by Holly Rayner
She led me into her room tonight and kicked the door closed behind us. I moved her hair off her shoulder and I put my lips against her neck. As I kissed her, I breathed in her sweet scent. I let the thought in of Grant breathing in that same scent when he cozied up with her on the couch and I felt a surge of anger course through me. Did I think she was sleeping with him? Probably not… but as long as she lived here with him, the proximity would lend itself to the possibility and I hated knowing that. I hated knowing that she either didn’t love me enough, or trust me enough to take the next step in our relationship. I hated knowing that some of her reasons for that was being reluctant to leave Grant.
“Hey,” she said. I realized I had the zipper of her dress halfway down and I had just stopped what I was doing. “Are you okay?”
I looked at her face... God, she was so beautiful. “I’m okay, baby,” I told her. Inwardly I resolved to do whatever it took to convince her that she could trust me. I wasn’t going to lose her. I didn’t just want her, I needed her.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You’re not mad at me?”
I pressed my forehead to hers. All I could see were her big, sexy green eyes as I said, “I could never be mad at you. I love you so much it hurts sometimes.”
She put her hands on the sides of my face and kissed me. With her lips still pressed against mine she said, “I love you so much too, Seth.” I loved hearing that, but I needed more. I needed her to feel safe with me… I needed to be her haven.
~
CHAPTER FOUR
~
SETH
The next morning when I woke up, Adele was gone. She’d left me a note that said, “Good morning gorgeous. I went for a run with Grant. I love you, Adele.”
The only thing about the note that really stood out to me was the part that said, “Grant.” He was like the only fly in the house, constantly buzzing around my head and no matter how hard I tried to swat him, I couldn’t. I got out of Adele’s bed and got dressed in my clothes from last night. It dawned on me that I didn’t have so much as a toothbrush here and of course she wouldn’t have invited me on her run… all I had were a pair of jeans and men’s designer shoes.
I picked up the pen that lay next to her note, holding it poised above the paper for a minute as I decided what I wanted to say. Finally, I decided that I wasn’t going to hash this out with her in a note. What I needed to do was what I’d decided last night; just continue to prove to her that she can trust me and be safe with me, above all else.
“Good morning, baby. I have to drive out and check on Dad today. I will call you later. I love you.”
I left it at that for now and headed home to the townhouse to shower. I did have to go check on Dad today. He was tough and mean but he was also depressed since he’d lost the company, and a lot of respect. He’d locked himself up in the estate and all he really ever did any more was drink. I hated him when he was drinking, but he was my father. If something happened to him, I didn’t want to have to live with the knowledge that I didn’t even try to do anything for him.
I drove out to the estate and got there right around lunch time. I let myself in the front door and made my way through the house, looking for Dad. I found him sitting at the dining room table eating his lunch. It was a huge table and I’d never realized before how lonely he looked when he sat there alone.
“Hey Dad.”
He looked at me with his always intense eyes. I remember when I was a kid those eyes could be kind and even sometimes reflected pride when they looked at me. It was a rare occasion that I saw him express either of those emotions these days. He looked at me with suspicion today. “Hi,” he said. “What brings you out?”
“Is it okay if I join you for lunch? I’m kind of hungry.”
He chuckled and said, “Boy if you had to drive all the way out here for lunch…”
“I came to see you, Dad. I haven’t seen you in over a week. I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”
“You want to make sure that girlfriend of yours hasn’t driven me to suicide?” he asked, pushing his plate back. Before I could answer that ridiculous question, Hannah, one of my father’s maids came into the room. She was a tall, round, ruddy faced woman who always had a warm smile and a kind word for everyone.
“Well hello young Mr. Hunter.”
“Hi Hannah. How are you?”
“If I was any better sir, I’d be twins.” She laughed at her own joke and I did too. Then she said, “Can I bring you some lunch?”
“I would love some,” I told her.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as she rushed back towards the kitchen. My father’s staff all rushed in and out. I knew it was because they were afraid of him. I’d done a lot of rushing myself over the years.
“Anyways, Dad… neither Adele nor I want to see anything bad happen to you.”
“She has you owned son. She flashes that pretty smile and wiggles those sexy little hips of hers and she makes you forget that she took everything from us. She even put your name second on that company and from what I hear from some of the shareholders, she walks around that place, leading you by the…”
“Dad, I didn’t come here to debate my relationship with Adele again.”
“What did you come here for?”
“Like I said, I wanted to see you. I was worried about you.”
