by Mia Caldwell
For the short period that he had known her, she had displayed no signs of having any addictions or vices that took all her money. Then again, money was enough of a motivation on its own for some people. Could she have kept up the “poor me” facade as an act to throw people off of her embezzling?
Christian made himself a tenth cup of coffee and returned with it to the living room. His brain was exhausted and he badly wanted to lie down, but every time he closed his eyes he only saw Raina.
He tossed and turned as he imagined for the millionth time the image of Roger massaging Raina’s breasts, his hands under her skirt, and his mouth on her neck. Raina’s reaction though was what had pierced his heart.
She had seemed to love what Roger was doing to her.
Raina had told Roger she was willing to trade her body for a promotion.
It was too much to bear and he shoved the images to the back of his mind. He glanced at the gold clock on the wall. Six thirty in the morning. The entire night had passed and he’d not slept a wink.
She usually got to work a few minutes before eight.
He would be there to meet her.
Christian needed answers.
Christian sat behind Raina’s desk and prepared himself for the inevitable confrontation. All of his feelings for her would have to be suspended.
He cleared his mind and thought back to the emails that Roger had sent him. The whole business did not make sense and it left a bitter taste in his mouth.
If Raina and his Uncle were having an affair, why didn’t Roger protect her by covering up for her?
The answer came swiftly. To cover his own ass.
His uncle was a selfish person whose only interest was himself.
Besides, he kept a string of women and Christian could not imagine him being so captivated with any woman to risk his own job by covering up for her.
It was disturbing, because all of the evidence he saw kept pointing to Raina. Christian knew himself to be a fair person and before he made the final conclusion, he needed to hear from Raina herself. She deserved that chance at least.
Yesterday, when he had caught them together right in the open lobby, Christian had reacted with rage and pain, something that he had never done before.
It was time to protect himself and get as far away from her as he could.
But last night he had missed Raina.
He missed her laugh and her playfulness and he had missed the children’s chatter—especially Jeremiah. It had felt good to be needed by a family, and to be looked up to.
Lost in his musings, Christian sat up abruptly when he heard voices in the hallway. One was clearly Raina and just hearing her voice made his knees weak. With her was Kelly. They walked past the office and he assumed that they had gone to Kelly’s office. He didn’t want to stay in her office any longer when he knew she was so close. He stood up and followed the two women. The door to Kelly’s office was slightly ajar and he paused for a moment, hearing Raina’s voice.
“Can you imagine? Five hundred thousand dollars!” she was saying.
His ears strained to hear the rest of the conversation.
“I’m so happy for you Raina, it’s just perfect. That’s a lot of money.” Kelly gushed.
“I know. I have to pinch myself to believe that I can now do all the things I’ve planned on doing. I don’t need this job Kelly! And I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Don’t get me wrong, it has brought me to where I am today, and I can enjoy my new found wealth, thanks to Del Mar …”
She laughed some more, no doubt at her perfidy and deviousness.
Christian could not stand to hear any more.
He tore himself from where he stood and strode purposely out of the staff wing and into the lobby of the grand hotel. His face contorted with rage. What a fool he had been!
He felt like an old rug, stepped all over, used and then thrown out into the garbage.
This was the last time, Christian swore to himself, the very last time. He would never ever be taken in by another deceitful woman.
The last place he wanted to be at that moment was at the hotel. He didn’t know if he’d be able to control his rage if he came face to face with her. He didn’t want to find out what he might do.
He didn’t need to be there any longer—Roger could take care of calling the cops and handling the rest of the investigation—and if he never saw Raina again, he would be a happy man.
He walked out of Del Mar hotel and out of Raina McMillan’s life for good.
She had broken his heart, but that was forgivable.
What was not forgivable was proving to be greedy and untrustworthy.
She would pay for that, Christian swore. He had his driver take him directly to the private airport. One of his assistants would handle packing up the penthouse apartment—he couldn’t bear to go back there.
The sooner he left Palm Beach for New York, the better he would feel.
“Mr. Del Mar, your meeting with the directors is in ten minutes.”
Christian looked up wearily. “OK, thank you Valerie.”
“It’s good to have you back sir,” Valerie, his secretary of seven years, said. She shot him a welcoming glance.
“Thank you,” Christian said with what he knew was a tired smile. He barely glanced at her before looking back at the mountain of papers he had on his desk.
He hadn’t slept much since his return from Palm Beach.
He felt displaced, as though he was in the wrong apartment—the wrong life. His New York apartment was more personal than the one in Palm Beach, yet he felt like a stranger there. He had shed his disguise and it felt good to be Christian Del Mar again, but still something remained missing.
Raina was like a ghost, lurking in the edges of his consciousness. He knew what he had to do but the thought of prosecuting her was too much. He had delayed the inevitable because he couldn’t stand the idea of putting her in jail—even though she deserved nothing less.
Still … If she was in jail, what would happen to the children? That thought was weighing heavily on his conscience.
