by Evie Nichole
“Hey!” Phyllis appeared in the doorway behind Justin. “What are you doing up here, Justin Sorenson? You don’t belong up here in the morning. I told you if you needed to deliver those papers, you could just leave them on my desk last night. There was no need to bother Ms. Evans.”
“I’m not bothering Ms. Evans.” Justin turned around and sneered at Phyllis. “And last night she was too busy screwing one of the clients to care where I put those papers.”
“What are you talking about, boy?” Phyllis was growling with her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. “Don’t you dare say something ugly like that!”
“You have to be joking,” Justin said with his trademark dramatic flair. “I walked in on her and that drunk cowboy in flagrante delicto! It was vile, and I’m sure it violates dozens and dozens of ethical policies within this firm.”
“Get out of here,” Phyllis told him. “And so help me, if I hear that rumor around this company, I will be the first one to tell the whole world that you’re just jealous that Daphne moved on from your laughable lack of equipment to a real man.”
Justin’s outrage showed up only in his bulging eyes as he turned and stomped out of the office. Daphne watched in horrified silence as he sped off down the hallway and eventually disappeared into the elevator.
“I am so sorry, sweetheart.” Phyllis wrung her hands together as she came the rest of the way into Daphne’s office. “I tried to stop him last night. I thought I got through to him. I thought he was getting into the elevator to go to the parking garage.”
“Last night I got lucky,” Daphne murmured. “Met came back to see if we could have dinner to discuss the media engagements. He kind of walked in on Justin’s tantrum and ended it pretty decisively.”
“Well, good for him!” Phyllis crowed. “It’s too bad that big strong cowboy didn’t plant a facer on Justin.”
“I think he would have, but you know what Justin is like,” Daphne moaned. She put her hands over her face. “Why is he suddenly doing this all over again?”
“I called Frieda last night,” Phyllis told Daphne. The woman was busy picking up the stray shrapnel from the bouquet and throwing the pieces into the trash. “Frieda works down in accounting. She says that Justin just dumped that other girl he’s been dating since you broke up with him.”
“Great. So, he’s feeling wounded and in need of a new source of fun for his sick and twisted mind games.” Daphne shivered.
She could not ignore the panic beginning to erode her reason. The problem with someone like Justin was that even if she kept saying no, he would not take no for an answer. And at what point would she decide she would rather just cave and go out with him than deal with the constant stalking and harassment? Sometimes it was only possible to withstand a certain amount of browbeating. Plus, nobody ever believed her when it came to his abuse. Everything with him was in the realm of emotional and psychological abuse. There were no physical scars or marks. There was nothing for a cop to photograph or document. It was all just he said, she said bullshit.
“I’m screwed,” Daphne whispered. “Maybe I should just quit and move out of town.”
“I feel like your cowboy would disagree with that idea,” Phyllis said softly. She reached out and gently touched Daphne’s arm. “Maybe he would have some ideas as to what could be done?”
“Are you kidding?” Daphne put her cool palms against her hot face. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing it would be to fully lay out that whole situation? There are things I don’t want to think about, much less talk about.”
“All right, sweetie.” Phyllis sighed. She had the remains of the bouquet in her arms. “I’ll get rid of this at least. Why don’t you just go home? You’ve probably been here for hours anyway. Not even Mr. Abernathy would want you working a full day after coming in hours before the day actually began.”
“No. That would look bad.” Daphne steeled herself. “I’ll wait until I’ve at least got my eight hours. Then I’ll go home. I promise. But I don’t want Justin to think that he got one over on me. That just makes him feel more powerful.”
“Well, if I hear anything,” Phyllis began doubtfully, “I’ll let you know right away. I still think we need to tell Mr. Abernathy what’s going on. I know you wouldn’t let me say anything last time, but the man needs to know that one of his accountants is an absolute asshole who stalks women and tries to scare the crap out of them for no good reason.”
“I wish it was that simple,” Daphne murmured. “I really do. I’ll be fine. I promise. I just need to get back to work. Now that it’s actually after seven, I can start making some phone calls. Doing normal things will make me feel better. You’ll see.”
Phyllis did not look convinced. “You just wait until I tell Ruth. We’ll get the secretary pool on your side, and those rumors will turn around fast!”
Phyllis bustled out of the office, and Daphne went back to work. She purposefully left the door open. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to feel alone. She needed to hear Phyllis moving around out there and talking on the phone. That would help keep Daphne centered in reality. At least until she could eliminate the horrible man who wanted to turn her reality into his dream world.
Chapter Ten
Mornings sucked. That was pretty much the only thing that Met Hernandez knew for certain. His head was pounding. His mood was low. And it felt as though he had spent the night with his face buried in a pile of horse crap.
He rolled over and realized that at least he was in a real bed. That was a bonus. He could get up and the shower was only a short distance away. He would be able to get there without too many steps. He might even make it before his hip or his leg gave out completely and sent him tumbling to the floor.
The time wasn’t usually much of a worry to Met. He didn’t think about what time it was. He never worried about getting places on time because, for the most part, there was nowhere to go. At the moment though, he felt a strange desire to get up and get moving. He wanted to go back to the offices of the Abernathy Firm and talk with Daphne a little more.
