by Evie Nichole
“Boys,” Joe said gruffly as he approached. “Where are the kids?”
“Saddling up with Aria and Maggie in the barn,” Darren offered. “Maggie’s been learning some of this stuff from Bella and Jaeger. She’s never ridden before. At least not much beyond those nose to tail trail rides at a rental place.”
“Good for her to learn then if she wants to be part of a ranching family.” The arrogance in Joe’s tone made Met want to roll his eyes.
Met was so sick of his father’s tendency to wax poetic about what it meant to be part of a “ranching family.” So far, in Met’s opinion, it meant that you ignored propriety and worried about the bottom line in between binge drinking and screwing around with as many women as possible.
“I saw your article in both the Front Range Wayfarer and the Denver Magazine.” Joe was nodding, but Met felt completely at a loss. What article? What was his father talking about? Then Joe enlightened him, and Met felt even worse. “They just came out last night. Well, the one in the Denver Magazine was in the Wednesday edition. The Front Range Wayfarer was just today. Your mother picked it up on the newsstand on our way out here since you were on the cover.”
Darren swung around to stare at Met. “You didn’t say you were going to be on the cover.”
“I didn’t know.” Met wondered why Daphne hadn’t at least texted to tell him when the article was being released. “I didn’t even know that the whole thing was done.”
“Well, it did the trick, I’m sure.” Joe snorted and shook his head. “Much better than that last bit of trash you managed to have pinned on your ass. I can’t believe the Abernathy Firm managed to turn that around and make you smell like roses after that piece in the Tattler.”
“Excuse me?” Met had no idea what his father was babbling about, but he intended to get to the bottom of it. “What are you blathering on about? I have no clue what you’re yakking about, and it’s starting to really piss me off.”
“You don’t, huh?” Joe started sniggering. “Well, isn’t that just perfect timing, then.”
“Joseph Hernandez, stop being such a bastard.” Audrey smacked Joe in the belly as she walked by. Then she dug in her messenger bag and pulled out a small newspaper Met had never seen before. “Here, sweetie, this is what came out on Monday morning.”
“What the hell?” Met groaned as he realized that Justin Sorenson’s pictures were right there on the cover of this gossip rag for the world to see. “This is crap! It’s not even true!”
Darren cleared his throat. He’d been looking over Met’s shoulder long enough to read the bit about Met drinking until he nearly passed out at Cody’s. “Actually, this is truth mixed with some fiction, which is the easiest form of lying to sell because it’s not all lies. You did almost pass out at Cody’s.”
“I did not!” Met protested. “I was nowhere near passing out. I was still coherent enough to tell you that I was about to puke, wasn’t I?”
“Wow. That is a really great defense,” Laredo said sarcastically. “I think the point we’re trying to make is that your behavior was absolutely the opposite of what it was supposed to be.”
“Got it.”
“Which is why this one makes me just so happy I could cry!” Audrey gushed. “I had no idea you were so sensitive!”
“Excuse me?” Met was pretty sure he’d heard her wrong. He had not been described as sensitive one time before in his life. He had heard the word insensitive plenty of times over the years, but sensitivity was not his thing. “And I had no idea that Widowmaker horse was one of Cal’s! Can you imagine? That must have been so hard for you!” Audrey actually swiped at a tear in the corner of her eye.
Meanwhile, Met thought it was quite possible that he was going to pass out right here and now without even one drop of alcohol in his system. Had his mother just talked about Widowmaker? Had she just said that she had no idea Widowmaker had been one of Cal’s horses? Had she actually just talked about his last ride? Or at least the emotional impact behind it? This was bad. This was very, very bad.
“Mom, where are you getting this from?” Met tried not to panic.
His mother pulled a big glossy magazine from her bag. It was today’s edition of the Front Range Wayfarer. The front cover was a shot of Met and Widowmaker. The two of them had their backs to the camera—so to speak. They were looking over their shoulder at the photographer. Widowmaker’s thick black tail hung almost all the way to the ground, and he was practically resting his head on Met’s shoulder. The scenery of the ranch range behind them was dramatic. The front range mountains themselves were the starting backdrop for a spread of green grass and a section of fence sporting the HLC brand etched right into the old wood.
The shot was rustic. It was dramatic. The color was good. And even Met had to admit that this Carson guy was a genius with a camera. But it was the headline on the sidebar of the magazine that made Met want to find the nearest hole and just hide for the rest of his life.
“The wounded man comes home to rest,” Audrey whispered to Met. “It’s just so poetic and so true, you know? I knew you were hurting, but the struggle with the alcohol is just such a wonderful touch. I know that people will absolutely forgive this other nonsense after they read about you and this horse.”
“Fuck. Me.” They were the only words that Met could get out of his mouth before turning to put a few yards between himself and his family.
Fortunately, now was about the time that Bella and Jaeger had appeared from the barn with their horses. The family immediately crowded around the two youngsters as they prepared to ride. Met watched from the opposite side of the ring as his niece and nephew walked their horses to the mounting block and got on.
