“But he doesn’t know the truth about how you two met. You’re still lying to him.”
Hello, hypocritical pot! She arched an incredulous brow. “I’m not the only one.”
Mike pointed an accusing finger at her. “Don’t compare our situations or motives. I did what I did because it was best for him and the company. You did it for a promotion.”
“No. I neglected to tell him the truth in the beginning because you ordered us not to. After we became involved”—she shook her head—“I was afraid I’d lose him. I’m in an untenable situation, but we want the same thing: for this presentation to be a success. For Adam. We both know how much he deserves it.”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Adam gesturing as he talked to the tech guys on stage. He looked up and their gazes met and held. Her breath seized in her throat and everyone around her froze in suspended animation. Had it only been a few weeks since they’d met? He was so intertwined with her heart that she couldn’t imagine not being a part of his life. He waved and she responded instinctively with her own greeting. He smiled and turned his attention back to the young man. She released her imprisoned breath.
And the world resumed around her.
“Adam has a thing about lying—” Mike began.
“I know. That’s why this has been so difficult. I approached Howard numerous times about changing our tactics, but he refused based on your orders.”
“Adam’s been through this before. His last girlfriend lied to him and—”
“I know all about Birgitta and the rushed launch of the mini game console.”
He shook his head. “I’m not talking about a typical person’s distaste for lies—”
“He has Asperger’s. I know,” she said, at Mike’s shocked expression.
He cleared his throat. “He told you about that?”
“Yes.”
His mouth tightened. “So you know he felt betrayed and why. He vowed he’d never be in that position again. So to see him here with you like this . . . it’s Birgitta two point oh.”
That produced a bitter tang in her mouth. She recoiled, wrinkling her nose. “I’m nothing like her. I would never betray him.”
“No, it’s not in your financial interest.”
Fuck him.
Irritation boiled her blood and she turned away from him, twisting her curls up and letting them cascade down her back. He was the one who’d started this with his insistence on hiding her identity from Adam. But she refrained from expressing her outrage, knowing she was the sole culprit for her current predicament. Investing in transferred emotion was counterproductive. Anger wasn’t the antidote for Mike’s suspicion. Understanding was the strategy for her success. She had to convince him they were on the same side. Plus, a part of her admired the other man for defending his friend.
She faced him. “This isn’t about work or my promotion. Please, I don’t want to hurt him. I love him.”
He stared at her for a few tense moments. Was she wasting her time? Would Mike never trust her sincerity and decide to blow her cover with Adam? She replayed their conversation in her mind, wondering if there was anything she could’ve said or done differently to affect the outcome.
“I believe you,” he finally said.
She exhaled and straightened, her conscience having shed thirty pounds. His approval was like whipped cream on dessert—not necessary, but nice to have. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You love him. But none of it matters until you tell him the truth.”
“I know, and I promise I will, after the presentation.”
“I’ll give you some time, but then I’ll have to step in. This lie is larger than you. I’m already lying to him about how you met, and now I’m part of the lie about your relationship and I—”
He stiffened and winced.
Oh, no. Please, God, no. Not like this.
She closed her eyes and her heart sank into the depths of her stomach. Slowly, she turned to find Adam standing behind her, his once-heated gaze gone glacial, the vein in his temple twitching frantically.
Chapter Eighteen
A RUSH OF coldness hammered Adam’s midsection. His muscles tightened and his head drew back as Mike’s words echoed in his mind.
I’m already lying to him about how you met, and now I’m part of the lie about your relationship.
Mike lowered his gaze and rocked back on his feet. Chelsea shook her head, her palm covering her lips. No one with his quantifiable intellectual prowess could fail to accept the truth of the situation before him.
He’d been used. Again.
“Your arrival at my house wasn’t coincidence.” It wasn’t a question.
Her beautiful eyes were wide, luminous with the sheen of unshed tears. “Adam, please. I know what it sounds like, but you have to let me explain.”
How had he thought he’d been cold before? His heart pounded in his chest and his body burned.
“You planned this before we’d ever met. What was your endgame?”
“Listen to me—”
He advanced on her. “Did you sell me out? Auction off the HPC blueprints to other companies? Is someone going to come out with a cheaper version before ours gets to the market?”
“No! Of course not. I—”
He grabbed her forearms and shook her. “What did you do, Chelsea? What did you do?”
“Hey,” Mike interrupted. “Let her go—”
Anger swirled within him, fueling him, inoculating him from the hurt and disappointment that would surely overwhelm him. He swung his arm to dislodge Mike’s grip and pivoted to face him, clenched fists raised to strike. “Stay the fuck out of this.”
How had this happened again? What was it about him that attracted unreliable women into his life? First his mother, then Birgitta, and now Chelsea.
“Adam, all I did was get you ready for the presentation, which is exactly what I’d promised you.”
