A Clandestine Corporate Affair

by Michelle Celmer

  She followed him. “No! You are not going to do this to me again, damn it!”

  He pulled the front door open and she hurled herself at it, slamming it shut again.

  “We need to talk about this, Nathan.”

  He gazed down at her, looking tired. Tired and resigned. Just the way he’d looked the last time, and she knew in that instant that he wouldn’t be changing his mind. “There’s nothing to say.”

  The ache in her heart was so intense she winced. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “I thought I’d changed. I was wrong.”

  “What about Max? He needs you.”

  He shook his head. “He’s better off without me.”

  He put his hand on the doorknob, but he wouldn’t look at her. She could stand there blocking the door until hell froze over, but he was still going to leave. He was already long gone. Walking out the door was just a formality now.

  She moved away from the door and he pulled it open. He had one foot on the porch when she blurted out, “If you leave, this is it. I’m not giving you another chance. Not with me or Max. Walk out that door and you’re out of his life forever.”

  He paused, half in, half out of her life, and a kernel of hope bloomed in her chest. Maybe faced with the reality of losing them permanently would shake some sense into him.

  He turned, looked her in the eye, and her heart started to beat wildly.

  Please, please don’t do this.

  “I’m sorry, Ana,” he said, then he stepped out the door and was gone.

  After he left Ana’s condo that night, Nathan drove around for hours. He knew he should go home, but his apartment just wasn’t home any longer. He finally rented a hotel room and slept there, and that was where he’d been staying for the past week. And as for work, he’d been functioning on autopilot.

  He missed Ana and Max. He hadn’t even known it was possible to miss someone as much as he missed them. There was a gaping hole in his heart, in his soul, and the essence of who he was, and the desire to live the life he’d worked so hard building, was slowly leaking out. Before long, there would be nothing left but an empty shell. Without them in his life, he felt, what was the point?

  He hadn’t talked to his brother since the day of their confrontation, but Wednesday morning Jordan knocked on Nathan’s office door. Nathan should have told him to get lost, but as Jordan had pointed out, this was business. Nothing personal. When they were at the office he had no choice but to talk to him.

  “Have you got a minute?” Jordan asked.

  Nathan gestured him inside.

  “So, the board meeting is this afternoon,” Jordan said, as if Nathan wasn’t already well aware of that fact.

  “So it is,” he said.

  “You should know that I had planned to go to the board and tell them about you and Ana.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Well, I changed my mind. I’m not going to do it.”

  “Am I supposed to thank you?”

  “No. I just thought you would want to know.”

  “It wouldn’t matter now anyway. We split up a week ago.”

  He looked truly taken aback. “You split up? Why?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Nathan, if it’s because of what I said—”

  “When you insinuated the woman I love is a slut?”

  Jordan actually looked remorseful. “I was just trying to ruffle your feathers. I didn’t think you would take me seriously.”

  “Then you’ll be relieved to know that it has nothing to do with that.”

  “Damn, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. What about Max?”

  “I’m not seeing Max either.”

  “What? Is she keeping him from you?”

  “It was my own choice.”

  “Are you crazy? You love that kid. And he adores you. I’ve never seen you so happy.”

  “It’s the only way I can keep them safe.”

  “From what?”

  “Me. Like you said, I’m just like him.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Nathan, those were just words said in the heat of the moment. I was trying to piss you off, trying to make you hit me.”

  Huh? “You wanted me to hit you?”

  “Because I knew it would make you feel lousy when you did. Because…” He drew in a deep breath and blew it out. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the enormous chip I’ve been carrying around on my shoulder for the past twenty or so years.”

  “You resent me. Jordan, I took—”

  “You took care of me, I know. You defended me against the whole damned world. Did it ever occur to you to let me defend myself or, instead of fighting my battles for me, teaching me how to fight them? Maybe I didn’t need you to be my damned savior.”

  His words stunned Nathan. All these years he assumed he was doing his brother a favor by protecting him. Had he actually done more harm than good? “I guess, since I was older, I considered it my responsibility to take care of you.”

  “Do you have any idea how guilty I used to feel when Dad would whale on you for something I did? After a while I started to resent you for it, for thinking I was too weak to take care of myself. Then it got to the point when I actually enjoyed getting you in trouble, watching you take the knocks for things I did. I wanted you to feel as weak and as small as I did.”

  “Jordan, I was only trying to help. I had no idea I was making you feel that way.”

  Jordan shrugged. “So, now you know. And this thing with Ana and Max, you don’t want to screw the pooch on this one. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

  “I would regret it a lot more if I hurt them.”

  “You’re not going to hurt them. Not physically anyway. Over the years I’ve given you a hundred reasons to clean my clock, and look how long it took for you to actually take a swing at me. And the expression on your face afterward…” Jordan laughed and shook his head. “You looked like you backed over a puppy with your car. That alone was worth the sore jaw.”

  Nathan grinned for the first time in a week. “I really looked that bad?”

