Page 78 of The Beat Match

“Thing is,” she told Wes, those cramps worsening, “something’s been off between us. It’s given me time to think, and I realized I got carried away.” Her voice cracked and tears burned her eyes. “I think we rushed into things and…and I don’t love you the way I thought I did. I think it’s better we stay friends, go back to how things were. Not that there’s any going back from here, but I don’t feel the way I thought I would. And I…” She swallowed another rush of bile and steadied herself. She would kill Duncan for this. “I don’t love you. I think I loved the idea of you.”

She waited for Wes to raise hell, read her mind, question her sanity. Yell at her and tell her she was just having a momentary freak-out. She’d have to push back, be as convincing as possible. Anything to save his job. She waited so long for some kind of reaction that the phone turned slippery in her shaky hand.

Then he said, “Okay.”

Okay? One word? Was he not going to fight for her? Demand answers? “I just, I don’t know. I think it’s the right thing?” She sputtered out the words, while shrinking under Duncan’s steady stare.

“Yeah, fine. I get it.”

She didn’t get it. She couldn’t fathom his neutral reply, the flatness of his tone.

He cleared his throat. “I’ll do next weekend’s show on my own. We’ll take some time apart. Speak when we’re—once we’ve had time apart. I have a Chicago business trip coming up, a few dinners with investors next week. And a golf tournament. I’ll be busy. I’ll call you when I can.” Did he have a hair appointment, too? A manicure scheduled? Another ridiculous reason for why he wasn’t begging her to change her mind?

Then he hung up. Just like that. Shut her out.

As though their time together had meant nothing.

Her bones turned dense, heavy with so much hurt. Duncan hadn’t been lying. Wes didn’t love her. He never had. She’d given him the out he’d actually wanted, and she didn’t know how to blink or breathe or press End on that sickening call.

Duncan angled his phone toward her, played a snippet of Wes’s incriminating call, then made a show of deleting it. “Pleasure doing business with you. And my ‘benefits’ offer hasn’t expired. You know how to reach me.”

There was that skeezy shiver again. She averted her gaze from him, couldn’t focus through the hurt, but she swiveled back and called his name. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you hurt the man who took a risk offering you an amazing job?”

Duncan’s confidence slipped briefly. “DLP has ways of getting to people.”

He disappeared in the walking crowd, just another man strutting down the sidewalk, as though he hadn’t just exploded Annie’s life.

She wanted to sink to the cement, curl into a ball and cry until she was nothing but a salty puddle. But that would mean Duncan had won, and the more she thought about Wes’s reaction, his quick jump to cut his losses and run, the more she didn’t buy it. He’d warned her he might freak out and bolt, hurting her in the process. This could be his instinct to run from real feelings, protect himself from getting hurt. Protect her in the process. That reasoning made a hell of a lot more sense than Duncan’s bullshit about Wes not loving her.

She knew Weston Aldrich, every damaged, infuriating, amazing, loving inch of him. That man would pack his feelings into his internal bomb shelter, building his defenses, precisely because he loved her, not because he didn’t.

She knew, and she’d let Duncan prep her to believe otherwise.

She sniffled, wiped the corners of her eyes, and dialed Sarah. Weston loved her, and she loved him so hard it hurt. She wouldn’t believe otherwise until she’d explained her call and spoke with him face to face, but that would have to wait. Whatever DLP had on Duncan was a doozy. There was no telling how far they’d push him. Duncan could still find another way to drag Weston down.

When Sarah answered, Annie bit down on her teeth. “The mole’s name is Duncan Ruffolo. He’s a long-time employee of Aldrich Pharma, Weston’s executive assistant, and we need to crush the life out of him.”

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23

Weston stared at his office door, waiting for his father to barge in. It wouldn’t take him long to hear they’d lost another researcher. Their final Biotrell meeting was in three days. All Weston’s hard work would spiral down the drain, Aldrich Pharma would suffer the consequences, and Victor S. Aldrich might fire his son.

Weston should make phone calls, reach out to Karim and Biotrell and get ahead of this latest cataclysm. All he could do was stare at his office door and wait.

A couple minutes later, it flew open. “Thanks to you, this merger’s about to bust wide open.” His father slammed the door shut.

Weston flexed his fingers on his chair arms. “I didn’t fire Allan. I didn’t cut his wages or make his work here difficult. He left because DLP are underhanded bastards.”

“Losing Allan Merkur is a blow, but he’s not the problem here. Neither is DLP. Karim asked one thing of you, one goddamn thing—to date his daughter. And you had to go and get tangled up with that street girl instead of putting Aldrich Pharma first.”

Heat blasted up Weston’s neck. All he’d done his whole adult life was put business first. He’d worked instead of socializing, instead of dating and vacationing like a functioning human. Which would have been fine, if he’d felt supported, valued. He lived and breathed this place, had even given up DJing for it, but the words that had Weston wanting to topple his desk were that street girl. “You will not speak of Anthea in front of me.”

“She’s not our people, son. Dating her cheapens yourself and the family name.”

Weston laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “You’re right. She’s not our people. She’s better than us. She actually cares about the people in her life. She goes out of her way to show her love and doesn’t lock herself in an office because she’s bitter life took a nasty turn.”

She was the best person he knew, and he didn’t correct his father’s misconception that they were still dating.