Forget You

by Nina Crespo

  “I called out when I came in, but I guess you didn’t hear me.” He slid a light green towel off the rack and handed it to her. Dressed in a deep brown suit and black button-down shirt, he could have easily graced the pages of a magazine advert for all things gorgeous, expensive, and tempting. “I’m done for the day. What about you?”

  She dried off. “Kind of. I want to check on my supply order before I meet Robin.”

  “That’s right, it’s her birthday. Didn’t you complete your orders already?”

  “Yes, but I want to check them again and make sure I didn’t miss anything. The show’s in a few weeks. I can’t afford to make a mistake. Everything has to be perfect.” She tucked the towel around herself sarong-style and went to move past him.

  He grasped her waist. “Hold on. Where’s this coming from?”

  “What?”

  “Worry. You went over the order twice, and you had me review it again before you sent it off. If you missed anything, it can’t be fixed tonight. Stop driving yourself crazy. Spend time with your friend.”

  “She may not want to call me that anymore. With everything going on, I almost forgot it was her birthday.” Guilt forced Sophie’s gaze down to her toes.

  “But you didn’t.” King tugged her forward.

  She resisted. “I’m wet. I’ll ruin your jacket.”

  “I don’t care.” He embraced her. “You look really tired.”

  “I know. It’ll take a ton of makeup to cover the bags under my eyes.”

  “It wasn’t a criticism of how you look. You’re beautiful no matter what. I’m just concerned about you. My schedule was packed when Aiden and I started up Kingman Partners. We shared the load. You’re on your own.”

  Sophie swallowed a witty answer. Sincerity deserved an honest response. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Promise me you’ll forget about work for a few hours and enjoy life.”

  “I’ll try, but there’s so much to do. I still haven’t finished my notes for your new assistant. I wish you would have consented to hiring someone now. I could train them before I leave.”

  “Stop. Let me worry about a new assistant. As far as the rest, it’ll get done.” He caressed her back and kissed the top of her head.

  With each of his steady, even breaths, she relaxed. It felt so good to be with him like this. It made it easy to forget he wasn’t her forever guy. But she knew that his scent, his touch, and the stillness inside of her right then were all memories she could treasure. They’d comfort her when he was no longer around. Resting her cheek against his chest, she closed her eyes and let him hold her a few minutes more.

  The maître d’ escorted Sophie through the polished, light brown wood tables in the dimly lit space.

  The downtown Richmond restaurant, known for its seafood and fresh, seasonal vegetable pairings, was packed.

  Robin, wearing a bright orange dress, was easy to spot sitting at a center table. Her face brightened with a smile as soon as she spotted Sophie.

  “Happy birthday!” Sophie swooped in to kiss Robin’s cheek. She laid a flat, medium-size box wrapped in balloon-printed paper on the table.

  “I thought you’d stood me up.”

  “Never.” As Sophie sat down, the maître d’ pushed in her chair. “I had to make a stop for your gift.”

  “Can I open it now?” Robin tore the wrapping from the box and opened it, not waiting for an answer. As she held up the turquoise lace peasant blouse, she grinned. “A Meagan Langston original. It’s gorgeous.”

  “Keep digging. There’s a gift card in there too so you can buy something to go with it.”

  When Robin found the card, she danced in her seat. “Thank you. I love you.” She blew kisses to Sophie. “You’re the best.” She carefully placed her gifts back into the box. “That wrap dress looks great on you, by the way. Purple is your color. Is it one of Meagan’s?”

  “Yes.”

  Robin sighed happily. “My friend, the jewelry designer who works with Meagan Langston.” She adjusted the white cloth napkin over the skirt of her dress. “I just love saying that.”

  “Part-time designer.” Sophie unsnapped her folded napkin and laid it over her lap.

  “You’re not honestly still thinking about getting another office gig after Kingman Partners?”

