“I usually don’t, so consider yourself privileged.”
“Believe me, I do. The more I learn about you, the more I like.”
His words lingered in the air as he made his way across the kitchen, rolling up his sleeves before washing the dishes by hand.
“Jay, I have a dishwasher,” Kasey protested.
“I’ve never liked those. Just relax. Pour some more wine,” he nodded to the half empty bottle. Refilling both glasses, she crossed her legs while watching him move around her kitchen comfortably.
Jay was the first man she’d had over to her house, but it felt right. Kasey knew in that moment that she’d made the right decision trying things out with Jay. She liked him, and could see the two of them growing together.
A loud ringer sounded through the kitchen, causing Kasey to jump, she’d never heard the alarm before.
“Sorry. That’s my phone. Can you hand it to me? It’s in my coat pocket” Jay called from the sink.
Kasey nodded, taking another sip of her wine before walking to Jay’s chair, digging in the inside pocket to retrieve his phone. It was illuminated with a text from Mitchell, something about golf on Saturday. She didn’t pay much attention, because a small white piece of paper stuck to his phone caught her eye.
In red writing, there was a phone number with the name Melissa written, a heart dotting the eye. Kasey’s stomach sunk to her knees as she turned to Jay.
“Did you find it?”
“I found this!” she held the white paper in the air, her fingers pressed so tightly Melissa’s name had a wrinkle through it.
Jay looked to have seen a ghost, his face went pale as he stood so still Kasey couldn’t believe he had any explanation. She turned and grabbed his coat, marching towards him so fast the hardwood floors hurt her bare feet.
“Kasey, let me explain,” he rushed the words as she stuffed his coat in his hands, which were still wet from cleaning the dishes.
“Explain what? That you wasted my time, telling me all these lies about wanting to try something out with me while you’re still collecting phone numbers from other women?” She spat the words out like they tasted sour.
“Kasey, you have to let me explain,” he reached for her, but she backed away too quickly.
“I don’t have to let you do anything. You need to leave my house right now.” She pointed towards the door, and Jay again took a step towards her, but she held her hands in the air defensively and he froze mid step.
“I don’t know why I ever thought I could trust you. It’s all about money with all of you, just trying to see what you can get and how much you can make. Well, you can forget about me contributing to your bottom line, Jay. I will never work for you!”
It was the last thing she said, and the words seemed to hit him like blows to the face as he turned in silence, his head hanging low. Carrying his coat, he left Kasey alone in the kitchen as she struggled to hold herself together.
When the front door opened, and closed, she finally allowed herself the emotional reaction she was fighting, and tears began to stream down her cheeks.
With her shoulders shaking from the violent cries, she kicked herself for ever believing she could be enough for a man like Jay. It was all a game to him, and she was nothing more than a pawn. She thought he was different than Renee, but she was wrong.
Now, what was she going to do? He was her way of leaving Rockwell Publishing, but now that he had shown his true colors, she knew there was no way they could work together.
Reaching across the table, she drank the rest of her wine, wiping away the tears. It was time for her to create a plan, because no one would ever leave Kasey Wright defeated. Not Renee, and definitely not Jay. She had to depend on herself, and she was ready to do whatever was needed to pull that off.
Chapter 39
Jay
Looking at his blank computer screen, Jay rubbed the scruff of a beard irritating his cheek. He hadn’t gone home after being kicked out of Kasey’s townhouse. With Danny thinking he would be a few hours at least, he had decided to walk while thinking of how he could possibly fix things.
Never in his life had he been so short of words, so unable to explain what should have never happened in the first place. He knew it was a mistake to get the barista’s number, and even had the decency to tell her that. But for some reason he still carried around her phone number as if it may come into use at some point.
A small voice spoke softly from the back of his mind, questioning if he was intentionally holding on to Melissa’s number, but he was certain it was an accident. He’d never thought about calling her after the day he received the phone number. Why he hadn’t disposed of it was simply because he’d never seen it again, if he had there was no question he would have gotten rid of it.
How could he tell that to Kasey? Admit that he saw a girl that kind of looked like her, and so he got her number so that he could possibly fuck her, pretending the woman was Kasey. Only, Kasey surprised him, so he thought since he could have the real thing, the other woman was useless? No, that would not have gone over well, and that’s the reason he remained mute as Kasey screamed at the top of her lungs in the townhouse.
The hurt was evident in her voice, her tone, her eyes, her quivering lips. The scene was engrained in his memory, and was the reason he hadn’t been able to sleep at all.
After walking out of her development, he debated calling a cab, but decided to walk a little further. He reached the office before he even realized where he was headed, walking the entire five-mile journey in a fog.
