Guilty Pleasure

by Taryn Leigh Taylor

  She could see the memory solidify behind his eyes. Then he went deathly still.

  “So?”

  But as nonchalantly as he might have meant for it to sound, the syllable was cocked and loaded. Viv could actually feel him processing the news, the way his body braced against the unwelcome realization.

  Her tears stung, salt on a wound that had never healed quite right. That she knew now never would. But she made herself say the words she’d never said aloud before.

  “I was pregnant.” The words hollowed out her chest, like someone had dug her heart out with a spoon, leaving her raw and scraped up.

  Wes shook his head, like his body couldn’t process what his mind had already pieced together. “When you shoved that goddamn ticket to Connecticut in my face and told me that if I really loved you, I’d drop everything to go with you? You were pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  He staggered, like the word was a blow.

  “You didn’t tell me.” He shoved his hands in his hair, looking helpless for a second, before anger flashed in his eyes. “How could you not tell me?”

  “Because I was terrified!” The words came out with more force than she’d intended. “More scared than I’d ever been in my whole life. You’d been so distant, so focused on Soteria.”

  She couldn’t hold back all the old feelings. “I needed you, Wes! I needed you to want me. To want to be with me. Not because I was pregnant, but because I was important to you. More important than all those investor dinners Jesse kept dragging you to. More important than your business plan and your goddamn computer.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now? You think that’s a good enough reason?” He stepped back from her.

  It wasn’t. She knew it. She’d known it then. While they’d fought. While they’d had sex. While she’d boarded the goddamn plane.

  “I meant to tell you. After I left, I spent weeks trying to figure out the best way to tell you.”

  Wes sneered at the flimsiness of her defense. He stepped back again. “Oh, you meant to tell me. You meant to fucking tell me that we had a baby.”

  She shook her head, and her throat constricted at the prospect of telling him now. “There was no baby.”

  The anger had been a good distraction, but now the overwhelming sadness was back. Tears dripped down her face.

  “I’d made an appointment for a ten-week ultrasound to find out the sex.”

  An appointment she’d had to cancel. For a baby that would never be.

  “I thought that’s how I’d tell you, because you’d want to know. I practiced it so many times. ‘Wes, I’m pregnant. It’s a girl,’ or, ‘It’s a boy.’ But three days before, I woke up and everything hurt so badly. I remember calling 911. Then I passed out.”

  Vivienne stared at the ring on her left hand as she twisted her fingers in her lap.

  “When I woke up from surgery, I asked about our baby. I swear to you, it was the first thing I asked. But the doctor explained that I was in the hospital because I’d had an ectopic pregnancy and my fallopian tube had burst.”

  She forced herself to meet Wes’s eyes, even though he was blurry through her tears.

  “It was all for nothing.” The words clawed at her throat. “Our whole lives changed and there wasn’t even a baby.” Breathe, she reminded herself. “There wasn’t even the chance of a baby. And so I told myself it was better if you didn’t know, because when I asked you to come with me, you turned me down.”

  The stricken look on Wes’s face hurt her all the way to her bones, and she hopped down from the counter at the sudden need to go to him. To erase the distance that had sprung up between them. But when she would have reached for him, he stepped back from her, did up his jeans.

  “I need to get out of here.” He stalked toward the door, grabbing the hooded sweatshirt from the coat rack and shoving bare feet into his sneakers.

  Vivienne watched as the man she loved walked out the door, flinched as it banged shut behind him.

  Her greatest fear made manifest. Again.

  Everyone who’d ever mattered to her left her when she needed them most. Her mother. Her father. Wes.

  She’d known they were destined for this. It was why she’d fought her feelings so desperately. Because if she and Wes were meant to be, it would have worked out the first time.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PREGNANT.

  When she’d first said the word, it was like someone had shoved a spike through his skull. Disorientation. Nausea. Agony. He couldn’t get his brain to focus.

  Now, after an hour of walking aimlessly down the street in the middle of the night, he was just numb.

  He couldn’t feel anything anymore.

  Wes jammed his hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie.

  Pregnant. But not pregnant.

  Wes walked faster, hoping motion would help dissipate some of the toxic emotional cocktail that was swirling in his gut. He was trying so goddamn hard to hold on to the anger, but other stuff kept getting in the way. Especially after he pulled his phone out of his pocket and googled ectopic pregnancy.

  Vivienne had never been totally sold on the idea of having children. She’d told him that once, a few weeks into their relationship when she’d asked him if he wanted kids and he’d said yes. One day.

  She hadn’t quite been able to squelch the fear in her eyes.

  “I’m not sure if I do,” she’d confessed. She was worried that she wouldn’t be a good mom because no one had taught her. Cancer had stolen her own mother before she’d had a chance to learn anything.

  The memory chilled him.

  Vivienne had been knocked up and terrified, and instead of turning to Wes, she’d fled across the country alone.

  It broke his fucking heart to think he was the greater of two evils for her in that moment. A moment when he should have been there for her.

