Taming The Cowboy (She's in Charge Book 4)

by Layla Valentine

  “Not really, but some things need to be handled in person.” I folded my arms and stepped back to let Gregory into the doorway as Bella blinked at us both in confusion.

  “I don’t understand—” she started.

  “Please come with me,” Gregory said. “We need to have a meeting.”

  She looked between the two of us again, hesitating, some of the color draining from her face. “I don’t—”

  “Now,” I said flatly. “Don’t bother shutting your computer down.”

  She stood up quickly, her hands darting to the keyboard. Gregory lifted an eyebrow. She stopped.

  “I’ll see you in the meeting room in a few minutes,” I said coldly. “Gregory, get us set up.”

  He didn’t have to take Bella’s arm in order to lead her out of there. I was glad of that at least. She walked stiffly, not looking at me, just staring ahead and a little down, avoiding eye contact.

  Once they were down the hall and stepping into the meeting room, I heaved a sigh and sat down at Bella’s computer. And started searching.

  It didn’t take long to find what I was after. I printed out everything relevant, pulled it all together, and then made my way down the hall with the stack of papers.

  Gregory sat at one end of the table, with the head of the table waiting for me, and a very nervous Bella sitting across from him. I slid into my seat and set the papers and my briefcase down.

  “Do you know why I called you in here?” I asked Bella.

  She kept quiet, head down, eyes avoiding me.

  “Acting like a truant teenager caught by her mom isn’t going to help you here,” I snapped. “Look at me.”

  She couldn’t. I wanted to grab her by the chin and force her head up, but I managed to keep my hands on the table.

  “I have a hell of a lot of evidence, both on this table and from witnesses, that says you have been selling information to Star of Texas Marketing about the company, and about me. What do you have to say for yourself?” I couldn’t keep my voice entirely calm; it came out in a harsh snap that made her flinch slightly.

  “Nothing that you’d want to hear,” she muttered.

  “Actually I do want to hear it. All of it. Because we have been friends for ten years—”

  “Friends?” she cut in, voice cracking. She lifted her gaze from the tabletop and glared at me. “Is that what you call us? You’re a billionaire, Ruth. You have no idea what it’s like to see someone be able to pay for anything they want, do whatever they want, while you still come home to car payments and a mortgage and kids getting sick.”

  I’m sure my mouth dropped open in shock. “You make six figures as my executive assistant—” I started, but she just burst out laughing.

  “What if I do? You could afford to pay me twice that.”

  “You’re twenty-five percent above scale, even for New York City. You can’t possibly tell me that all of this is about my not paying you enough.” None of this made any damned sense. “For one thing, you would have said something by now if you had money problems. You know I would have helped you—”

  “I didn’t want your charity. I’m tired of watching you bring in piles of money every damned day even when you’re off on a freaking ranch vacation. How many hours do you even work a day, four? Five?” Her face was now flushed with color.

  “That depends. Some days, I’m putting in twelve. Fourteen. And when I started this business—”

  “That hasn’t been the case for a long time, Ruth.” Her voice dropped to a cold rasp that startled me.

  “So this is literally about your being jealous that I’m financially successful. Not that I don’t pay you enough, not that you had a financial emergency that Star managed to leverage. You’re just…jealous.” It astonished me, even more than the betrayal. “I thought we were friends.”

  “You think we could ever be friends while you’re constantly showing off your cash? That penthouse you just bought could fit four of my houses inside of it.” Her voice had changed completely; it dripped with frustration and loathing for me.

  “So you decided to betray our friendship, your job, all the confidentiality paperwork you signed and everything else for what, revenge? And for the stack of cash Star’s CEO is waving at you?”

  “Yes!” Her voice cracked again. “Yes, a million times, yes. Because living as your help isn’t good enough for me.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re definitely not going to be doing that anymore,” Gregory said so dryly that Bella shot him a death glare. He gave it right back to her…and she wilted, her lips trembling.

  “I never thought of you as ‘the help,’ Bella,” I said in a tired voice. “I thought of you as someone I could rely on above almost everyone else. But I was wrong.”

  She just stared at me.

  “Here’s how it’s going to go,” I said. “I have all the evidence I need to put you behind bars for a long, long time. Industrial espionage is no joke. You may think that you were just getting yourself paid and sticking it to ‘the man,’ but in reality, you betrayed me, a friend who cared about you, along with everyone else here.”

  “You deserved it,” she snapped shakily. But there was doubt in her eyes.

  “No. I never did. But you deserve jail,” I growled back—making her mouth shut very quickly. “But that’s not what’s going to happen here. If you cooperate in bringing the scumbags at Star to justice, that is.”

  She swallowed hard, shooting a look at Gregory, who was still glaring at her. Gregory took a lot to get genuinely angry, but when he was, he was terrifying. Very few things pissed him off more than corruption. And as much as it hurt me to admit it…Bella had fallen.

  She had nothing for me but jealousy of my success and stupid excuses. She didn’t care about how hard I had worked; she didn’t care how well I paid her or my other employees. This friend I thought I had was false. Scratch the surface, apply just a little pressure, and she showed herself as greedy, backstabbing, and hateful.

