by Emma Quinn
When he burst through the trees to see the house he slowed his pace further until he was quickly walking. His heart rate slowed again and his breathing evened out so that when he reached the front door, his was back to normal.
Other than the sweat-soaked clothing he wore and his damp hair.
He dug in the pockets of his sweats for his keys, but as he went to unlock the door, he noticed that it was already open. Frowning, he pushed the door open. “Hello?” he called.
“In here,” came a familiar woman’s voice.
He frowned. The voice didn’t belong to Helen.
He walked into the living room to find that Tiffani was lounging on the couch where he’d slept the night before. She was smiling brightly at him, her dark eyes focused on him like a predator might look at their prey.
“I always love seeing you when you’re sweaty like this, dear,” she cooed. “It’s so manly and sexy.”
His eyes scanned the room quickly. No sign of Helen. “What are you doing here?”
She frowned, her full lips pouting. “I’m here because you didn’t call yesterday.”
He clenched his jaw tightly, fighting against the anger and irritation already growing inside of him. “Why would I? As I recall, we broke things off over a week ago now, Tiffani.”
Standing quickly, she walked up to him. “So? It was Valentine’s Day! You were supposed to apologize to me! You were supposed to tell me how much you missed me and that you regretted that we fought, then tell me that you couldn’t possibly live without me.” Her eyes had narrowed and there was a tick in her cheek that told him just how pissed she was.
Ironic, because he was pissed, too.
“Are you kidding me right now?” he demanded.
“Of course not! That’s how romance works, you idiot!”
He scoffed at her. “Wow. So you came here to tell me that I was supposed to follow some ridiculous plot of an idiotic romance novel so that you could call me an idiot? Well, you certainly told me. Now get out.”
She gritted her teeth until he worried she might chip a tooth.
“You need to go,” he finally said firmly. “We’re done. Crawling back here isn’t going to change that.”
She flinched at his words and he had half a second to feel bad for saying them. Things hadn’t ended well between them and they’d spent so much of their time together fighting, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hurt her. She was immature and spoiled, but he didn’t think she was an inherently bad person.
“Yes, well, clearly I was wrong about how things would go here,” she finally told him, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin. “It’s pretty clear that you wasted no time in replacing me.”
He blinked at her. “Replacing—?”
She pushed past him, moving towards the door. He followed her as she headed out. Pausing at the door, she turned back to look at him. She dug into her little clutch purse until she found a set of house keys. His keys. “I think these belong to you,” she told him stiffly, dropping them on the table beside the door. “I hope things work out with your little woman, though I’m sure you’ll have some explaining to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
But she didn’t answer him. She just smiled coolly at him, then turned away. She left, leaving the door wide open behind her so that he could watch her as she left. But he didn’t. He closed the door and realized that she had been talking about Helen.
“Shit,” he cursed.
He turned and headed up the stairs. The bed was unmade, but there was no sign of Helen. And her shoes were gone. He checked the office and the green house. Nothing. He looked in the kitchen, the living room, and everywhere else he could think of, but there was no sign of Helen. Not even a note.
He found his phone and dialed her number quickly, but it went straight to voicemail. “Helen, it’s Michael. When you get this message, call me. I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
Unsure what else he could do, he went upstairs and showered. After he got out, seeing that he hadn’t gotten a call back from Helen yet, he tried her once more. Still it went immediately to voicemail. Afterwards, he got dressed and ready for work.
He needed something to take his mind off of Helen and what Tiffani had potentially ruined.
14
Michael
M
ichael came into the office that day as Ethan was coming out of the conference room. For a second, Ethan looked worried, his brow pulled together, his mouth pinched. But it passed almost as quickly as it had come and his face transformed into one of happiness at seeing Michael.
“Michael, there you are!” he said, joining his colleague and walking alongside him as they headed towards Michael’s office. “Just the man I wanted to speak with.”
“I was hoping to talk with you, too,” admitted Michael.
“Wonderful. Let’s talk in your office, shall we?”
Michael nodded. They headed to his office and paused only long enough to check with Charlotte for any messages or changes in his schedule. Charlotte gave Ethan the same dirty look that she always did, but Michael didn’t pay her dislike of Ethan much mind.
As Ethan closed the door and took a seat opposite Michael, he said, “I was meeting with the city council just now.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, we’re trying out a potential work around for the restaurant problem.”
Michael stiffened. The restaurant problem. It was more or less what Michael wanted to discuss that morning, too, though his mind was more focused on the park. “I see. And what type of work around is that?”
“We’re hoping that we’ll be able to argue that the restaurant is holding up progress and improvements to the city by not selling. If we can make a convincing case of it, we can force them to sell and give them a fraction of what the damn thing’s worth!”
Ethan looked thrilled at the prospect, but Michael felt his stomach sour. “Is that right?”
