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But the cold, cruel Ash I’d been carrying the image of in my mind, wasn’t the one I’d seen over the last week. Good God, I had sex with him in his limo. Was I that lonely and desperate to let the man who’d knocked me up and then left me brokenhearted touch me again?
I shook my head of Ash.
Ben looked down. “I’m sorry about all this, Beth. I’ll try harder.”
Like I hadn’t heard that before. “When this is done, Hannah and I are moving. If you don’t have your life together, you can’t be a part of it.”
“I’ll get better,” he snapped, his tone changing suddenly, another issue I had with him being around Hannah. He hadn’t ever been violent, but he could get angry.
I shrugged, acting like I didn’t care one way or the other.
He huffed out a breath. “We need an infusion of cash quickly, Beth or we’ll lose this place.”
I steadied myself at the sink. “I’m working on it.”
“Dad did this to us.”
“Dad made some bad decisions, but he’s not forcing you to drink your life away,” I whirled on him. “I’m sorry your life isn’t turning out how you want. But instead of being a baby about it, how about you put on your big boy pants and help me get us on the right track.”
His jaw ticked. “You don’t think I’m trying to fix this? What do you think I do all day at the office?”
“Drink.”
His shoulders tensed. “I’m working with dad’s creditors, figuring out what we can maximize to bring in money and cut to save. Do you know how many people I’ve had to lay off? People who relied on us to feed their families—”
“I rely on it to feed my family too, Ben.”
He stood, swayed slightly but his face was hard. “We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t fucked Ash.”
I stared back at him, not wanting to go off on him with Hannah in the other room.
“Dad wouldn’t have cut ties with Cam Raven after he learned you fucked him and we’d be financially secure, and you wouldn’t have to be raising a kid on your own.”
I moved quickly and jabbed my finger into his chest. “Don’t you ever suggest that Hannah is a burden to me or the family. She’s the only good thing in our lives right now.”
He backed off, blowing out a breath. “Hannah is a great kid, but it’s because of you and Ash that we’re—”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t you blame her. We’re in this problem because dad made bad decisions based on emotion not good business sense. That’s not my or Hannah’s fault. And you could help us get out of it if you’d keep off the bottle long enough to have a coherent thought.”
“Mommy?”
My gaze shot to Hannah standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Crap, did she see all that? “Yes, baby.”
“Are you and Uncle Ben fighting?”
Ben smiled, and it made my heart hurt more that he wasn’t the Ben I knew and loved. “She’s my kid sister. We’re supposed to fight. That’s what brothers and sisters do.”
She looked from him to me.
“Do you want lunch?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Can I have peanut butter and jelly?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll get cleaned up,” Ben said moving out of the kitchen. He squatted down in front of Hannah. “Did you grow overnight? You look taller.”
Her eyes widened and she grinned. “Did I mommy? Did I grow?”
“Yes, of course.”
Ben winked at her and then headed upstairs. Ben was right that we fought sometimes as kids. As we got older, we got along well. Had he not been drinking, we’d probably be stressed over our situation, but hopefully not fighting. It would infinitely worse if he knew I spent time with Ash… and had sex with him again. Ben knew we needed to sell his part of Jet, but had been putting it off because he couldn’t get past his best friend not only sleeping with his sister, but knocking her up. That was why having sex with Ash was so reckless. I needed to set up the deal and then never see Ash again.
7
Ash – Wednesday
In my office, I finally read the email from Beth responding to my proposal. I’d come up with something I thought was fair. It included half of what the bar was worth, minus half of what we paid Tuck. I’d considered subtracting all of the expenses of having Tuck since the reason he was hired was to replace Ben. But in the end, we’d agreed to fifty-fifty, so I’d decided to take on half of the cost.
Beth apparently hoped for more but said she’d take the offer. The fact that she didn’t counter the offer suggested that she was eager to sell. Was that because there were financial issues or because she just wanted to be done with me?