  “How did you let them get to you?” I said, still astonished by the whole thing.

  “Get to me?” She laughed again, but it was weak this time, and nervous. “I went to them. When I found out that you were about to give one of your pompous speeches about helping women get ahead in the world, it was the last straw.”

  I heard Gregory’s knuckles crack as his fists clenched under the table. I was right there with him—for a few moments, all I could see was red.

  “So this was all your idea. Contacting Arthur Kendall. Making the deal. Setting me up for harassment and death threats. Giving them my home address, so that some woman-hating lunatic with a gun could come try to kill me.”

  She went milk-white and, to my surprise, started shaking her head.

  “No. I called Kendall and made a deal, but I didn’t give up your home address, and I didn’t know how he planned to get you to go on vacation at that ranch. I set you up to get the contents of that precious offline laptop you don’t let any of us near. The one with all your secrets!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I kept being more and more astonished by the irrational garbage flying out of her mouth. “What I have in my laptop is all the confidential information that clients have given me, as well as sensitive information on my employees. Like your own social security number. Would you like that handed over to a crook like Kendall?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “I…I…”

  “There’s no dirt to get on me. None. There is private information, yes, a lot of which I keep offline for the protection of my board and my employees. But absolutely none of it will lead to a scandal about me, or provide Kendall with some amazing secret to my success. In fact, you know what you’ve managed to do with your greedy little collaboration with him?”

  “W-what?” she stammered, having gone from defiant and scared to genuinely worried. It seemed to be sinking in, through her self-righteousness, jealousy, malice and misplaced anger, that she had not only screwed up badly—she had done so for prett
y much nothing. What did she have to show for it? The money that Star of Texas must have given her would only go so far, and as soon as they realized she was useless, it would dry up entirely—and her with no job and a black mark on her employment history that would never go away.

  “Besides completely screwing your career and any chance of getting employed by any company in the industry, you nearly got me killed,” I said. “That man who showed up at my home? That was your fault. Kendall may have decided to astroturf himself a movement of angry, bitter men against me, and he may have been the one behind my address getting out. Though considering that you’re a filthy, spiteful liar, you might well be lying about that too. Either way, if you hadn’t lost your mind and decided to betray me, I wouldn’t have ended up with some creep with a firearm trying to break into my home!”

  And then there was all the rest I wasn’t going to mention to her. Setting me up on a “dream vacation” where I was spied on and manipulated like a lab rat in an experiment. Using Calvin to seduce me, make me fall in love…and, if he hadn’t rebelled and refused to deliver anything real to them, get sensitive information that might not have caused a scandal, but would have caused problems for everyone in my organization.

  “You weren’t a pawn like I thought. You were the instigator. You did all of this because you wanted to. It was your idea.”

  “I wouldn’t have sent a guy with a gun after you—” she protested.

  “But you sure were eager to plot against me for a short-term gain of money, weren’t you? Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, Bella. The only idiot in this room is you.”

  Her jaw dropped; she looked genuinely scandalized. Meanwhile, I could hear Gregory snorting under his breath as he struggled not to laugh at her expression.

  A long silence stretched between us. Finally, she swallowed and took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do?”

  I leaned toward her slightly, staring her right in the eyes. “You’re going to cooperate with us in exposing this plot and taking down that bastard and any member of his staff who is involved. When I press charges, you will testify. If I go to the press, you will cooperate. Is that clear?”

  She blanched even further, looking incredibly nervous. “I can’t do that. You’ve seen the kind of things—”

  “Yes, I have. I’ve had them aimed at me, largely thanks to you.” I kept staring at her. “Do you think you would survive prison?”

  “I—I—no,” she stammered out in a tiny voice. “Please don’t call the cops on me.”

  “Then you had better stop making excuses and squirming around trying to avoid responsibility. Now do I call the cops and have them escort you to jail, or are you going back to your desk, filling that email to Star of Texas that you were working on with exactly what I tell you to, and continuing to cooperate until I say we’re done?”

  “The…second one,” she said finally. The look of misery and defeat on her face hurt me and satisfied my anger at the same time.

  How long had she been building up her anger and resentment against me because I was rich and she wasn’t? How many years had it taken her to convince herself that I was the bad guy, instead of an incredibly generous and considerate boss and friend? How long did it take her thoughts to get twisted and her morals to fly out the window?

  I had no idea. Maybe I would never know at all.

  “Fine. Go back to your desk. I’ll send you what to send him. You will be watched. If you try to betray me again, you’ll be led out in handcuffs.”

  “You all right?” Gregory asked me as he walked me out.

  “No,” I said simply. “I’m still processing this. Calvin’s part in this was motivated by desperation. But Bella? She just talked herself into hating me. Because I have what she doesn’t.”

  “You can’t argue with irrational people, Ruth. It never works. She really did talk herself into hating you. We’re paid well, we have stable work, you’re not all that demanding especially given all the perks…and somehow despite that, she decided that you were the bad guy.”

  “What do you think she expected me to do to satisfy her, give her a billion dollars?”

