Sweeter Than Revenge

by Ann Christopher

  Ellis just shook his head. “Don’t kid a kidder, Maria.”

  “—you knowI need that money! There’s no way I can survive on what I’ve been making as an account assistant when my spousal support runs out—”

  “It’s not as bad as all that.” A conciliatory note crept into Ellis’s voice. “You can have the money this time next year, if you keep working hard. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  Flabbergasted, Maria flapped her hands. “You expect me to agree to this?”

  “Ellis,” David said again. “I’m Maria’s boss. Don’t I get any say? That’s what you hired me for.”

  Ellis’s gaze, uncertain now, flickered to David and then back to Maria. “Fine.”

  David stood up and walked to the edge of the desk. “You’re not being fair. Maria didwork hard. We all did the best we could with Anastasia, but there was no pleasing her. Hell, there were a few times I wanted to fire her myself.”

  Maria began to feel better.

  “Believe me,” David said. “I know Maria got off to a rocky start, but she’s pulled her act together. She’s a goodpublicist.”

  Ellis wasn’t finished yet. “She’s been late,” he told David, ticking off Maria’s many transgressions on his fingers. “She fires clients. Oh, and Anastasia also complained about that book signing. Said Maria didn’t have the right kind of bottled water or the right kind of pens.”

  Cursing, Maria rolled her eyes at this revelation, but the men ignored her.

  “I’m surprised at you, David. I really am. I brought you in here to straighten her out. I thought you were the man for the job.” Ellis shook his head sadly. “But I know you’ve always had a sweet spot for her.”

  “Ellis,” David said, an angry flush creeping over his cheekbones. “Maria is smart, funny, hardworking and savvy. I’ve been gladto have her help dealing with Anastasia.”

  “I see.” Ellis stared at David, studying him intently as if he needed the answer to a crucial question and could only read it on David’s face. Comprehension seemed to dawn, and Ellis nodded, his expression grim now. “I see,” he said again. “You’re back together, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” David didn’t hesitate and showed no signs of embarrassment.

  Ellis stared hard at David, and Maria could feel him calculating, assessing and, eventually, softening. Finally he nodded once and the familiar twinkle reappeared in his eyes.

  “Well, I couldn’t ask for a better man for my daughter. It should’ve been you in the first place, not George. I’m glad you’ve worked things out.” Standing, he held out his hand.

  David shook it, but didn’t smile. “What about Maria’s trust? She deserves it.”

  Ellis shook his head firmly, signaling the end of the discussion. “Not yet. She’s got a little more growing up to do.”

  Maria and David exchanged unhappy looks.

  Ellis turned to her and patted her cheek with a wry smile on his face. “I should’ve known you’d land on your feet, Sugar. You won’t need your own fortune, after all, will you? Not when you’ve got David’s.”

  Maria didn’t answer for a long moment, certain she’d misheard. Then she looked at David. “What’s Daddy talking about?”

  David looked unaccountably flushed and uncomfortable. He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the desk in an obvious attempt to look nonchalant.

  “Yeah, Ellis,” he said tightly. “What’re you talking about?”

  Ellis’s eyes widened with surprise, but then he laughed. “You haven’t told her?”

  David didn’t answer.

  “This is the funniest thing I ever heard.” Ellis laughed again as he walked to the door. “Well, maybe Maria doesn’t read Fortunemagazine, David, but I sure do.”

  He winked at David and then, still chuckling, disappeared down the hall.

  David stared at her and she stared back, feeling bewildered and more than a little disoriented—as if she didn’t know him at all. They’d spent the afternoon together, and she’d loved him, explored him and talked to him. There hadn’t been time for him to tell her every single thing he’d done while he was gone, but he wouldn’t keep her in the dark about something like this. Not after she’d told him how important it was for him to open up and trust her more.

  “What—” she began, then had to stop and clear her hoarse throat. “What was Daddy talking about?”

  His unreadable expression tightened and narrowed, scaring her. “Does it matter?”