The thought gave him motivation enough to move. He rolled to a sitting position and threw his legs over the side of the bed. From there it was a short trip to a standing position. That wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was doable. This basically meant that he did not feel as though he were about to die. Hard to believe, but it was a vast improvement over other mornings.
The water was hot. The bathroom was steamy. Met felt his muscles finally beginning to loosen. It felt so good to stand there and let the hot water sluice over his back. The alcohol seemed to leach from his pores, and he felt clean. It was as if he could start all over again every single morning with just the single act of taking a shower. That was starting to become his unfortunate excuse for ending every single night in a spectacular display of bad decision-making.
“Met?”
Ugh. Maybe starting over wasn’t going to be his reality this morning. Hearing his father’s voice usually meant bad things were about to happen. At least that had been the way of things since Met was a child. There was no reason to expect a change now.
“Met?”
“I’m in the shower!” Met shouted. Surely the man would go back downstairs and leave Met in peace to take his shower. Surely.
“Demetrio Hernandez, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Joe Hernandez’s voice echoed around the cavernous interior of Laredo’s master bathroom. “The first thing I hear this morning when I stop to get my coffee is that my youngest son passed out at Cody’s last night! Do you know how humiliating that is? I mean, my God! The least you could do is learn to hold your liquor if you’re going to get smashed! You can’t even do that. At least when I drink I don’t embarrass myself.”
Met was glad the shower doors were at least frosted. Joe would be unable to see the faces that Met was making at him from inside the steam-filled shower. The man was delusional. That was the only answer to why Joe thought it was acceptable to accos
t his youngest son in the bathroom. Met really didn’t want his father checking out his naked backside. There were limits once a man reached a certain age, and that was most definitely one of them.
“Don’t you dare ignore me, Demetrio.” Joe put his hand on the shower door.
“So glad that my personal problems are really about you and not me!” Met shouted. “That’s real comforting, Pops.”
“Do not call me that!” Joe snarled. His hand hit the door on the shower stall and made the whole thing shiver. Met could see a perfect outline of his father. In fact, Met could practically feel the glowering hostility rolling off the man who was supposed to love and cherish his sons. Yeah. That kind of thing did not happen in the Hernandez family. Sons were meant to carry on the family name, expand the family holdings, and increase the family’s wealth. Any happiness that occurred along the way was most definitely accidental.
Met thought about his mother. He thought about what Avery Hernandez had endured with this man and his bullshit. It wasn’t right. Maybe it was time Joe answered for some of that. Maybe it was time to get some answers. There would never be a better opportunity.
Met shut off the water. He reached for the towel he had draped over the shower door and dried his face. Then he wrapped the huge fluffy bath sheet around his waist and shoved the door open.
“Watch it!” Joe backed off a few steps to avoid getting smacked in the nose with the door.
“Watch it?” Met returned drily. Sometimes his father’s ability to be a jerk really beggared Met’s ability to describe it. “You barge in while I’m taking a shower and you have the balls to tell me to watch it?”
“I wanted answers,” Joe said gruffly. He apparently wasn’t quite as eager to shout accusations and be offended when he had to do it face to face. That figured. “You’re supposed to be working with the Abernathy Firm to improve the family image. Not destroy it in a bar while passed out drunk.”
“For the record.” Met could not resist this one little dig. “I never passed out. Get your facts straight before you get all mad and pitch a fit. The part about me passing out is pure fabrication. I did vomit in the parking lot, but that was not inside Cody’s. It was next to the truck.”
“That’s not making me feel any better.” Joe curled his lip. If they had been outside, Met was pretty sure his father would have spit on him. It was enough to decide Met on where to take the conversation next.
“You know what doesn’t make me feel better?” Met was tall, but he still had to look up at his father. Right now, he was glaring up at him and it felt like being twelve years old once again. “It doesn’t make me feel better to know that my father was screwing around on my mother. It doesn’t make me feel better to know that my father is keeping secrets about the accident that killed our adopted sister’s parents. It doesn’t make me feel better that my father is a damned hypocrite who can get so drunk at a Stockmen’s Association meeting that he requires chaperones to keep him from making a fool out of us all but he can stand here and be sanctimonious about my drinking.”
“Who says I cheated on your mother?” Joe’s tone changed drastically. He went from being belligerent and cocksure of himself to sounding almost scared. Interesting.
Met shook his head and stalked from the bathroom into Laredo’s dressing room. Most of Laredo’s clothes were still in the closet. Apparently, he did not need a suit for every single day of the year while living at Clouds End Farm.
“Good God, my brother is materialistic!” Met muttered as he dug through his own meager selection of jeans and T-shirts.
“You’d do better to put one of those on.” Joe was back to being irritating and condescending.
Perhaps it was time to turn the tables back around. Met shot his father a droll look. “Mom is the one that told me you were cheating. She’s had it, you know? I don’t blame her. She can’t even be seen in public with you at this point. If the two of you go out, she has to be your babysitter because you’re such a damn mess.”
