A few days later, she did ask a little bit more about the situation, and I told her what I knew. When I hesitantly asked if she wanted to go to the prison to see our dad, she clammed up and the conversation was over. She threw herself into play rehearsals, spending her evening at practice or making obsessive re-writes on her script.
Ford wasn’t a whole lot more talkative. We spoke or texted every day, but I hadn’t seen him since that devastating night in his apartment when I’d told him about my dad. In the meantime, the press was still speculating, saying awful things about me. About my dad.
“You need to release a statement,” Heidi said one day at work. Reporters kept calling me here, at home, wherever they could. “Why haven’t Ford’s PR people stepped in?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Truth was, he hadn’t talked to me a much about what was happening at his corporation. Our phone calls had been getting shorter, our texts less frequent.
And then a request came. My father wanted to speak to me. So one evening when Cara had rehearsals, I drove to the prison and met with him in the dark and drab visitor room he was allowed to use once a month.
“I’m sorry,” were his first words to me. “I know I put you in a bad spot with your sister. How’s she holding up?”
“Not well,” I said, skipping the details about how even she was getting the occasional call from reporters as well as being teased at school for having a sister who was, apparently, a combination seductress and spy, trying to single-handedly take down Davenport Industries. The stories had only grown wilder in the press.
“I’m sorry,” my dad said again. And after a long pause, he continued. “My lawyer said that the bad press means I probably won’t get parole.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. His first parole hearing was coming up in a few months. He was silent for a minute, and I stared at him, at the additional lines on his face and gray hair at his temples. Did he really have a chance at parole? All these years, he told me he’d only stolen what we needed to get by, but now with these new revelations in the press, I knew differently. He’s stolen almost sixty thousand dollars, a fact I mentioned now.
“But I didn’t.”
What? “You mean it’s true, what the press is saying? That you were framed?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “I took about eight thousands dollars. Which was wrong, of course, but I wasn’t the only one doing something wrong. The way I figure it, someone at Davenport found out about my theft and decided to help himself to fifty thousand and pin it all on me.”
I gasped. This was a big deal. “Why—why didn’t that come up at the trial?”
My father shrugged. “It’s still a felony whether it’s eight thousand or fifty-eight thousand. And I had a public defender, and he advised against mentioning it. He said it would only make me look worse, trying to blame my crime on someone else. I don’t know if it was good advice or not, but what’s done is done.”
My thoughts were heavy as I drove back from the prison. He was sorry for the problems he’d caused me. And I was sorry for the problems I’d caused Cara and Ford. Everybody was sorry, but no one had any solutions for making things better—myself included. I wished I did.
On Friday evening, I was restless. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my father’s revelation out of my head. Yes, he was still guilty of a crime, but he wasn’t the only one. Ford needed to know that. Which was a problem since he wasn’t talking to me.
He still answered texts, but there was no doubt he was distant. The newspapers all reported that his board was not happy with him, and that the stocks for his company had lost value. I knew it was a busy, difficult time for him, but I needed to talk to him. And when I asked, for the third time, if I could meet with him, he’d said it wasn’t a good time. Again.
So I drove over to his building. The doorman called up to Ford’s penthouse, and then politely informed me that the resident I was here to see was not accepting visitors at the moment. And a half-dozen thoughts flashed through my head. That he was done with me. That he hated me. That he had another woman up there.
But my overwhelming thought was that this was a load of crap. I’d screwed up, big time, but not so long ago, so had he. I wasn’t going to let him ghost on me. If he wanted to break up with me, then he was just going to actually do it, not just drift away. That thought felt like a knife to the heart, but if that’s what he wanted, then I needed to know. But how could I get up there?
Eventually, I thought of Jason. Ford had told me that he had an apartment in this building, too. I didn’t know which one, but I had his phone number from the day he helped us move. I called him and few minutes later, he met me in the lobby.
He had one jeans and a sweatshirt, so clearly he hadn’t been planning to go anywhere with Ford tonight. Jason led me over to a leather sofa in the corner of the lobby. “He’s not ready to speak to you,” he said without preamble.
“I got that part.”
A half-smile graced his face and then was gone.
“If you ask him to, he’ll speak to me. Or if you let me up there.”
“Can’t do that. I’m already in trouble for not telling him about your dad.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He scratched the back of his neck with his left hand. “Dunno. Except he was the ass who insisted he wanted a background check but didn’t want to know what I’d found out. Something about not wanting to invade your privacy too much as if there’s an acceptable amount. And it just seemed to me that it was your business if you wanted to tell him. And knowing every little thing about the other person without context didn’t seem like the best way to start a relationship in my opinion.”
I was grateful for his discretion, but I still needed his help. “Please let me up there. I have to talk to him.”
“Can’t do that,” he said gruffly. “Sorry.”
“Yes, you can,” I said. “You just don’t want to.”
“I work for him, not you.”
I thought for a moment, and then an evil idea hit me. “I used to work for him too, you know. At Sultry Sirens.”