  What was this belligerence? Why didn’t he just answer her simple question? “How can I know whether itmatters when I don’t know what itis?”

  “Well,” he said, his lips twisting as though he’d swallowed a mouthful of sour milk, “money matters to you, doesn’t it, Maria? Especially now.”

  “Money issues don’t matter between you and me. I told you that earlier.” The coolness and distance between them, which seemed to grow by the second, terrified her. She wanted to walk the four feet to where he stood, to touch him, to reassure herself, but she didn’t dare. “Why are you playing games?”

  A strange, wild light flickered behind his eyes. “You’re right. Why shouldn’t I trust you with the truth?”

  But apparently he didn’t trust her, because he paused and it took him an awfully long time to speak. She waited.

  “I…made a little money…while I was gone.”

  “A little money?”she said, knowing this was just the tip of his iceberg. “Does Fortunewrite about people with a little money?”

  “Twenty million, give or take. I invested in a software dot-com. It went public and then I sold my shares. Now I have a lot of…investments and a charitable foundation for childhood literacy.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Her legs, wobbly after all the emotional ups and downs of this long day, finally gave out. Overwhelmed, she sank to the sofa, stared down at the Indian rug and tried to think. Twenty million dollars. An enormous fortune. More than the six million held in trust for her—more, even, than her father’s reputed thirteen million. David Hunt, whose father hadn’t married his mother, who’d grown up in an awful, rundown apartment downtown, who’d worked his way through college and graduate school, who used to wear awful, ill-fitting suits, was now worth more than her and her father combined. She couldn’t believe it, but she should have known. David was amazing, and she’d known, from the second she laid eyes on him, that he was a man of power and action, a man who could do anything he set his brilliant mind to.

  But he hadn’t told her. Even after they’d made love and she’d told him repeatedly how much she loved him, how she didn’t care about whether he had money or not, and how she needed him to trust her, he’d never mentioned his incredible reversal of fortune.

  David came to stand in front of her and she looked up at him. “You didn’t tell me,” she said faintly.

  “There wasn’t time and—”

  She made an outraged noise, and that, along with the horrified, incredulous look she gave him, shamed him into abandoning this ridiculous excuse.

  “Does it matter?” he asked instead. “You said money doesn’t matter, so if it doesn’t matter if I’m poor, it shouldn’t matter that I’m rich. Either you love me or you don’t.”

  It hit her then. Staring into his glittering, narrowed eyes, she realized the truth. He still didn’t trust her. He still, in some dark, tormented part of his mind, thought she didn’t truly love him, or that she would walk out on him or, worse, that his financial status would play any role in her decision to be with him or not. And if that was what he believed, then he didn’t know the first thing about her even at this late date.

  The growing unease she’d felt for the past ten minutes exploded into full-blown despair, and her pulse stuttered sickeningly. Sudden exhaustion washed over her. Feeling as though she were two hundred and twenty years old, she put her hands on the arms of her chair, pressed herself to her feet and tried to choke back the emotion that clogged her throat.

  “The only thi
ng that matters,” she said quietly, “is that you still don’t trust me or believe in this relationship any more than you ever did.”

  Blinking through her tears, she stared into his surprised, flashing eyes for a long, sad minute. Neither of them moved. Finally the pain was too much and she turned away, hoping that if she couldn’t see him she’d be able to drag a little air into her constricted chest.

  He took a quick step after her. “Maria.”

  She kept walking through the hall and up the stairs to her room.

  He did not try to stop her.

  Early the next morning, Maria, feeling dazed and oddly numb, ran into Shelley, her new best office friend and personal savior, in the hallway near a set of cubicles.

  “Thanks again for all your help,” Maria told Shelley.

  Help,they both knew, encompassed all the private coaching Shelley had given her over the past couple of weeks: how to write a press release, how to approach a reporter, how to fill out an expense report, how to handle a demanding client like Anastasia…the list went on and on.

