Business & Pleasure_A Dad's Best Friend Romance

by Tia Siren

  “Damn it, Riley!”

  “Leave me alone!” The pain was too close to the surface, but she refused to cry in front of him. “Get out of my room, Grayson. In fact, get out of my life. I don’t need or want you around me.”

  The last of her things landed in a messy heap in the suitcases, and she hurriedly zipped them. She stormed to the door, wondering how it had all come tumbling down so fast. The only thing she was sure of was that everything had crashed and burned, taking her heart with it like the dedicated captain of a sinking ship.

  “Riley!” Gray desperately tried again.

  “No!” she scoffed, not willing to say more than one more syllable to him.

  Sweating, and yanking her suitcases behind her, Riley opened the door and ran down the hall. She took the steps, tossing her suitcases over the side so they landed on the concrete below. Her feet carried her down the steps in the blur, to a waiting cab.

  The startled driver looked at her like she’d lost her mind when she grabbed her bags and heaved them at him.

  “I need to get to the airport right now!” she cried.

  By the time Riley climbed into the cab, Gray had made it down. His hair was still mussed from their lovemaking, and his clothes were askew.

  She flipped him the bird as the cab drove out of the gates of the resort and headed for the airport.

  Just like that, it was over. She’d rebelled, dared to go on a little adventure, and all it had left her with was a broken heart and shattered dream. Her confidence was beyond destroyed, and even Webster or Roget couldn’t have come up with enough words to describe how she felt in that moment.

  He had lied to her. He’d never cared for her at all. Anger and misery swallowed her whole, and she made a quick decision. Never again. Never again will I risk everything for another person, never in my entire life. Gray had broken her heart, her spirit, and possibly her father’s reputation and bank account, and because of him she would never, ever open herself like that again.

  Chapter 13

  Gray stood there and watched the cab drive away. He was beyond angry and upset with himself. Why the hell did I tell her? Why didn’t I just sneak her out the back or something? He could have told her the reception desk was having problems, that a sewer pipe had broken down there, not to bother checking out because they had changed the policy and guests no longer had to be present to check out. He could have checked her out manually and said nothing if it came right down to it. He knew he never should have lied to his father, either. In the end, though, lying to Riley was the worst of all his sins. Why didn’t I tell her the truth from the start, so she could make up her own mind about being with me or not?

  To complicate everything more, he now had to check her out manually, and he had to explain to his dad why she had left the way that she had.

  “Damn it!” Growling in frustration, he headed back upstairs and used a passkey to let himself into Riley’s condo. The room felt emptier than it ever had before. He felt the loss of her keenly, all the way down to his bones. He gritted his teeth and looked around. The bed was messy, and the musky smell of sex rode the currents of salty sea air coming in through the open sliding-glass doors. He shut them and stripped the bed, swearing hard under his breath.

  He found an abandoned sandal below the bed and held it for a moment. “Great. Now I’m like the guy in that damn fairytale, holding on to one stupid shoe and a dream. Some Prince Charming I turned out to be, huh? Prince Asshole maybe.”

  Frustrated, he tossed the shoe into the lost-and-found box in the hallway and headed down to the lobby. Someone called that his shirt was inside out. “Screw off,” he muttered pulling his shirt over his head as he went and fixing it.

  To his massive relief, his father was nowhere in sight. He went behind the desk and manually checked Riley out, under the guise of doing something with the bar stock. The clerk was often too busy to pay much attention, and that day was no exception. Like everywhere else in the resort, the reception desk was sorely understaffed.

  “Hey, where’s the Teeter girl?” His dad asked immediately when he bumped into his son in the hallway.

  “Oh, uh…” Grayson stuttered, not at all happy to see his dad. “She checked out. I went to her room, but she was already gone. I just checked the computer. She left early this morning, at, like, four. I’ve got no idea why.”

  “Damn it.” His dad scowled. “I was hoping to talk to her. She left that early?”

  “Yeah, that’s what the checkout system says. Sorry, Dad. I guess she played me,” he managed, without a trace of irony in his voice. “I’ve gotta get to the bar. It was supposed to open ten minutes ago.” He huffed, beyond frustrated about everything. And pissed at his dad. “Hey, Dad, we seriously need to hire some help, even part- time. The staff just can’t keep up around here, me included.”

  His dad shrugged. “I’m well aware of that, son. I’m working on it, so please stop riding me about it.”

  As his dad stormed off, Gray felt like a loser on every level. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to stop her from leaving anyway, but he was now certain he should have allowed her to remain blissfully ignorant of what his father was up to. I should’ve just let it be over, so there’d be no bitterness between us. He was just so worried that his dad would corner her, and then he would have been faced with two people who were pissed off at him for lying.

  In the end, he made the absolutely worst possible choice. He had chosen to hurt her to try to keep his dad from being pissed off, and he had definitely made the wrong choice. “When am I gonna learn he doesn’t give a single damn about me? All he cares about is…” Gray stopped talking to himself, as he knew it would do no good anyway.

  Instead of going to the bar, he headed for the parking garage and his car. If I haul ass and take shortcuts, I might still just make it! he thought, picking his pace up to a run.