Jason looked at me cautiously, no doubt remembering his disastrous first—and presumably last—call to the fantasy hotline.
“You remember the naughty nurse scenario, don’t you? Would you like to hear more about it?”
He looked at me as if I were insane. “No, thank you. Once was enough.”
“But I didn’t even get to finish the fantasy. Let me tell it to you now—or, you could let me up to Ford’s penthouse instead.”
“I can’t do that,” Jason said, folding his arms.
“There was this one nurse, Angelica. She was so beautiful. Dark, glossy hair that fell to her waist. Big, soulful eyes. And lips like strawberries. Sometimes, in the evenings, we’d study together. And when we were done—”
Jason looked uncomfortable now, as was I. But I just had to speak to Ford. I had to get Jason to let me up there, and this seemed like the only way I might be able to get Jason to cave.
“Sometimes, we’d be so tired from all that studying that we’d want to relax. To take a nice bath—together. So she’d light some candles, and I’d get the bubble bath and—”
I stopped, looking at the flush on Jason’s miserable face. Torturing him was not going to get me what I wanted. I put my head in my hands. “I love him,” I said, not looking up.
After a long moment, I continued. “I don’t know when exactly it happened, but I do. So much. And—and before all this, I think he cared about me. Maybe not love, but he cared about me. And I need to know. If any of that’s still there or if it’s all gone.”
Now I sat up and looked at him. “Please. I need to know.”
He was silent for at least a minute during which my heart beat unsteadily. Finally, he spoke. “Come with me.”
36
Ford
“I will. I know. I know,” I said and hung up. Garrett was really starting to piss me off. Like my father before him, he had the best
interests of the company at heart, but he made me feel like I was spinning my wheels. My dad had left me this company, and it as true that he probably intended Garrett to be the de facto leader with me the CEO figurehead with the right last name—but that didn’t mean that was best for Davenport Industries.
Still, Garrett’s words stung. I’d hurt the reputation of the company by consorting with “that woman,” as he’d put it. He’d also implied—but had been too polite to flat out say—that I’d been thinking with my cock, not my brain. Which was probably a fair assessment at other points in my life, but not now. Not with Autumn. Things were different with her. So why had I just had the doorman tell her I wasn’t available?
It’s not like I’d been avoiding her. It had just been one hell of a week. One complete fuck-up of a week. I’d been putting out fires at the office and dealing with the press as best I could—which wasn’t much since our official position was that we didn’t have an official position on Autumn and her father. And the board was having a collective shit-fit, and things couldn’t get much worse.
Except every time I thought of Autumn, I felt worse. She should have told me. She could have told me—if she’d trusted me. She’d even said that the night she’d come over here. She’d admitted she found it hard to believe in our relationship. It figured—the only woman I’d ever loved, and she thought I was just out for a good time. Not that that descriptor hadn’t been applied to me in the past—quite accurately. But not now. Not with her. With Autumn, I saw a future.
Yet I’d just turned her away, and I wasn’t sure why except right now, our future looked pretty fucking rocky. And the shit happening at the corporation couldn’t wait. I needed time to deal with that first. Autumn probably needed time, too. To deal with her sister and her dad.
And then the elevator chimed, and I knew, I just knew, it was her. Somehow, she’d charmed the doorman. Or Jason. He was a soft touch sometimes. Absentmindedly, I looked down at the T-shirt and black jeans I was wearing. But what the hell difference did that make. This was likely to be a big fight, so it didn’t matter what I was wearing.
And then the elevator doors slid open and it was like every cell in my body reoriented itself to her. Yearned for her. I noticed the way her hair bounced as she stepped toward me. The light scent of citrus as I moved toward her. The soft rose-colored sweater and jeans that she wore. And suddenly nothing else seemed to matter.
She stopped a few feet short of me. I wanted to hug her. Hold her. Fuck her. But we had this barrier between us that needed to be torn down before I could do any of those things. She set her purse down and looked up at me. “Jason?” I asked.
“Jason,” she confirmed. “But I didn’t know how else I could talk to you. It’s not like you live in a place where I can knock on your front door. You don’t even have a front door, just the elevator.”
I shrugged. “That means I don’t have to share my Halloween candy.”
She gave a small half-smile at that, but I was the first to admit it wasn’t much of a joke. “So… why’d you storm the castle so to speak?”
“To talk to you,” she said. “No, actually, to talk at you. I need for you to listen. You asked me to listen to you before, when I found out you’d eavesdropped on my Sultry Sirens calls. So now I’m asking you to listen. Please.”
For a relationship that started out on the phone, it seemed like we hadn’t done a lot of listening to each other lately. I owed her this. “Fair enough,” I said, and I led her over to the sofa. I sat down, putting my feet up on the coffee table, but she remained standing, her hands fidgeting nervously with the bottom of her sweater.
“I should have told you,” she began, and I definitely wasn’t going to argue with her about that. “I’m sorry that I didn’t do that. I was going to that night. To explain it fully. To get your advice about how to tell Cara. But it was too late at that point. I’d waited too long.”
