Myself (Selfish Series, #2)

by Shantel Tessier

  “Yet you don’t answer or call her back?” he asks.

  She shakes her head once. “We got into it.”

  He nods. “She filled me in on your lunch the other day.”

  She looks up at him through her lashes but says nothing. What is there to say? Her mother was a total bitch. “I want you to come by my office tomorrow, Becca,” he says with no room to argue.

  “Sir?” she asks hesitantly.

  “Your mother also informed me about your plans for the future.”

  At those words, she lifts her chin and pulls her shoulders back. I smile at her. She believes in her plans. And so do I. “And you want me to come to a meeting to hear about how stupid it is?” She shakes her head. “You can save that speech, Dad.”

  He smiles at her as if he’s proud. “No, I want to hear more about it. I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  Her eyes light up, and she smiles excitedly. “You do?”

  “Absolutely,” he says with a nod. Then he looks at me. “But right now, I need to talk business with Mr. Barnett ...” He lets his words hang in the air, and it takes her a few seconds to understand them.

  “Oh, of course.” She walks over to me and gives me an awkward hug. “I’ll uh, see you later,” she whispers and then goes to walk out.

  I open my drawer and grab my keys out of it then walk after her. “Becca?” I call out, and she stops before opening my office door. “Here.” I hand them to her.

  “I can’t take your car,” she says, shaking her head quickly and pulling her hand back from me.

  “Yes, you can,” I assure her.

  She goes to open her mouth to argue, but her father clears his throat. He has business he wants to discuss, and he doesn’t like to wait. She finally closes her hand around them and says thanks before walking out.

  I walk back over to my seat, straightening my suit jacket, and sit down. “Fredrick said they suspect another two weeks, possibly three—”

  “So you’re dating my daughter?” he interrupts me.

  “Yes, sir,” I say without hesitation. “We’re together.”

  “Together?” he repeats the word slowly.

  I feel like I’m back in high school. You know when you put a label on your relationship. It sounds so childish. But I need him to understand where I’m at with his daughter. “We have been together ever since she moved back here. And it’s serious,” I add.

  “That was what? Not even a week ago.” Four days actually, but I don’t tell him that. “How serious can it be?”

  “I love her,” I say simply. “And she ...”

  “Loves you,” he finishes. I nod. “Again, how can it be that serious so soon?” he asks.

  This is where it’s going to get complicated. This is where he could think I took advantage of his underage daughter. “It’s not what you think, sir,” I decide to say.

  He crosses his arms over his chest. “And what is it I’m thinking?”

  All of a sudden, my tie seems too tight. I clear my throat. “We saw each other before she left for Seattle.” He lifts a brow. “I won’t go into details, but I assure you I loved her then too.” It’s hard to explain to a man how you feel about his daughter when he doesn’t know the details of how you got to that point. Some things you just have to keep to yourself. And he’ll just have to understand that.

  After a long moment of silence he asks, “Does Ryder know?”

  I shake my head. “She doesn’t want him to know.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  “She’s just not ready to tell him.” Is all I’m going to say about that.

  “You’re okay with that?” he asks curiously. “Keeping this big of a secret from your best friend?”

  Not really, but I say, “For now.”

  “What happened with her and Conner?” he questions, uncrossing his arms while he walks around the chair and sits down. He plans to stay a while. Just my luck.

  I grind my teeth. “He’s gone.”

  “I got that. But how did that happen?”

  I lean forward and place my forearms on my desk. Now, this part of the story I’m willing to tell him. “I can tell you, but I need your full discretion.” I’m not gonna beat around the bush with this man. He does have the potential to fuck with what I have with Becca, and I do work with him sometimes. Not saying I wouldn’t pick her over my business, because I would in a heartbeat, but that also shows how vulnerable she makes me.

  He nods. “You have it.” And I believe him. Timothy isn’t the kind of guy who fucks around, not on something like this. A man like him has more secrets than most, and he’ll take them to his grave.

  “He broke up with her while we were in Panama. I found him afterward in the hotel bar already hitting on another woman. I dragged him to the bathroom and beat his ass.” Might as well let him know what I did. I’m sure his wife already does. Conner is a little bitch, and he wants others to feel sorry for him. He probably ran to Tim’s wife crying that I touched him.

  “He’s had that coming,” he says, rubbing his face as if visualizing it.

  “Did you know about it?” I come out and ask.

  He frowns. “How would I know about it? I don’t talk to Conner.” He lifts his right foot and places it on his left knee. “I don’t have any need for a man like that.”

  “Just curious,” I say with a shrug. Why would his wife not tell him? It would just give her one more reason to hate me. Maybe Conner didn’t tell her.

  His eyes narrow on me. “No, you weren’t. What do you have to say, Jaycent?”

  Tim never was a bullshitter. It was always hard to talk our way out of trouble when Ryder and I were younger. We could bullshit our way out of anything with my dad, but not with Ryder’s.

  “Well, I got some information out of him.”

  His brows pull together. “What kind of information?”

  I take a deep breath and let it go. “He told me that your wife had been paying him to be with Becca.”

  He shoots to his feet. “She what?” His choice of words hurt. There’s no look of doubt on his face, just pure rage. He knows what she is capable of.

