by Ravenna Tate
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. She had lied to him. A small voice in his head reminded him that his wife didn’t know about Theresa, but he told that voice to go fuck itself. This wasn’t the same situation at all. Not even close.
That voice then reminded him that Lynda didn’t know he’d ordered hits on three men ten years ago, and that they weren’t the only shady things he’d done. Again, Merrick convinced himself that none of those things mattered. This wasn’t about him. It was about Lynda’s ex-boyfriend.
He refused to accept that he owed his wife a full accounting of his life. This was a distinct situation, separate from what he sometimes had to do in the course of business, and thus it needed to be dealt with on its own merits. Comparing it to anything he’d done to resolve a different problem was irrelevant.
Merrick rescheduled the rest of his meetings that afternoon, then set new calendars for everything else. It would have to wait. He needed to go home and talk to his wife.
Chapter Fourteen
Lynda was more than impressed with Merrick’s workout room. A kickass stereo system, full video feed capability so she could watch movies or TV during her workout if she wanted, and every imaginable cardio and weight machine that existed.
She stayed in for there an hour, and then went into her bathroom to take another shower. She’d never felt so refreshed afterward. All the crap she’d read online dissipated as she dried off, then dressed in a pair of her favorite white Capri pants and a red tank top. She even put in matching earrings.
It was almost four, and she’d been told by the staff that Merrick rarely got home from work before six. She planned on reading for a couple of hours, but then she heard his voice downstairs. He was home early.
Smiling, she started down the hall to go and greet her husband, but he was already upstairs and coming toward her. Her heart pounded at the look of anger on his face. What was wrong?
His gaze drifted over her clothes, but there was no appreciation in his glance. “We need to talk.”
“All right. Should I—”
“In my office. Now.”
She took a step back at the tone in his voice. “Excuse me? I’m not one of your employees, Merrick.”
“No, you’re not.” He stopped mere inches from her. It was clear he was livid over something, but she had no clue what it was. What the fuck had happened? “You’re my wife. And as my wife, what affects you also affects me.”
Lynda swallowed hard as her mind raced. This could only be about two things. Her uncles or Rey. Rey … the videos… She put a hand over her chest. “Oh, God…”
He gave her an incredulous look. “What haven’t you told me, Lynda? What do you now suspect I found out?”
Lynda blinked back tears. “Merrick, please. You’re scaring me.”
For the briefest second, his features softened, but then the expression was gone. “In my office. I want complete privacy for this talk.”
She followed him into his bedroom, cutting her gaze toward the bed where they’d spent the night in each other’s arms. Would that ever happen again, or had she blown it already by not telling him everything about Rey in the first place?
They entered his office, and Merrick shut the door. Then he pressed the button on the intercom. When one of the staff answered, he told them he and Lynda were not to be disturbed for any reason.
“Sit down.” He pointed toward a chair in front of his desk, but before she took a seat, she pulled it closer to his. She would not sit across from him like a damn subordinate.
“Tell me about Rey Santos.”
Fuck. Fuck it all to hell and back. “It sounds like you already know everything, so please can we not play this game?”
He slammed both fists on the desk, and she jumped. She started to rise as hot fear raced through her, but he was up and standing in front of her before she could move. “I’m sorry. Please sit down again. I’ll refrain from any further outbursts of a physical nature.”
She was having trouble holding back the tears now. His voice sounded edgy and barely in control. A muscle in his jaw twitched. She had no idea what this man was capable of when truly angered, and didn’t want to be in the same room with him when she found out.
“Lynda, I said I was sorry. I will not hurt you. Please sit down so we can get to the bottom of this.”
That was a little better, but not much. She finally took her seat again and so did he. “Will you please tell me what you know?” she asked. This would be easier if all she had to do was fill in the blanks.
“No, I will not. I want to hear it from you. All of it this time.”
She put a hand to her mouth as hot bile rose in her throat. “May I please have something to drink?”
“Stop stalling, Lynda.”
“I’m not stalling. Merrick, this is really hard for me to talk about. No one else knows what happened.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. I’ve told no one about this.”
He studied her face carefully for a few seconds, then asked her what she wanted to drink.
“Ginger ale, please. My stomach is in knots.”
He swiveled around and pushed the button on the intercom again. “Please bring a bottle of ginger ale, a glass with ice, and a Jack and Coke for me.” Then he faced her again. “Compose yourself until they arrive with the drinks. I don’t want any gossip about this situation. It’s too volatile.”
She nodded, forcing her breathing to slow. When one of the staff, whose name Lynda didn’t yet know, arrived with the drinks, he placed them on the desk without a glance at either her or Merrick, the left and closed the door behind him. Her husband had his staff trained well.
She poured the ginger ale into the glass, spilling some on his desk because her fingers were shaking. He opened a drawer and handed her a paper napkin. “It’s all right. The wood is treated.”