He lifted his hand, as if his flesh could stem the tide of her excuses. Her betrayal threatened to fracture his armor, but he ignored the pain and sought relief in analytics, letting his mind sift through the options and follow each to its logical conclusion. Had he left any of his research lying about for her to examine? Had she ever seen him input his password? What about when his files were unlocked and vulnerable? Did she go through them, email some to his competition?
Her hands trembled as she reached for him. “Listen to me—”
“Why? So you can lie to me again? Pacify me to get a head start on my next invention?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m not interested in anything you say unless you start telling me the truth. You owe me that.”
“You needed to accept my help of your own accord. That was my job.” She dashed away her tears with the back of her hand.
He hated seeing her cry, despised seeing her in pain. What she said made no sense, but he fixated on her last two words. “Your job? You’re in the entertainment industry. What does your job have to do with me?”
She bit her lower lip and he refused to surrender to his instinct to assume that task himself. That had been part of the problem. Her presence had weakened his common sense. There’d been numerous instances where her words hadn’t added up, but he’d ignored his inner mathematician, succumbing to emotion. He waited, knowing he wasn’t going to like what came next.
“I don’t work in entertainment in the way I led you to believe. I work in public relations.”
“You’re in PR?” He hadn’t expected that.
“I’m the Executive Managing Director of West Coast Entertainment for Beecher & Stowe Public Relations.”
“Hence the entertainment,” he said, muttering to himself. She’d probably assuaged her guilt by telling herself she’d partially told the truth. “And who gav
e you ‘me’ as an assignment?”
“I did.”
His head swiveled to Mike, who’d remained standing several feet away, his brow lowered, arms crossed over his chest.
“What?” Now he was really confused.
“I gave her the assignment. She was there because of me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Mike glanced around. “Can we talk about this somewhere private?”
Adam followed the trajectory of Mike’s gaze and for the first time he noticed their melodrama had garnered an audience. Fucking fantastic.
“I introduced you to Chelsea,” he told Mike. “You’d never met her before today.”
“You needed help with your presentation. After the last launch, you were having problems, whether you’d admit it or not. A successful launch was key to a profitable initial rollout of the HPC. So I hired Chelsea’s firm to get you ready for the launch and, as a condition of the job, she couldn’t tell you about my involvement. If you knew what I was doing, you would have thwarted her efforts at every turn.”
Adam felt blindsided. Lied to not only by the woman he was involved with, but his best friend and business partner. Remembered humiliation bubbled in his midsection. This was why he preferred solitude on his mountain. In fact, if he’d turned her away the night of the storm, he wouldn’t be in this situation. He walked away. Not wanting to endure the crowd on the escalators, he headed for the elevators.
Damn his Asperger’s. A normal man would’ve figured it out. A normal man would’ve read their body language, seen the clues, felt . . . something in the air. A normal man wouldn’t have been fooled. Again. He laughed bitterly. What would it take before he accepted he wasn’t normal? Was he or was he not a fucking genius?
“Adam, wait.” Chelsea gave chase and caught up with him. “We’re not finished.”
“There’s nothing else to say.”
She grabbed his elbow. “The hell there’s not.”
He jerked away from her touch. The doors opened and he stepped onto the elevator. She followed, bestowing a fierce glare on the people attempting to enter behind her. They let the doors close without further efforts to board. Adam pressed the button for the lobby.
“You have to listen to me,” she said.
He’d actually accepted he’d live his life alone.
Until her.
“Did I miss something? Didn’t Mike hire you to prepare me for the launch? Have you not been lying to me from the moment we met?”
The anger seeped from her face and she hugged her waist. He was an idiot and should be retested. He knew the truth, knew it, yet he needed her to say the words, so there was no confusion.
“Chelsea?”
Her gaze shot to his and she nodded. “Yes.”
It was impossible for the stomach to literally drop, and as the elevator was steady, there were no motions to affect his center of gravity. But that’s what he experienced. He didn’t shy away from it, hoping this time he’d learn his lesson. He let the sensation imprint itself in his mind and on his heart.
He would never go through this again.
“I will explain everything, I promise—”
“You don’t have to explain anything,” he said, studying the control panel, refusing to look at her. “I have the ability to fully comprehend the situation, once my questions are answered. The night of the storm, when you came to my house, you knew who I was?”
She sighed. “Yes.”
“And that meeting was part of your plan? To get in my good graces?”
“It’s the reason I was on the mountain, although I hadn’t anticipated the weather. Mike hired our firm but I was the one who decided how to approach you.”
At least she wasn’t denying it. Which shouldn’t surprise him. She’d always been a straight shooter. Or was she? He didn’t know the real Chelsea.
“Was it part of your brilliant business scheme to sleep with me?”
“It wasn’t like that and you know it. I didn’t plan to sleep with you. I certainly didn’t count on falling in love with you.”
