“Oh, then you must be telepathic. That could come in handy.”
“Please, just sit down and listen to me. It’s not as bad as you think.” And it wasn’t—but it wasn’t good either. And I had very little to say in my own defense.
“I don’t need to listen. I just need to know for sure—did you listen to a tape of me with that client?”
“Autumn, please—”
“It’s a yes or no question,” she snapped, her voice angry but I could see tears pooling at her lower lashes, getting ready to fall. Fuck.
“Will you just listen for a min—”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes,” I said looking directly at her. “But I can explain—”
“But I don’t need you to. That’s all I need to know.”
Shit. How had I fucked this up so much? She looked devastated, and it made me remember how upset, how mortified she’d been when I had Jason call her hotline. That was when I’d decided for certain that I could never tell her this, and then I’d gone and screwed it all up today. My brains turned to shit after a good blowjob. They always had, but it was no excuse. Now she probably thought I was some kind of fucking stalker. I hoped she’d trust me enough to listen, but I didn’t blame her for feeling upset. I’d fucked up big time.
She was slipping on her shoes as I stood up and fastened my pants. I took a step toward her and reached for her arm, but she hastily took a step back. Shit. I froze in place, frowning at her. “You know I’d never hurt you, don’t you?” Surely she knew me well enough to know that?
To my immense relief, she said, “I know.” If she ever thought I’d hurt her in any way, I’d throw myself off a fucking bridge.
If she trusted me that much, then maybe I could get her to listen. “It’s not like you think. You see, I—”
“I do have one more question,” she interrupted. “It’s also yes or no.”
I looked at her steadily, waiting for her to ask whatever she needed to.
“You said before that I’d have autonomy in this apartment. That my lease was through the rental office and that you had nothing to do with it. No control over what I did in my own apartment. Did you mean that?”
“Of course,” I said, looking into her troubled blue eyes.
“Then I’d like you to leave.”
“Autumn—”
“Please.”
Her eyes bore into me for one last, long moment. I wanted to grab her and throw her on the bed. Pin her down and make her listen to me. Make her see that yeah, I’d done something shitty, but not quite as shitty as she thought. But I didn’t. I could handle her being angry at me. Being justifiably pissed. But I didn’t want her to be scared of me. Ever. Whether she knew it or not, she could trust me with her life.
Right now, there was only one thing I could do to make her understand that. To allow her to feel safe. And that was to leave.
And so I did.
30
Autumn
“Hey, you’re here.”
Cara’s greeting when I picked her up after school was subdued. She and I hadn’t spoken much last night after she’d come home from the library. I’d gone to bed early claiming a headache, but what I’d really done was to go to my room and cry. Nearly twenty-four hours later, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around the situation with Ford.
Meeting him at the new apartment had been amazing at first. I’d been so upset about the fight with Cara, and he’d said all the right things. He’d provided comfort when I needed it and wild wickedness when I wanted that. But then he’d shocked the hell out of me.
His deception felt even worse than when he’d had Jason call me. That had been extremely humiliating, but this went far beyond that. For Ford to have somehow obtained a recording of me was a huge breach of my privacy and my client’s. It was creepy, and stalkery, and I still couldn’t believe he’d done it. But it was more than that. For me, this was total and complete mortification on a cellular level.
My Sultry Sirens persona was one I never wanted him to witness. For months, he’d talked about wanting to know the real me. The real woman behind the voice. And now I knew that that was all a lie. As recent events proved, he had wanted to hear me pretend to do things to my body and talk dirty. He’d been the one man who wouldn’t talk dirty to me like that, yet apparently, he’d enjoyed listening to me talk that way to other men. That was seriously messed up. If he could do that, then he was not the man I thought he was. And that made me feel betrayed. Humiliated. And heart broken.
“Autumn, are you listening?” Cara’s voice interrupted the downward spiral of my thoughts. “I said I thought you were taking the car in this afternoon.”
“Oh yeah. Something came up.”
“Okay,” she said, and we rode in silence for a while, my eyes on the road and my mind in turmoil. After a few minutes, Cara cleared her throat. “Umm… I worked on Ella’s big speech today. During study hall. I thought about what you said, and I made some changes. Quite a few, actually. Do you think that maybe sometime I could read it for you again?”
“Sure,” I said automatically.
There was another long pause, and then she spoke again. “I’m sorry. For upsetting you.”
I gave a small smile in her direction, not trusting myself to speak. She had upset me a great deal, but it was what Ford had done that had kept me up all night. And kept preying on my mind at work.
“Are you still really angry?” she asked hesitantly.
I turned my head to tell her that no, I was okay. That I knew she didn’t mean it. But instead I burst into tears.
“Autumn! I’m so sorry. I know I said that awful thing, but honestly, I didn’t mean it. I was just upset about what you said about that speech. Not because you said it, but because you were right. I’m so sorry. Can you pull over somewhere?”
Her last request was probably a pretty good one. Tears were flooding my eyes and I could barely see to drive. Blindly, I pulled into the parking lot of some corporate building and parked in the back away from the other cars.
