by Shayla Black
Do I want to see the woman I’m in love with fuck someone else to avoid being charged with a crime? Even the thought of it cramps my gut.
“Send it.” No matter how much I don’t want to, I have to watch. I have to see if anything on the footage indicates why she hopped into bed with James Braden.
“I’ll do it when I get home.” Bret sighs. “I get that you’re really vibing with this chick, and she’s obviously smart enough to feed you a believable story. But it’s better to know the truth now, before you’re in even deeper.”
Like after we were engaged?
It feels absolutely shitty, but my brother is right.
Behind me, the bathroom door opens and Bethany walks out with a towel wrapped around her clean hair—and absolutely nothing else.
My jaw drops. My blood races. Guess what my cock is doing?
How stupid does that make me?
“Um, thanks. I gotta go.”
Bethany sends me a catlike smile and revs my libido even more.
“Call me tomorrow, after you’ve seen the footage,” Bret says. “Then we’ll talk about how to nail the bitch to the wall.”
“Later,” I mutter, staring at the woman who seemed to be everything I needed and wanted in a wife…and staggering because my happy vision from mere minutes ago is now falling apart.
“I’m serious, Clint.”
Bret is, and he has every reason to be.
“I know you’re trying to help. I’ll take it from here. And…thanks for looking out for me.”
“I’ve always got your back, bro. Get your head out of her pussy and do the right thing.”
With that, we hang up, and Bethany sways toward me. “Who was that?”
“One of my brothers.”
“Everything okay?”
No. It’s a fucking disaster. I want to confront her, but on the off chance Bret somehow got everything wrong, I don’t want to accuse her before I’ve seen the video. Besides, I’m tired. I’m stupidly fucking emotional. And I also haven’t found a way to be honest with Beth myself.
I can’t deal with any of this right now.
As I hurtle myself out of the chair, I swoop down and clandestinely scoop up the little ring box before pocketing it. Then I turn to her. “Fine. I’m ready to call it a night. You?”
“Well…” She sidles up to me, pressing her naked body against my bare chest and dusting kisses up my neck. “I’m ready for bed.”
If I take what she’s offering, she’ll only cloud my head. And if she lied to me, I can’t let myself want her anymore.
Somehow, I manage to grab only her shoulders and ease her away. “Sorry. I need a shower and some sleep.”
“Oh. Okay.” Bethany tries to hide her crestfallen expression, but I see her hurt. “All right. Good night.”
When she turns away, I hate to end our great—even momentous—day together on a sour note. I wish she could come clean and allay my worries, put this goddamn terrible suspicion to rest once and for all…
“Hey.” I grab her wrist and turn her to face me again. “I meant to ask you, what was on the video your dad is after? How did you blackmail the federal prosecutor?”
“He hooked up with a suspect.”
That’s all she’s going to say? “Who? Anyone you know?”
She blinks away. “No one important.”
Her lie guts me. I release her quickly, as if touching her burns me. Fuck, if she was so easily dishonest about this question, what else was she dishonest about?
“Gotcha. Sleep well.”
Shaking, I turn away and shut the door between us. That ring in my pocket? I might as well throw it in the trash. I’m still going to sleep on this and wait for Bret’s video, just in case it contains something that changes my mind. But it’s wishful fucking thinking. My broken heart finally agrees with my head. Bethany has played me, and I’ve just been too dazzled to see her for the beautiful manipulator she is.
So unless a miracle happens, I’m going to tell her who I am…and that I have the video that enabled her to escape prosecution. Then maybe I’ll get what I came here for in the first place: justice for my dad.
Now that Bethany has torn my fucking heart out of my chest, ripped it to shreds, and spit on it, nothing else matters.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The following afternoon, we drive into work. We’ve barely spoken since we woke on opposite sides of the bed.