He flinched and shook his head.
“I love you, Adam. That’s why I can’t apologize for taking this assignment. Because if I hadn’t, I’d never have met you. I only wish I hadn’t agreed not to tell you who I was, or that I’d told you earlier.” She paused. “But I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t,” he said, finally turning to face her. “Why is that?”
Her account was still illogical. He was missing an important fact. Why would she go through all of this for her job? He swallowed, wanting to banish the sour taste that suddenly materialized at the back of his throat. From his memory, their conversation on the mountain popped into his mind. His stomach roiled and he hunched forward, his shoulders curling inward.
“What was your prize upon the successful completion of your mission?”
“What?”
“You aren’t slow, Chelsea. Don’t insult us both by pretending that you are. This,” he said, motioning to the space between them, “is the ethical dilemma you were pondering. The task you had to complete to get your promotion.”
Her hands trembled and she shoved them in the crook of her elbows when she crossed her arms. “This has nothing to do with my partnership—”
“Oh, it’s a partnership. Impressive. So now we know the going rate of betrayal: a new title and a high six-figure salary.”
“I deserve that. But you have to understand, Adam. This job, this partnership, was the most important thing to me. I told you a little about my upbringing, but not all of it.”
“That appears to be a pattern with you.”
Her mouth tightened at the corners, but she continued.
“My mother raised me. I never knew my father. It wasn’t the most normal upbringing. She kept trying to replace him. She’d take her paycheck and run off with her latest boyfriend, leaving me to fend for myself for a week. And when that boyfriend left her, she’d descend into a depression that left no room for taking care of me. Then she’d meet another guy and the cycle would start all over again.”
Despite his anger, he listened, the information giving him an insight into her he’d never had. It explained a lot about her, but it didn’t excuse her behavior.
“When we met in the beginning it didn’t matter; you were just a job. I didn’t know anything about love. My mother said she loved me a thousand times, but her love didn’t pay the rent, put food in my belly, or clothes on my back. Her love for me couldn’t make her show up for meetings at school, it didn’t stop me from being bullied because of her reputation, and it didn’t make her fight to keep me when the state took me away. By the time I recognized that I loved you, it was too late. I was afraid you would hate me.”
“You just told me how important your career is to you and what that promotion would mean. So don’t tell me that keeping the truth from me was about being afraid that I would hate you. What scared you was the possibility that I wouldn’t go through with the presentation and you wouldn’t get your partnership.”
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Two men wearing lanyards and carrying iPads stood waiting. They took one look at them and stepped back.
“We’ll take the next one,” the taller man said, waving them off.
“What about us?” Chelsea asked, when the doors had closed again. “You can’t let this one mistake negate our entire relationship.”
“There wasn’t an us because I don’t know who you are.”
“Yes, you do. I never lied about the important things. Think about our moments together. Playing video games, our mountainside hike.” She lowered her voice. “Making love. Those weren’t fake.”
“How can I believe you?”
“Because it’s the truth,” she said, her voice increasing in volume and intensity.
Didn’t she understand? “I thought what you told me before was the truth. How can I trust anything you ever tell me again? I told you how I felt about lying and you smiled in my face and deceived me behind my back.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, clenching her hands into fists. “People aren’t computers, Adam. We’re complex creatures. I’m not saying I didn’t lie to you in the beginning, but things changed. I thought making partner would compensate for my mother and my upbringing, but I was wrong. The partnership means nothing to me if I lose you because of it.”
“Then you did all of it for nothing.”
Tears coursed down her face and fell from her quavering chin. The acid in the back of his throat threatened to choke him.
“We always seem to get stuck on this verbal merry-go-round,” she whispered. “I love you. I will never lie to you again. Doesn’t my word mean anything?”
He considered her. Her vibrant curls, her glassy eyes, her smooth dark skin, her full lips.
“For a time, it was everything.”
When the elevator doors opened again, he stomped out, the sound of her sobs following him. He didn’t care where he was or where he was going. He couldn’t be near her one moment longer. Her presence was a painful reminder of her deception and his disability. Pressure pricked behind his eyelids, emphasizing the tightness in his throat and the hollowness in his chest.
Was this what heartbreak felt like?
Chapter Nineteen
I LOVE YOU. I will never lie to you again. Doesn’t my word mean anything?
Adam stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room of the presidential suite at the St. Regis Hotel. The sun had yet to set and the surrounding stone, metal, and glass skyscrapers that comprised San Francisco’s cityscape seemed to sparkle from its rays.
He missed his home. If he were standing in his great room, studying his usual vista, he’d see mountains instead of buildings, sky instead of lights, trees instead of people. That’s the lesson he should learn from this ordeal. Life had been better on his mountain, developing new technology without distractions, keeping his own vigil.
Love On My Mind Page 20
