I couldn’t.
“I just found out. I had no idea until a few months ago that it was you. I don’t even—”
“I said stop.” He stepped forward, forcing me back against the wall. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Please, listen—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He slammed a hand against the wall above my head and I saw past the cultured, ruthless gentleman everyone else saw to a man who was far less polished and way more dangerous than anyone truly realized. “Your father seduced my mother and after introducing her to drugs, left her to OD in a hotel room because trying to save her meant watching his precious inheritance go up in flames.” His face was so close to mine now I felt the warm puff of his breath on my lips. “He destroyed my family. I want nothing from him or you. I certainly don’t want to breathe the same air as either one of you.”
He abruptly pushed away from the wall and marched out of the hallway.
Most women would probably be in tears after a verbal assault like that. Not me. Growing up, I’d watched my mother succumb to tears in every spat she ever had, and I’d hated that. When she was angry she cried, when all she really wanted to do was be angry.
So I never cried when I was angry.
And I was pissed at my estranged father for putting me in a position where I’d be painted with the same disgusting brush as him.
Caine’s last words penetrated through my thoughts.
“Oh, shit.” I rushed out of the hallway.
Caine was speaking to Benito in the kitchen.
My stomach flipped as Benito flinched at whatever Caine said. He looked over at me, bewildered, before turning to respond to the other man.
Caine glowered and whipped around, searching the room for someone. His eyes locked on a young man dressed in a stylish suit. “Ethan, I want a different photographer.” His voice carried across the room so everyone heard and caused them to halt in what they were doing. “Or I don’t do the cover.”
Ethan nodded militantly. “I’m on it, sir.”
I was horrified; my eyes flew to Benito, whose mouth had dropped open in equal horror. Caine didn’t stick around long enough to witness that, though. He was already striding toward me, and as he passed me to head for the exit, he didn’t even look at me.
I felt sick.
Benito’s tone was quiet, surprisingly calm. His words were not. “What the fuck did you do?”
My friend Rachel moved the restless child in her arms from one side of her lap to the other. “It’s been five hours. Calm down. Your boss will call you to clear this whole misunderstanding up.”
I eyed her daughter, Maisy, with growing concern. “Should Maisy’s face be that purple?”
Rachel frowned at the subject change and looked at her daughter. “Maisy, stop holding your breath.”
Maisy stared up at her stubbornly.
“Uh … she’s still holding her breath.” Why Rachel was not as worried by this as I was, I did not know.
Rachel made a face. “You won’t get a toy if you keep holding your breath.”
Maisy let out a comically long exhale and then grinned at me.
“She’s the devil,” I murmured softly, eyeing her warily.
“Tell me about it.” Rachel shrugged. “Apparently I pulled the old holding–my-breath-to-get-what-I-want trick when I was her age.”
I glanced down at my half-eaten lunch. “We can leave and go for a walk through the gardens if she’s getting restless.”
“We’re not finished calming you down.” Rachel waved at a passing waiter. “Two more diet sodas and an orange juice, please.”
I didn’t argue. Out of all of my friends, Rachel was the most persistent and overbearing. That was probably why she was the only one of them I still saw on a regular basis.
There had been four of us, close friends, in college: me, Rachel, Viv, and Maggie. Out of the four of us, I was the only one not married, and I was childless. Between them they had four kids. I’d lost contact with Viv and Maggie over the years, and now I only saw Rachel every few weeks. I’d been so busy with work and socializing with colleagues that I’d never bothered to make new friendships outside of the old or outside of my career.
If that horrible gut feeling I had turned out to be true, if Benito fired me, I was looking at a very grim future of no money, no pretty apartment, and no social life.
“Maybe you should make mine a vodka,” I grumbled.
Rachel heaved a sigh. “Benito is not going to fire you. Not after all your hard work. Right, baby?” She bounced her daughter on her knee.
Maisy giggled at me and shook her head, her dark curls flying into her mother’s face.
“Great, even the three-year-old knows I’m fucked.”
Rachel grimaced. “You can’t say fucked in front of a kid, Lex.” Our drinks arrived and she pushed mine toward me.
“Now calm your shit so we can talk about me for a while.”
I smiled a real smile for the first time in a week. “Only if you tell me one more time I’m not going to get fired.”
“Lex, you’re not going to get fired.”
“Alexa, you’re fired!”
My stomach dropped at the irate beginning to the voice mail message Benito had left me.
“I don’t know what the fuck happened this morning, but you are done. And not just with me. Oh no! Do you know what you cost me today? You pissed Caine Carraway off so badly I lost Mogul and two other magazines from the same media company! My reputation is on the line here. After everything I’ve worked for! Well …” His voice lowered, which was even scarier than the shouting. “Consider yourself fucked, because I’m going to make sure you never work in this industry again.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and sucked in a shuddering, teary breath.
This was bad.
This was so, so bad.
CHAPTER 2
I stared stubbornly at my phone as I sipped a huge glass of red wine. “No.”
My grandfather sighed loudly, causing the speakerphone to crackle. “For once put your pride aside and let me help you. Or do you want to move out of that apartment you love so much?”
