Brandon and my father shake hands. There’s a split-second hesitation as he glances at me, as if he didn’t know I’d be here. His eyes move to my face, and it’s like he’s trying to read something from me. I can almost sense him asking a question, and in that same split second his strong face falls from sure to uncertain. Then he seems to remember Dad and extends his hand for me to shake. I do. The simple, platonic touch prickles my skin. I remember the feel of that hand on my upper arm as he pulled me toward him, as his lips met mine.
I blink the thought away — and Brandon, curiously, seems to do the same. His gaze flicks to my face, and again I see his unasked question. Then it’s gone as my father speaks.
“Brandon, thanks for stopping in. Riley and I are on our way out to lunch, but I figured I could dispense with one piece of business beforehand.” He grins. My father can be hard, and he can be scary if he’s angry, but he’s wonderfully warm when in the right mood. I see that warmth now. He wants this. It’s the right decision. Welcoming Brandon into the family. Taking him on as a surrogate son. We’ll all be happy together, I think.
“Sure, Mr. James.”
“Please. Call me Mason.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He smiles. The smile lifts his beard, which hides his scar. It’s the most genuine smile I’ve seen on him since that night, after dinner.
“You applied for the VP of Land Acquisition job.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A lot of people applied. It’s a great job. Lots of responsibility. Very important position. A spot in which I can only have the best.” He glances at me and smiles. “It had to be someone who came highly recommended.”
“Of course, Mr. … Mason.”
“I’ve given the decision a lot of thought. And I … hang on a second.” He reaches for his computer, which is blipping at him. I think it might be a Skype sound, and it’s insistent.
“Riley,” he says, “did you hear from Fourth Federal? They’re asking about moving forward. We just need a yes or a no.”
“I haven’t heard,” I say. Then: “Wait. I got a call during the meeting.”
My purse is on the desk, where I set it as Dad was cleaning up. I move to grab it, but Dad is closer. My phone is poking out the top so he snags it and looks at the screen. He turns it toward me, but I can’t read it. I step closer, but my dad moves like a mantis and in a flick he’s tapping at the screen. “An hour ago. Okay if I listen?”
I nod. But as my father raises the phone to his ear and begins to listen, I catch movement from the corner of my eye. I look over to see Brandon’s face, which looks panicked.
A number I didn’t have in my phone. Maybe because I’d deleted the contact, proving to myself that certain things were over or had never even begun.
And I understand.
“Dad!” I say. “I don’t think that’s from … !”
I stop when I see the way his jaw firms. He stares. At me, and Brandon.
CHAPTER 35
Brandon
Mason’s face is still composed, but I can see something percolating under the surface. The welcoming, almost joking way he was speaking thirty seconds ago is gone. As he listens to the message I left for Riley before coming in, I can hear the loudest inflections in my own voice. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but two competing thoughts war for my attention while I’m watching Mason’s hard eyes.
First, it’s clear he doesn’t like what I said, seeing as I kept things more factual and less lovey than Bridget would have liked.
And second, I’m bothered that Riley isn’t hearing the message, and that sincerity I had to summon the courage to voice has been twisted to impale me.
“What is this?” he says.
Riley seems confused. She must know, from my death gaze, that the message is from me, not the banker she’s been waiting on. But she doesn’t know what I said. She might never know. And even if she does, those words will be tainted by what’s about to happen, and the fact that her father heard them first.
“I … ” Riley begins.
“I’m talking to you, Brandon.”
For a half second, I consider playing dumb. He’s listening to Riley’s phone, to a message left for his daughter, so how should I know what’s on there? But even if I didn’t begin the message with my name (I did), Mason isn’t stupid. He knows a voice when he hears it, just like he knows a guilty face when it’s right there in front of him.
“It’s nothing,” I say, knowing how lame I must sound.
“What about ‘the other night’? What happened ‘the other night,’ Brandon?”
“I just meant dinner.” Already, a nervous twitter in my voice might be betraying me. I don’t recall my exact words because I didn’t expect to find them under scrutiny. I could have left a vague message that conveyed my meaning without specifically saying damning things if I’d known Mason would hear it, but I didn’t. Silly me, I’d thought Riley would be the one to hear her own messages.
“Dinner.” He says the word like it weighs a thousand pounds.
“Yes.”
“That’s your honest answer.”
He’s missing part of the message while he talks to me, so suddenly my frantic mission is to keep his attention on me and away from what I said to Riley. It’s pointless, seeing as he can merely rewind and I doubt Riley will insist that he give it back, shocked as she seems. But it’s all I have.
“Yes.”
“Mmm. And what about dinner?”
I’m a wounded mouse next to a cat wanting to play. The way Mason’s looking at me, it’s clear he knows everything. Will I dig myself in deeper by trying to lie and play him as a fool? Have I already said something truly damning? Did I specifically say that we slept together? Oh, God … did I say where we did it — on the dark roadside, like animals?
My heart is beating in my temples. My fingers are starting to shake. Mason hasn’t raised his voice, but I feel like I’m being crushed. He’s just looking at me, but I want to run and hide.