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

  Burst fallopian tubes, according to what he’d read, could be life-threatening.

  She’d almost died and he hadn’t even known. How could he not have known something like that?

  Jesus. No wonder she’d left him.

  At the time, her sudden announcement that she was going to Yale instead of Stanford, that stupid ultimatum with the plane ticket, had struck him as incredibly selfish.

  But he’d been selfish, too. She wasn’t wrong. He’d been caught up in Jesse’s plans to schmooze investors and turn Soteria into something big, right out of the gate. Maybe if he’d been paying better attention, he would have realized that something was going on with her.

  Because he knew. He knew what losing her mom had done to her. How abandoned she’d felt by her father afterward. She’d told him how she used to dream about her father choosing her over work, how she used to scan the hall during piano concerts and dance recitals in hopes that just once, he’d pick her instead of a meeting, or a business lunch or golf game. She’d trusted him with that knowledge, and then he’d acted just like the son of a bitch who’d raised her. Let her fly across the country without him. Abandoned her when she’d needed him the most.

  Just like he was doing right now.

  The realization hauled Wes up short. She’d trusted him again, and he was fucking it up. Walking away when what she needed was his understanding. The realization disgusted him, and he cursed himself silently as he turned around and started the long walk home.

  He knew she wasn’t there the second that he opened the door. Not that he blamed her for leaving. God, he was such an asshole.

  He considered going to find her right then, had his keys in his hand, but he stopped himself. Set them back down. Dismissed the idea as he pulled off his hoodie and draped it over the back of his desk chair. If she’d wanted to discuss things further tonight, she wouldn’t have left. They could both use some time to let wh
at had just happened settle and get a couple hours of sleep.

  Tomorrow, he’d go and get his wife.

  * * *

  “Viv? C’mon. Open up.”

  Wes knocked again, ignoring the tingle at the base of his spine that was turning into a bad feeling about the fact that she hadn’t answered the door yet.

  He punched the eight digits of her mom’s birthday into the security panel and burst inside. “Viv?”

  He strode past the kitchen, through the living room, into the bedroom.

  Empty.

  Memories of the last time he’d come home to find her gone assailed him, twining the past and the present together in a way that constricted his breathing.

  His heart started to thud against his ribcage with more force, but he swallowed the panic. He wasn’t going to lose her again. This was just a problem in need of a solution. He was good at finding solutions. She was somewhere, even if she wasn’t here, so all he had to do was—

  The vibration of his phone in his pocket interrupted his train of thought, but any hope that it was her was dashed as he glanced at the screen.

  “What the hell, man? I’ve been trying to get in touch since the charges were dropped.”

  “I know.” Jesse’s voice was calm. Eerily so. “My lawyers advised I shouldn’t speak with you.”

  Wes’s fingers tightened on his phone. He didn’t like the sound of that. “Your lawyers,” he repeated, matching Jesse’s composure. “Don’t you mean our lawyers? Because I’m pretty sure the esteemed law firm of Denisof Price Goldberg represents Soteria Security. Or at least that’s the way they made it sound when they told me to fuck off after I was put in handcuffs and hauled off to jail. But now that my legal woes are behind me, we’ve got some reinstatement paperwork to sign. Isn’t that right?”

  The long silence on the other end of the line told Wes everything he needed to know, even before Jesse spoke again.

  “This isn’t how I wanted this to go down. We’ve been partners, friends, for a long time. But Soteria is hemorrhaging clients since you went to prison. And I’ve been doing everything I can to keep us afloat!”

  Not so calm anymore.

  “You’re a goddamn liability.”

  “The charges were dropped,” Wes countered.

  “And then you turned around and married the goddamn enemy! How do you think that’s going to play in the media? That the second you’re cleared of wrongdoing, you hitch yourself to the FBI’s next target!”

  “She didn’t do this.” Wes’s voice was flat and hard with conviction.

  “Tell that to the video surveillance footage. I’ve got to go. I have a joint meeting with Max and Liam in a couple of hours, and I need to prepare. If I can keep them on board, then this media storm will stabilize, and I can finally implement my plan to take Soteria Security public by the end of the year.”

  The announcement blindsided Wes.

  “What the hell are you talking about? I thought we agreed no IPO. We always said Soteria could be more innovative, and do better work, without having to answer to shareholders!”

  “We didn’t agree. You used your fifty-one percent share to cock-block me, and what I’ve wanted, for years. I’m the one who sacrificed for your genius. I’m the one who parceled out my shares to get new investors, to take Soteria to the money-making behemoth it’s become. Now that I have controlling interest, you honestly think I’m giving it back to you?”

  Wes realized in that moment that his plan to preserve the business by signing his shares over to Jesse before he went to jail had turned out to be Soteria’s death knell instead.

  “You’re freezing me out of my own goddamn company?”

  “Don’t act all hurt. You brought this on yourself. For once in your life, you’re going to see what it’s like when everything doesn’t go your way. And Wes? Don’t call me again. From now on, any communication between us needs to go through my lawyers.”

