she answered without thinking, and instantly felt tricked. The words had slipped out before she had a chance to think and she wondered if that had been his purpose.
“Ex-boyfriend, hmm?” Tyler leaned against the back counter and crossed his arms as he considered her thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t be the guy who’s been troubling you, would he?”
The thought flashed through her mind that he was entirely too close to the mark. This was followed immediately by the idea that she’d never find a better opportunity to tell him the truth.
“Want me to beat him up for you, Gracie?” he teased, and tugged at the ends of her loose hair.
“Tyler…”
“What a charming scene, my dear. I do hope I’m not interrupting.”
The oily tones that snaked into her moment of silence from behind her stiffened her back and iced her blood. It was a voice from her nightmares, one whose power she thought she’d taken away. She realized suddenly how wrong she was about that as Tyler looked over her shoulder.
She knew who he saw.
“Can I help you?” Tyler snapped, placing a hand on her shoulder to hold her still, keeping her back to the room.
At Your Service (Silhouette Desire) Page 16