Lynda didn’t give a shit about his fucking wood, but this wasn’t the time to say so. She took a couple of large sips until she no longer felt like she would puke, and noticed he had already drained his drink. Time to get this out in the open.
“I found an email three years ago in October one evening while Rey was out with friends from college. I was on his computer, looking for pictures I knew he’d saved on his hard drive, because I wanted to use some of them in a design I was working on.”
“In seven years you never did that before?”
“No, I didn’t. He usually emailed me anything he thought might be of interest for me to use, but he’d forgotten to send these particular pictures. And we didn’t live together the entire time I was with him. In fact, I still had my own apartment.”
She couldn’t blame him for looking suspicious. “Why?”
“Because sometimes I needed my own space in which to work. The apartment we shared was noisy late into the night, because it was in a building where grad students lived. Mine wasn’t noisy, and I liked the area better.”
He nodded slightly, and she drank more ginger ale before continuing. “The email was to several of his college friends, and the subject line read ‘Told you Lynda fucks like a porn star’.”
She wasn’t sure if the look of shock and disgust on his face was because Rey had disrespected her so horribly, but she was grateful for it, just the same. He had defended her once already. Would he do it again if necessary?
“It contained several videos of us having sex, and I don’t mean doing it missionary position in a darkened room.” Heat rose to her face when she realized how much she’d have to tell him. “Rey liked it messy, and in as many ways as he could bend my body. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s part of the story. I knew you weren’t a virgin the first time I kissed you, and I certainly wasn’t. We each have a past.”
A quick image of him making love to other women flashed through her mind, and the resulting wave of hot jealousy surprised her. “The videos had been edited so that they resembled nothing short of ro
ugh porn. He’d spliced scenes together and cut out anything intimate or transitional. The email said he had others. All they had to do was ask for them.”
“Did you look for the others?”
“Oh yeah. I sure did. There were about three hundred. I could tell by my hairstyle and items in the background that he’d been filming us for years.”
“And you had no idea this was happening.”
He didn’t believe that. She heard it in his voice. “None. I swear it.”
“Did you confront him, or did you simply leave?”
“Oh, I confronted him. I waited up until he got home and watched him delete the email from his trash. Then I watched him delete every single video.”
Merrick narrowed his eyes. “Did you check to see if he had them stored somewhere else on the computer or on another device?”
“No.” He’d conclude now that he’d married a complete fool. “I was upset and afraid. I wasn’t thinking clearly. There was a lot of screaming and throwing things that night, and I don’t mean from him.”
Merrick nodded again. At least the anger had finally left his eyes. “While I can understand your reaction, I wish you had checked.”
“I wish I had, too, Merrick, but I didn’t. I packed everything I could and left that night. I never went back. He shipped the rest of my things weeks later, after I refused to return his calls, his emails, or answer the door when he came over.”
Merrick snorted, sucked what little was left of his drink, then pushed the button on the intercom and asked for another one. He cut his gaze toward her glass. “Do you need a refill?”
“No. Thank you for asking.”
“How long did he try to get you back, just for my own curiosity?”
“About a month.”
“I’m proud of you for not going back with him, but I have to say this. I’m finding it hard to believe you never knew he was filming you both, or that he’d never done it before.”
“He told me he was drunk when he wrote the email and he never would have sent it.”
“And you believe that?”
She sighed and glanced down at the floor. “No. I don’t. I didn’t believe it then, and I still don’t believe it. I think he only said that because he was caught.”
“You do realize there are probably copies of the videos, or at least some of them, floating around out there. Even if he never sent any of them, he likely made copies that you didn’t find.”
“I know that now.”
“Lynda, you should have told me.”
She finally met his gaze, and the disappointment in it forced the tears that had been threatening to her eyes. “I know,” she whispered. “I wish I could explain what it felt like that night. Seven years … seven years I gave that asshole. I was so humiliated. It felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest. If he’d died instead of me finding that email, I don’t think I could have felt worse.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far.” The most profound look of pain spread across his face, and Lynda stopped in the act of speaking once more as she stared at him. What the hell was that about? He cleared his throat and averted his gaze, and when he looked her in the eyes again, his face was once more a mask of controlled anger and disappointment. But she knew she had not imagined that anguish.
What was he hiding in his past? Had someone he loved died? She knew so little about her husband. “What do you mean by that? That you wouldn’t go quite that far?”
“I mean the end of a relationship, even a long term one, isn’t the same as never being able to see or touch the person again because they’re actually dead.”
Was his voice shaking? “You sound like you have firsthand experience with that.”
“This isn’t about me.” He fidgeted with the cup that held his pens. She’d hadn’t seen him this rattled yet. “It’s about you and the mistake you made three years ago in not checking to be sure the videos were gone.”
“Merrick, what do you want me to do? I can’t go back in time and change that.”
“You should have told me.”