  “A lot of people keep their day jobs while pursuing other things.” But lately, she had started to contemplate the possibility of just making jewelry. “A real job is a good insurance policy.”

  “News flash. What you’re doing with Meagan is a real job. You’re not making pretend jewelry.” Robin held up a hand, stalling Sophie’s explanation. “Whatever I say goes. It’s my birthday.”

  A server took their drink orders.

  Robin tucked her blond hair behind her ears and gave Sophie a conspiratorial smile. “A doctor at the hospital tried to make reservations here for his wedding anniversary. He said the place is booked solid for months. How did you do it? Was it Meagan?”

  “No. It was King. He knows the head chef.”

  “Oh, he knows her? That’s interesting.” Robin sat back. “I heard she’s pretty. Is she one of his exes?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.” Sophie released an easy-breezy sigh as she studied the menu.

  “My, aren’t we accommodating.”

  “So are you implying that I should have let his past stand in the way of my treating you to excellent food?”

  “Are you crazy? Of course not.”

  Robin’s incredulous look pushed a laugh out of Sophie. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  When the server returned, Robin ordered the grilled seafood platter and Sophie chose the Chilean sea bass.

  Robin caught her up on hospital gossip over dinner. As they moved on to a whipped-cream-and-berry-covered chocolate torte, they talked about all the series slated on their binge-watch list.

  Robin sucked the rich dessert from her fork. “I’m catching up on episodes of that new police drama on my next day off. Hot guys in uniform always do it for me. Will you be coming home for a visit?”

  “A visit?” Sophie laughed. “You make it sound like I’ve left.”

  “You were with King almost every night for the past four days. Stop with the look.” Robin laid down her fork. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you were acting weird and figure it out? Why didn’t you just tell me you were sleeping with him again instead of sneaking around?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

  “It’s not about my approval.” Robin leaned in and lowered her voice. “A few weeks ago, you were downing margaritas instead of champagne. You looked like your heart was ripped out, and it was because of him. Good things are happening for you. I don’t want him to spoil it for you or hurt you again.”

  “He won’t.” Sophie hunted for words—some sort of a plausible explanation that would allow Robin to understand. “I’m in this with my eyes open, and I’m still keeping my promise. After this weekend, it’s over.”

  Robin studied her. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  The rich chocolate dessert overwhelmed her taste buds. She wanted another bite, but having more would ruin its appeal. The same principle applied to her and King. They would end it before something ruined the goodness of what they now shared.

  Sophie laid down her fork. “Yes. I do.”

  twenty-four

  KING CLOSED THE bank app on his phone, then set his cell on the binder on top of the wooden deck next to his patio chair. The check he’d written to Meagan in support of the fashion show had cleared. At least something had turned out right. He let the half-full tumbler of whiskey dangle from his fingers. Moonlight beamed in the ice on the glass.

  He’d tried to avoid reading through the report again, but not even alcohol could quell the gnawing inside of him. Still, he’d found nothing wrong. That morning, Aiden had chewed his ass up, down, and sideways for stalling and called him obsessed. If a clear reason to not go ahead w
ith the bid wasn’t presented by the end of the week, his brother would go forward without him with the full support of their financial advisors. Since his hesitation was based on a gut feeling, he wouldn’t blame Aiden for doing it.

  King took a sip from the glass, and condensation dripped onto his bare chest. He missed Sophie. For the past few nights, they’d sat on the balcony outside the bedroom talking, sometimes just enjoying the silence, but Robin’s birthday was important. Sophie needed time with her friends. Still, it was growing hard to watch her leave, knowing soon she wouldn’t come back at all. She’d negotiated the terms of their hookup. It was easy to say yes for a chance to be with her. It was harder to accept she wanted the time limit to stay that way. Not that he was built for more. He wouldn’t ask her to settle for less like his mother had with his father.

  “King?”

  Sophie stood in the doorway. The breeze tugged at the short dress she wore, offering teasing, shadowed glimpses of her breasts.

