My cell phone rang and I pulled if from my back pocket, frowning at the unfamiliar number on the screen.
I swiped to engage the call and lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Deacon? It’s Calvin. Is Fiona with you? I’ve been trying to reach her, but she’s not answering her phone.”
Something in his tone set me immediately on edge. “No, I’m at the bar. She’s not at work?”
There was a long pause that made my gut churn painfully. “You haven’t talked to her.” It was a statement, not a question, and it did nothing to make me feel any better.
“I haven’t. What’s going on, Calvin? Did something happen?”
Another pause. “Maybe I should let her tell you.”
A sick, sinking sensation hit me like a sledgehammer. “I’m thinking you need to tell me what the hell’s going on before I think the worst and lose my mind.”
Calvin sighed through the line, causing the hairs on my arms to stand on end. Finally, after what felt like an agonizing lifetime, he started talking. “Something happened at the office this morning. There was… an email that was sent out.” He stopped to let out a choked cough. “Look, I really think Fiona should be the one to tell you what happened. If she knew you heard it from me, she might get upset—”
“Look, Cal, no disrespect, but you called me and started dropping hints that something happened almost immediately. Now, if you don’t start talking, I’m going to be the one who gets upset.”
That time he didn’t make me wait. “Last night there was an email circulated to all the employees in the Seattle office. The email contained explicit pictures of Fiona in some rather, uh… compromising positions.” My vision was suddenly coated with red as fury set in. “I think you probably know the pictures I’m referring to.”
“How the fuck did that happen?” I barked through the line as my hands clenched into tight fists. “How the hell did someone even get ahold of those pictures?”
“The who is what we’re currently working to find out. As for the how, it seems that Fiona misplaced her phone one evening. She thinks, and I’m inclined to agree, that what really happened was someone took it and found the pictures.”
I had no words as worry for Fiona flooded my system. “Where is she?” I snapped, the need to get to her as soon as possible overriding everything else.
“I honestly don’t know, Deac. I thought she might have gone to you when she left here earlier. Maybe she’s at home?”
Suddenly a memory from our childhood came flashing into my head, and instinct told me I already knew exactly where to find her. “I know where she is,” I said to Calvin. “I’m going to her now.”
“Thank God,” he breathed into the speaker, his relief palpable. “Deacon, just do one thing for me. Take care of my little girl. She needs it now more than ever.”
As long as I was alive, I’d spend my every waking minute taking care of Fiona. It was the most important job I’d ever have, and one I had no intention of ever failing at. “Always, Cal. You have my word.”
I knew I had his trust and his approval when his only reply was “Go get her, son.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Fiona
The tree house was long gone, age and weather having turned it into a dilapidated wreck. Most of the wood had rotted and fallen away, leaving behind a skeleton of what it used to be. I remembered thinking it was glorious as a child, a hidden treasure Deacon and I had built with our own two hands. I hadn’t thought about our tree house in years, but for whatever reason, I found myself drawn to our secret hideout when I left work earlier that day.
I sat on an old fallen tree, staring up at the remaining pile of rubble for hours. The clothes I’d picked for work earlier that morning weren’t suited for hanging in the woods behind Deacon’s childhood home in the middle of winter, but at least there wasn’t any rain. I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my wool coat around them for warmth as I tried hard not to think about the fact that countless people now knew exactly what my breasts…and other parts of me looked like.
The crunch of leaves and the snapping of twigs alerted me to someone’s presence, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Deacon coming my way when I turned to look over my shoulder. Sometimes I wondered if he knew me better than I knew myself.
“Hey,” I said, my quiet voice resonating in the silence of the woods.
“Hey, baby. Had a feeling I’d find you out here. Also had a feeling that you wouldn’t be properly dressed to be hanging outside, so I brought you this.” He held up the huge fleece blanket he’d been carrying under his arm, and I could’ve cried with relief. I’d lost feeling in my legs too long ago to recall.
“Thanks,” I muttered as he sat on the log beside me, pulled me flush against his side, and wrapped the blanket around the both of us. “So I’m taking it you heard?”
Because this day couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Deacon nodded in confirmation. “Your dad called me when he couldn’t get ahold of you. In his defense, he wanted you to be the one to tell me. I kind of forced it out of him.”
I managed a small smile in spite of everything. “Why am I not surprised,” I said as I laid my head against his shoulder. He held me to him and I did my best to absorb the warmth and safety I always felt whenever he was close.
After several minutes of silent contemplation, he asked, “You want to talk about it?”
I heaved a sigh, and instead of answering, I asked, “Do you ever think about this place?”
I felt his chin shift my hair, and as he spoke, his lips brushed against the top of my head. “You mean the tree house?”
“Yeah.” I continued to talk on a whisper. “Our special secret hideout. Do you ever think about it?”
“Yes.” He spoke just as softly. “I used to think about it all the time. After you and Grayson….” He stopped and I felt him swallow. “After I lost you, I used to come out here and sit just like you were when I found you. No matter what was going on between us, when I came out here I felt like I still had a piece of you with me.”