  He snorted as we stopped at the elevator and I pressed the button. “No, I don’t think even that would have satisfied her. She’s full of spite, and she never said anything about her concerns. She just sat on it all until it built up and poisoned her.”

  “All she would have had to do was talk to me,” I started, but he shook his head.

  “No. This kind of thing…they can rationalize all of it if they’re of a mind to. She wanted your money, and when she couldn’t have it, she at least wanted more money at your expense. I’m not even sure she feels that bad about nearly getting you killed.” The corner of his eye twitched.

  “I’m sure she feels plenty bad now that she’s caught,” I said. “Keep monitoring her, electronically and through regular checks. Don’t let her get comfortable enough to think she can get away with anything else. We need her behaving, and we need control over what she feeds to that bastard.”

  “Understood.” The elevator dinged and the door opened. He nodded and held the door with a big hand for me. “Go home, look after yourself. You held up well, but I know that mess must have taken it out of you.”

  Chapter 19

  Ruth

  Gregory was more right than I wanted to admit. On the drive home, all I could think about was getting away from everyone so I could work out my feelings in private. This thing with Bella had really pulled the rug out from under me. It was like she had secretly turned into a monster right under my nose.

  This is how people develop trust issues, I thought. The shock and the anger kept knocking around inside of me, leaving me restless and short-tempered as I sat there caught in late afternoon traffic. “Come on!” I yelled at the cars in front of me, knowing it was pointless but near tears anyway.

  Get yourself under control. You’re going to look really bad if you get in some kind of stupid road rage incident because you found out your so-called friend’s a two-faced asshole.

  I had to do deep breathing exercises the entire way home to keep from riding the gas—or my horn. But I did it.

  It took me an extra half hour to get back to my new home. I practically stumbled in my door, feet burning from my business pumps and head throbbing. It felt like I had been working all day, instead of coming in for one meeting and then fighting traffic on the way home. I kicked off my shoes, dropped my briefcase carelessly on the stoop, and barely managed to lock the door before heading for my bedroom.

  I set my laptop case and phone on my dresser and left a trail of clothes toward my en suite, where I stood under the hot water until I caught myself dozing against the shower wall. I was beyond tears, beyond anger. After that I crawled into bed. All I wanted to do was sleep until things somehow got better.

  Instead, I dreamed of Bella, back when we were actually friends, and I thought I could trust her.

  We had been picnicking in a park near my old place: me, her, a couple of our mutual friends who had since moved out of town. Talking, laughing, eating cold fried chicken and fruit salad.

  That had only been eight months ago. But at the moment, I was in the middle of it again…and she was asking me, again, what kind of man I found attractive.

  “I like dark-haired guys. Especially with light-colored eye—that always looks amazing. And I don’t care if he’s tall, but I’d like him to be taller than me.” I took a bite of my chicken breast while Bella snickered.

  “That’s practically every guy out there,” she teased me, and I felt my cheeks get hot. “What else?”

  “Well, I’ll always want a country boy over just about anyone else. Especially if he works with horses—”

  I woke up abruptly to my phone ringing. I clawed my way out of bed and stumbled over to it, but I missed the call. Unlisted number. No idea who it was. I stared at it, heart beating fast from my clumsy lunge across the room, then sighed and turned my phone off.

  Ba
ck in bed, I stared at the ceiling, thinking about the brief dream. It dovetailed everything that bothered me right now…and it also clued me in to something really ironic.

  Bella had paid attention to my preferences in men. And she must have passed them along to that bastard at Star of Texas, because Calvin definitely fit the bill in every way. Except for one thing. One thing I would have noticed, if I hadn’t been so smitten.

  His skin had been strikingly pale against his hair and black hat. He couldn’t have been working on that ranch for more than a day or two without any tan at all. It should have given away that he was a city guy playing games with me. But instead…

  I sighed. I needed rest, and time to take care of myself and work some of this out. But the more I lay there, the more I knew that I needed closure.

  There would be no closure with Bella, who had gone rotten on me and probably never would consider admitting that she had done me wrong. But then there was Calvin, who seemed almost eager to redeem himself in my eyes.

  How eager? Because right now…I needed someone to lean on, and I didn’t have very many options.

  Gregory was home having a well-earned break with his family. My few friends were still at work. When I tried to call Mom and Dad, I remembered that they were off on a cruise. I wouldn’t be hearing from them for at least another week.

  I tried to nap again, but it was fitful. Finally, I gave up and crawled out of bed again to go make myself some tea. Hopefully caffeine would do the trick that sleep had refused to. If it didn’t, at least the mix of green tea and peppermint would settle my jumpy stomach.

  I needed to call Calvin. The thought kept nagging at me as I drank my tea and nibbled a chicken sandwich. He was the only other person who knew what I was going through besides Gregory—and Bella, damn her. And I really, really wanted to talk to him again, too. That part, I couldn’t deny anymore.

  I finished my tea and my meal, and stared at my phone for a while. Then I called him.

  He picked up right away. “I didn’t know if I would hear from you again,” he said, happily astonished. “I’m really glad you called.”