His voice was hard again, and louder now. Was that because of whatever had unnerved him, or because he realized that Rey might come forward and try to blackmail one of them? If he still had the videos.
“I know that. I can’t do anything about that either, except apologize. You know, he could have blackmailed me by now if he wanted to. He knew I had money.”
A thoughtful look came over his face, and Lynda wiped away the last of her tears.
“That is true. But the stakes are higher now.”
“Tell me what you want me to do.”
Someone knocked. Merrick told them to come in, and then the same staff member as earlier placed the second drink on the desk and left. Merrick drained that one before he spoke again. Drunk and angry wasn’t a good combo.
“There’s nothing you can do, except swear to me that you aren’t keeping anything about this man or those videos from me.”
“I’m not. You have the full story.”
“He never contacted you about them, or gave you any reason to think he had copies?”
“No. Never. I haven’t heard from him since a month after I walked out.”
He fidgeted with everything on the desk while she watched. Finally, he looked at her, and she wanted to die inside at the look of regret in his beautiful eyes. “I need some time to think. I’ll instruct the staff to make sure you eat dinner, but I won’t be here.”
What? “Where are you going?”
“I need to be alone, Lynda. Please leave now.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re dismissing me?”
He said nothing, merely stared at her with a cold, hard look that turned her bones to ice.
“You know, communication is the key to a successful marriage.”
He snorted again. “Said by the woman who kept a secret from her husband that might well ruin them both.”
She knew he was right, but Lynda doubted his own past was pristine. She rose, because it was obviously she’d get nowhere by staying in this room right now and trying to talk some sense into him. “All right, Merrick. You have your victory. I didn’t tell you the truth about Rey because I didn’t know you, and because it left me with emotional scars that I’m not sure will ever heal.”
She pushed the chair back where it had been earlier, then faced him across the desk. “But unless you can sit there, look me right in the eyes, and tell me there are no secrets in your past that you can’t tell me for whatever reason, you have no right to judge me. None.”
The emotion that passed across his face was quick, but it was enough to tell Lynda she’d struck a nerve, and she’d made her point. Her handsome, charming, sexy, volatile husband was hiding a few things of his own.
“That’s what I thought. Enjoy your evening.” She turned and walked out of the office, forcing her pace to remain normal. When she closed the door behind her, she didn’t glance at him. Then she went into her room and lay on the bed, wondering what the fuck she was supposed to do now.
It was ruined. All of it. All the hope she’d felt earlier, and all the elation at having made what she considered a breakthrough was gone. The loveless, cold marriage she’d envisioned at first was a reality. It always had been. She’d fooled herself into believing that scorching sex meant there might one day be something intimate between them.
Dare she even say it? She had begun to hope the fact that they were so compatible in bed might mean that one day, they’d fall in love. She was a fool. A stupid fool. That would never happen. The only thing keeping him in this marriage right now was the same thing keeping her in it. The company, and the pre-nup.
Chapter Fifteen
Merrick found it easy to avoid Lynda for three days, but only in terms of the physical layout of his apartment. She slept in her own suite, had her meals brought in there, and he did the same in his suite. If the staff noticed the two hadn’t spoken, they said nothing. He wouldn’t have expected anything el
se from them. They were paid to do their jobs and stay discreet.
What he found more difficult than he’d imagined was consciously avoiding speaking to her or seeking out her company. He missed his wife, and that shocked the hell out of him. To distract his thoughts of her hair and her eyes, he called Todd several times a day and night.
The phone went straight to voice mail every time. Something was very wrong, and Merrick had the uncomfortable sensation that whatever was keeping Todd from answering his phone was connected to the fact that Shelton Energy had been transferred to him on paper only. The money trail was still non-existent.
During the same three days, he tried, also without success, to reach Dean. The money transfer was supposed to have taken place by now, but his accounting team told him that never happened. They, too, had been unable to reach Dean. Even more disturbing was that no one Merrick could reach at Dean’s firm seemed to know why the hell he wasn’t answering his phone or emails, or why he hadn’t been in the office all week.
Merrick didn’t like loose ends, and he wasn’t used to Dean dropping the ball like this. What the fuck was going on? He thought briefly of asking Lynda if she’d heard from her father, but if she hadn’t, all that would do was worry her. Plus, he had to get his thoughts straight before he looked into her eyes again.
He’d slipped up during their conversation about Rey and the videos. When she’d made that quip about how she couldn’t have felt worse if he’d died, he’d let his emotions show. She hadn’t missed that. She was too sharp. She’d flat out asked him about it, and he’d avoided the question by turning the discussion back to her and Rey.
The hypocrisy of what he’d done wasn’t lost on Merrick. He’d berated her for not sharing a traumatic experience with him, when he was hiding this terrible secret and its aftermath from her. Telling himself the two experiences weren’t related didn’t change the facts. He was hiding it, and now she knew there was something in his past that he hadn’t told her.