Cara immediately took off her seat belt and leaned over to give me as much of a hug as she could in the cramped space. “I’m so sorry. I was being a jerk. I know we don’t need anyone to fix our lives. We’re doing fine on our own.”
I hugged her back, trying to control my tears, but they just kept coming. Cara found a tissue for me and continued. “I guess I just meant that yeah, we’re okay on our own, but it’s nice having Ford in our lives. It would be even if he were dirty poor. He’s a good guy. Autumn? I was trying to make you feel better, not make you cry harder. I’m so sorry.”
Mopping at my face with the tissue, I tried to get the words out. “It’s not you. It’s him.”
“Ford?”
“Y—yeah.”
“Uh-oh. What happened?”
“He… he’s not the man I thought he was.”
Cara was silent for a minute, but she took my hand and held it tight. “Did you two break up?”
“No, he just… maybe. I don’t really know.” I couldn’t explain anything in detail since she knew nothing about the Sultry Sirens job. “He lied about something. Something important.”
“I thought he was a good guy,” she said at last.
“So did I.”
“Well… let’s go home and I’ll make cocoa and we’ll talk about it. Are you feeling any better now? Do you want me to drive?”
What? That snapped me out of my crying jag at least somewhat. She didn’t even have a learner’s permit. “No, you can’t drive.”
“It was worth a try,” she said, and then I realized that she’d just been trying to make me smile. Ford might not be the person I thought he was, but Cara was still Cara. My sister and my best friend. And maybe we were overdue for some disagreements and arguments, but we’d be okay. We were family.
“Basically, he’s been lying to me since the first day I met him,” I told Cara as I concluded a highly edited version of meeting Ford at the apartment.
“No. But he’s called and texted a bunch of times.”
Cara took a long sip of her cocoa. “So… what does this mean in terms of the apartment? I’m not saying that’s the only thing that matters,” she added hurriedly. “If I had to choose between an amazing apartment that makes my sister miserable or a dumpy one that makes her happy, I’d choose the dump. But I just wondered if you’d decided anything.”
“We’re still moving in,” I said, not mentioning that I’d immediately called the leasing office this morning and asked if it was too late to back out. I talked to several people there including the manager, but they all said that I was locked into leasing the place for a year. Which was pretty much what I expected them to say.
That place would always remind me of Ford, but somehow, I still believed what he said about him not interfering with anything involving the apartment. After all, last night when I’d asked him to leave, he’d done so. His eyes had been troubled, but he’d done it.
“That’s good,” Cara said. She hadn’t even seen the apartment but she knew it had to be much better than this one. “So, will we see… him… when we move in on Friday?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Jason will be helping us.” I suspected the leasing office contacted Ford as soon as I’d called today, and he in turn had had Jason contact me. So it would be Ford’s right-hand man who would arrive with the movers arrange for them to take our boxes and furniture for the new place. I’d thanked Jason, but I’d refused to listen to any of Ford’s voice messages. The few texts of his that I’d read were all the same. He was sorry. He wanted to explain. Would I please just talk to him. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
Every time I thought about him listening to me talking to my clients, it made me want to die of shame. And he was the one who’d said I shouldn’t be embarrassed about that job. And all this time he’d been eavesdropping. Spying on me. Lying to me.
But at least I had my sister. She’d been enough for me before I met Ford, and she would be again. She was again. But still, I couldn’t help but miss the man I’d thought he was.
Friday arrived and by the time Cara was finished at school, we were all moved in. I’d offered to show her the place earlier, but she’d elected to wait until it was truly ours. Her enthusiasm as she raced from room to room, taking it all in, made me feel better than I had all week. Made me forget myself and bend to smell the huge bouquet of white roses that were on the counter. Jason hadn’t said anything, but of course they were from Ford.
Jason had been great throughout the day, directly the movers, discreetly making sure that I had everything I need. He didn’t leave until after Cara had arrived, and he’d seemed to get a kick out of her enthusiasm, too.
“Thank you so much for all your help today,” I told him.
“You’re welcome,” he said. Then he glanced around to make sure Cara was out of earshot. “Ford would have been here if he could’ve.”
It was the first time anyone had mentioned his name today, and I tried not to show the pang of sadness that hit me. “Not a problem. He’s a busy man with an empire to run,” I said breezily, but Jason just stared at me.
“You know that’s not what I meant. He would’ve been here if he thought you wanted him here.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know what he did, but I know he feels incredibly sorry for it.”
“Thanks, Jason,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. And even though he’d been great all day, it was with a certain amount of relief that I closed and locked the door behind him. Now it was just us in our new home.
Except Cara seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Jason. When I went out to the kitchen, she was adding water to the base of the flower arrangement. “These smell so good.”
“They do,” I said evenly.
“Have you spoken to him?”
“No.”
“Are you going to?”
“No,” I repeated.
“Okay,” she said, looking at the roses, not me. “But—well, it’s obvious he screwed up. I don’t know exactly what he did, and it’s none of my business. But does that one thing erase all the other things he’s done for us?”