“I … ”
Riley comes closer. “It’s not what you think,” she says, blowing any chance we had, if there ever was one.
“Funny how people only say that when it’s exactly what you’d think,” Mason says.
“It just happened. It … ” Riley trails off like I did. There’s no way to win this. Even the truth will dig the ditch deeper.
“It just happened,” Mason repeats. He looks at me. “So this is how you thank me. This is what happens when I leave you alone with my little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl, Daddy,” she says, inadvertently using words that make his point.
Mason turns to Riley. “And this is why you defended him.” His eyes squint, unpleasant realization piling atop unpleasant realization. To me, he says, “This is why you said all those things about her! Now I understand. Now I get it.”
“That’s not it at all,” Riley says.
“Is this how I taught you?”
“I’m a grown woman.”
“Is this how I raised you, Riley?”
My breath catches at his semi-shout. His office door is open, and the blinds are drawn. Anyone in the outer office will be able to hear this. It’s not even private. Everyone will know. Everyone will think they understand us.
The ambitious man who decided to climb the ladder by climbing Mason’s daughter.
And the spoiled little rich girl who couldn’t resist her urges even with careers at stake.
“Keep your voice down, Dad,” she says, eyeing the door.
“This is my office. This is my company. Don’t tell me what to do.” He turns back to me. “Where did you go? You broke down. So where did you break down? A sleazy little motel?” His head shakes with baffled fury. “Is this why you were late to the meeting? You were too busy fucking my daughter?”
“Daddy!”
“And you,” he says, turning on her. “You could run around and do what you wanted. Whom you wanted. I’m not stupid. I know you’re a woman. I know I’
m kidding myself if I still insist on seeing you as this virginal little girl in white, skipping around in a meadow of daisies. But I thought you had more sense than this.”
“He’s — ”
“He works for me, Riley! How long did it take? Tell me that? Did you know each other before you met here, in my office?”
“No!”
“Did you do it when I sent you out to the new land, too? Did you even survey it, or did you spend the whole morning rolling around on a blanket in the grass?”
“Of course not!”
Mason is pacing. “I knew something was going on. Even then. After that first day, when Margo sent you out. But it’d just been a goddamned day. Of course nothing would happen. I figured you were grown up enough that I didn’t have to keep tabs on you every second like I had to in high school. I — ”
“You don’t! And you didn’t have to in high school, either!” Tears of frustration form in Riley’s eyes. Her fists are balled. She looks seconds from becoming what Mason is accusing her of being: a petulant teenager, about to stomp her foot and start shouting.
“But that was how it started, wasn’t it? And then at dinner … ” Mason’s eyes flick to mine, and it’s as if he’s punched his fist through my skull. “You must think I’m a fool.”
“No! No, sir.” I hear the servility in my voice, but as angry as Mason is, servility only seems safe.
“I feel like an idiot. Not seeing it. Being played. You must have laughed when I suggested we all have dinner together. Were you planning all along to stay after? To … ”
It dawns on me what he must have realized — or thought he realized. I move to counter it, but countering too early will only make us both look guilty.
“That fake message. From the financiers. Did you have someone do that so I’d run off to the Hunt Club and leave you alone?”
“No!” Riley shouts.
But he’s glaring right at me. “Figure you’ll have a nice dinner on the old man’s tab, maybe? Then run off and take out your goddamned … ”
“No, Mason! That’s not what happened, I swear!”
“Don’t call me Mason!”
I flinch back. Somehow, that one hurts most of all.
“Get out of here,” he says.
I look at Riley.
“Don’t look at her. Me. Look at me. I’m telling you to get the hell out of my office.”
“Dad, we’re adults!” Riley says.
Mason looks at her, and there’s a moment where I think she’s said something profound — something that somehow, he never considered. Something that gets through to him and makes everything okay.
It’s true. We are adults. She’s twenty-two, and I’m twenty-seven. Not only is it insane for either of us to think that her father can tell her what to do; it’s also the kind of thing he’s due to realize for himself, and to let his girl grow up and make her own decisions.
“You are adults,” he says, looking from one to the other. “But you’re not adults who make the kinds of decisions I want made in my company.”
I feel my heart sink. I look at Riley and see just how much that little bomb crushed her. Despite my sudden despair, my first instinct is to lash out and make him take it back — not for me, but for Riley.
“Get out,” he says, almost softly. “Both of you.”
CHAPTER 36
Riley
I think Brandon might call after I get home, but he doesn’t. I pretend it doesn’t hurt, but it does. With Dad mad at me, Brandon is just about the only person I could talk to other than Phoebe. And I don’t want to talk to her. She’ll have all sorts of advice, and really I just need someone to believe me.
I want someone to believe I’m an adult. Someone who recognizes that I’m no longer a kid. Someone who respects me.
It’s ironic that I expect this from someone who won’t call me back.