Ethan seemed to misunderstand the question. Michael was asking if the ethics of that were okay, but Ethan read it as whether or not the plan was a legitimate possibility. “Oh, I have confidence that we can swing it. After all, we already got the council to roll over on that damn park. What’s one little restaurant?”
Michael frowned. “About the park…”
“Hell, are we getting push back there, too, now?” Ethan asked, sounding exasperated at the prospect.
“I imagine there will always be push back,” Michael answered, but added, “And I’m beginning to see why.”
Ethan’s expression dropped. His shoulders straightened and his jaw tightened slightly. Suddenly his body read like suspicion. “Is that so?”
Michael nodded. “I visited the park. It’s beautiful.”
Before Michael could continue, Ethan sighed dramatically. “Oh, hell, anything with a little green is beautiful. Tell you what, we’ll add in some plants to the parking garage, okay? People will love it.”
Holding up his hand to stop Ethan from brushing the whole thing off, Michael shook his head. “No. I went there at night and there were stars out, the moon was huge and lit the whole place up—did you know there’s an underground stream that comes out right there? It’s amazing. And there wasn’t any trash or junkies or needles. Nothing. It was perfect.”
Ethan’s jaw twitched. “I see.”
“I don’t understand how the council would agree to pave over it.”
There was a long pause before Ethan rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t think I needed to really bring it up.”
“I think it’s important that I have all the details, don’t you?”
“I thought it was better to keep you out of the down and dirty stuff.”
Suddenly, Michael had a feeling that Ethan was on the verge of telling him something that he wasn’t going to like. Something he probably never would have known if Helen hadn’t shown him that park last night.
“What dirty stuff?” Michael asked.
Ethan stood,
stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets and began to pace. “You understand, this is business. It’s all about money changing hands and talking to the right people, you get that, right?”
Michael was frowning, but nodded. “Negotiating. I understand. I just don’t understand what you could have negotiated to get people on board with paving over that park.”
With a heavy sigh, Ethan finally shook his head and turned to face Michael head on. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
Ethan smiled in a way that could only be described as patronizing. “Money, Michael. Money is how I negotiated paving over that cute little park.” His voice grew high pitched and he hunched his shoulders, pinching his fingers together as though picking up something dainty as he said ‘cute little park’.
Dawning realization hit Michael like a punch in the gut. “You bribed the city council.” It wasn’t a question.
“Of course,” Ethan crowed. “This year’s election isn’t far off and campaigns are expensive. All I had to do was promise that we would be very supportive of reelection. Suddenly, everyone was very supportive of our project.”
“Jesus Christ, Ethan!” Michael half-shouted, standing himself and placing his hands palms flat on his desk. “You can’t just bribe people to get your way!”
Ethan snorted. “Of course I can. I’ve been doing it for years.”
Michael blanched, then shook his head. “Please tell me you’re not serious.”
“Stop it,” Ethan bit out. “You’re not a child anymore and it’s time you realized how business works around here. You can just bury your head in the sand like a scared child forever. Business is war and war has casualties like pretty little parks and sad little couples with their shitty restaurants.”
It was a slap in the face, realizing how corrupt Ethan was. And how little of a problem he had with it. “You may be fine with war and casualties, but what if it gets out that Roth, Inc. has been bribing people to get their way? Can you imagine how big that scandal would be?”
It was a legitimate concern and it was the issue Michael had that Ethan would be most likely to sympathize with. He was realizing here and now that Ethan wasn’t going to care about things like having a moral compass and doing the right thing, but he might care about the reputation of the company.
Ethan laughed. “Don’t worry about that. No one’s going to say anything. The council would be in bigger trouble than we would and probably lose the reelection, and I’ve got enough good-will with the major news sites that no one’s going to believe in any small time story. The company’s reputation will remain, just like it always has.”
Michael fell silent. He knew what he had to do next, but it filled him with dread. It wasn’t going to end well between Ethan and him. And there would be other consequences. He would have to explain to investors, possibly even talk with the people whom Ethan had gotten to sell their businesses. Were those deals legitimate? Or had they been as shady as Ethan’s dealings with the city council?
Worse still, how many projects before this had dirt swept under some rug that Michael didn’t know about?
Taking a deep breath, Michael forced him to say what had to be said: “We need to call off the project.”
Ethan froze. There was a moment where his face went slack and his shoulders slumped and he looked just… confused. As though this had never been part of the plan and there had to be some sort of mistake. “I should have known,” he finally said with a shake of his head.
“Should have known what?” Michael felt irritation prickle across his skin. “Should have known that bribing people is off the table? Yeah, you should have known that.”
Ethan’s smile might have qualified as sympathetic, until his words came out. “No, Michael. I should have known that you’d get soft, just like your father did at the end.”
The mention of Michael’s father made his blood run cold.
Once, Michael had looked at Ethan as though he were his father. The man who took care of him, understood when he needed time after his father’s death. This was the man who had always been such a force in Michael’s life.
