Exposed

by Tracy Wolff

  Shit. I just keep screwing this up, don’t I? All I want to do is protect her and instead I keep fucking up.

  “I go by Stu.”

  “Oh, right. It’s nice to meet you, Stu. You do such a good job of getting Ethan to listen to you, maybe you can give me some pointers.”

  He grins. “Funny, I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

  They laugh together and a quick glance at Stu tells me he’s completely charmed by Chloe. Not like that’s a surprise. When she stops trying to blend into the woodwork, my wife is a very charming woman.

  I take the door from Chloe, hold it open a little wider. Stu gets the hint. “Okay, I’ll be going now. I’m sure I’ll be talking to you again soon, though, Chloe.”

  Her smile dims a little. “I’m sure you will be, Stu.”

  Yeah, she knows about Brandon, all right. And she obviously knows exactly who Stu is and what his job is.

  Once he’s gone and the door is closed behind him, I walk to the desk and click the button that lowers the privacy screen on my windows. My office is pretty isolated as I’ve got this whole floor, but Dorothy’s out there, along with my assistants, Scott and Vikram, and anyone else who happens to wander up to use one of the boardrooms. No one needs to see what goes on between Chloe and me, especially not when I’m about to break her heart—and her fragile self-confidence—wide open.

  As soon as the privacy screens click into place, I take her into my arms. She comes willingly, pressing her face against my chest. “I have half an hour before I have to be back to work,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “I want you to tell me what’s going on. All of it. I don’t want you to try to protect me.”

  “I’ll always protect you.” I press a kiss to her forehead.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do.” Reluctantly, I let her go long enough to lead her over to the seating area I have on the side of my office opposite my desk. I settle at one end, gesture for her to sit next to me.

  She does, and snuggles into my side without any prompting from me at all. I exhale the breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding.

  For long seconds, we just sit there, absorbing the peace that comes with being pressed against one another for the first time in four days. Finally, though, she pulls away enough to look me straight in the eye.

  “Tell me,” she says.

  And so I do, explaining exactly what happened at Brandon’s fund-raiser. What I said, how he reacted, how the world is reacting. She takes it all well, only asking a couple of questions here and there. At least until I get to the part about my mother’s phone call.

  That’s when she loses it a little. Oh, she doesn’t say a word, but I can see the panic in her pale skin, in her lips pressed so tightly together, in her eyes that are swimming with tears she refuses to shed. And I hate—I hate so much—that I’ve put her in this position. That I’ve brought her to this.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m doing everything I can to stop her. I promise, I won’t let her hurt you. I won’t let her tear you apart for her own twisted enjoyment.”

  “You’re not going to be able to stop her.”

  “Oh, I’ll stop her. Or I’ll die trying. She doesn’t get to use the worst moments of your life as a way to exonerate the bastard who hurt you. She doesn’t get to hold you up as entertainment for the bloodthirsty American public in order to try to save Brandon. I’ll see her in hell first.”

  “She’s your mother.”

  “Do you think I give a shit about that, right now? She’s a threat to you.”

  “She’s your mother,” Chloe repeats. “And I know you’re furious with her right now. God knows, I am after what she said to me in Napa. But, Ethan, I know what it’s like to be estranged from the only family I have. I wouldn’t wish that on you, not for anything.”

  “You’re not wishing it on me.”

  “No, but I’m bringing it on you.”

  “You’re not,” I tell her firmly. “She is. She’s doing all of it because she wants to protect Brandon and the position he might one day achieve. She wants power and influence—she always has. It’s why she left my father before he became the hero he was when he died and it’s why she married the man she did the second time around. It’s why she tried to talk me into politics and why she’s pushed Brandon that way from the moment I said no. It’s why she did everything she could to cover up what Brandon did to you and it’s why she’s so dangerous now. She’ll do whatever it takes to keep the power she does have, and to increase it.

  “That’s who she is, Chloe. Who she’s always been. I’ve just ignored it because I was too busy building this company to understand just how harmful and poisonous she’d become. But that’s on me, Chloe. Just like trusting her when she came to me with that ridiculous story about your parents extorting money from her is on me. Everything else is on her. And none of it, not one bit of it, is on you.”

  “It’s not about who’s to blame anymore, Ethan. It’s about how to get you and your reputation out of this with the least amount of damage.”

  “I can hold my own against her. The press knows who I am, what I stand for. If they want to come at me, they’re welcome to take a shot. But you’re a mystery to them. They don’t know you, yet, and I want to make sure they don’t take you apart just because they can.”

  “It’s not about me anymore.”

  “It’s always about you. It will always be about you.” How can she not know that by now? I’d do anything for her.

  I can tell that’s not what she wants to hear, though. Her shoulders slump and she just looks tired. So tired. I hate that my family has done this to her. That life and circumstances and I have done this to her.