No, I did not. I’d worked my butt off to be able to afford to rent a place like my one-bedroom condo in Back Bay. It was beautiful with its high ceilings and tall windows that looked down onto the tree lined street. I loved the location. I was a twenty-minute walk from my favorite part of the city—the Public Garden, Newbury Street, Charles Street … Location was everything, but the fact that my apartment was cute and homey was icing on a very nice cake. It was the kind of place I’d always wanted, and I had hoped that someday I’d have saved enough for a deposit to buy the apartment or one in the same neighborhood.
Material goods didn’t mean a damn thing. I knew that. But I just really needed my pretty apartment right now. It was a comfort thing.
Did I need it enough to sell my principles?
Unfortunately no.
“I’m not taking your money, Grandpa.” I knew it wasn’t Edward Holland’s fault, but the diamond fortune he’d inherited from his family and gone on to expand with wise investments that diversified his business portfolio was the very thing that had polluted my father. I didn’t want anywhere near something so toxic.
“Then I’ll have a word with Benito.”
I thought about the fact that my grandfather had kept his relationship with me secret from the rest of his family. No one outside the family knew that Alexa Holland was a Holland—my dad had managed to keep the indiscretion with my mother that led to my birth from his family, excluding his father—and Grandpa certainly hadn’t confessed to them that he’d reached out to me when I was twenty-one and all alone in Boston.
I understood that it would have caused drama and irritation for him to reveal the truth, but I couldn’t say it didn’t hurt. Sometimes it felt like he was ashamed of me. Like it or not, though, he was all I had now and I loved him.
I bit down my resentment. “You can’
t,” I said. “Benito has a big mouth. He’ll tell everyone who I am.”
“So, what, then? You find another job … Doing what?”
Any other job would come with a major pay cut. As an executive PA to a successful photographer, I made a nice income. More than twice that of standard PA positions. I sipped at my wine, looking around at all my pretty things in my pretty home.
“I didn’t even get to apologize,” I muttered.
“What?”
“I didn’t even get to apologize,” I repeated. “He blew up in my face and then ruined my life.” I groaned. “Don’t even say it. I recognize the irony in that. My family ruined his … tit for tat.”
Grandpa cleared his throat. “You didn’t ruin his life. But you did take him off guard.”
Guilt suffused me. “True.”
“And I already told you my attempts in the past have failed. It isn’t our place to apologize.”
“I know that.” I did know that. I wasn’t disappointed, because I couldn’t apologize for my father’s sins. I was disappointed because in that moment, when Caine realized who I was, I saw a pain in his eyes that was so familiar to me. Seeing the pain that was clearly still raw for him, I felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of kinship with him. We were both part of a tragic legacy. I’d never been able to talk about it with anyone because of the secrecy of it all. For years I’d been left to bear the burden of the truth all by myself. Then three months ago my mom died and all the ugly shit came crawling to the surface, and during a tirade on the phone to my grandpa he’d finally let slip the name of the child who had been wronged.
Caine Carraway. The only other person besides my parents and grandfather who knew the truth. The only other person who could possibly understand.
I couldn’t explain the connection I felt to him. I just knew that it was possible I was the only person who could understand his pain, and … I found I wanted to be there for him somehow. It didn’t make sense. I barely knew him. I knew that. But I couldn’t help feeling it all the same.
It was gut-wrenching then to have him look at me like I was part of the problem. Like … I was to blame. I hated the idea that he could think that of me, and I didn’t want that to be the last time we ever spoke. I didn’t want to be part of a bad memory. “I should go over there and apologize for ambushing him. While I’m there I could ask him to fix this. One call to Benito and he can make this go away.”
“Alexa, I don’t think that’s wise.”
Maybe not. But I was desperate for my job back and to change Caine’s opinion of me. “Ever since Mom … I just … I need him to hear me out, and I see no harm in asking him to call Benito while I’m there.”
“That sounds an awful lot like what you need and not what he needs.”
I shoved that truth aside and rationalized, “Have you met Caine Carraway? I don’t think that man knows what he needs.”
The receptionist was staring at me as if I was ridiculous.
“You want to see Mr. Carraway of Carraway Financial Holdings without an appointment?”
I knew it wouldn’t be easy to walk into the huge rose-granite-walled building on International Place and expect to be escorted directly to Caine’s office. Still, the receptionist was treating it as if I were asking to see the president. “Yes.” I curbed my natural instinct to return her question with sarcasm. She didn’t look like she’d respond well to that.
She sighed. “One moment, please.”
I glanced over at the security guard who was manning the metal detectors situated before the elevators. Carraway Financial Holdings shared the building with another company, which meant there were security cameras everywhere. No matter what I tried to pull here, I was going to get caught. It was all just a matter of timing. I was okay with getting caught … as long it was after I got in to see Caine.
I sidled away from the reception desk while the pinchy-mouthed receptionist lady frowned at her nails. While her focus was elsewhere I smoothed on a fake look of nonchalance and began to walk toward the detectors.
“ID.” The security guard held out a hand to stop me from going any farther.