“That’s bullshit!” Joe put his hands on a section of Laredo’s suit jackets and ripped them off the hangers. “That’s total bullshit! I never cheated on your mother. Never!”
“Really?” Met raised an eyebrow before pulling his shirt over his head and yanking it down over his belly. “Do you really want to try and convince me of that? I’m your son, not your priest.”
“What does that mean?”
“I saw you.” Met still had trouble believing his father didn’t know that he’d been caught. “I watched you. I saw what you did. I saw you grunting and sweating over her in the barn. Would you like to try and convince me that it was some kind of figment of my childish imagination?”
“I told you years ago that I was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again!” Joe protested. He waved his hand in the air and backtracked like a crooked politician. “I told you and I kept my word.”
“Why did you think I left?” Met asked quietly. He needed to drop his towel and pull on his jeans, but he didn’t care to be bare assed in front of his own father. He didn’t trust him that much. “Why would a boy leave his home at seventeen just a few months before graduation? Why bother? What would make him do that, Dad?”
Joe’s complexion went ashen, and he stumbled back a few steps until his hip smashed into the doorway. Met took the opportunity to pull on his jeans underneath his towel. It was awkward as hell, but he was done being naked and vulnerable around this man.
“Mom knows,” Met added. He buttoned his pants and zipped his fly. Then he sat down on Laredo’s padded dressing chair to pull on his socks. Why did getting dressed have to take so long anyway?
“No, she doesn’t.” The sound of Joe’s voice was so insecure that it sounded as though he were desperately trying to convince himself. “She doesn’t know anything about it.”
“You’re wrong.” Met sighed. “I think she’s always known. But she’s tired of it, Dad. And who could blame her? Are you still banging strangers? Are you still picking up women in bars and bringing them back to a hotel room?” Met snorted with disdain. “That’s at least a little classier than doing them in the barn.”
“I told you,” Joe whispered. “That was the only time.”
“No. I saw you in a motel in town when I was a senior in high school.” Met couldn’t believe his father was still trying to lie about this. “I was at the drive-in burger joint because whatever chick I was dating was working there. So, there I was, eating my burger and fries. It was the week of Thanksgiving. I’ll never forget. I promise you that.”
“You’re lying.” Joe made a finalistic gesture with his hand and turned to leave.
“Oh. Now you want to leave, huh?” Met shoved his feet in his cowboy boots and made to follow his father out of the bathroom. “You don’t want to sit here and yell at me when you’re afraid that I have something on you. Is that it? You coward!”
Joe spun around and pointed his finger at Met. “You’re a little shit who thinks he knows it all when in reality he doesn’t know anything! You just think you do!”
“Yeah. Because seeing you walk into a motel with a busty blonde wearing fishnet stockings and a tube top in November was totally a figment of my overactive teenaged imagination,” Met said sarcastically. “And by the way, your taste in women sucks ass!”
“Don’t talk about your mother that way,” Joe said distractedly. “You said you saw me?”
“Are you going to admit that I did?” Met cocked his head to one side.
He had followed his father out of the bathroom and down the hallway. It was so tempting. The stairs were right there. One tiny shove and Joe Hernandez would no longer be a problem. He needed to retire. He needed to go away. He needed to do all kinds of things that he was never going to volunteer to do. So, why was it a bad thing for Joe to just disappear? Met was the only witness. He could say the man had tripped. Met had confronted him about his philandering, and Joe had tripped as he tried to deny the obvious.
Except Met had an awful lo
t of motive. And right now, the idea of being run in on a possible murder charge wasn’t a great one. The family had enough crap going on. Plus, Captain Paul Weatherby of the Flying W would just love an opportunity to drive the nails deeper into the Hernandez family image.
Of course, that made Met think about Daphne. She would not appreciate the trouble of having to not only bail Met out of jail but also having to try and make that stain go away. The sweet woman was working on trying to use her contacts to find someone that would want to interview Met. He didn’t relish the thought of embarrassing her by being in jail when it was time for the interview.
Joe was looking at the stairs as though he was also contemplating the possibility of falling. Why? Could Joe Hernandez be feeling guilt and remorse?
Nah.
“Dad, why do you care whether or not I saw you?” Met walked a few steps closer to his father. “You lie. That’s what you do. You tried to lie to me when I was twelve. I never understood then. I didn’t understand when I was seventeen. I don’t understand now. You lie, and then you act surprised when we all have trouble believing you.”
“I didn’t lie.” Joe firmly grabbed the railing and took the stairs deliberately one at a time. “I didn’t lie. I never cheated on your mother after that time you saw me in the barn. Never.”
“And the thing with the hooker?” Met called after his father. “That was what? Are you trying to claim that you were just getting her a room for the night or something? You were her benefactor trying to get her off the streets? Come on, Dad. You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“You’re just going to have to believe me.” Joe Hernandez got to the bottom of the stairs and practically speed walked to the front door.
Met didn’t stop his father. He let the old man go. He had made his point. For the most part anyway. And besides, it was time to go. Met scooped his wallet and keys off the little table in the entryway and headed out the front door after his father.