“Why did you wait? You could have told me when I came clean to you about Sultry Sirens.”
“Yes, I should have. But I’m not sure if you realize how much your revelation affected me.”
I had to give a rueful smile at that. “It did perhaps seem like a really poorly conceived episode of ‘Undercover Boss.’”
But Autumn wasn’t in a laughing mood. “Not about that. About why you called me in the first place. Why you liked me. Up until that point, I hadn’t trusted it.”
And now we were to one of the main points that pissed me off. “I’ve never given you any reason not to trust my interest in you.”
“I know,” she said. “But up until that point, you’d never given me any reason to trust it, either. I mean, men who call fantasy hotlines are not known for their interest in committed relationships.”
“Touché.”
“After that night, I did start to trust in our relationship—because of what you told me about why you first called me. I started to believe in us. I still had some doubts, you know. Before the ball when you said how much it cost and all the important people we’d be meeting there. But I pushed those doubts aside because I knew I mattered to you. By then, I believed it.”
“You should,” I said. “It’s true.”
“Exactly.” And now she came and sat next to me on the couch. “That’s my point.”
“I thought it was my point.”
“No, it’s mine,” she insisted. “It’s like a logic problem. You liked me for who I was. I liked you for who you were. Ergo, what we had was real. So you don’t get to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Withdraw. Retreat. Give up on us.”
“I’m not giving up on us.”
“Your radio silence this week says differently.”
I shook my head. “This is like the worst apology ever.”
She smiled a little at that, a fleeting expression that quickly disappeared. “I’m not responsible for what my my father did. You’ve said as much yourself. I am responsible for not telling you sooner, and I’ve already apologized for that. So that leaves two big issues. First, can you forgive me for that? It’s your call, but I forgave you for not coming clean before. And second, is what we had real? Because if you truly liked me for who I was before, then you don’t get to stop doing that just because it’s inconvenient for you. Inconvenient for your company.”
“Inconvenient?” I growled. “Do you have any idea what kind of week Davenport Industries has had?”
“No, because you’ve shut me out. All I know is what I read in the news, and we both know how inaccurate that can be. I want to understand. I want us to work together to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix. It’s my company, so it’s my responsibility.”
“But the situation affects both of us,” she said, reaching out to rest her hand on my leg. “You and me. And Cara and my dad, and your board of directors. We should be working together. Heidi’s already asked me a half dozen times why a statement hasn’t been released.”
“Because there’s nothing to say,” I said, frustrated. “Except for the part about your being a super spy, it’s basically accurate. You and I are dating. Your dad stole from Davenport Industries. What more is there to say?”
“How about the rest of the story? The part they don’t know. The part you and I don’t know. But if we work together, I bet we can find out.”
And she was right. We went into research mode. Dug into records, receipts, and invoices with a lot of help from Jason. We worked together all weekend. And on Monday morning, I invited Autumn to the CEO’s office at Davenport Industries. There was someone we needed to speak with.
“You wanted to see me?” Garrett asked, walking into my office. He looked impeccable as usual in a grey suit with his beard neatly trimmed. He spotted Autumn and paused. “Nice to see you again. Anna, right?”
“It’s Autumn,” I said, and I squeezed her hand. “And I’m pretty sure you know that.”
“My apologies,” Garrett said politely to the trembling woman at my side. “I w
as introduced to a lot of people at the ball. My memory is not what it once was.”
“Your memory was just fine when you called the press and leaked the news about Autumn’s father embezzling from the company.”
“Excuse me? Dear boy, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I have friends in low places in the newsroom. The tip came from an older man with an upper-class accent. Remind you of anyone?”
“Sure. Every member of my country club, for example,” Garrett said. But he’d taken his glasses off and was wiping them on his shirt in a distracted way.
“It was a petty move, and it backfired,” I said, leaning against the corner of my desk, Autumn by my side. “Because Autumn’s dad revealed that he didn’t take all of the money.”
“What’s the word of a thief got to do with anything?”
“A thief who stole to help his family,” I shot back. “What’s your excuse?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sean Andrews didn’t take all that money. He only took what he needed to help his family. The rest was taken by someone else.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Garrett’s voice was strong, but he took a step back.
“Because we discovered that that’s not the only time money went missing. It’s happened before. Thirty thousand ten years ago. Forty-five thousand seven years ago. Sixty thousand last year. And the only common denominator—the only one who had the access—is you.”
“You can’t be serious—”
I cut through him, disgusted but also pained. “Why’d you do it, Gar? You’re rich. You have everything you need. I figure it must be something you didn’t want on any books. Was it gambling debt? Blackmail? Mistresses? Why would you do that to me? To my father?”
“I’d never hurt your father,” Garrett said, his voice a whisper.
“But you did. Even if he didn’t know it, you did. You betrayed him, and you betrayed me. You have one hour to resign from the board and vacate this building forever. I give you that out of respect for my father. If you don’t go quietly, then I’ll have a criminal investigation opened.”
Charming: A Cinderella Billionaire Story Page 23