  For a minute I think back to that night in my kitchen, when I tried to break up with her. I’d just flown in from Vegas, where I’d beaten the shit out of Brandon and I knew—I knew—I had to break things off with Chloe. Doing anything else was cruel. And I tried, I did, but in the end I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t strong enough to get past her pain and my own. I wasn’t strong enough to walk away when I loved her so much.

  And now, now we’re married and I love her so much. But I can’t help wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t caved. If I had let her walk out that door that night and never contacted her again? It would have hurt every day that I woke without her. Every day that I had to live without touching her, kissing her, hearing her voice, seeing her smile.

  And yet…and yet sitting here with her, knowing in my gut how badly things are going to go and how little I’m going to protect her, I can’t help thinking she would have been better off if I’d just let her go. If I hadn’t been so selfish, so lovestruck, so devastated at just the thought of being without her.

  I don’t know what it says about me that I didn’t let her go when she still had the chance at a normal life, but I know it isn’t good.

  “Don’t,” she says, her hand smoothing down my cheek.

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You’re blaming yourself and I won’t have it.”

  I laugh, but it comes out dark and bitter. “Who else is there to blame for this mess?”

  If I’d been strong enough to walk away, or strong enough to insist on doing this my way, we wouldn’t be here right now. But I wasn’t and now the only woman I’ve ever loved is going to suffer for my weakness. The knowledge grates like few things ever have.

  “I’m not even going to bother answering that question.”

  “Believe me, baby, I know there’s plenty of blame to go around. But I’m not going to exonerate myself from this situation.”

  “You don’t have to exonerate yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong. And besides, at this point does it really matter? Shouldn’t we be figuring out what we’re going to do instead of listing all the reasons we blame ourselves?”

  “You are blameless—”

  “Focus, Ethan.” She reaches out, taps my cheek sharply. “We nee
d to focus here.”

  “Stu and I are already working on a plan. I’m going to call my mother’s bluff and hope it’s actually a bluff. If it isn’t, we’ll have a contingency plan waiting.”

  “And what’s the contingency plan? Because, I have to be honest, I’m not real confident that your mom is bluffing.”

  “Yeah, neither am I. Which is why we’re going to try to figure out what news organization my mom will leak the story to. And then I’m going to make sure none of them touch the story.”

  “And how are you going to do that? You can’t go around threatening a bunch of members of the press, Ethan. Nothing good will come of it.”

  “Like nothing good would come of me destroying Brandon?” The words slip out before I know I’m going to say them. Shit. Now’s not the time to pick at her for being compassionate—and for worrying about me.

  “Really?” she asks, brow raised sardonically. “It didn’t take you long to decide I wasn’t blameless after all.”

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  “You meant it exactly the way it sounded. And, you know what, maybe you’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t have interfered in your nefarious plot to bring down your brother. But I still think it was the right thing to do. The last thing I want is Brandon and his mob contacts focused on you.”

  “So you’d rather have him and my mother focused on you?”

  “Any day, baby. Any day.”

  And just that easily, I melt. “You can’t go around saying things like that, Chloe.”

  “Why not? It’s true.”

  “Because I feel the same way about you. You’ve been hurt enough. I don’t want anything else to happen to you because of me.”

  “You’ve already said that. And sorry, but that ship has sailed. You don’t get to spend all your time thinking about how fragile, how broken, how ruined I am. I survived being raped by Brandon, I survived being abandoned by my family and being all but tortured by my classmates. I’m not weak. I used to think I was, but I was wrong. And you don’t get to try to make me weak just so you can protect me.”

  “Jesus, that’s not what I’m doing. Chloe, you can’t really think that.” She can’t really think that.

  “I don’t think that. But sometimes, that’s the way you make me feel when you talk about protecting me. About not wanting to see me hurt any more.”

  I stand up, walk to the window that looks out over the Frost Industries campus. I’ve built this company from the ground up. I started with almost nothing and now I have a financial and business empire. Sure, there were missteps along the way, but they were minor miscalculations. Small mistakes that I could easily recover from.

  Which is why I don’t understand why this relationship thing is so difficult for me. I’m well on my way to making my first billion before this year is up. Why the fuck can’t I keep my relationship on steady ground for longer than the blink of an eye?

  I hear Chloe get up off the couch, hear her move across the room to me. And still it comes as a surprise when she wraps her arms around my waist and leans into me. She’s wearing heels, so I can feel the warmth of her breath against my neck, feel the softness of her breasts against my back.

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” I admit hoarsely. Somehow, I’ve never felt more exposed. “I don’t know how to help you when you turn your back on everything I can offer you.”

  “All I want from you is to be your partner,” she tells me, pressing soft kisses against the nape of my neck. “For you to let me stand beside you instead of standing behind you, using you as a shield.”

  “I want to be your shield.”

  “And I want to be yours. But neither of us is going to get what we want if we keep jockeying for position.”

  Fuck. “You know, I really hate it when you’re right.”

  She laughs then, and it’s a real laugh. Warm and sweet and happy, so happy, despite what’s in store for her. And I don’t know how she does that. How, in the middle of this gigantic shitstorm we’re about to get hit with, she can find joy.