I pulled back to face him, tears stinging my eyes as I said, “You always had me, Deacon. Even when you wanted nothing to do with me, you always had me.”
Deacon’s hand came up and stroked my cheekbone. “Yeah. Just maybe not in the way I wanted back then.”
Squeezing my eyes closed, I turned away while pain lanced through my heart. “After everything happened, when I left the office, this was the first place I thought of. It was like instinct brought me here. I remembered feeling safe every time I climbed into that tree house because I knew you’d eventually show up.”
Deacon’s quiet laughter shook my body. “That’s ironic since the damn thing was a death trap. If it was such a safe place, you never would’ve broken your arm.”
I thought back to that day, and it wasn’t the pain I remembered. It was Deacon carrying me back to his house and taking care of me like he always did. I swallowed down the swell of emotion clogging my throat. “I think I loved you, even back then. I was just too young and stupid to realize it.”
His eyebrows drew together in a concerned frown. “Baby, you don’t need to say stuff like that. We agreed that the past was the past. Nothing that happened before matters. We’re together now.”
Shaking my head, I pressed more of my weight against his side. “I’m not saying that to try and make up for the past. I’ve been sitting out here for hours, and that’s a lot of time alone to think. I came here because this place holds memories of you. Every good childhood memory I have is because of you. Even when you weren’t in my life, if something happened, you were always the first person I wanted to call. You’re right. That damn tree house should’ve been condemned the moment we finished it, but I’ll only ever remember loving it because it was ours. I know we said the past is the past, but I was in love with you back then, Deacon, and I never stopped. It was always you. No matter what, it’s always been you. I just hate that I didn�
��t realize it sooner. We could’ve had so much more time togeth—”
He silenced me with a kiss so brutal my lips felt bruised when he pulled away and cupped my jaw. “The time wasn’t right for us back then, sweetheart, but it’s the right time now, and that’s all that matters.”
“But—”
His thumb rested against my lips to cut off my words. “And when we have our kids, we get to tell them how Mommy and Daddy grew up as best friends before that grew into something even better. How many people get to say that?”
I released a watery laugh, one tear breaking free. “You’re being awesome again. I’m going to need you to stop. I’ve already bawled my eyes out like five times today.”
Deacon smiled, and for the first time in hours I felt like everything might be okay. “Can’t make any promises, sweetheart. I’m just an awesome guy.”
A giggle erupted from deep within my chest. Feeling lighter than I had since that morning, I laid my head back on his shoulder and looked at the ramshackle tree house.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that before I finally got the nerve to talk about what had happened earlier. “I think I know who stole my phone,” I said, admitting it out loud for the first time. Deacon’s entire body grew tight but he didn’t say a word, giving me a chance to continue uninterrupted. “The day I lost my phone, Todd had come into my office. He crossed a line and I kind of lost it on him. He got pissed.” The shiver that worked its way up my spine had nothing to do with the temperature. “Like seriously pissed. We exchanged some words, and things got kind of ugly. I kicked him out of my office after he called me a cock-tease. I don’t remember seeing my phone again after that until it turned up back on my desk the next morning.”
Anger radiated from every pore, every molecule of Deacon’s body. “He called you what?” he snarled so ferociously that it scared me a little.
“Deacon—”
He roared over me. “That motherfucker called you a cock-tease? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I… no.” I don’t think I’d ever seen Deacon so angry in all my life. If I didn’t know him so well, I’d have been terrified.
“What happened before that?”
“Deac, it doesn’t—”
“Swear to fuckin’ Christ, Fiona, if you tell me it doesn’t matter, I’m going to lose my goddamn mind. Now what happened. Before. That?” he clipped.
“He came in acting like himself at first, trying to be charming. But then he… well, he grabbed me by my hips and—”
Deacon shot off the log so fast I nearly fell backward. “I’m going to fuckin’ kill that asshole!”
All of a sudden I was terrified for an altogether different reason.
“You are not!” I shouted, jumping to my feet, the blanket around my shoulders keeping me warm all but forgotten. “Deacon, you’re not going near that guy. Especially not when you’re this upset.”
“Upset? Got news for you, baby. I’m not upset. I’m fucking pissed!”
“Exactly! And if you do something like oh, I don’t know, beat the shit out of him, you’ll be the one who ends up in trouble. I know this guy, Deac. He’s a snake. You lay a finger on him and he’ll press charges.”
His jaw ticked furiously as he growled, “It’ll be worth it.”
“And what about me?” I cried. “What am I supposed to do while you’re locked up for assault?” I started to grow more and more frantic as I ranted. “I only just got you, Deacon! I’m not going to lose you after all this time!”
As if sensing I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, the rage seeped from his muscles. What he said next shocked the hell out of me. “Okay, baby, okay. Just calm down. I’m not going to do anything that could take me away from you.”
That wasn’t quite good enough, so I demanded, “Promise me.”