Lost in his thoughts, he heard Valerie softly shut the door. He thought of Raina in handcuffs and the children holding on to each other in terror as they watched her be dragged out of their home. He thought of the children being sent to foster homes and being split up. He thought about all of that, and he knew deep in his heart he wouldn’t do that to them.
None of it was their fault.
Fine.
She was welcome to the money, if it had meant so much to her that she would steal for it. The money would be a small price to pay to rid himself of her in his life. Perhaps the memory of her would disappear too, once he wiped that slate clean.
Christian stood up and made for the conference room, down one floor. He wasn’t looking forward to this meeting with his division directors.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Christian said, walking into the boardroom.
“Christian!” Horace said, standing up. The three other men stood up too and shook his hand vigorously, patting Christian on the back.
They made polite small talk, before getting down to the business they needed to discuss.
“I know you all want to know about Del Mar Palm Beach,” Christian begun when they had all settled down around the conference table. “Well, I did get to the bottom of the problem,” he sucked in a deep breath. “I can assure you that it now has a clean bill of health.”
The expected questions came, probing for more details. Christian circumvented the questions and gave as few details as possible without mentioning names. They appeared satisfied as they broke the meeting up thirty minutes later. He was known for his short board meetings. Christian saw no use in lingering; he preferred to get down to business and go on to other things.
The other things, for now, included wiring instructions to the Palm Beach office to let Raina go. It hurt him even as he wrote the email but he had no choice. She had gotten away easy but the images of the thr
ee children haunted him.
Each of them was special. Chantal was the most serious of the three, and Christian knew she would make a wonderful lawyer or doctor one day. Crystal would probably venture into fashion or something on the artistic side. She was creative and she loved drama. She would be the life and soul of every party. Jeremiah was a bright and well-rounded child, and he loved sports. He could be anything he chose to be. All three of them could—if they had the right support.
Christian intended to offer that support.
Raina’s betrayal had no effect on how he felt about the children. They were innocent, and had welcomed him into their hearts and home and viewed him as part of the family. After the email giving instructions to terminate Raina’s employment, Christian then wrote another to his accountant.
He wanted to set up a private, anonymous school scholarship for them.
Later in the afternoon, Valerie popped into his office with documents she needed him to sign or approve.
“I’ve sent flowers to a few people, Jane from Sales got engaged …” Valerie started going down a long list.
Christian cringed and waved away her updates, and then when he saw her crestfallen face, he felt remorseful. “Sorry Val, I’m in a terrible mood, none of which is your fault. Thank you for your thoughtfulness, I really do appreciate it.”
She perked up then and her face lit up into a smile. Happily married with four almost grown kids, Valerie was his perfect assistant. She had no interest in him and neither did he have any interest in her. Theirs was a professional relationship which sometimes veered towards friendship.
“You don’t look yourself,” Valerie commented, her tone concerned.
“I’ll be alright in a few days or so, can you bear with me till then?”
She grinned. “For you? Of course.”
She took him through the documents he needed to sign. On her way out, she paused by the door.
“You know, we missed you while you were gone. Also, you have an event tonight, I put a reminder on your desk in the morning,” she said. “The annual Gala for the New York Patrons of the Arts?” she added when she saw his blank look.
Christian ran his fingers through his hair. The last thing he wanted was to spend the evening making inconsequential conversation with women who considered themselves the cream of New York society. Still, maybe he would find one diversion to spend the next couple of weeks with.
At the gala, which was to celebrate something Christian had no interest in, he drank too many glasses of champagne, talked to too many boring people, and fielded too many press inquiries about his recent absence from his company. Listening to another such request, he glanced at a blond, stick thin woman holding a microphone in front of him and stifled a yawn.
Being with Raina had spoiled him. He longed for her curvy body, her wild, dark, curly hair, her soft skin, her full lips.
He saw her face everywhere he looked.
Right now in his tipsy mind, he wished that Ms. Fontaine or whatever she had said her name was would disappear, and that he could close his eyes and Raina would be in her place.
In his inebriated state he didn’t care that she had stolen from him; his need for her was that bad. In his mind he was taking her to his bedroom to make love to her until she screamed in pleasure for him.
The mental image of Raina writhing and moaning under his touch caused him to groan.
“Are you alright? Is it the canapés? They didn’t go down well with me either.…”
“Excuse me,” Christian said. No, he wasn’t feeling well, but it had nothing to do with the overly rich food. Leaving abruptly, and very rudely, he left Ms. Fontaine gaping at him. He made a dash to the dive bar he’d seen on the far end of the block on his way to the event.
He sat at the counter of McGilly’s Tavern and continued drinking until the bartender cut him off for having had too much. An hour later, Jim was guiding him out into the street and into his car.
Jim never said a word to him and Christian slept through most of the ride home. He rarely drank more than a couple of glasses of wine, but tonight, he had felt in need of something to dull the pain.