  Wes was still reeling from the precision of Jesse’s vindictive attack, the intensely personal nature of it, after he’d hung up the phone. Between the two of them, Jesse Hastings was the gregarious one, the figurehead who was out front, drumming up business and dealing with clients, while Wes preferred to stay behind the scenes, creating.

  Jesse was always the guy scouting for new opportunities, trying to grow their coffers, and with every big monetary milestone they’d reached, he’d broached the subject of taking the company public one day. But Wes had always managed to talk him down, to convince Jesse that it was the work that mattered most, not the money, but the innovation. At least he thought he had.

  Apparently, he’d been wrong.

  Wes ran a hand down his face and shoved his phone back in his pocket.

  He’d worry about the professional blow later. Right now, he needed to find Vivienne.

  As he stalked back through her condo, something bright and orange on the kitchen table caught his eye, drawing him over.

  A tiger lily in a vase.

  Along with the flower, there was a black shoebox, a nondescript envelope, some official-looking papers, her wedding ring, and a handwritten note from Vivienne. His hand shook as he reached for the sheet of blue stationery.

  Wes,

  If I’m going to jail, there’s somewhere I have to say goodbye to before that happens. In the meantime, I hope that, whatever you came here for, you’ll find it on this table.

  Viv

  Wes glanced at the legal documents—a set of presigned annulment papers and a set of presigned divorce papers. Viv always was an overachiever.

  The envelope contained the blackmail letter, which ended up a little crumpled when anger made his hand clench, and a thumb drive with the Whitfield Industries logo on it.

  Despite the note’s strict instructions to dispose of the thumb drive once the program was installed on Whitfield’s system, Vivienne had found a way to preserve this key piece of evidence.

  That’s my girl, he thought, turning it over in his fingers before dropping it back in the envelope with the now-mangled note. So fucking smart.

  He lifted the lid off the shoebox, and the contents were like a gut punch of sentimentality. A bunch of photos of the two of them, looking young and fresh faced and in love. The frame with the pressed tiger lily that used to sit by their bed—she’d made it with one of the flowers in the bouquet he’d given her the night of their first date.

  There was a notebook, too, and Wes had to leaf through only a couple of pages to realize it was a diary of sorts. The dates on the tops of the pages told him these entries spanned her nonviable pregnancy, from terrified start to tragic end.

  He snapped the book shut at the realization. Because as desperate as he was to know, to understand what she’d gone through, he wanted to hear it from her. Face-to-face. But when Wes slipped her diary back in the shoebox, something else caught his eye.

  Not the hospital bracelet itself, but the number sequence printed beneath her name. The date she’d been admitted for emergency, lifesaving surgery.

  May 10. Six years ago.

  The exact eight numbers in the string of garbage code that had popped up repeatedly throughout AJ’s investigation. She’d been right on both counts. It was a date and a signature.

  What had Viv said? Something about “...after Jesse showed up...right after...”

  The realization of what she’d left unspoken hit him like a lightning bolt. Jesus Christ.

  Precise. Vindictive. Intensely personal.

  Wes glanced over his shoulder, through the kitchen to the foyer where Vivienne’s security camera was logging the comings and goings of all her visitors and transmitting them to her phone...and anyone who might have bugged her phone.

  His partner’s out-of-the-blue phone call suddenly made a lot more sense. The bastard had watched him walk into Viv’s apartment.

  A cold rag
e flooded Wes’s veins at the betrayal.

  Poaching Soteria Security was one thing, and if Jesse wanted to punch below the belt in some desperate attempt to hurt him for whatever slights and transgressions he’d already found Wes guilty of, well, Wes could take care of himself. But exploiting Vivienne’s trauma in some sociopathic attempt to twist the knife in Wes’s back a little deeper? Monitoring her phone and her security feed? Hurting the woman he loved?

  Jesse would pay dearly for that.

  Wes pulled his own phone out and waited for his call to connect.

  “AJ? Never mind how I got this number. I need you to get me into that meeting with Whitfield and Kearney that’s happening later. I know who fucked me over, and I’m going to bury the bastard.”

  Grabbing Vivienne’s ring from the table, Wes shoved it in his pocket.

  Then he gathered up the rest of the evidence she’d left him.

  He needed to pay a little visit to the FBI before his meeting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WES STRODE INTO the lobby of Whitfield Industries at precisely 2:00 p.m. and headed straight for the elevator. A familiar black-clad figure hit the button as he approached.

  “They’re expecting me?”

  AJ slid him a look drenched in annoyance. “You know, you really need to stop second-guessing my methods. It makes me not like you.”

  “You never liked me,” he pointed out reasonably, straightening his tie. There was a certain poetic symmetry to ending things as they’d begun. Which was why he’d changed back into the gray suit he’d been wearing when he was arrested before arriving at Whitfield Industries to deliver the coup de grâce.

  The silver doors dinged open, and once the herd of office drones disembarked, AJ and Wes stepped inside. A harried, balding guy tried to join them, but AJ stopped him.