  “He told me that he had planned to dump her, and your wife came to him and offered him money if he would go with her to Seattle.”

  He shakes his head, and his jaw tightens. “I fought with that woman over Becca going to Seattle. I told her it was stupid to ship her across the country when she could get the same education right here!”

  “He said she didn’t want her staying in New York because of me.”

  “You?” he asks, starting to pace back and forth.

  I nod. “She told Conner that she didn’t want her around me. That she knew Becca loved me, and there was no way ...”

  “She wasn’t gonna let her be with you,” he states, coming to a stop and looking at me. He tilts his head to the side. “She wanted her gone because of you.” I swallow nervously. He’s gonna blame this all on me. It’s my fault, after all.

  I slowly stand. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Why? Because my wife would rather pay a man than have her end up with you?” he asks with bite.

  I can’t help but ask how he would have reacted four years ago if he knew a twenty-five-year-old was in love with his eighteen-year-old daughter. “Is she much better than you?”

  His eyes narrow on mine. “What does that mean?” he demands.

  “I feel as if you would have paid me to walk away,” I say truthfully. Timothy O’Kane is a shark in these waters. He pays people off to get what he wants and buries those who refuse to take the money.

  “I never said that,” he growls and then lets out a long breath. “I know you’re a good guy, Jaycent.”

  “But ...” I add.

  He looks me in the eyes. “But you were too old for her then, and you’re too old for her now.” I don’t argue because her age has always been a huge factor. “But I never liked Conner,” he spits out. “That spineless weasel.” He fists his hands down by his sides. “A
nd my daughter is an adult now and can make her own decisions. Plus, anyone is better than he is.”

  “Thanks,” I say dryly.

  He looks away, and his eyes find the picture I have sitting on my desk. It’s of me, my mother, father, and sister. I don’t remember the picture being taken, but I had to have been seven, maybe eight. My parents had taken me and my sister to Disney World. We stand in the middle of a walkway; strangers cover the background of the picture, and the tall castle towers back in the distance. I’m on my father’s shoulders with my hands in the air, a huge smile on my face, and Mickey Mouse ears on my head. My mother’s left arm is around my father’s waist, and the other is holding my sister’s hand. We’re all smiling at the camera. My chest tightens, and I look away from it.

  “She just didn’t want Becca to have what she wanted,” he says softly.

  I look at him, and he pulls his eyes away from the picture and meets mine. “What does that mean?” I ask slowly.

  He looks back down at the picture. “You look just like him.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat but ask, needing him to say it. The words that I haven’t heard in so long. “What?”

  “Your father,” he says matter-of-factly, and that lump in my throat gets bigger. “She sees him when she looks at you and doesn’t want her daughter to have what she wanted.” I don’t say a word. I can’t. The lump has grown to the point of suffocation. He sighs. “I know that my wife slept with your father.”

  The words don’t surprise me because I knew this, but the fact that he does shocks me. I still don’t say a word, but my face must portray my surprise. “What? You thought I didn’t know?” He shakes his head. “Just because I’m not around doesn’t mean I’m blind.” My chest tightens at his confession. “What does surprise me is that you know.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. O’Kane ...”

  He waves off my apology. “It wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t your father’s either. I blame my wife. She took advantage of him. After your mother had passed, he wasn’t the same.” I nod my head at that. None of us were the same. “But what I can’t forgive is her using him.”

  “How did you know?” I ask, clearing my throat.

  “Your father told me,” he says simply. “He came to me.” He lets out a long breath. “He was a great friend and ashamed of his mistake; he asked for forgiveness.”

  “And?” I almost choke on the single word.

  “It was never a question,” he says, sitting back down slowly.

  I sit down as well ‘cause my legs are having a hard time holding me up. I place my elbow on the desk and rub my eye. How are we even having this conversation?

  “You knew about it.” It’s not a question, but I nod.

  “I had gone to my parents’ house to check on my father. You were right; he wasn’t the same after my mother passed ...” The toll of having to watch my mother die was hard on all of us, but he just crumbled. Like a building he had once designed. Watching it fall to the ground and blanketing the city in nothing but dust. He never was able to see clearly again. “I heard him in the kitchen.” I swallow not able to look him in the eyes. “I walked in to see a naked woman. I had spun back around before I could see who it was and excused myself. I ran out of the house but came to a stop when I saw the car in the driveway. I hadn’t noticed it before. But it was hard to miss after that. She had seen me, though. It was too late to deny it.” I was twenty-five, Becca eighteen.

  “Did she ever come to you about it?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “No. She avoided me.” He nods, and I swallow. “I should have told you, sir.”

  He waves a hand in the air. “It wasn’t your place.” He laces his fingers and places them in his lap. “Plus, do you think your father was the only man she ever crawled into bed with?” I don’t answer. “No.”

  I look down at my hands. The thing was I hadn’t thought less of my father when I saw him with a married woman. My best friend’s mother, no less. I knew he wasn’t in his right mind. I knew he was hurting, and although I know it wasn’t right, I still couldn’t bring myself to judge him. And I’m thankful for that ‘cause two years later, my sister and I lost him too.