His brainstorming had borne no fruit, and now the office was beginning to wake up, the secretaries arriving to work in time to greet their bosses. Jay was impressed by how hard they worked to make life easier for the executives like him.
As always, Mitchell arrived early, doing a double take when he walked past Jay’s office before peeking inside.
“Well, aren’t you just the—” Mitchell didn’t finish his sentence as his face dropped once he got a good look at Jay.
Quickly, he turned and pulled the door shut before plopping down in his regular leather loveseat, concern covering his face.
“What’s going on?”
“I fucked up, Mitch—again.”
Jay rubbed his face with his hands, trying his best to prepare himself to retell the story that had haunted him for the past twelve-hours. Beginning with the honest story about how he met Melissa, Jay struggled with recounting the pointless interaction. He watched as Mitchell smiled while hearing the story of Kasey’s perfectly planned dinner. Jay held back no detail about their evening together and how perfect it had been—the food, the wine, their conversation.
Jay loved Kasey’s home, and imagined it would have been somewhere he would have lived at her age. Mitchell nodded and contorted his face when Jay got to the climax of the evening. Once he’d told every detail, leading up to him arriving at the office in the middle of the night, Mitchell sat in silence, taking a deep breath before speaking.
“Why were you holding on to the number, Jay?”
“What do you mean? I wasn’t. I got the number, I put it in my pocket, and I went about my life. There was no grand scheme to keep this twenty-year-old in a stable for a rainy day. She was a cute girl. I got her number, never called, and forgot to throw the damn paper away!”
He was angry, but it wasn’t with Mitchell. Jay was furious with himself. There was always a doubt that he could be in a relationship, he knew that. It was far from his strong point, but he wanted to try for Kasey. She was worth it and he would do anything to have her. So, to lose her on such a dumb ass mistake felt worse than if he’d tried and failed. It was losing on a technicality, but he couldn’t expect anything other than the reaction she gave him.
“Why didn’t you tell her that?”
“I tried. Maybe I didn’t. I was so stunned that she even found the number, I froze. She was so mad. No, she was hurt. I hurt her, again, and she was just warming up to me. It’s so fuc
king stupid!” Jay yelled, banging his fist on the hard wood desk so hard it stung for minutes after the thud.
“Jay, you know I’m always rooting for you, I really am. But I think you may have muddied this one up too bad. There’s no way to clean this up, bro. It looks really bad.”
Just then, there was a knock on the door of Jay’s office.
“Come in!” he yelled.
Brenda, the head of accounting, poked her head in, obviously shocked by either Jay’s presence or his appearance.
“Sorry, Mr. Canton. I wasn’t expecting you to be in, but I heard you were in here, Mitch. Can I speak to you when you get a minute?” she nervously asked. The tension was palpable, and she wanted out of there as soon as possible.
“Go ahead, Mitch. I’ll catch up to you later,” Jay sullenly dismissed his friend.
“Are you sure?” Mitchell double-checked, worried about Jay’s well-being.
“Yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing else to be done.”
“I’ll be back after this meeting,” Mitchell assured him before leaving with Brenda.
The minute Mitch left the office, Jay began to collect his things, eager to put a new plan in motion. Mitchell thought there was nothing else to do because he didn’t know all the options available to Jay.
With a few taps on his phone, he alerted Danny to be downstairs and stalked out of his office, a man on a mission.
“Mr. Canton! I didn’t know you’d already arrived,” Jessica looked shocked to see him.
“I’ll be back in a few,” he said, without even making eye contact.
The ride in the elevator was short, his mind too concerned with getting Kasey back to focus on anything else.
“Mr. Canton! I was wondering if you’d taken the day off,” Danny smiled, holding the backdoor open.
“Rockwell Publishing!”
They were the only two words spoken between the two, who often had good conversation in the mornings. Danny had driven Jay enough to pick up on his moods, and today was not a talkative kind of day.
They arrived at Rockwell Publishing and Jay all but sprinted to Renee’s office, glancing around with the hopes of spotting Kasey. While he didn’t know what he would say, he couldn’t ignore the longing desire in his chest to at least know she was okay.
“You look like shit, Canton. Is it your drop in market share? Don’t worry. I won’t be taking too much more of the market until I can expand my office. There’s literally more business happening in here than we can handle,” she chuckled, with that evil laugh she always used around him.
“I need to talk to you,” he growled, inviting himself into her office.
“Hold my calls!” she barked at her assistant before following Jay into her office and closing the door behind them. “What do you want, Canton?”
“Is the deal still good?”
“What deal?” she crossed her arms defensively, preparing for some sort of punchline.
“One of my publishing houses for Kasey.”