  Shelley waved her off. “You did all the work. I just got you started in the right direction.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d’ve been out on my butt without—” Maria spied Kwasi across the room on the other side of the cubicles, and trailed off. “He’s here,” she cried. “And I think he’s looking for you.”

  Shelley gave a tiny shriek and turned her head. “Where?”

  “Don’t look!”

  Shelley jerked her head back around and shrieked again. “Does he see us?”

  Just then, Kwasi turned in their direction, saw them and waved to Maria. She waved back. “He does now.”

  “Oh, God.” Shelley smoothed her hair and adjusted her belt. “How do I look?”

  “Wonderful.”

  It was true. Underneath all those fashion don’ts,it turned out, was a very pretty woman. Maria’s spa had worked a miracle on Shelley. The magicians there had plucked her brows, layered her hair, manicured and pedicured her, and introduced her to the world of makeup. Maria had thereafter dragged her to LensCrafters for a long-overdue update on her glasses, and gotten Shelley to trade in the horrible old pair for a new pair with stylish black frames. She’d also cleaned out her closet and given Shelley one of her best red summer dresses—the one with a deep scoop neckline and wide belt—and Shelley was working it.

  “Here he is,” Maria hissed. “Be cool. Be cool.”

  Shelley sucked in a deep breath.

  “Showtime,”Maria said, turning smoothly. “Oh, hi, Kwasi. How are you?”

  “Great,” he said vaguely, his gaze riveted on Shelley. “Hi, Shelley.”

  “Hi, Kwasi.” Smiling, she sidled closer and touched his arm. “How are you?”

  Maria stifled her gleeful grin and urge to clap, not that either of the lovebirds would have noticed if she’d stood on her head and clapped her feet. They simpered at each other the way they’d been doing ever since Shelley’s inner transformation began with the sexy lingerie, and neither looked around as Maria drifted away. She hoped Shelley knew—she made a mental note to mention it first chance she got—that it wasn’t the plucked brows that attracted Kwasi. It was Shelley’s newfound confidence. Yeah. She’d definitely have to mention that to Shelley.

  Maria meandered through the hallway toward her office, her thoughts drifting back to David and their upcoming meeting with Anastasia. She hadn’t seen him since they’d retreated to their neutral corners last night, and she didn’t have the faintest idea what would happen when she did.

  She just couldn’t believe she’d let the same man break her heart over the same issue—lack of trust—for the secondtime. He’d promised to open up and trust her more, to believe in their relationship, but he hadn’t. Otherwise he’d have told her about his fortune. If he trusted her and had faith in their relationship, he’d never have kept his financial status a secret. In the cold light of day, it was all so clear, and so simple. But that didn’t make it any easier.

  The awful truth—that she and David were over, again—hadn’t sunk in yet, but when it did, she knew the pain would be blistering. Until then, she’d try to enjoy the strange detachment she felt. Nothing mattered, really. Not the temporary loss of her fortune, not the second end to her relationship with David. She’d just float in this blissful emptiness forever, or maybe lie down in her bed, pull the covers over her head and never get out.

  Yeah. That sounded good.

  She’d just turned into her office and settled at her desk when her father appeared in her doorway. “Hello, Sugar.”

  Maria stared at him and felt nothing. Not betrayal or fury, not even anger. Just indifference. “Daddy,” she said.

  He gingerly crept into the office as though he wasn’t certain the floor would support him. “How’re you doing?”

  “Fine,” she said automatically.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “Well, I am.” Listening to her own voice, though, which sounded as hollow and wooden as she felt inside, Maria knew she wasn’t fine and probably never would be.

  “I’m worried about you, Sugar.”

  There was no answer for that, so she didn’t bother trying to think of one. Eating, sleeping and talking had all fallen by the wayside in the past several hours, and she couldn’t see herself caring about such things again anytime soon. Working this morning helped keep her sane, but only just. What she’d do when it was time to go home tonight and think,she had no idea. But she would keep working, inheritance or no, because she’d discovered, much to her surprise, that she loved her job.