  Chapter 14

  Riley checked in to her flight, handing over everything but her purse to be checked in, then walked through the small airport with her head down and her spirits even lower. She was depressed and needed to find a nice, quiet place suitable for a long, heart-rending cry. Not in public. Hell no. That was the very last thing she needed to do. She’d been forbidden from crying in public all her life, even as a child. She could quite clearly recall being handed off to a nanny when she let out the least little whimper, and the nanny was instructed to remove her until she could compose herself and be fit for the rest of the people present. She was barely two years old when that happened, the age when any normal child would cry. She had never forgotten how it felt to be stared at, to be exiled, and to suffer the consequences of parental disapproval. For those reasons, she could not let the tears fall even as her eyes ached with the need to weep. Her eyes burned, itched, and watered, but she held on. She was a Teeter, and Teeters did not break down in public where someone would see and use those tears against them. No Teeter ever showed weakness. How often have I heard those words when I felt hurt, lonely, or sad? Never let it show. Just keep it all inside. We can’t possibly let anyone know what we’re feeling.

  Torn and hurt beyond measure, Riley finally made her way to a restroom. She found an empty stall, far at the end, and went inside. She locked the door and plopped down on the seat, not caring at all that her sundress was sitting where other people had once placed their bare asses.

  The tears came, and Riley bowed her head and closed her eyes, letting the scalding rivers run down her face unchecked. Her chest heaved, but no sound crossed her lips. She was an expert at weeping silently, with good reason. No Teeter went crazy and cried loud enough for others to hear, if they cried at all. Her nannies used to hush her so often that she had learned to cry without sobbing. Now, as she sat there trying to release some of the pain Gray’s betrayal had wrought, Riley realized just how utterly fucked up her family really was.

  They were cold and didn’t care. They didn’t need or want her in their lives for much of anything, and they often wished she was a bo
y. It was no secret that her mother hated being pregnant, but they did not want to adopt for fear they would end up with a less-than-desirable specimen. For that reason, Riley was an only child. She was often made to feel the weight of her gender and her inability to win their approval for whatever she was trying to succeed in.

  Why am I even going back to that? Why am I giving in? the political princess wondered atop that porcelain throne.

  Her trust came from her paternal grandfather, who was far richer than even her father. The truth was that she had enough money to live the rest of her life without ever having to worry or work a single minute. It was worth something like a quarter-billion dollars in cash, plus a vast set of holdings that she was about to take a job dealing with, a job her father would oversee because he did not believe she had the ability to even manage her own money.

  It was undeniably a lot of money and a lot of responsibility. The companies her trust encompassed employed a lot of people, so many people’s livelihoods were at stake. It seemed like too much for her to bear alone, so she had agreed to her father’s suggestions about her future and the future of her trust, even though they were more orders than suggestions.

  She didn’t want to go back to any of that, to that life that was not her own, to that bank account she really didn’t care about, but all things considered she didn’t know where else to go. The one thing she did know was that she couldn’t stay in that tropical paradise with Grayson the liar.

  ***

  Gray cursed and laid on the horn as a slow-moving truck on too-large tires popped out of a side street right in front of him. He swore a few times and darted around the oversized vehicle. His thoughts were chaotic. If Riley already signed in for her flight, how do I get past security? This is insane. She’s probably gone already, if not in person, at least in spirit. How in the hell did I go and blow it so completely? Some private jet had probably already whisked her away.

  He stomped on the accelerator and drove faster. The truck ahead of him blew its horn, and a hand came out the window, with one finger extended high into the air. “Same to you, buddy,” Gray muttered. His hands were steady on the wheel, but his heart was anything but.

  It was beyond him why and how he cared so much. He’d never felt that way about anyone before, and it scared the utter hell out of him as he flew around a corner and into a hairpin turn that turned into a flat sprint to the front entrance of the airport. He had to get to her. He had to try, no matter what it took.

  Of course he was stopped at the security post. He turned around and sprinted back to the counter, trying to piece together where her flight might be headed. New York, dumbass, he told himself, then bought the last ticket out and dashed back to security. The long lines made him more nervous with each passing second. He finally got through the security checkpoint and made a mad dash through the terminal, his heart beating out a hectic rhythm in his ears.

  “Damn it!” he sputtered when he scanned the waiting area and saw no sign of her there. He rushed over to the counter when another idea formed in his head. “Excuse me. Where is the first-class lounge?”

  The agent gave his disheveled clothes a suspicious look. “Um, it’s down the hall, that door to the left, but you need a key to get in.”

  “I know,” he lied, deciding that he would just take up post outside the door and wait there for her to come out.

  When the last person filed out, he grabbed the door to keep it from closing. He ducked inside and found it vacant, so he hurried back to the small coach passenger lounge.

  There didn’t seem to be a sign of her anywhere. Had he missed her? Did she take another flight, go somewhere else? Damn it! Is she sitting in a different lounge somewhere else in the airport? Tell me she hasn’t already gone, that I’m not too late to make things right between us!

  Discouraged but not ready to give up, he set off through the airport, checking each and every lounge, but Riley was nowhere to be seen.

  Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. He heard a flight being called and took off at a dead run. She has to be boarding. She just has to be!

  Gray stood there until his name was called, and then the doors to the jet-way were closed, the attendants obviously deciding he was a no-show. When he realized they had not called her name over the speakers, his heart sank.

  Just like that she was definitely and irrevocably gone, along with his heart and his dignity.

  Chapter 15

  “Flight 1604 to New York now boarding. All first-class passengers, please report to Gate 6 for boarding. I repeat, Flight 1604 to New York, La Guardia is now boarding…”

  Riley stared at the gate. She knew she needed to be on it. She had to get out of Florida. It was called the Sunshine State, but it didn’t feel very sunny at the moment. In fact, it felt too Gray, literally. He had made promises to her, tricked her into thinking he cared, when he had his daddy’s ulterior motives in mind all along. Worse, he’d tempted her into doing things she’d never even considered doing before, things that would have her daddy’s PR people’s heads spinning. Grayson Smith, that devilishly good-looking bartender, had even made her actually think about leaving her restrictive life behind. How is that even possible? she thought, shaking her head at her own ridiculousness as she watched an obese man in a Hawaiian shirt ushering his equally-rotund wife through Gate 6.

  People moved past her, streaming into the line that led to the plane. She sighed, grabbed her bags, and joined the herd, clutching her purse tightly. Clutching to stop her hands from shaking. Her ears rang as she walked, moving past rows of chairs and people trying to get a better place in line. She stumbled against someone’s shoe and caught herself, her hair falling forward as she fought to regain her balance.

  “Riley!”

  Her shoulders tensed and her heart leapt high in her chest, slamming against her ribcage like a wrestler thrown onto the ropes. She didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to see him, if he was even there at all. As much as she hated to admit it, it could have just been her imagination, and if her silly, love-struck mind drummed up that voice of his she didn’t want to bear the disappointment.

  “Riley, wait!” A rustle as people were forced to move aside behind her told her she wasn’t dreaming. “Riley, please!”

  Gray…? She turned slowly, and her eyes landed squarely on him. His hair was still messy, his clothes rumpled. The urge to run to him, to fling herself into his arms like some corny Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks romance was so strong that she had to purposely plant her feet solidly on the floor to keep from doing just that. Stop, Riley. He can’t be trusted, she reminded herself. There’s no sense in making a fool of yourself. She’d been an idiot. Very stupid. She’d let loose on the reins, lost control of her life. She’d let him into her life, given him her heart, only for him to blend it all up like those damn smoothies he made for the silicone bimbos he served.

  “Thank goodness I caught you.” He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it even more as he stared into her face.

  She blinked a few times, trying to put a coherent thought together. “What are you doing here?”

  “I-I…” he started then stopped, out of breath. “Sorry. I went to the wrong gate first. I didn’t know there are two flights out to New York, and I thought… Well, I was sure you were already gone, but just as I was about to leave I noticed this flight on the departure board and—”

  “And what? And you’re going to New York now, too?” she asked, cutting him off and staring at the boarding pass in his hand. “Gee, what a coincidence,” she snapped.

  He shook his head. “No, my ticket was for that other flight. I, uh, missed it. I just… Could we please talk before you go?”

  She almost smiled at him. He was trying to play it cool, but she knew he had purchased that ticket just to get him past security. “Look, I’ve gotta go. They’ve already called my flight,” she said, motioning toward the gate. “I’m sorry you missed your plane, but we have nothing more to talk about.” She pivoted on her heel and tried t
o move toward Gate 6.

  An upset expression flashed across his face, and he tugged gently on the strap of her bag to stop her. He turned her around slowly, gently. “Riley, I’m really sorry. I can’t fix… I couldn’t let you leave without trying to make it right.”

  “Make what right?” The sharpness in her voice was upsetting, but she didn’t know how to smooth it out.

  He sighed, and his well-defined shoulders slumped and flexed. He took her arm and steered her to a small corner, out of the way of the crowd gathering near the gate. His voice dropped to just above a whisper, an attempt at privacy that she appreciated. “All of it, Riley. I know it was wrong for me not to tell you who I was, that my dad owns the place. I was hoping you’d come to trust me enough so we could be really honest with each other. I wanted to tell you right after brunch, but you were too sick and it just wasn’t a good time. Then I thought about telling you on the boat, but got kinda distracted…” He grinned and then turned serious again. “It doesn’t matter; I should have told you, that’s all. My old man saw us together and practically jumped me, wanting to know what we said to each other.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell him the truth?”

  “For the same reason you don’t tell your folks the truth, or at least I’m betting you don’t. I don’t wanna let him down, don’t want him to think I can’t help with the family business. I want Dad to take me seriously just once in my life. Hell, I could give you a thousand reasons but they’d all pan out to the same thing.”

  She understood. “I see,” she said, then instantly regretted giving him an opening. She clenched her teeth and stared at him for a moment. “I get it, okay? Still, it’s no excuse. You’re not a kid.” She blew out a breath, words escaping her lips before she could stop them. “You didn’t have to go so far as sleeping with me, Grayson.”