  She is so fucking beautiful. King sucked a stream of air into his lungs. At some point he’d stopped breathing. “I thought you were partying with Robin in celebration of her birthday.”

  “I was.” Sophie came over to sit on his lap, and her warmth seeped through his dark boxers. “But when we were at the bar, Robin ran into this cute paramedic she’s been dating off and on. I was definitely a third wheel.” She kissed him. “Why aren’t you in bed? It’s late.”

  He pulled her closer, absorbing the fragrance wafting from her warm skin. “Something came up. After I took care of it, I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  She glanced at the binder. “Isn’t it time to let it go?”

  “I will. I have. But I couldn’t look away without taking one more shot at finding the problem. I failed. All I needed was one small thing. If I’d found it, maybe Aiden would listen.”

  “I’ve never seen you two this divided.”

  “Whenever Gerard is in the mix, things have a tendency to turn chaotic. I think Aiden’s insistence to go forward has too much to do with beating out our father. It’s clouding his judgment.”

  “That type of animosity isn’t good.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “From the outside it’s hard to understand. Why would your father want to destroy what you’ve built and see you fail? As his sons, your success is part of his legacy.”

  “Raising us to outlast his opponents as his successors was the legacy he envisioned. Not us competing against him and, God forbid, winning. In his eyes, we’re disloyal. It’s ironic because he doesn’t have a drop of loyalty inside of him. Now that we’ve supposedly failed him, he considers us something he needs to get rid of. One of his favorite sayings is that sometimes you have to eat your young.”

  She shivered. “That’s vicious.”

  “For him, that’s the cost of the ultimate prize: winning. If you’re not willing to sacrifice everything for that, you’re useless. He instilled that in us from day one.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.” As a child, once King had realized winning would gain Gerard’s approval, he’d strived to attain it. So he became the best. Surpassed his peers. Stupidly mocked failure. King glided his palm up Sophie’s silky-smooth thigh. “He handed me my first multimillion-dollar deal when I was seventeen.”

  “He must have had a lot of faith in you.”

  “Faith had nothing to do with it. It was a test. Everyone said I was as smart as him, so I had to prove it.”

  Sophie leaned away to look up at him. “He viewed it as a competition? That’s insane. Having a smart kid is something to be proud of as a parent.” She shook her head. “Being put in that position by him must have been so intimidating.”

  He tightened his hold on her, drawing her back against his chest. The sense of calm that came over him when he held her close, and the way it left him when she moved away—that type of power was far more intimidating. A harsh laugh shot out of him. “Not even close. I’d graduated early from high school, then spent what would have been my senior year shadowing my father and every heavy hitter in the business world who’d let me in. I was headed to Cornell, and cocky as hell.”

  “Did you succeed in closing that first deal?”

  The answer to that question had always eluded him. Haunted him. Which is why he never talked about that first deal. Yet he’d brought it up now with Sophie. End it. Say yes and move on. “On the books, yes, but in reality, no. I skirted around business procedures I saw as unnecessary.” The confession hovered in his throat like a foreign language he hadn’t quite mastered. “I signed the contract and sent it forward without allowing accounting, legal, or my father’s advisors to review the final document. If they had, they would have noticed a critical mistake. I’d agreed to terms no seasoned negotiator worth a damn would ever have considered.”

  “Did you try to fix it?”

  “You bet I did. I went to the owners, but they wouldn’t budge. Any other remedy, other than a voluntary renegotiation of terms, opened our company to a lawsuit. The only option was to take the loss.”

  The thought of King facing the cruelty of Gerard alone made her heart ache. “What did your father say?”

  The secret he’d kept all these years, the one that had caused him to become indebted to Gerard for saving him, knotted his gut, but he wanted Sophie to know the truth. More important, he needed to say it as a reminder to himself why he wasn’t worthy to have her beyond a few more nights.