His arms shot out and wrapped around me, pulling me into an embrace. “I promise.”
Those two words were all I needed to hear to relax, because I knew, to my soul, that Deacon would never break a promise to me. My forehead fell to his chest and I sighed, “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” When I tried to pull back to look at his face, his arms tightened around me like steel bands, keeping me in place. “I promise I won’t do anything that could take me away from you, but I don’t promise to sit back and do nothing. As soon as I get you home, I’m going to your office to talk to Calvin.”
My entire body drooped in defeat. Oh well, I guess it could be worse. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of getting involved?”
I could hear the humor clear as day in his voice as he answered, “Not a chance in hell.”
But I wasn’t done trying. I still had one card to play. “Not even for a blowjob?”
“Not even for that,” he laughed.
Putting as much attitude in my voice as I could muster, I threatened, “Then I guess you can kiss your blowjobs goodbye.”
His fingertips stroked up and down along my spine in a soothing gesture. “Sweetheart, you can lie to me all you want. With how soaked you get every damn time, I know you love sucking me off almost as much as I love having those pretty plump lips of yours wrapped around my cock.”
Damn it.
He was such a pain in the ass sometimes.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Deacon
I got Fiona home and into a nice warm bubble bath so she could thaw out after spending hours in the cold. When I felt she was settled and there was no risk of her losing it, I jumped back in my car and headed for Prentice Fashion. A minute after the receptionist called to tell him I was there, Calvin appeared in the lobby.
“Deacon, I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Calvin,” I greeted with a chin lift. “You got a minute to talk?”
He hesitated for a split second before tentatively waving me through the glass doors and into the main offices. I followed behind, scanning every face I passed until my gaze landed on the fucker I was searching for. I knew when all the color drained from his face the second he saw me that he was the one who emailed those private, naked pictures of my woman for everyone to see. And he was going to pay.
Her body was mine. No one had a right to see what lay beneath her clothes but me. Especially if she didn’t give them permission. I was going to make that prick regret the day he was born.
Calvin led me into his office, closing the door behind him. “Is everything okay?” he asked, rounding his desk. “Is Fiona all right?”
“She’s fine,” I assured him. “I found her back by our old tree house. We talked and I think I got her calmed down, but she admitted something that I didn’t want to wait to tell you.”
He took his seat and waved to the one across from him for me to sit in. “I’m all ears. Anything to find this asshole. Our IT department thinks they’re close to some answers, but it’s not moving fast enough for my liking.”
I relaxed back in the chair, propping an ankle on the opposite knee. “That guy sitting three doors down from here. You know who he is? Dude who dresses like a Tiger Woods reject and reeks like cheap drugstore cologne?”
Calvin’s face pinched in confusion. “Um, you mean Todd Walden?”
“Yeah, that’s the guy. Seems he didn’t take Fiona shooting him down too well. Put his hands on her when she made it clear that she didn’t want him to touch her, and called her a cock-tease when she made it even more clear that she’d never go there with him.”
Calvin’s face burned as red as the small amount of hair he still had on his head. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“Wish I was. Fee told me she noticed her phone missing shortly after that exchange, but didn’t really think anything of it when it appeared back on her desk the next morning. A guy like that, incapable of taking a hit to his ego, I’m thinking he’d take a woman’s rejection as a personal slight and do whatever he could to get back at the chick for not returning his affections.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” he said, his focus sliding beyond
me to the closed door. “But that was all they were, just rumors. No one’s ever come forward, and we haven’t had any definitive proof in order to take action.”
I tapped my index fingers on the arms of the chair. “My guess, you have your IT guys dig into this Todd asshole, you’ll find where the email came from.”
Calvin’s eyes flashed with fire as his body grew stiff. “You know, I’m beginning to think you’re right. If you wouldn’t mind, I need to make a quick phone call. It shouldn’t take but a minute.”
“Do what you need to do.”
Calvin picked up his phone and made a call. Things moved surprisingly fast after that. With Todd’s name, the computer guys were no longer searching for a needle in a haystack. They were able to confirm that the email came from his personal account, but that the dumb fucker had sent it from his company laptop.
A few minutes after that, a guy named Anthony came into the office. I left him and Calvin to their business of preparing to fire the motherfucker, but I wasn’t about to let the asshole off that easy. Instead of heading home to Fiona, I took the elevator down to the parking garage and waited.
Thirty minutes later, douchebag Todd came storming out of the elevator to a ragtop convertible that screamed my dick’s so small I have to overcompensate with my ride, but I’m too broke for anything better than a Miata. His face was so red it was starting to turn purple, and he carried a box of all his personal shit in his hands.
“Yo. Asshole.”
He stopped and spun around, momentarily startled at the sight of me before he slipped his my shit doesn’t stink mask into place. “Get the hell out of my face. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“That’s good, because you’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear. I’ll do the talking. You’ll keep your mouth shut and listen if you’re smart. But since I already know you’re a dumb fuck, I’m not counting on that.”
Charming Fiona Page 20