  “It was freaking awesome. And it astounds me that after all the years, and all the bullshit, you don’t hate my guts. No matter how hard I push you, how big of a jerk I am, you’re still there for me. If I called you at 3:00 a.m. from some bar, too wasted to drive, and said I needed a ride, you would drop everything and pick me up.” He paused, then said, “Which I guess in a way makes you the weak one, not me.”

  “Because if I called you for a ride in the middle of the night…?”

  “I’d tell you to call a damn cab, then I’d roll over and go back to sleep.”

  No, he wouldn’t. Nathan didn’t know how he knew. He just did. If Jordan didn’t care about him, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. Maybe there was hope for them yet.

  “Don’t think this changes anything,” Jordan said. “When it comes to the CEO position I’m going to leave you in the dust. Then I’ll be your boss. Think how much fun that will be.”

  “You have to get through me first.”

  Jordan grinned, turned and walked out of Nathan’s office.

  Nathan sat there for a minute, a little stunned, trying to process what had just happened, what had been resolved, and trying to figure out what it meant, but it felt as if the walls were closing in on him. He needed to get out of here. He needed fresh air, a chance to clear his head and really think.

  He grabbed his coat and headed out of his office, telling his secretary to cancel all his appointments and that he would be back later that day.

  Maybe. The truth was, he didn’t know where he was going or how long he would be there. The way he was feeling, he could get in the car, pick a direction and never look back.

  Instead, after driving in circles for a while, he found himself in the last place he’d ever expected to be. His father’s house.

  Sixteen

  The Everette family estate looked exactly as it had the l
ast time Nathan was there ten years ago, and ten years before that. In his entire life he didn’t think it had changed much.

  Maybe that should have been a comfort, but it wasn’t.

  He had no idea why he was here or what he planned to do, but suddenly he was out of the car and walking up to the porch. It was as if he was following some predetermined flight plan he had absolutely no control over.

  He climbed the front steps and stopped at the door, raising his hand to knock. Then he dropped it back down to his side.

  What the hell was he doing? There was a damned good reason he’d spent the last ten years avoiding this place. Avoiding his father. This wouldn’t solve anything.

  He turned to leave, stopping as his foot hit the first step, unable to go any farther. Damn it. Somehow he knew that until he did this, until he faced his father, he wouldn’t be able to move on with his life. He would be caught in a perpetual cycle of self-doubt from which he might never break free. He needed to do this for himself, and for Max.

  Before he could change his mind, he walked back to the door and rapped hard. Besides, what were the odds that he would be home at two in the afternoon anyway?

  The housekeeper opened the door. When she saw who was standing there, she slapped a hand to her bosom, which along with her middle seemed to have expanded over the years, and her hair was more silver than the pale blond it used to be. “Nathan! My goodness, it’s been years!”

  “Hi, Sylvia. Is my father by any chance home?”

  “As a matter of fact he is. He’s just getting over a cold, so he’s working from home today.”

  Dumb fricking luck. “Can you tell him I’m here?”

  “Of course! Come on inside. Can I take your coat?”

  “I can’t stay long.”

  “Well, I’ll go get him then.”

  She hurried off in the direction of the study while Nathan looked around. Unlike the outside, someone had given the interior a major overhaul. The gaudy and nauseating pastels his mother had been so fond of had been replaced with a more Southwestern feel. Probably one of his father’s multiple wives made the change.

  “Nathan! What a surprise!”

  He turned to see his father walking toward him, and blinked with surprise. For some reason he expected him to look exactly as he had the last time he’d seen him. And though only ten years had passed it looked as though he had aged double that. His hair was more salt than pepper and his face was a roadmap of lines and wrinkles. He was the same height he’d always been, but he seemed smaller somehow, a scaled-down version of his former self. In slacks, a button-down plaid shirt and a pullover sweater, he looked more like Mister Rogers than the monster Nathan remembered.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “I would shake your hand but I’m just getting over a terrible cold. I wouldn’t want to risk passing my germs along to you.”

  “I appreciate that.” Besides, he wasn’t here to exchange pleasantries.

  “Why don’t we sit in my study? Can I get you a drink?”

  “I can’t stay long.”

  “Your brother tells me you’re both competing for the CEO position at Western Oil.”

  That shouldn’t have raised his hackles, but it did. “I didn’t come here to talk about Jordan,” he snapped.

  His father shrank back visibly. He nodded and stuck his hands in his pants pockets. “Okay, what did you come here for?”

  He honestly had no clue. “This was a bad idea,” he said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  He turned to leave, and got to the door before he realized that he couldn’t go, not until he had some answers. He turned back to his father. “I have a son.”

  His father blinked with surprise. “I—I didn’t know. How old is he?”

  “Nine months. His name is Max.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “He’s a great kid. He looks a lot like me, but he has his mother’s eyes. And he has the Everette birthmark.” A ball of emotion rolled up into his throat. “He’s beautiful and smart and I love him more than life itself, and I’m probably never going to see him again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m so damned afraid that I’m going to do to him what you did to me.” He hadn’t expected to blurt that out, and clearly his father hadn’t, either. There was nothing like getting right to the point.