  King forced a long breath. “I went to my father’s office that night. He always worked late. The door was closed, but the light was on. And he wasn’t alone. He was with a woman, and from the sounds they were making, it was obvious what they were doing.” Suddenly it was as if he were standing outside that door again. A teen, not yet a man, in need of his father. His pride wounded by a mistake. His world irreparably changed with the knowledge of his father’s infidelity.

  Sophie stroked his chest. Not in a way to incite passion, but to comfort.

  The last thing he deserved was her compassion. “I didn’t have the guts to confront him. The next morning on the way to the board meeting, I even tried to convince myself that someone else was in my father’s office, and it wasn’t him.” Long-buried shame burbled up. “I walked into the boardroom ready to face failure but instead was applauded for buying my first hotel property.”

  She sat up. “You said you’d screwed it up.”

  “I had, but when I looked into my father’s eyes, I could see what he’d done. I’m not sure how he found out I’d negotiated a bad deal. Knowing him, he let it go through, all the while planning to use some ace up his sleeve to negate everything. Nothing short of blackmail would have caused the owners in Aruba to give up the windfall that I’d given them. But somehow, Gerard had pulled it off. He was willing to let me take the credit, without anyone knowing I’d messed up, on one condition.”

  “He told you that?”

  “He didn’t have to. I could see it in his eyes. He knew that I’d discovered he was cheating. He’d invited my mother to the meeting. She was excited about a European trip my father had just announced he was taking her on. Aiden was there too. Gerard had promised him a car for his upcoming birthday.”

  King swallowed the bitterness rising in his throat. “I had a choice. I could tell my mother what I knew and tear our family apart, or I could keep his secret and have the future I’d dreamed of in the company. It’s obvious which one I chose.” Braced for Sophie’s disgust, he released her. No one, most of all him, could blame her for leaving now.

  “How cruel.” Moonlight reflected in her eyes. “No child should ever be forced to make a decision like that.”

  “But I did, and I believed him when he said it wouldn’t happen again. He gets off on pushing my buttons about how I failed. That’s why he showed up in Virginia Beach.”

  She cupped his cheek. “Someone who tries to knock another person down to build themselves up isn’t confident or powerful. I think he wanted you to mess up the presentatio
n because he’s afraid of becoming obsolete in your shadow.”

  He laid his forehead against hers. “You’d think that knowing how the drive to win at all costs made my father who he is would deter me from making the same mistakes. But sometimes, when I’m faced with either winning at all costs or losing, it’s not an easy decision to make.”

  “You have to believe that you’re better than him in all of the right ways.”

  “I do when I’m with you.”

  “Then make a conscious choice. Choose to be that man, and not your father. Continue to be the good man I see when I look at you.”

  He kissed her, pouring into it what little he knew how to give, conveying what he wanted to say but didn’t have a right to ask from her. He needed her. He wanted her to stay with him. An odd pang spread through the middle of his chest. But he’d settle for the physical, for the completeness he felt buried inside of her.

  He grasped Sophie’s hips and brought her closer to his chest. As she straddled him, he grabbed the front of her dress and ripped it open.

  She groaned against his lips. “I just bought this.”

  “I’ll buy you another one.”

  He deepened the kiss and his caress followed the fabric he slipped down her arms. Her skin was like a silky dream he never wanted to end. He squeezed her breasts and sucked her nipples. “Should I get a condom?”

  Sophie undulated against his hard length pressing through the fabric of his boxers. “I’m on the pill and I’ve been tested. You?”

  “I was tested too and I’m clean. Are we good to go?”

  “Yes.”

  King leaned back and freed himself from his boxers. She gripped his shoulder with one hand while guiding him inside of her with the other.

  A low groan slipped out of him as he let her take the lead while she moved up and down on his shaft. The warmth of her pussy squeezing around his cock incited a riot inside of him.

  He grasped her hips and drove deeper. The need for release feathered down his spine. King reached between her legs and pressed her clit.