I stared up into his bearded face and noted the alertness in his eyes. Damn my luck. I couldn’t get a clichéd, unobservant security guy?
I smiled innocently. “The lady at reception told me they’ve run out of visitor ID passes. She told me to go on up.”
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion.
I gestured to her. “Ask her.”
He huffed and looked over at reception. I realized right away he was going to yell the question at her so he didn’t have to move from his post.
It was my only opportunity.
I skittered past him and rushed through the detectors and heard him shout just as I was hurrying into the elevator that would take me to Caine’s floor. The doors shut as the security guard’s foot came into view.
“You’ve lost it,” I murmured to myself as the elevator climbed. “You’ve actually finally lost it. You should have taken the therapy when it was offered.”
I heard a snort from my right. I was sharing the elevator with a guy who grinned at me as if I was hilarious. “It doesn’t work for some people,” he said.
I was confused. “What?”
“Therapy,” he explained. “Works for some, not for others.”
I took in his sharp suit and expensive watch. He was good-looking with perfect light brown hair and vibrant blue eyes, and I could tell with just one look that along with the designer suit he wore designer confidence. He was also vaguely familiar. “Did it work for you?”
He shrugged, his grin wicked. “My therapist worked for me.”
I laughed. “Well, at least you got something out of it.”
His smile widened and he nodded at the elevator buttons. “Carraway Financial Holdings?”
I nodded and my stomach flipped nervously at the thought of seeing him again. “I need to speak to the CEO.”
“Caine?” The guy’s eyebrows rose before his gaze roamed over me. “Should I tackle you and let security have you?”
“Mr. Carraway would probably prefer that, but he needs to let me have my say.”
“Uh … who are you?”
I shot him a wary look. “Um … who are you?”
“A friend. I’m supposed to have lunch with him.”
The elevator doors pinged open. “When I have it I’ll give you my firstborn if you let me cut into the first five minutes of that.”
He stepped out and I followed him. His gaze was appraising.
I waited, my eyes darting nervously to the receptionist, who looked awfully concerned by my sudden appearance.
“I’ll tell you what.” Elevator Guy drew my attention back to him, amusement lacing his words. “The detectors didn’t go off, and it’s clear you’re not carrying a weapon.” He gestured to my tailored shorts and tank top. “So I’m going to take you in to see Caine. But”—he cut me off before I could give him my relieved thanks—“I get to accompany you. I’m curious to hear how Caine knows someone like you.” He put his hand lightly on my lower back and started guiding me toward reception.
I wrinkled my nose, not sure if I’d just been insulted or complimented. “Someone like me?”
“Mr. Lexington.” The receptionist shot up from his chair, his voice high with panic. “I believe that woman just dodged security.”
“It’s fine, Dean.” The guy, who I now recognized from the society pages as Henry Lexington, the son of Randall Lexington, one of Caine’s business partners, waved away the receptionist’s concerns. “Let Caine know we’re on our way.”
Bemused, I let Lexington lead me down a corridor of offices. Near the end of the hallway, the space opened out and a glass desk as stylish as the reception desk we’d previously passed was positioned aside two large double doors. A brass plaque on the door declared that the room beyond belonged to Caine Carraway, CEO.
There were no windows into the office on this side, affording Caine complete pri
vacy.
The young man I’d seen at the photo shoot stood up from behind the glass desk as we approached. His eyes darted to me and then widened with recognition. “Uh, Mr. Lexington—”
“I’m expected.” Lexington threw him a debonair smile that definitely worked for him and reached for the door.
“But—”
The PA was cut off as Lexington led me inside Caine’s huge office. While there were no windows behind us, there was a wall of them opposite us and along the right side of the office. Light streamed into the modern but sparsely decorated space.
I barely took anything in, however, because my gaze zeroed in on Caine.
He looked equal parts enraged and baffled by my presence as he shot to his feet from behind a huge antique desk.
There was another dip in my belly, this one a little lower than the last. Although I’d already witnessed it, the power of his presence continued to surprise me.
“Henry, what the fuck?”
Lexington’s eyebrows rose considerably at Caine’s reaction to my appearance. He looked down at me and smirked. “Seriously, who are you?”
“Get out.”
Both our heads whipped back in Caine’s direction.
Of course he was talking to me.
“No.” I took a step toward him despite the menace emanating from him. “We need to talk.” The muscle in his jaw flexed at my refusal to be cowed.
Inwardly I was pretty cowed, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’m busy.”
“Mr. Lexington here was kind enough to offer me five minutes of his lunch appointment with you.”
Caine shot him a furious look. “Did he?”
Henry smiled. “I’m a gentleman that way.”
“Henry, get out,” Caine said, the words quiet but forceful.
“Well, I made—”
“Now.”
Clearly Henry knew something I didn’t, because unlike me he didn’t appear at all afraid of Caine. “Of course.” He chuckled and then winked at me in a way that worked for him even more than the debonair smile. “Good luck.”
I waited until the door had closed behind Henry before I took in a deep breath and braced myself to interact with Caine. I noted his eyes flickered up quickly from my legs to my face.