Now Michael was left wondering if he’d ever even known him in the first place.
“Look, son, if this is about that pretty piece of tail you met at the restaurant, you don’t have to try so hard,” Ethan said, waving his hand about as though to clear the air. “Just pay her off. Give her enough money than she’s ever seen in her life—shouldn’t be hard, given the looks of that restaurant—and she’ll fall into your bed, legs hanging off the headboard.”
Michael felt anger swell inside him until he was sure it would burst. It crawled over his skin like tiny ants and bit at him until he thought all he would be able to see was red.
“I’m going to leave,” he told Ethan in a surprisingly calm tone. “And you’re never going to talk about Helen that way again.”
He turned and left his own office before Ethan had a chance to say anything else, something that might make Michael have to kill him.
15
Helen
T
he phone rang. Again. It was the fifth time that day and the twentieth that week. Helen was in the lab, dutifully ignoring it, but Fiona was staring at Helen.
“You could answer it,” she pointed out.
“But I’m not going to.”
Fiona sighed as the phone quit ringing. A second later it buzzed, letting them both know there was a message. “You could at least check the message,” Fiona offered.
“But I’m not.”
Helen was irritated with Fiona. After telling her everything that had happened, Fiona had basically wiped it all away with a sweep of her hand. She’d insisted that that was how all true romance happened. It wasn’t about finding someone, it was about going through the gory details before finally coming to terms with the fact that they were destined together.
“He has a fiancée!” Helen huffed, swirling around to face her friend.
They’d been having this argument for two weeks now, each trying to convince the other of their point. Helen had explained about Tiffani and that huge rock on her finger. How embarrassing it had been walking out of that house in her clothes from the night before, knowing she didn’t look half as good as the woman standing in the doorway.
“You didn’t give him a chance to explain,” Fiona countered. “Maybe she was lying! Maybe she was a crazy stalker who pretended to be his fiancée!”
“Occam’s razor,” Helen challenged. “The simplest explanation is probably the correct one and the simplest explanation is that she is definitely his fiancée and he was playing me!”
Fiona frowned. She’d been pushing for this romantic plot that would reveal itself and end with a happily ever after, but as time wore on, Helen was making it pretty clear that she wasn’t having it.
“I’m just saying, you should at least hear him out.”
Before Helen could argue further, there was a delivery.
A young man with pockmarked skin adjusted his hat which read Flowers-4-You. “Um, Helen Willems?” But he was already headed towards Helen. He’d been the same delivery man for the last two weeks.
The two weeks that Michael Roth had been sending her apology flowers.
“Yes, thank you,” Helen said with a sigh. She signed for the flowers and set them on her desk as the delivery man left.
Fiona had a smirk on her face, folding her arms across her chest. “See?”
“Flowers don’t explain anything.”
“No, but it shows that he wants to explain and that you should give him a chance!” She adjusted her glasses, pushing them up the bridge of her nose. Stepping closer to Helen, she put her hand on her friend’s shoulder and said seriously, “Just hear what he has to say. I’m not saying it’ll make it all better, but at least you won’t be left wondering if maybe there was something real there, okay?”
Helen was about to say no again, but there was something that touched her. She didn’t
want to live with a maybe regret and while she didn’t think there was anything Michael could say to change her mind, she owed herself the chance to at least find out.
“Fine,” she said, defeated. Fiona started to grin at her, but before she had the chance to get too excited, Helen added, “But if I’m not convinced, that’s it. I don’t care how many flowers or chocolates he sends, okay?”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “Fine. But you have to admit, the flowers and chocolates for the last two weeks have been really romantic.”
“I don’t have to admit anything,” Helen grumbled.
Helen was going to just listen to the voice messages she’d been left, but decided a recording was too easy. People could lie to voicemail but it was harder to lie to a real person on the other end of the phone. So she took a deep breath and called Michael Roth back.
It rang only once before his rich voice said, “Helen? I didn’t think you would return my call.”
He sounded relieved.
“I haven’t listened to any of your voicemails,” she told him flatly. “But I got the flowers.”
“Helen, I’m sorry about the other night.”
“Is Tiffani your fiancée?” she asked, not giving him the chance to unravel some long story about what happened. She was a scientist. She just wanted the facts.
There was a pause, then, “She was.”
Helen scoffed. “I knew it!”
“Please, let me explain. Tiffani and I were engaged until almost a month ago. When you agreed to go out with me, we had already broken it off.”
This softened Helen. A little. But she still felt that twinge of anger at the thought that Tiffani had been his fiancé—and clearly still wanted to be. “She had your key.”
He sighed through the phone. “I know. I got it back from her that day. Her stuff was shipped to her place weeks ago. All I needed to do was get that key and honestly, I didn’t do it, because I wasn’t interested in seeing her. It was stupid.”
