Page 50 of The Beat Match

Once they were settled, Duncan clasped his hands on the table and fiddled with his college ring. “How’s the DJ thing going? Is that Falcon guy teaching you like you hoped?”

She appreciated the personal question, but she appreciated their waitress arriving at the table even more. Duncan ordered a martini. She ordered a negroni, while figuring out how to side-step that landmine. Duncan didn’t know his boss was Falcon. He could never know.

Once the waitress left, Annie forced an honest-ish reply. “I worked with Falcon for a bit, but he’s too busy to keep it up.” Too afraid of her lusty advances. “I’m practicing solo now and might take more lessons from this guy Julio, who’s also pretty killer. Still figuring out my style and how to approach it all.”

“But you love it? The music, the club scene, being onstage—that’s your dream?”

She wasn’t sure if she’d ever be as amazing as Wes, but she wouldn’t let their drama thwart her plans. “I don’t know about dream, but the bug bit me and now I’m hooked. I’ll make it work, one way or another. What about you? Is working for Aldrich Pharma your dream job?”

His gaze cut to his ring. He spun it slowly. “Weston took a chance promoting me when he did. There was another candidate more qualified, but when he called me in to give me the news, he said, ‘You have less experience, but there’s more hunger in your eyes. The job’s yours, as long as you promise not to let me down.’”

“That’s a great vote of confidence, but you didn’t answer my question.”

He sipped his water, placed the glass down, and kept his gaze trained on the table. “It’s an amazing job, rewarding and challenging. Everyone’s on their A-game, especially when the shit hits the fan. There’s a real team feeling there.”

There was tension in his voice, though. Discomfort in his body language. And he was still evading. “I know firsthand how obstinate Wes can be. He must be an impossible boss to please.”

She pictured her head on Wes’s lap, how badly she’d wanted to please him, please herself with a filthy lick of her tongue. She sipped her water and crunched an ice cube.

Duncan straightened and slung an arm over the back of his chair, discomfort gone, expensive grin returned. “I can please anyone, anytime. It’s a skill, and Weston’s a great boss. Demanding, but the good ones always are. They push you to be better.”

Something flickered in his eyes. Disappointment? “So why do you look like he’s about to fire you?”

A waiter brushed close to his chair, and Duncan shifted forward. “Like I told you, I’m worried about him. As many times as I’ve tried to get him to talk, he refuses. He sticks to himself, and I feel responsible in some ways. Like I’m not doing my job well enough. If I knew what was eating at him, I could figure out how to delegate better, ease his burden. You’ve still had no luck getting him to open up?”

Wes had opened up to her plenty, not all truths she’d wanted to learn, but his work admissions in her apartment proved Duncan’s concerns were warranted. Annie still worried after Wes, regardless of their issues. Aside from his stressful work and secret-identity drama, fake dating a woman for a business merger must be exhausting. As nice as it was to feel less jealous of Rosanna, none of it changed Wes’s brutal dismissal of Annie, or that Annie could still help him with his video montage, if she shook off a fraction of his painful rejection.

Maybe that was what she needed to do. Tell him about the video she’d created to help them recover from this downswing. Force them to interact again.

An effort that would entail pretending she wasn’t in love with him.

“He confided in you, didn’t he?” Duncan’s intuitiveness caught her off guard. Her turmoil must be tattooed on her forehead.

“Sort of.”

“About the merger? Is he struggling with anything specific?”

Wooing Rosanna for a deal was pretty specific, as was his double life, but no one could know about those arrangements. Duncan smelled her secrets, though. He was literally on the edge of his seat, wanting to help the man who’d taken a chance on him.

“Honestly, Annie, I know the ins and outs of that merger like the back of my hand. I’ve worked with him on the financing, the fine print. The guy’s drowning at work and his father’s taken notice. The last thing Weston needs is more pressure from Victor. Anything Weston said might help.”

Victor S. Aldrich was a walking gavel, judge and jury over his perceived domain.

After Leo’s death, when her first foster parents had gotten pregnant and told her they’d decided to quit fostering, she’d stayed at Weston’s mansion for the night, stressed and sleepless over her future. She’d told Wes it was cool. She’d be fine wherever she was. Deep down, she’d been a roiling mess. Clementine had been at that foster home. The pigtailed, freckled foster girl that had been so quiet and scared. She’d only just started to smile, and she’d asked Annie if they could stay together always. Annie had stupidly said yes.

Unable to sleep, Annie had tiptoed down to the kitchen in Wes’s mansion and walked by the study or library or whatever it was those extra rooms were called, where she’d heard angry voices. Wes and his dad.

“Why can’t she live here? God knows we have the room and money.”

“Her mother died with a needle in her arm. Her father’s some miscreant who disappeared. Her brother got shot in a seedy club. You’ve clearly lost your mind, son.”

“You’re worried what people will think?”

“What people think defines who you are. Have I taught you nothing?”

“Think of it as charity work. The country club crowd loves a hero.”

An angry grunt. “I can’t keep you from visiting her, but you shouldn’t have brought her here tonight, and you will never bring her here again. She’s not welcome in this house.”