  It was true. How or when it’d happened, she didn’t know, but she liked putting her nose to the grindstone, working hard and seeing the fruits of her labor. She liked the meetings and the brainstorming, liked going home at the end of the day and knowing she’d earned her hot bath and glass of wine. No matter what else happened—whether she got her money right now or not—she didn’t want to quit working and go back to the pool. She wanted to earn her way, the same as everyone else.

  Ellis cleared his throat. “I, ah…know things blew up last night with David—”

  Maybe she wasn’t dead inside, after all, because the sound of the name sliced what was left of her heart to bits. “I can’t,” she said, holding her hands up in surrender. “Please don’t—”

  Ellis watched her for a long time, his obvious concern making him look older and haggard in the bright fluorescent lighting, and finally heaved a harsh sigh. “Maybe this’ll cheer you up. My lawyers sent over the papers for me to sign to revoke your trust, but I couldn’t do it. Now that I’ve slept on it, I’ve decided I was being too hard on you. So I’m going to let you have it, after all. You’ve earned it.”

  He watched her expectantly, but Maria just blinked. She’d just become a millionaire. All her financial woes were over and, as long as she was savvy and a little conservative, they were over forever. Financial freedom was now hers, and this was the sort of moment in which a person should jump and holler and feel something.

  She felt only the same emptiness and a detached curiosity about how soon he’d go back to his desk and leave her alone to her shell of a life.

  “I don’t want the money,” she said finally.

  Once the words were said, she wondered where they’d come from, not that she cared. She didn’t want to retract them. This was the right decision. She knew it.

  “Don’t want it?” Ellis spluttered, aghast. “But what—”

  “Keep it,” she said in that same mechanical tone. “I don’t care. Maybe I’ll draw on the interest, and maybe I won’t. I don’t know right now and I just don’t care.”

  “But—”

  “I can live on my salary here.”

  Ellis was evidently too stunned to speak, and also too stunned to get up and go as she wished he would. Since she didn’t have the energy to continue this conversation any further, she got slowly to her feet. As she passed by, she told him the rest of her developing news the se
cond it flashed into her mind.

  “I’m moving out, too, Daddy. It’s time for me to stand on my own two feet, don’t you think?”

  She was finally ready to leave her father’s nest; there was no reason why she couldn’t. What expenses would she have? Just a car payment, insurance, rent and utilities. Plenty of people did just fine on less money than she made here at the firm, and she could do it, too. What was to stop her? She didn’t need all the clothes and the shoes, didn’t need an endless supply of new purses and jewelry. Want,yes. Need,no. What value had any of those things ever brought to her life? What happiness?

  None.

  The thing she needed—David’s trust—she’d never had and apparently never would have. So why bother with the rest?

  Ellis jumped up and grabbed her wrist, holding her back as though to keep her from leaping off a rocky cliff. “Maria,” he cried with more than a twinge of desperation in his voice, “you can’t just give up your money! Money’s important!”

  Gently but firmly, she pulled her arm away, and she and her father stared at each other in absolute silence. Finally she spoke.

  “Nothing’s important,” she said, walking out of her office and leaving off the final two words of the sentence.

  Except David.

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 19

  Alittle while later David sat at the head of the table in the conference room enduring the most miserable meeting of his life. To his right sat Anastasia and Uri; to his left, Maria. If someone stopped by the room to present the Unhappiest Personaward, it would no doubt be a four-way tie. Maria and Anastasia glared at each other with identical, pouty-mouthed, arms-crossed venom. Uri’s usually expressionless face had acquired a stony overlay. As for David, he’d rarely felt worse.

  He was in hell.

  After spending the most beautiful afternoon of his life in bed with Maria, being regifted with her love, and assuring her that he was capable of a more mature and trusting relationship, he’d promptly blown said relationship right out of the water.

  Again.

  He hadn’t even told her how much he loved her—or that he’d alwaysloved her—even though his heart was so full of the emotion it threatened to choke him. After all these years and all he’d gone through to work his way back to Maria, he was still a coward where she was concerned.