“It wasn’t just one thing,” I said stiffly. “It was more of an ongoing thing. An ongoing deception.”
“I see,” she said. “I can get why that would hurt. But… does it really cancel out everything else? Not just the things like the Chicago trip and the Hamilton tickets and this place. But how much fun you two had together. How happy he made you. Does it really undo all of that?”
“Not ‘undo,’ not exactly,” I said. “It’s more like I wouldn’t have felt that way about him if I’d known he wasn’t being truthful.”
“That makes sense,” Cara said. “Do you think he’s sorry?”
I thought about it. He’d certainly called and texted a lot. “I guess he is.”
“Then… is there any way you can give him a second chance?”
“No,” I said. That was an easy question to answer.
“But why? I was mean to you the other day, and you forgave me. Could you at least listen to Ford and see what he has to say for himself?”
“But you weren’t lying to me. It’s different.”
“But I have,” she said. I stared at her, and she flushed. “Not about anything big. Just, you know, little things. Everyone does that. Don’t you?”
“Trust me, Ford lied about something big,” I said. But later, when she was getting her new room organized, I thought about what she said. Her words about lying had settled in my stomach like a brick. Of course I lied. I was lying by omission about our father. To her and to Ford. Did that make what he’d done less awful? It didn’t lessen the humiliation I felt every time I thought about him listening to me saying wicked things to a client.
But as the night wore on, it at least made me think about justification. I’d felt I had no choice about my lie. My father insisted that Cara shouldn’t know anything until he was up for parole. And I’d been afraid to tell Ford about what my dad did. It was a reason. Maybe not a reason everyone would agree with it, but at least I had some rationale for why I’d done that. Why I was continuing to do that.
I couldn’t see any good reason why Ford would have spied on me like that, but maybe I should at least hear him out. Let him explain as he kept asking in his texts. It didn’t mean that anything would change between us, but maybe Cara was right. Maybe I did owe it to him—and maybe to myself, also—to see what, if anything, remained of the man I’d thought he was.
31
Autumn
“Thank you for meeting with me, Autumn.”
We’d chosen a neutral place, a coffeehouse not too far from my new apartment building. I’d thought it would be easier to meet in public, but so far it hadn’t been. Ford had arrived first and gotten us a secluded booth in the back. I supposed that privacy was good, given the things we needed to talk about, but it also felt intimate. Seeing him again sitting across from me, looking so devastatingly handsome was harder than I thought it would be.
He’s stood when I arrived and I’d wanted to throw myself into his arms for comfort. But I had to remind myself that he was the reason I needed comforting in the first place. Still, it was hard not to fall into old habits. After my drink arrived, I’d placed a hand on the table, and I saw him start to reach for it. And for a moment, I’d wanted to reach for him, too.
Until I remembered what he’d done. And how humiliated he’d made me feel. I tried to explain that to him. The betrayal of trust. The mortification. And he listened, with a sober expression on his face.
And then it was his turn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For making you feel that way.”
An apology wasn’t what I was here for. I w
anted an explanation. But still, his simple words affected me. His piercing hazel eyes were steady on mine and he sounded sincere. And all of a sudden, it hit me that this was Ford. The man who’d become such an important part of my life. The man I cared about so much. The man who seemed like he cared about me. I wished with all my heart that things could go back to the way they had been. “I don’t understand why you did this. Or how. But mostly why.”
He took a sip of his coffee, his eyes never learning mine. “Well, the answer to both questions starts with a simple fact I should have told you a long time ago. I’m the owner of Sultry Sirens.”
What? If the booth had suddenly ejected me into the air, fighter-jet style, I couldn’t have been more surprised. “You—it—it’s owned by Davenport Industries?”
“No. By me personally.”
My mind was still reeling. Was that actually true? His name wasn’t associated with the company in any way. Then again, privacy was very valued in that line of work. If it was true, that explained how he was able to get a recording of my phone calls, but not why he did it. And surely that wasn’t ethical? Company owners needed to have a reason to spy on employees, didn’t they?
This was still just so hard to believe. All this time, my favorite client had been my boss. I couldn’t quite take it in. “I don’t understand. Why—when did you start that company?”
“I didn’t start it. I bought it. It was at the end of graduate school when I got my MBA. I was young, stupid, and arrogant. I thought I knew more than my professors. I scoffed at my dad and his old-school business practices. I talked about how much better I’d do all the time, and my buddies finally called me out on it. They bet me $50,000 that I couldn’t take a failing business and turn it around. They got to choose the business, of course. So they found Sultry Sirens. It was mired in debt and if it didn’t find a buyer, it would have closed. So I bought it with some money my grandfather left me. I fired the management and took the reins myself, at first. Hired new employees. Arranged for benefits. Created new procedures. That manual you hated so much? My buddies and I wrote most of the scripts over beers at a local bar in the evenings. And within a year, it was making a profit.”
Charming: A Cinderella Billionaire Story Page 20