Met hadn’t ridden a horse that did not want to buck him off in something like five or six years. When he had first started on the rodeo circuit, he’d ridden shifts as a pickup man for the bull riding. Once he had stopped doing that, he had pretty much stopped sitting in a saddle unless it was strapped to a bronc that wanted him dead in the dirt.
It was odd to see those two little kids so excited to get up on their horses. Bella was up and had Smokey headed toward the rail in just a few minutes. She was confident, calm, and absolutely in control of that horse. She reminded Met strongly of Jesse. As a girl, Jesse had possessed the same confidence on a horse. It was almost as if she’d been born there.
Jaeger was a little more cautious but no less enthusiastic. His little cowboy boots were practically sticking out both sides of his horse, the pony was so fat. But he got that horse going with almost no help from Aria or Maggie. Jaeger sent his little sorrel mount after Bella’s grey mare, and the two of them immediately started their lesson.
It was a relief to know that there were no eyes on him right now. Met felt utterly exposed. How could Daphne have allowed that? He hadn’t read the article yet, but he was pretty sure from the headline and from his mother’s comments that Carson had used information in the article that hadn’t been given to him by Met. Met had not discussed about his previous relationship with Widowmaker. He had not talked about his alcohol problems or the fact that his injuries were so extensive that he would be lucky to ever sit in a regular saddle again, much less ride a bronc. Met hadn’t given Carson that information, and that meant that Daphne had done it for him.
Met had trusted her. He had told her things that he had never told anyone else. She had guessed things about him. She had inferred them and understood them and even been allowed to ask questions and make assumptions that Met would never have allowed from another person.
He felt used. He felt betrayed. He felt as though the only reason she had slept with him and talked with him and gotten to know him was so she could do her job more appropriately. Had any of it been real? Had it all just been part of the playacting that she’d done so she could get a gold star from her company?
Pulling out his phone, Met opened a text box and tried to decide what to say. There were no words that would accurately tell her how horrible he
felt right now. There was nothing that he could say to make her understand how exposed and vulnerable she’d left him by showing the whole world he was riddled with scars and soft spots. She had left him naked in front of the entire Denver region, and now she didn’t even have the good grace to call him back or return a message? Maybe he’d been totally wrong about her. Maybe nothing had happened between them. Maybe it had been all sex and that was all. And maybe it was time for him to accept that and just be done with it and with her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It had been days since Daphne had heard from Demetrio Hernandez, but maybe that was for the best. Met hadn’t been what he pretended to be. That much had been obvious from the multiple and sordid reports of his drunken carousing at Cody’s Bar and Grill.
The article was out. In fact, it was sitting open on the desk in front of her. Daphne had been amusing herself for the last hour or more by staring at the full color photograph of Met Hernandez. It was almost as if Carson had been trying to make one of those old magazine pin-ups from a teeny bopper magazine from the eighties. In fact, Daphne figured it was totally possible to rip out the full page photos of Met Hernandez and pin them up on a wall.
Of course, that was providing you could stand his lying and two-faced bullshit in your life. She was done with that. She was done with men who claimed they didn’t have a drinking problem, but did. She was done with guys who were secretly malignant narcissists and claimed to be wonderful lovers. And she was most certainly done with men who masqueraded as one thing while secretly knowing that they were another. And that pretty much made her done with men.
“Daphne?”
There was a knock at her office door. Daphne stood up to go and answer. She wasn’t all too surprised when Mr. Abernathy walked into her office and offered her a big, broad smile. She waved him to a seat on the couch opposite her desk before taking her place in her chair once again.
“I just wanted to stop by in person to tell you once again how proud I am of this work that you did,” Abernathy gushed. The man was all smiles. His bristly gray hair was neatly combed, and he looked as though he had just come from the barbershop. “I don’t think we could have asked for things to go better. I know that the article in the Tattler was the beginning of the week, but this beautiful layout in two different prime publications was the end of the week, and they almost worked better together. Your disaster management skills are unmatched, young lady. They truly are.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“That’s actually what I want to talk to you about a little more.” Abernathy shifted in his seat and crossed his legs. Then he uncrossed his legs and tried to readjust his suit pants. He looked very nervous. Why? Was he about to fire her? This was bad. Or at least she had a bad feeling about it.
“What’s going on?” Daphne prompted. “You’re acting like you do when you have to fire someone.”
“Well, that’s sort of the problem,” Abernathy blurted out. “We’ve had an official complaint from the better business bureau and the department of labor filed by Justin Sorenson.”
“I see.” She didn’t see. Not at all. But at this point, what could she do? “And what were these complaints regarding?”
“Sexual harassment.” Now Abernathy looked apologetic. “Justin is alleging that you were harassing him and that he got fired because he refused to sleep with you.”
Daphne didn’t say anything because she just didn’t have the words. She was trying to process what Abernathy had just said because her brain kept telling her that she wasn’t hearing the man correctly.
“I’m sorry,” Daphne said with barely concealed frustration. “Did you say that he filed a complaint against me because I tried to get him to sleep with me and he wouldn’t?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Abernathy cleared his throat. He was now rubbing his palms on the tops of his thighs as though he intended to wear a hole in his slacks. “As I said, we don’t quite know what to do.”