  “Yeah, well, you should probably get used to it, Ethan, love. You’re stuck with me for a long time and I plan on being right a lot more than I’m wrong.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me at all. Future lawyer that you are.”

  She laughs again, and this time I turn to face her. To cup her cheeks in my hands and slowly, so slowly, bring my mouth down to hers.

  It’s a lazy kiss, filled with memories and promises and all the moments that stretch between. I lick my way into her mouth, taking the time to explore her thoroughly. It’s only been four days since I’ve kissed her like this, but that’s four days too many. To hell with Brandon, to hell with my mom, to hell with everything, right now, that isn’t this. There will be time soon enough to deal with all the shit that’s headed straight at us.

  But Chloe breaks away too soon. And when she looks at me, the joy is gone. But it hasn’t been replaced by fear or sadness or rage. No, the look in her eyes—the look that rips right to the center of me—is her total, abject resolve.

  “Let them leak it,” she tells me.

  “What?” I couldn’t be more shocked if she suggested self-immolating in the middle of my office.

  “I have nothing to be ashamed of, and neither do you. Let your mother leak whatever she wants.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. Whoever gets the narrative going is the one who controls it. If she leaks it, it will be her story.”

  “So make it our story. You leak it.”

  “Are you serious?” I demand. “A few days ago you told me to do exactly the opposite of that.”

  “No, a few days ago I told you I didn’t want you going after Brandon and his illegal activities because I was afraid you were going to get hurt. But this? He’s already hurt me all he’s going to with this rape. If laying it all out on the line for the whole country to see is the only way for me to be totally free of him, and for you to be safe, then I say let’s do it. Now. He and your mother brought it on themselves.”

  “You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that. You don’t know what being the object of a story like this entails.”

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But haven’t you been saying all along that you wanted to protect me? This is your chance.”

  “This is—I don’t—I haven’t even thought about this as an option.”

  “Oh, bullshit. You’re a brilliant guy, Ethan. Don’t tell me you didn’t look at all the options, including this one. I know I have. And while I might not know the sheer magnitude of what it entails, I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen. Reporters at the gates at all hours of the day and night. Stories about me—and the rude, obnoxious comments that go with them—all over the internet. People calling me a slut or a whore or a gold-digging bitch. I can handle it. I swear.”

  “I don’t want you to handle it.” I repeat my words from earlier. Just the thought of those things happening to her makes me crazy.

  “Too bad that’s not a choice you get to make.” She presses another kiss to my lips, then walks across my office to the minibar in the corner like the debate is over—and like she isn’t the least bit bothered about the decision she’s making.

  Once there, she pours herself a glass of water. And I do my best not to pay attention to the fact that her hands are shaking.

  “So, oh wise one,” she says after she’s taken a long drink. “Tell me. How are we going to do this?”

  “I have no idea.” It’s not an option I was ever willing to consider.

  “Well, you better figure it out pretty quickly, because there’s no way your mother is getting the drop on us this time. No way in hell.”

  And she wonders why I love her, why sometimes the love I feel for her is so big, so expansive, so immense that it’s all I can do to keep from bursting into a million little pieces. This is definitely one of those times.

  “Stu and I will figure out the best way to do this,”
I promise her. “We’ll do everything to keep you as safe as possible.”

  “I know, and I’m okay with that, as long as you keep yourself safe, too.”

  “I’m not the one I’m worried about here.”

  “Aren’t you glad I’m here, then? I can do the worrying for both of us.”

  Chapter 19

  I walk Chloe back to her office. She’s three buildings over, so we get to spend a few minutes holding hands in the sunshine, and it feels good. So much of our relationship has been, if not fully in darkness, then at least dark, that it feels amazing to have the warmth of the sun beating down on our faces and shoulders.

  If I were a more metaphysical sort, I’d say it feels like a sign. But I’m not, so I’ll just run with it. Just enjoy looking at the sun glinting off my wife’s strawberry blond hair. Just enjoy the feel of her hand, warm and steady, in my own.

  I’m planning on walking her all the way up to her cubicle, but once we get to her building she puts a hand in the middle of my chest and gently pushes me back from the door. “This is as far as you go.”

  She brushes a quick kiss onto the corner of my mouth.

  “What do you mean? I’ll walk you up.” I go to open the door.

  “No,” she says. “You won’t. I don’t walk you to your office like you’re a little kid, so you don’t get to walk me to mine.”

  “I’d love it if you walked me to my office. In fact, let’s head back that way right now.” I waggle my brows at her suggestively. “I’ll clear my afternoon schedule and we can—”

  “God.” She rolls her eyes at me. “You are such an idiot.”

  “Hey. Ten minutes ago you were calling me brilliant.”

  “Ten minutes ago, you were brilliant. Now you’re just pathetic.”

  “Watch it, lady.” I grab her wrist, pull her into my body. “Don’t you know us big-business types have very fragile egos?”