Had he been in Palm Beach, he knew he was weak enough that he would have gone to Raina’s door and begged her to let him make love to her.
He staggered into his apartment.
“Will you be all right, boss?” Jim said, with concern written all over his face.
Christian squinted, the image of his driver dancing in front of his eyes. He waved Jim away—all three versions of him—and shut the door. He stumbled towards his bedroom and fell onto the bed with all his clothes on.
Hours later, he woke up with a stiff body and a dry throat. The moment he lifted his head, pain rushed in. Christian groaned and turned over but his thirst got worse by the second. He dragged himself out of bed and flicked on the light switch, and then immediately regretted it, and turned the lights off once more.
In the living room, he checked the time. It was two in the morning.
He drowned a cup of cold water from the fridge, poured another and returned with it to the bedroom. He undressed and slipped back into bed. He needed a plan. He could not drink Raina away; besides, drinking himself to a stupor every night did not appeal to him in any way.
If he lay still enough, he could almost hear her soft breathing and smell her scent and almost imagine that she was lying next to him.
This was lunacy! Christian had never been affected in this way by a breakup. To him, moving on from a relationship was like flicking off a fly from his suit with a single movement of his fingers.
The solution was to immerse himself in work. It had always worked for him in the past.
But that would not be enough this time, he grimaced at the thought, knowing the truth behind it. He enjoyed giving talks on business and consulting and he could do that to fill any stray hour that wasn’t taken up with running his own empire. He could take up jogging or tennis. Hell, he would take up knitting if it helped him take his mind off of Raina, he thought wryly.
If he was exhausted enough, within a few weeks, he would not even recall what Raina had looked like—the way she threw her head back when she laughed, or the way she bit her lip when she was worried, or the way she could look professional and confident giving a talk to her staff. The way she looked when he made her come … no, he would definitely not remember that.…
He wondered if she was happy now wherever she was.
Was she counting the money she had stolen and patting herself on the back, literally laughing all the way to the bank? A sneer crept across his face at the thought. She was a greedy thief and a liar, he reminded himself. No matter how good his cock felt when he was buried inside her, he had to keep that thought at the forefront of his mind.
“Oh, Raina,” Christian said out aloud, “Why?”
If only he could see her and hold her one more time. Except that it wouldn’t be the same. Her betrayal and deceit would always be a barrier to them, separating them like an invisible force field.
If he saw her, who knew what he would do to her, with his anger still so fresh, his pain still so raw? He wanted revenge, but he knew the people who would ultimately get hurt would be the children—so he could not act on his wishes.
Still, it puzzled Christian that she could be so kind and caring to a stranger, going as far as inviting him to her own house and then turn round and steal from the very company that provided her and the children financial security.
It was difficult to fathom.
13
“I’m looking for Christopher, the maintenance guy, is he off today?” Raina asked. She kept her voice light and casual, hoping no one would notice the strain or the worry she felt.
It had been two days and Christopher was still avoiding her calls and he had not been back to the house.
“Oh him, no, he just went AWOL, I guess,” Genevieve, the human resources manager said with a shrug. “Another one bites the dust, huh? Ugh. Staff are so unreliabl
e these days, aren’t they? Did I tell you about the contractors who are building my garage? Can you believe they—”
“Oh, thanks,” Raina managed to say and stumbled out, leaving Genevieve to pratter on about her own troubles.
How could he? How could Christopher just leave? Without a single word? Her eyes were flooded with tears and she staggered towards Kelly’s office. Before entering, Raina tried to compose herself. She needed another opinion from someone not involved.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“Hi. You look terrible,” Kelly commented. She leaned back in her chair and assessed her friend objectively.
“Gee. Thanks.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do look terrible.” Trust her friend to say it as it was, Raina thought wryly. She sat down without an invitation.
“I feel as terrible as I look. Would you believe that Christopher just took off? Without even a single word to me?” Raina choked. “He just left. Just like that.” She waved her arms in the air, like a magician showing off his disappearing act.
She was unable to believe that the man who had been so gentle with her and the children could just up and leave without even a goodbye to them.
“Oh, Raina, I’m so sorry,” Kelly commiserated.
Raina did not seem to hear her. She thought of Christopher and was beginning to wonder if she had known him at all.
“If I was in his shoes, I would give myself a chance to explain,” Raina said with feeling.
Kelly raised an eyebrow. “Really, Raina?”
Raina sighed. “Okay. Okay, maybe not.” She sighed again, her shoulders slumping. “I know it looked bad, Kelly. Pervy Roger on my neck, his hands up my skirt—but! But Christopher could at least have waited to hear what I had to say before jumping to conclusions! He clearly thought the worst about me, and never gave me a chance!”
“Some people react differently to situations. You said so yourself, he had a bad experience with a betrayal from a friend. He must have seen you and Roger as a betrayal.”
Raina groaned. “What am I going to do?”