Hannah came back in with a roast beef sandwich and soup. She sat it down in front of me and James pushed his hardly touched plate towards her and said, “You can take this.” Hannah looked at the plate and then at James disapprovingly, but she didn’t say anything to him. She picked it up and looked at me.
“What can I bring you to drink, sir?”
“An iced tea if you don’t mind, Hannah.”
“And I’ll take a scotch and soda,” my father said.
“It’s a little early for scotch Dad, don’t you think?”
He glanced at me, but that was the entire acknowledgement my question got. Poor Hannah on the other hand got a glare that again sent her scurrying away to do his bidding. I sat quietly for a while, eating my sandwich and after Hannah brought our drinks back and left, my father said, “How’s your golf game?”
I laughed. “Better than yours,” I told him.
He smiled. It was the first genuine smile he’d given me in I couldn’t remember when. “You think so do you? Well, finish eating that sandwich and we’ll go out and see.”
The estate had a nine hole course. It was where I learned how to play, and the time my father had taken to teach me had made me love the game that much more. I finished eating while Dad called his “caddy” and told him to bring his clubs and mine and meet us out back with the cart in fifteen minutes. Dad’s “caddy” also doubled as his driver. His name was Bud and he seemed happy to be out and about when he met us outside. Since Dad was forced out of the company, I didn’t imagine that Bud got out much.
We rode in silence to the course, but we had barely gotten past the first hole when Dad started in on Adele again. “So, has the red-haired Jezebel turned up pregnant yet… or talked you into letting her move into that pretty townhouse with you yet?”
I took my swing and it went nowhere. The anxiety was back, stuck in my throat and swelling up to nearly cut off my air. I finally found my voice and trying to not let it shake and give my cowardice away I said, “Please stop calling her names. Her name is Adele; I’d appreciate it if you’d use it.”
He swung his club and then he looked at me, hard. “You’re in love with her… I can see that son. I’m not completely heartless in spite of what you might think. I feel for you son. You’re not the first man by a long shot that has been taken in by a pretty face.” I tried to ignore him. I walked to where my ball was and Bud handed me a putter. I took the shot and made it and as Dad set up for his he said, “Son, nobody wants to admit that they’ve been played, but she actually admitted it to you. Instead of dumping her the way most men would have, you’re in business with her. You’ve put
yourself in an even more dangerous position. Your personal and professional life is fully in her hands.”
“Dad! Please stop. Adele and I share the company… something that she suggested when she didn’t have to. I don’t want to rehash ugliness with you today, but you took that company from her, it was only fair that she took it back.”
“I don’t want to rehash ugliness with you either Seth,” my father said in a calmer tone. “What I want is to protect you. It’s what I’ve always wanted. I may not have gone about things the conventional way but everything I ever did was with my family’s best interest in mind. I wanted that company for you, Seth and for my grandchildren. You can talk about how I got it in the first place and hold that against me, or you can look at the benefits you reaped from it. You can remember the long days I put in working to rebuild it after it became ours. I didn’t sit back and live off of someone else’s labor… I worked for it all.”
“But… it wasn’t yours to take Dad, and I can’t be okay with that.”
“Why Seth? Because it goes against your morals? Or because it goes against hers? Who is she to tell you how you should think and what you should believe? She used you to get what she wanted son; I hope that I’m wrong, but I just don’t see this lasting between you and her. Then what are you left with? Not a legacy for your children, that’s for sure.”
I didn’t answer that. I suppose it was a rhetorical question anyways. My mind suddenly went back to Grant and my suspicions that there was more to that relationship than Adele wanted me to know. Dad was right… she did use me and she admitted it. I wonder how many nights she left work and went home and talked to Grant about what a fool she was making of me. Maybe she was with him all along… and she still is. Maybe she’s still making a fool out of me. When we got to the ninth hole I finally asked him, “What is it that you think I should do, Dad… or that you want me to do?”
“I think that you need to stop thinking with your head down south and start using that Ivy League brain of yours. Just do me one favor son; keep a close eye on her. I think you’ll realize on your own eventually that you can’t trust her. When that happens…when it sinks in… get our company back.”
I hated that what he was saying affected me so much. I hated that it made me have doubts about Adele… or did I already have them and his words only perpetuated it?