Without Phoebe to batter me with her opinions and urging, I can only make excuses on my own and rationalize for myself. Maybe he’s not calling because he doesn’t want to make things worse with my father. Maybe he’s not calling because he thinks he can save his job — though I think we can both agree he won’t be getting that vice presidency. Dad is a stickler about honesty. He equates it with loyalty. But that’s something he doesn’t get about me and never has: There are things he doesn’t need to know and wouldn’t want to know, and withholding them isn’t about disloyalty. Not spilling your guts every time you see someone isn’t the same as lying. It’s privacy. I’m a woman now, and deserve my own treasure trove of secrets that are no one’s business but mine. Dad doesn’t get that. He thinks he does, and I suppose he thinks he’s protecting me.
But the person I am now doesn’t need protection. And that’s what Dad doesn’t understand.
I’m annoyed that he was so angry. I should be able to be with whomever I want. We’re well past the days when he was allowed an influential opinion on my personal life. But somehow, this is about more for him. Somehow, this feels like a punch in the gut to my father, I suppose. Not only was he confronted with blatant proof of my adulthood in one fell swoop; he was blindsided with a double-punch from the man he’d decided to rely on. The man whose judgment he’d trusted.
Dad doesn’t see that there’s nothing wrong with Brandon’s judgment from where I’m standing. But I have no arguments right now other than “Yes, he is” and “No, you’re wrong.” It’s like trying to argue religion or politics. I could bluster, but he’ll never hear me.
But even more than the feeling of rejection and reprimand is the horrible feeling about the rejection and reprimand. I can’t feel rejected by my father unless I care what he thinks, and I can’t feel reprimanded unless I admit, in some small way, that he might be right. I don’t believe he’s right at all, but I feel chastised just the same. My father’s approval has always mattered, and that mattering tripled after Mom’s death. Dad is all I have. He’s been my anchor, my port in the storm. No matter how bad things got, I could always count on my father. If anyone ever hurt me, he was the person I turned to.
And he’d say, There, there, it’s all right. You’re better than they are. They’re not good enough for you.
He said it about friends who did something mean. He said it about boyfriends and dates who jilted me, people who made me feel inferior or unwanted. Every time I had a problem with someone else, I came to my father, and he explained why they were wrong for doing something not-nice to me. Dad was always my advocate, explaining why we were right and the world was wrong.
This time, I’m wrong.
This time, I find myself wanting to side with the man my father thinks is the enemy. I honestly don’t know if he’s reacting genuinely to what he’s learned, or if this is just programming. Someone did something to his little girl, and he’s automatically on the defensive without a rational thought to drive it. He’s explaining why he’s right and Brandon is wrong, just like always.
Only this time, I’m on the other side.
To have always been under my father’s protection and now be cast outside the wall? That hurts. That wants to buckle my legs, curl me into a ball, and send me to tears. That breaks my heart. I used to have someone to turn to when I felt like this, but now my anchor’s turned against me. He thinks I’m the problem.
In the other wing, through the main entrance, I hear the door open and close. I hear feet on the stairs.
I wait, sure that if I let enough time expire, Dad will come to me. He’ll knock softly on my outside door, obeying our separate quarters as if they were truly separate. He’ll sit on the edge of my bed and put his strong arm around me. Then he’ll make me feel better, because right now I feel awful.
But a knock never comes. The clock makes a full revolution; sixty minutes leave me with nothing.
I feel as if I deserve this. A split forms within me, and there’s a strong Riley who tries to stand. To be my own woman. That Riley tells me that my father isn’t always right, and that when he’s wrong, I need to go on withou
t his approval as long as I’m doing what I know is right. But it’s impossible to believe. It’s impossible to feel. Because the old Riley, the little girl inside me, is too entrenched.
I pull the phone from my purse. There are no messages. It does not ring.
I tell myself that I’ll be fine.
Tomorrow will come. Then the next day. Dad and I will make up. He’ll expect me to come around and admit to my foolishness, and I will. It hurts New Riley a lot to believe it, but I imagine I’ll probably apologize. I only have one father. If he doesn’t come to me, I’ll have to go to him. I’ll tell him I was wrong, and that I regret it, even though I don’t.
I look at the phone and feel utterly, hopelessly lost. Helpless because I’ve realized something I don’t want to: I love Brandon Grant.
I love his personal strength. I love his story, and how he overcame. I love his stoicism and straight-faced sincerity. I love the way I was able to break that seriousness and get him to smile and laugh. I love his silence, and how he hides himself from the world. I love how bold he is, coming out from behind that mask.
God help me, I don’t regret a thing.
God help me, I’d do it again.
I’m thinking this as I look at my phone, which won’t ring.
Brandon, right now, isn’t calling because he wants to save his job. He wants to save his ass. Mason James has always had a way of making me feel a need to please him, but he has that effect on everyone. I saw it in Brandon’s eyes. I saw him looking at my father the way he’d look at his own, if he’d had one.
And still, I can’t help thinking about him.
I won’t call. I can’t call because I don’t know why he hasn’t called me. He might be staying away for my own good, or he might be staying away for his. If I call, I’ll find out which it is. If I call, it’ll break my heart.
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