Counting the Kisses (Counting the Billions, #3)

by Lexy Timms

  “I saw the articles,” he said. “You got cornered on your way into the building.” He shook his head sharply. “I should have been there. Or I should have found someone to be there for you. Hired a private security guard or something. I never should have put you in that situation. But seriously, don’t worry about it. It was nice to read that you still profess to support me, even though, what was it that they said? I’ve shown time and again that I’m ‘only capable of acting on my impulses and not planning anything long-term for the future’?”

  The bitterness in his voice threw me for a moment. I had speculated before that the news articles about him must bother Daniel more than he let on, but I had never heard him talk about them like this before. I took a hesitant step toward him, forgetting for the moment that I had more bad news to deliver, because that press junket hadn’t been what I wanted to talk about at all. In fact, I had nearly forgotten about that incident in light of everything else that had happened that day.

  Daniel’s face softened, and he gave me a tight smile. “Sorry,” he said in a quiet voice. “What I’m trying to say is that I’ll try not to let anything like that happen ever again.” His face twisted again, this time with unhappiness more than anger. “The good news is that the trial’s over. Gerrard won. I’m not happy about the outcome, but at least I don’t have to do any jail time.” He shook his head. “I just still can’t believe he won. But the point is, I’ll be back to work with you on Monday morning, so you won’t have to face the press alone again.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said slowly. But I had to wonder whether he was really going to let me come back to work as usual on Monday when he heard about the other part of the day. “But I actually made another mistake.” I took a deep breath, barely able to meet Daniel’s eyes. “You know I had that meeting this afternoon, with Duncan Flannigan?”

  “Yes,” Daniel said, sounding wary.

  “The meeting went really well, but afterward, instead of walking him out, I had to rush right into the next meeting. Duncan and I went a little bit overtime, I guess, and I was already a couple minutes late for that next meeting. And it’s not like he hasn’t been to the office before, so I figured he knew the way out.”

  Daniel’s eyebrows knit together. “What are you trying to tell me—that he somehow managed to get lost in our office building?” he asked.

  “Well, no,” I said slowly. “But when I came out of the next meeting, he was still there, hanging around and chatting with some of the other employees.”

  Daniel looked confused, and I couldn’t blame him. I had been shocked when I realized what they were chatting about as well. Because at first, I had just stupidly assumed that somehow Duncan Flannigan and Judy Mannheim were friends. After all, Judy had worked for McGregor Enterprises for a while and Duncan had been a client for a long time as well.

  But then Erin had come up to me, eyes wide. “He’s been snooping around the office trying to find out information about Daniel,” she had told me.

  “What kind of information?” I had asked.

  “Well, he asked me if I had ever slept with him,” she had admitted.

  Daniel frowned. “Who was he chatting with?” he finally asked.

  “Apparently, he went around to all the women in the office and asked personal questions about you, including if any of them had ever had...sexual relations with you.”

  It was so quiet in that mansion that you could have heard a pin drop. I dared a look up at Daniel’s face, and I wasn’t sure that I had ever seen him that angry before, not even the night that he had punched Gerrard.

  “I kicked him out as soon as I realized what he was doing,” I hurried to say. But I knew that that didn’t change what had happened. I still felt sick with guilt about it. Because it wasn’t just about the information that he might have collected, and I didn’t even know what all he might have learned. But it was more that he had the audacity to ask those questions at all.

  Daniel had put me in charge of the office. He had trusted me to keep order in the office, and I hadn’t. And I knew just how much Daniel cared about all of his employees. I knew that he wouldn’t be happy about this situation. Even if nothing got out to the press, he had still made everyone in the office uncomfortable.

  And it was all my fault. There were any number of things I could have done differently. I could have walked him out of the office like I normally would have. I couldn’t believe I had attempted to extend the contract we had with him. I should have been able to see through him, to see what kind of guy he really was. Not the kind of guy that we wanted to do business with, that was for sure.

  But I hadn’t seen any of the signs, and now, looking up at Daniel, I couldn’t help feeling like I had failed him.

  Chapter 11

  Daniel

  I STARED AT ABBY IN shock. What the hell had she just said? Duncan Flannigan, walking around the office asking all the female employees if any of them had ever slept with me? I had worked with Duncan for years now; he was one of our most loyal clients. I couldn’t believe it.

  I shook my head. “Look, I don’t know what you think you overheard—” I began.

  Abby’s head snapped up, and I saw a flash of anger in her eyes to match the frustration in my own. “What I thought I overheard?” she asked incredulously. “I’m not just telling you shit that I overheard.”

  “So, what, Duncan asked you about your relationship with me?” I asked her disparagingly. It wasn’t really that I was mad at her. I was just pissed at the whole situation. First Gerrard, now Duncan. Two men I had worked with forever, two men I had trusted. It seemed like nothing was sacred anymore, though.

  I might not have lost much in the trial today, but I had lost more than enough for me to feel like I needed to start rethinking my personal allegiances. But who could I trust?