~
CHAPTER FIVE
~
ADELE
Seth was gone when Grant and I got back from our run on Saturday morning. I had kind of expected that he would want to go home and shower and change… or that he might have things to tend to on his day off. What I hadn’t expected was for him to leave me a note that said he was going to see James. Why couldn’t he let that relationship lie? From what I’d seen, Seth didn’t get any respect from his father and very little love. He’d found out that James Hunter was a crook and a man so unscrupulous that he would steal from a child, yet he still tried to foster a relationship with him. I was beginning to wonder if I had made a grave mistake by handing half of my company over to him when he could just as easily hand it back to the man who still seemed to live only to destroy me.
After my shower, I went out into the kitchen and found Grant making breakfast. “Hey! Will Mr. Hunter be joining us?” he asked with a grin.
I sat down at the table and accepted the glass of juice he’d poured for me. “No, he’s gone,” I said.
“Oh, okay… I made your favorite, veggie omelets.”
“Thanks.”
He finished what he was doing at the stove and turned around, sitting a plate with an omelet the size of New Hampshire on it in front of me. “You want toast?” he asked.
I laughed, “No, I think this will be plenty, thanks.” Grant fixed his own plate and sat down across from me. I was poking my omelet with my fork.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I told him. “Lately… I’ve just had some… questions, I guess about Seth and my relationship.”
He finished chewing his bite and took a drink. When he sat his cup down he said, “What kind of questions? Do you think he’s cheating on you?” His dark eyes flashed when he said that. I knew that Grant was protective of me and I didn’t want him to be angry with Seth.
“No… nothing like that. My concerns are mostly professional ones. You know, sometimes I wonder if my concerns stem from the fact that I set out to deceive him in the first place. It’s like a man or woman who are having an affair accusing their spouse of having one too. I worry that maybe he’s using me now. What if he wants the company back for his father? What if I set myself up for failure by handing half of it over to him?”
“Let me ask you this,” he said. “What has he done or said that makes you think that might be on his mind?”
“Nothing really. I guess I find it strange, and maybe even a little insulting that he’s still trying to have a relationship with his father after all he’s done to me… the woman he professes to love.”
Grant was nodding “Okay, maybe that’s strange. Or maybe, he’s like the rest of us and he’s found out that parent/child relationships can be complicated things, and almost impossible to walk away from.”
Grant’s mother was an alcoholic who was rarely home when he was a kid. He had three different step-fathers and his real father visited him once a year. He still answers the phone any time either of them called and no matter how crazy they made him, he was still always there if one of them needed him.
“Maybe. Maybe I don’t understand it because I’ve never been an adult with parents. I guess it is a lot different than the relationship you have with them when you’re a kid.”
“A lot,” he said, putting the rest of his omelet on top of his toast and taking a bite. After he swallowed he said, “Do you think he really loves you?”
I thought about that for a second even though I didn’t really need to. I did believe that he loved me. What I was worried about was whether or not he loved me enough to ultimately choose me over his father. “Yes, I think he does,” I said at last. “He asked me to move in with him.”
Grant stopped chewing and stared at me. He seemed to recover after a few seconds and after he finished that bite he said, “So he did, huh? What did you say?”
“I said not yet,” I told him. “I said that I was comfortable here with you and I was afraid to give that up just yet.”
“God, I hate this,” he said, putting down his fork and pushing his plate away.
“You hate what?”
“I hate being your best friend sometimes.”
I raised an eyebrow and said, “Really? Why?”
“Because best friends are supposed to only want the other one to be happy. I’m supposed to tell you, if he makes you happy then go for it. So here goes… If he makes you happy Adele, go for it.”
“But?”
“But if he doesn’t, then stay here because I’m going to miss you like crazy.” I smiled at him. I would miss him like crazy too. Before I had a chance to say anything else he said, “Honestly, I want nothing more than for you to be happy. If you love him then my advice to you would be not to let this silly business keep coming between you. There will always be another job, another company… but how many times in our lives do we find true love?”
He was right but I still knew that I had to trust Seth unconditionally before I could take that next step. “Once… I hope.” I told him with a smile. “But I’m going to make darn sure that this is the real thing before I make any radical changes. Time will tell… I hope.”
He reached one of his long arms across the table and took my hand to his lips. He kissed it and said, “Take your time… but follow your heart.”
I spent the rest of the weekend making excuses to Seth as to why I couldn’t see him. I stayed in my pajamas all day Sunday but I spent most of the day on my laptop working on the specifics of the buyout that I was really hoping would go through this week. On Monday morning as I got ready for work I felt a tiny ti
ckle in my belly when I thought about seeing Seth. On my way in, I tried to decide if it was anticipation about seeing him, or dread.