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“Why?”
The elevator dings. “It’s just something I do every now and then.” The doors open and I dart forward. I can feel him at my back, watching me, wanting to pull me to his office and yank my skirt up and see for himself. Connie is at Sallie’s desk when I approach and they both look at me with keen eyes that see too much. “You look happy,” Connie says, and when Reid stops beside me, she eyes him, “Wait. You look happy, too. Who are you?”
“A man about to close a deal so big they’ll be talking about it for fifty years.” He looks at me. “We need to be at the meeting, dressed for the party, by five.” He walks away.
I turn to the ladies. “He brought so much money to the table there’s no way Grayson can’t be impressed. And he’s barely gotten started.”
“Then you two are working well together?” Connie asks, her eyes searching mine.
Sallie snorts. “He orders her around like she’s his plaything.”
My cheeks heat and Connie smiles. “And that only goes well for him when she lets it go well for him.” She winks and walks away.
I quickly bypass Sallie’s curious look and enter my office. I claim my seat, ready for tonight. I want it to be here. That’s when I hear Sallie say, “Sir. Sir, you can’t be here.”
I stand up and hurry to the door to find Reid’s father walking toward his office, because apparently the hell of the weekend is not behind us, and neither is the hate.
Chapter sixty-one
Reid
I’ve just hung up with one of the investors I’m working with who’s demanding a meeting, and promising fast cash when Connie buzzes my office. “Your father is charging toward your office while Sallie runs after him.”
“Holy fuck,” I murmur. “Get Sallie out of this.”
“Done.”
No sooner does she say that word then my father walks into my office in one of his expensive suits, and he doesn’t bother to shut the door. He saunters toward me like he owns the place and sets a folder on my desk. “I saved you the work. My retirement terms and contract.”
“You aren’t here to give me your retirement contract. You’re here to drive home the fact that you and I are in Carrie’s father’s old office. You want to cut her because she’s his daughter. Or you’re afraid she’ll marry me and get the family fortune.”
“Marry? You’re going to marry that woman?”
I said those words with no hesitation and I don’t back down now. In the back of my mind, I’ve known Carrie was it for me, the final woman, from the beginning. “I could be so lucky as to have Carrie agree to be my wife,” I say, “which should tell you how deeply I will cut you for her.”
He presses his hands on my desk. “How did you become what you are right now?”
“My mother wrote a letter that told me who you really are, and do you know her worst fear? That I would become you.”
He stands up and for the first time in my life, outside of the day we buried my mother, he looks stricken. “She didn’t say that.”
“She did. You hurt her. You cut her. She wasn’t a business conquest. She was your wife and my mother.”
His lashes lower and he cuts his gaze. “Read the contract,” he says and then he turns and leaves.
I don’t believe what I just said to him will change him, but it affected him. There is still something human in that man and I can only hope that means he’s capable of a real truce. I round the desk and I exit my office, crossing the offices and entering Carrie’s office. She’s standing at her window and she turns as I shut the door.
“What are you thinking right now?”
“I’m not. I’m waiting for you to tell me what that was.”
I cross to stand in front of her. “He brought me his version of his retirement contract and he did it to taunt you with the idea of him in your father’s office. And me in your father’s office. He’s afraid of you, Carrie.”
“Why would he be afraid of me?”
I shackle her waist and pull her to me. “Because you have a bigger hold on me than he does.”
Her hands settle on my chest, tiny, delicate, and yet her touch undoes me. “And my father,” she says, giving me what I want, what I was looking for, “fears that you have a bigger hold on me than he does.”