  “Anyway,” he says, “what about Conner now?” Changing the subject as if he wasn’t just talking about his wife’s infidelity with my father.

  I’m happy to comply. “Well, I’m just guessing here, but I think your wife is still paying him because he won’t go away.”

  “What do you mean by won’t go away?”

  “He keeps texting Becca, and then last night he called her saying that he needed to come up to her apartment ‘cause he left some stuff behind in Seattle and needed to retrieve it.”

  “Please tell me Becca didn’t fall for that.” I don’t answer that. He sighs. “What happened when he got up there?”

  “He attacked Ashlyn,” I say not really giving him the truth but enough to get him to see the picture.

  “Is she okay?” he asks wide-eyed.

  I nod. “Security was called. Then Ryder had extra security brought up to guard their door. He’s not gonna get in, but I doubt your wife knows they’ve split.”

  He nods and then stands again. I stand with him this time. “I’ll take care of it.” Then he turns to walk out.

  “Mr. O’Kane?”

  He pauses and turns to face me. “Please, don’t ...”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” he assures me. “Oh, and by the way. Like I said, I spoke to Fredrick earlier on my way over here. I told him if he didn’t have it done in a week, he was fired.” And with that, he walks out.

  I fall back down into my seat and run a hand down my face. I have made a name for myself, and that name comes with contacts. I pull my cell out and dial a number for someone I haven’t spoken to in years, but I know he’ll answer. Just in case Timothy can’t fix this situation with Conner.

  It picks up after the fourth ring. “What’s up, Jaycent? It’s been a while,” the man says.

  I lean back in my seat. “It has. Still taking care of unwanted business?”

  “For the right price,” he answers, and I smile.

  “Good to hear. I could use your services ...”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BECCA

  “Are you serious?” I ask, staring up at him wide-eyed.

  Jaycent nods. “He won’t tell anyone.”

  “Of course, he will,” I say as I get up off my bed. “God, Jaycent.”

  “It wasn’t like I had a choice.” He growls. “He walked in and ....”

  “I know.” I sigh. “I just don’t want him to tell me I can’t see you.” He laughs. “Why do you find that funny?”

  “He’s not gonna say that, babe. He said you were an adult and can make your own decisions.”

  “Then why did he buy me this apartment?” I snap.

  He places his hands on my shoulders. “Give him a little credit. Please?”

  I nod as I bite my bottom lip. “Yeah, I guess so. I’m gonna see him tomorrow anyway. I’ll wait and see what he has to say then.”

  “I think you’ll be surprised.”

  “Doubtful,” I say grimly.

  He kisses me softly on the lips and smiles against them. “Don’t worry. I promise it’ll be okay.”

  I pull away and nod my head. I want to believe him. “Okay.”

  “We never got to finish our conversation earlier.”

  I swallow nervously. “Which conversation was that?”

  He steps to me. “The one where you agree to move in with me.”

  “Jayce.” I breathe. “I thought you were joking.”

  He frowns. “Why would you think that? Of course, I was being serious.” I get that tightening feeling back in my stomach at his words. I want to scream yes as I jump up and down but ... there’s always a but.

  “I’m not sure we’re ready for that,” I say, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. I’m gonna cry.

  “Becca, we’re not some couple just starting
out. I didn’t just meet you last week. I’ve known you my entire life. I’ve loved you for four years, and you’ve told me that you'd felt that way about me for longer. Why would we take it slow? You want to just date one another?” I shake my head. “You want to be mine?” I nod, and he smiles. “I want to be yours too. And this is the next step.”

  “You want to take that next step with me?” I ask as a slow smile spreads across my face.

  “Why do you sound so surprised? Like you can’t possibly think I’d want that with you?”

  I shake my head. He’s not Conner, Becca. If Jaycent tells me something, then he means it. “Okay,” I say as a smile grows across my face.

  “Okay?” he asks excitedly.

  I nod. “I’ll move in with you.”

  He lifts me up and spins me around. “You’re moving in with me.”

  “I’m not saying today,” I say, and his smile falls. “I gotta figure out my situation with the apartment and Ashlyn, but I do want to live with you, Jayce.”

  He reaches up and cups my face. “Do you have any idea how happy you make me?”

  “I hope as happy as you make me.”

  That night, we stayed at my apartment, and the following morning, I woke up with him when his alarm went off. We showered together, and then I dried my hair while he shaved. It was easy. Comfortable. I couldn’t stop thinking about what it was going to be like to do this every day but at his house. Where we didn’t have to be quiet in fear of Ashlyn or Ryder coming in at any second. It made my head spin and panties wet knowing that if I wanted to jump him on his couch or in his kitchen, nothing would stop me.

  We were about to have morning sex when his phone rang, and it was the office. He went from boyfriend to bossy businessman in a split second. And he was telling someone they’d better get an inspection before the end of the day or it was gonna be their ass. I couldn’t help but laugh as he slammed my front door shut.

  I fixed myself a second cup of coffee and had my morning phone call with Margaret, Ashlyn’s mother. Once again, she made me tear up, and I promised to visit soon. Then I was out the door and in a cab on the way to my father’s office.