  Abby. I could trust Abby. But even as I took a step toward her, she was shaking her head and stepping back. “Oh no,” she said. “You don’t just get to say shit like that and then pretend like there’s nothing wrong,” she snapped.

  I winced. “I know,” I agreed. “And I’m sorry. It’s just been a long day, and I’m a little confused. Did Duncan talk to you or not?”

  “He didn’t talk to me,” Abby said icily. “But Erin says he asked her about her sexual relations with you, and she says that he talked to nearly every woman in the office about the same thing. So, sure, maybe it’s hearsay. But I trust Erin. Don’t you?”

  “Of course I trust Erin,” I said, fighting the urge to groan. “Abby, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that. All I’m saying is that I just want to understand what happened a little better. You can give me that, can’t you?”

  “You’re the boss, boss,” Abby said snidely. This time, it was no longer a joke shared between the two of us. No, this time, she said it like if I wasn’t her boss, she would be walking away right now.

  What a misunderstanding. All I wanted to tell her was how glad I was to be home, to see her, to be done with this stupid trial. It might not have gone the way that I wanted things to go, but it wasn’t like I really needed the money. All I could think of on the way home was how lucky I was that at the end of the day, I still had Abby in my life. That was what I really cared about right now.

  But then with this whole thing at work, whatever she was trying to tell me, it felt like I was just purposefully pushing her away almost. Abby looked like she might cry, even, and all I wanted was to step closer to her, to take her into my arms and apologize. But the way she stepped away from me made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with me right now.

  “Abby, what happened?” I asked, hearing the desperation in my voice as I did so.

  “Duncan went around the office asking all the available women if they had ever had relations with you. I caught him near the end of his rounds and threw him out of the office.” Here, she looked even more uncertain. “And I told him that we would never do business with him again.”

  “Good,” I growled. D
uncan might be one of our oldest, most reliable clients, but if what Abby had said was true, and I felt certain that it was or else she wouldn’t have said that, then I had no desire to ever do any business with the other man again.

  One by one, it seemed like I was cutting all of the older guys out of our business deals, from Gerrard to Duncan. But there was nothing else I could do.

  Was this the way that the business world was supposed to be? Somehow, I had never pictured things being this way, back when I was first in charge of the business. I had naively thought that somehow, things would get better and better, year after year. That at the end of the day, I would create some core group of people I worked with all the time, who knew me and the business, guys who shared the same values as me.

  That couldn’t be further from the truth. I was starting to learn that naivety and ideals had nothing to do with the real business world.

  I shook my head, pressing my fingertips against my eyeballs. “So what else happened?” I finally asked Abby.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  I stared blankly at her for a moment. “I just assumed there was more to it,” I told her. “You told me that something had gone wrong. That you’d made a mistake.”

  “I fired one of our best clients,” Abby reminded me.

  I immediately shook my head. “Abby, I would have done exactly the same thing,” I told her. “If I had been running late for a meeting, I wouldn’t have seen Duncan out. Same as you, I would have assumed that he would just leave, like normal. Asking prying questions like that to my employees, I never could have suspected it. And if I had caught him doing that, then I would have terminated our contracts with him.”

  Abby stared at me for a long moment, and I could see that she was seeking reassurance in my face. Again, I wanted nothing more than to hold her. But again, she stepped back away from me, her gaze turning away to the side. “I think I should just head home for the night,” she said dully.

  “Abby, no,” I said, reaching for her. “I want you here.”

  Abby shook her head, though. “I have a lot of things I need to think over,” she said.

  “Like what?” I asked, actually puzzled. “Maybe I can help. Be your sounding board, if you will.”

  “I don’t think so,” Abby told me, and it was like a knife to the heart. I flinched back, but I didn’t know what to say to her. She sighed. “I just don’t want to talk right now. I can tell that you’re pissed about the trial and all of the work stuff. And I just feel frustrated and out of sorts. Let’s give it a night or two. We’ll figure it out later. I’m going to go home.”

  As she turned to head for the door, I wished that I could think of something to say to her, something to make her stop, to come back, to talk things out with me. I wanted to convince her that I wasn’t upset, that I wanted to talk things over with her. That I was happy to come home to her, that I wanted to just curl up on the couch with her tonight, maybe put on a shitty movie, cuddle, and relax.

  I wanted a place that felt like home. That was all I had ever wanted. And with her, this place could almost feel like home.

  But there she went, striding in quick steps away from me, carefully closing the door behind her. I stared at the solid wood, the echoes of the shutting door still resonating in my ears.

  Had I lost her again? What had even happened just now? How did I make things better? I knew I couldn’t possibly figure out how to make things better without first figuring out just what it was I had screwed up in the first place. And I was afraid that to figure that out, I would have to go back to that night at the bar with Gerrard.

  The money might not matter to me. But that didn’t mean there were no punishments and that I hadn’t screwed up. No, Abby had cooled things off with me once because she didn’t want anything to do with the kind of guy who beat up his former trusted advisor in a bar. Now, no doubt, she was thinking about all the other terrible things about me, things that the media had printed over the years.