  “Why don’t you come in and sit down?” his father said.

  “I don’t want to sit down. I just want to know why. Why did you do it? Tell me why so I can figure out how to be different.”

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t regret the way I treated you and your brother. I know I wasn’t a great father.”

  “That does not help me.”

  His father shrugged. “I guess…it was the way I was raised. It’s all I knew.”

  Great. So, it was some twisted family tradition. That was just swell. “So in other words, I’m screwed.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “No. You have a choice. Just like I did. I chose not to change. I spent twenty miserable years with a woman I loved more than life itself, and all she wanted from me was my name and as much of my money as she could get her greedy hands on. I was bitter and heartbroken, and instead of taking it out on the person who deserved it, I took it out on my kids.”

  “You actually loved her?” Somehow he found that hard to believe. She was just so…unlovable. Stunningly beautiful, yes, but cold and selfish.

  “Of course I loved her. Why did you think I married her?”

  “Because she was pregnant.”

  “She didn’t find out she was pregnant until after we were engaged. Almost two months, if memory serves.”

  Nathan shook his head. “That can’t be right. I heard grandmother and Aunt Caroline talking when I was a kid. They said you had to get married.”

  “Your grandmother never liked your mom. She thought she was beneath the Everette name. She was furious when she found out that I proposed. I think she had herself convinced that I would come to my senses and break the engagement, so when your mom got pregnant, I guess in her own twisted way, your grandmother probably thought we had to get married.”

  Nathan was beginning to think that everything he knew about his life was wrong. Or at the very least grossly misinterpreted. There was only one thing that didn’t make sense…

  “You said it’s the way you were raised, but didn’t your father die when you were four years old?”

  “I don’t really remember him, but as far as I know, my father never laid a hand on me.”

  It took a second for the meaning of his words to sink in. “Are you saying Grandmother…”

  “She looked harmless, but that woman was mean as a snake.”

  Damn. It was bad enough for a boy to be bullied by his father, but coming from his mother it had to be even more humiliating and degrading. Then to be married to a woman he loved who didn’t love him back. Picking on his sons, who were too young to defend themselves, must have made him feel empowered.

  “Son, the bottom line is that your grandmother was a very unhappy person, and so was I. I was a miserable excuse for a father. And nowhere does it say that you’re destined to be just like me. You can be whatever kind of father you want to be. You make the choice.”

  If it was his choice, then he chose to be different. And if he made mistakes, they would be his own, and hopefully he would learn from them along the way.

  “I have to go,” he told his father.

  He nodded, but he looked…sad. And for a second Nathan actually felt sorry for him. Which beat the hell out of hating him.

  “Maybe you could stop by again sometime,” he said. “I don’t know if your brother told you, but I’m getting married. Again.”

  “He mentioned it.”

  He shrugged. “Who knows, maybe this one will stick.”

  “Maybe I could bring Max by to see you some time.”

  “Does that mean you will be seeing him again?”

  If Ana would let him. And e
ven if she didn’t, being in his son’s life was something he considered worth fighting for.

  But before he fought that battle, he had a board meeting to crash.

  “Okay,” Beth said, pressing the End button on her cell phone and jotting down a date and time in her daily planner. She set the book on the coffee table and sank back into the couch. “I have an appointment with the marriage counselor next Monday at 7:00 p.m. I made it later just in case Leo decides to come with me.”

  But they both knew he wouldn’t. At least not yet. After finding a hotel room charge on Leo’s credit card bill, from two days after New Year’s, Beth finally took a stand. She insisted they go into counseling, and when he refused, she decided to go alone.

  It was definitely a start.

  Ana put her hand on Beth’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “I’m very proud of you. This is a huge step.”

  “One that I wish my husband was making with me. But if he doesn’t love me enough to try to save our marriage, maybe it isn’t worth saving.” Tears welled in her eyes, but she took a deep breath and blinked them back. “But I’m going to get through it.” She put her hand over Ana’s. “We both are.”

  Yeah, except Nathan did love her, and he loved Max, and he wanted to be with them, but he was just being a big idiot. And she was an idiot for believing him when he said he wouldn’t hurt her. But never again. He’d had his chance and he blew it. A few days ago she might have taken him back. She had still been in the mourning stage, crying every time she thought about him, but now she was angry—and boy, was she angry—and if he dared show up at her door, she was going to be the one gunning to “hurt” someone.

  “I should probably pick Piper up from the babysitter’s and get home to make dinner,” Beth said. “Or better yet, maybe I’ll just grab something on the way home. Maybe Thai or sushi, Leo’s least favorites.”

  The doorbell rang and Ana’s heart dropped into her knees. The way it had every time the doorbell rang this past week. But it wasn’t going to be Nathan. It never was. She didn’t want to see him even if it was, but it was just an automatic reaction, like Pavlov’s dog.

  “I better get that,” she said, pushing herself up from the couch, deliberately not looking out the window before she pulled the door open.