It was the only plan he had, Mitchell was right, he was out of moves. It was desperate and he knew Renee would run the division into the ground, but it didn’t matter if he could have Kasey back.
“Uh, ye-yes.” Renee stuttered, failing at remaining cool.
“I’ll do it. Have your lawyers draw it up, I’ll sign.”
“I’ll have the paperwork drafted as soon as possible. Once I get your signature, I’ll get Kasey back to you.”
“Fine.”
He stalked out of the office as fast as he walked in. Renee was smart enough to know how good of a deal she was getting, so he expected she would be calling sooner than later. He needed to get his head together so that Kasey would be willing to hear him out when he did see her.
She deserved to know the whole truth, and he was willing to tell her. All he needed was another chance, but he couldn’t honestly say that he deserved it.
Chapter 40
Kasey
“You’re looking much better,” Nicole smiled across the table at her best friend.
“I told you I would pull myself together,” she allowed a half smile to grow before taking a sip of her margarita. It was one of their regular girl lunches to catch up on all that had happened over the past week.
“Kasey, you don’t have to pretend to be strong for me. It’s only been two weeks, and I know you cared about him a lot.”
Silence grew between them as Kasey tried to find the right words. As usual, Nicole was right, she did really like Jay and she wanted things to be different between them, but his actions revealed his true intentions. More than anything, she was happy she hadn’t fallen any harder, because in just that short time, she was almost head over heels about him.
“It was all just for business, Nicole. I got played, forgetting how cutthroat the industry can be. Jay is a shark, just like Renee, it’s something I should get used to. This is the big leagues.”
It was the only explanation Kasey could come up with, and the story she’d repeated to herself to make sense of Jay’s actions. He had to want her solely for what she could add to Passions Publishing, using the ploy of a relationship as a carrot to dangle in her face.
“Well, for someone so in touch with business, he sure is falling behind to Renee. And no offense, but she doesn’t seem half as competent as him.”
“We did see an uptick in the romance department,” Kasey nodded, reaching across the table for a tortilla chip.
“No, I mean the acquisition.” Nicole looked to Kasey incredulously.
“What acquisition?” she asked, absentmindedly.
“I wondered why you hadn’t told me. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Renee just bought one of Jay’s publishing houses.” Nicole’s eyes widened with shock. “Maybe you’re right, I should get in the publishing industry, because you’re asleep at the wheel!”
“No, I didn’t hear anything about that. I’ll have to ask Renee when I get back to the office,” Kasey said, as nonchalantly as possible, but Nicole’s revelation made the rest of their lunch torturous. Every ten seconds, Kasey looked at her watch, trying to find the best time to get back to the office.
She had to know every detail about the deal and what it entailed. How on earth had Renee managed to buy a piece of Passions Publishing? She knew how much Jay cared about his business, and doubted he’d leave any loopholes for someone as shady as Renee to get in the backdoor.
“How about you just go back to the office, because you’re not paying any attention to me anyway,” Nicole teased, before finishing her margarita.
“Sorry, I just can’t wrap my mind around how that deal could have gone down without me knowing anything about it.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re still caught up on the one that got away,” Nicole smiled innocently.
“He didn’t get away, Nicole, he was a dirt bag.”
“How could you know that if you didn’t even hear his side of the story?”
Throughout the two weeks, Nicole had been more understanding and empathetic towards Jay than Kasey liked.
According to her best friend, Jay’s behavior didn’t add up to someone who wasn’t genuinely interested. Nicole felt that Kasey’s business theory was all bullshit. If Jay was only concerned with her re-joining the Passions team, he was smart enough to know he should have removed himself from the deal—maybe having his partner approach her with a proposition that gave her stock in the company, or something equally as lucrative.
“There’s nothing to hear, Nicole.” Kasey was done hearing her wild theories about how Jay loved her and only made a mistake. She wasn’t in the mood for fairy tales, so she gave her best friend a hug and left for the office.
It had been a while since she visited Rockwell Publishing in the afternoon, preferring to schedule her meetings in the morning so she could work from home in the evenings. There was a lot going on—people moving furniture, and a legal team meeting in the large conference room.
“What’s going on?” Kasey asked
a receptionist, who seemed to be overwhelmed with calls.
“It’s about the acquisition. Everyone is going crazy!”
Bypassing her own office, Kasey went straight to Renee’s to figure out what was going on. She was on the phone when Kasey arrived, but she rushed the person off the line, waving Kasey in as she said her goodbyes.
“The woman of the hour! How are you, sweetheart?” Renee cheerily came around her desk, wrapping her arms around Kasey in one of her now infamous yet still awkward hugs.
“What is going on, Renee?”
My One and Only: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Second Chance Romance Page 45