  Only half of those things were true, of course, but she couldn’t know which things were true and which were false. And at the end of the day, I supposed it didn’t really matter. At the end of the day, I just wasn’t a good enough guy. I could never hope to deserve someone like Abby.

  I headed into the office, my gut churning with guilt and loneliness. With careful, measured movements, I poured a couple fingers of whiskey into a glass. Then, I sat down with my view over the city of Chicago, alone again in the night.

  How many of those lights out there hid people who were just as lonely as me?

  None of them, I was sure. There was no way there was anyone in the world who was as lonesome as I was at that precise moment.

  Chapter 12

  Abby

  I HONESTLY COULDN’T tell you why I stormed out of Daniel’s on Friday night. I had been so relieved when he finally told me that he would have handled the Duncan situation in exactly the same way as I had. That he would have terminated the contract with Duncan as well. Because that was what I had really been worried about, that he wouldn’t understand what I had done. That he would tell me I didn’t have the authority to do something like that, or I had cost the business a vital account. I had expected that he would fire me.

  But in the end, he seemed to understand and to support my decision. It was everything I had ever wanted to hear from him. But at the end of the day, I couldn’t help thinking about the rest of it.

  He hadn’t taken my story at face value, not at first. He had all but accused me of lying to him, or stretching the truth at the very least. He had sounded so angry at me, somehow, when he had asked me if Duncan had asked me anything about my relationship with him. Almost as though Daniel was just angry about our relationship in general. Almost as though he didn’t want me there.

  And maybe he didn’t. I had been there so often, almost every night lately. Maybe Daniel needed his space. Maybe I should have realized that when he was pissed off, as he was bound to be after the trial, that he wouldn’t want me around. I was stupid for putting myself in that situation. I had to go home. I had to let him know he wasn’t stuck with me every day, not if he didn’t want that.

  I just wished I had realized it sooner, before I had overstayed my welcome.

  Now, Saturday morning, I was alone in my apartment. It had been a while since I’d even been here, and I had to admit, waking up on my own wasn’t anything that I really wanted. No, it was much nicer to fall asleep stretched out beside Daniel, to wake up in the morning with his arms curled around my body, my head pillowed on his firm torso.

  Instead, Saturday morning brought empty, cold sheets and an ache in my gut that nothing would fill. I wanted to go over to Daniel’s, to tell him I was sorry, that I would be more independent from now on, that he didn’t have to feel guilty about kicking me out from time to time.

  But then again, that probably wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Kicking me out” implied that I would overstay my welcome again. And guilty? I was the one who should be feeling guilty. I was the one who was single-handedly ruining our relationship, both at work and here at home.

  The good thing about the fact that I hadn’t been home in a while was that everything could use a bit of a light clean. I attacked the place, dusting in spots that hadn’t seen the light of day since probably before I had moved in. But I didn’t feel any better by the time I was done.

  It didn’t help that Daniel called halfway through my cleaning spree. I debated picking up the call. But the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like a bad idea. I still felt like there were things I needed to sort through from the night before, and I wasn’t going to do that if I just went rushing back to him. Besides, I didn’t want him to think that I was too needy.

  He had gotten angry with me. That was the main sticking point to all of it. Beyond the neediness and the guilt, there was the fact that he had been angry at me. I hadn’t expected that. I had never expected that. And I still would never expect Daniel to hit me or otherwise p
hysically hurt me. But at the same time, the physical wasn’t everything in a relationship.

  Could I be with someone who got angry like that? Could my emotions handle it? I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t been sure before, when Daniel punched Gerrard, and now, I felt even less sure, having seen that anger directed toward me, albeit in a muted form.

  I scrubbed out the inside of the fridge, trying to pretend that the tears in the corner of my eyes were from the smell of the cleaning agent.

  I just couldn’t help feeling foolish. It seemed like somehow, I had pegged Daniel totally wrong. Like I had misunderstood our relationship and what I was to him. Like I had tried to make him into a good guy, the kind of guy he had never been to begin with.

  The more the afternoon dragged on, the more certain I made myself that something had been wrong from the start. Daniel had never really been the guy I had thought he was. He had never been the guy I had somehow convinced Matt and Leanne that he was. No, he was just what all the tabloids said he was: angry and rude and given to rash impulses. That was it.

  Dating me was probably just an impulse thing. He couldn’t keep his hands off me. I couldn’t expect anything more, when the same was basically just as true for me. It was just an impulse for me to like Daniel like this.

  But of course, these were impulses I never should have acted on. There was the difficulty.

  Around 3:00 p.m., I got on my computer and started looking up articles about him. Who was this guy I had been dating? If anything, I knew that the articles about the trial were bound to give me clues.

  After scrolling through a dozen of the articles, I felt sick to my stomach. Sure enough, Daniel’s name was everywhere. There were hundreds of articles out about the assault charges already, some sticking to the bare facts of the trial and others embellishing their articles with anecdotes about other incidents in Daniel’s past. Another altercation at another bar. Rumors about loud verbal fights in office meetings.