“What does he want you to do?” Daphne could see her career spinning slowly around and around the toilet bowl. Soon enough, it would go down the drain so quietly that it would be like she’d never even had a promising career to begin with.
“He wants us to hire him back.”
“And fire me?”
“On, no.” Abernathy was very adamant about this. “He wants a return to the status quo.”
“I see.” She nodded and then gestured to Abernathy. “Then, I guess you need to hire him back.”
“What?”
“I’ll quit.”
“No!” Abernathy was waving his hands in front of his face. “You can’t quit!”
“But I would have to,” she said dully. “Don’t you see? He wants a return to the time when he could harass me on a regular basis without putting himself out. It was much easier to harass me here in the building. And now that he’ll have the knowledge that he can’t be prosecuted or even reprimanded for anything he does, that man will be absolutely unhinged. If I were you, I would be warning the other people in this building that there is a predator on the loose.”
“Don’t say that!” Abernathy protested. He was wringing his hands together now, and Daphne was suddenly struck by the fact that the public relations expert had no idea how to handle this PR problem.
“What you need to do is to hire him back and set some kind of trap for him,” Daphne suggested. “Put him in a situation where you know he’s going to snap, and then just wait around to document the crap out of it when it happens.”
“Do you really think so?”
“You just said disaster management was my thing, right?” She was so disgusted by this that she felt sick to her stomach. “So, trust me when I say that I really think so.”
“That’s okay.” Daphne realized all of a sudden that it really was. She was fine with this. “I’ll find another job. As long as you’re willing to give me a good recommendation, of course.”
“Of course.” He looked sick to his stomach. “This isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” she retorted. “Why would this be any different?”
How could this grown man sit here and tell her that he was treating her unfairly and yet not do anything about it? Daphne stood up from her chair and turned her back on Mr. Abernathy. She stared around at the familiar features of her office. It hadn’t been very long ago that she had been offered the chance to work as a senior account representative. Perhaps three years had passed. It might seem like a long time, but considering she had expected to be working in this office for this company until she retired at sixty-five or some other incomprehensible age, this was a shock.
“I should have stayed in the junior rep department,” she murmured to nobody in particular. “I bet he wouldn’t have been interested in me if I had stayed in the pool with everyone else.”
The junior account reps all shared a huge room on the opposite end of this floor. Their desks were set up to look like what Daphne often thought of as an office dormitory. All lined up in a row with phones and file cabinets, laptops, paper, pens, and basically everything you needed to do your job in a communal sort of pile.
Daphne turned to face Mr. Abernathy once again. “Who’s getting my office?”
Of course, this was actually a question about whom he was promoting into her job position. The odd thing was that he looked guilty. He turned his head and could not meet her gaze as he cleared his throat. What was the big secret? Had Justin had the balls to make demands? And why was he having such an easy time manipulating the whole company?
“Carolina Aguilar will take over your position and your office.” Abernathy’s announcement was delivered in a flat, almost monotone voice. He didn’t sound particularly thrilled.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Daphne had a mental image of Carolina Aguilar. It was from the other night at the Italian restaurant. The woman had been particularly unsupportive in her own rude way. Or maybe she’d just been rude and it felt unsupportive because of the situation. Regardless, there had
been something very off about the woman, and now she was getting promoted right on top of Daphne? This was wrong. It was all wrong!
“Mr. Abernathy, I’m confused.” Of course Daphne was confused, but she was also taking a shot in the dark here, so she felt the urge to cross her fingers in hopes that she wasn’t way off base. “Does Carolina have seniority?”
“Well, no.” He folded his hands tightly in his lap.
Daphne could have sworn the man wanted to leap up and start pacing or something, but he forced himself to sit still. Why? Did he believe it made him seem firmer in his opinions? How silly. She raised her eyebrows expectantly. This man was supposed to be her boss. Right now, she was treating him like some lowly probationary employee, and she didn’t care one bit.
“Carolina is very skilled.”
“Uh huh.” Daphne folded her arms over her chest. “And let me guess. She’s promised you that she can control Justin. She has something on him. Or does she have something on you? There’s a lot of pushing people around going on right now, and I’m really surprised that you’re tolerating it.”
He stood up and straightened the lapels of his impeccable suit. “What do you mean? I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but you’re completely off base. There’s nothing untoward going on here.”
“Oh, really?” Daphne said flatly. “You just told me that I’m essentially getting let go. Not that you’re actually going to fire me but that you’re rehiring Justin Sorenson even though you were the one insistent on firing him less than a week ago. Now you’ve changed your mind and squeezed me out intentionally in the hopes that I would just resign and go elsewhere. Not only that, but you already have someone lined up to take my job! And that was after you came to my office to compliment me on the work that I did on the Hernandez account!” Daphne pointed at Abernathy and did not even bother to try and hide her anger. “So, I’ll ask you again, Thomas Abernathy. What do they have on you?”