I received an email with the video from Bret late this morning, along with apologies that he came home and fell asleep almost instantly because the drive was long and, because of a freak accident on I-5 in Santa Ana, traffic was a bitch. The footage is still on my phone, unwatched. I can’t bring myself to open it and see beyond any doubt that Bethany has betrayed me. To know that I fell for someone and I now have the power—and the responsibility?—to destroy her because maybe that’s what she deserves.
But I also can’t bring myself to stop looking at her, wanting her, wishing she’d explain everything away so I could go on blissfully believing her.
What a fucking fool. I knew before I met her that she played corporate games to win. I thought if I didn’t pit myself as her foe, if I approached her instead as a friend and a lover, that she would be human and honest. But no. Maybe she never learned integrity since her father used—and warped—her for his gain. Unless none of that is true, either.
Or maybe I’m letting suspicion get the best of me because it seems crazy that I could fall so hard and fast for a habitual liar and a heartless criminal.
I’m at a decision point now. What I choose next will either make or break us.
“You okay?” Beth asks softly as she stashes her purse in her locker at the back of the bar.
She’s asked me at least ten times today.
“Fine,” I lie.
“Do we need to talk about something?”
Everything. Make all this confusion go away so I can believe in us again…
But odds are, that isn’t going to happen.
“I’ve just got a lot on my mind after my brother called last night. I need to sort it out. We’ll talk after the shift, okay?”
She looks reluctant to let the matter go. “Sure. If you need some space to think, that’s understandable. But if you want to talk, if you need a sounding board… You’ve been so good about that with me, I’d be happy to return the favor.”
Because she means that or because she wants another opportunity to gather info and figure out a way to use it so she can keep screwing me over?
God, I hate this fucking uncertainty.
I nod her way, and she clocks in before leaving the break room. I can tell she’s worried. Vaguely, I wonder if I actually matter to her or if pretending to give a shit is all part of the act.
Ash told me I had to rip the Band-Aid off and be honest with her. He was right; I do. I’ve got to force myself to sit down with the footage, take it all in—no matter how hard it is—then man up and let the chips fall.
“How did last night go?” my pal asks as he saunters in, low-voiced. “Did you tell her?”
“No.” I close my eyes. I have no doubt he can see my misery all over my face. “I think she played me after all.”
He rears back in shock. “What makes you think she’s guilty?”
“Everything I was too busy falling for her to see.”
“I’m sorry, man. Really.” He claps me on the shoulder. “If you need an ear or a sofa, you know where to find me.”
I nod, and he clocks in. Before he leaves the break room, he pauses. “I don’t know if it matters to you, but as I came this direction a minute ago, I noticed the dude in the loud Hawaiian shirt with the even louder mouth is back. He’s already drunk. I think he’s unstable.”
Great. I don’t need Paul Daniels adding another wrinkle to this mess. I’ll keep an eye on him. Whatever Bethany’s sins—and they might be plenty—she doesn’t deserve his violence.
“Thanks.”
With a nod, Ash leaves.
/> Finally, I’m by myself. And I’m out of excuses. I have to watch the video.
My hands shake as I shut the door. No one else should come in here since our shift is about to start. If I gave a shit about this job—or anything but the truth—I’d be out there helping Ash set up. But he’ll cover for me since he knows I need a few minutes.
Finally, I launch my email, ignoring everything but the attachment from my brother. Before I see a single image, I already know this is going to hurt like hell.
Four sickening minutes later, I close the app, darken my phone. After watching Bethany use her moves on the suit she seduced, there’s a gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be. I’m in danger of throwing up what little lunch I managed to choke down. The emptiness of my future without her stretches out before me. Her perfidy is going to leave a scar for decades. God, she’s an amazing liar. I believed everything, all the way down to the boo-hoo stories about how her father used her.
This video proves she’s more than capable of using someone for her own ends without anyone coercing her at all.
I feel so fucking gullible and stupid.
But I’ve got to detach myself from her and turn over this evidence. It may burn her—if the feds choose to open the investigation against her again. But if I won’t be walking away happy, then I should get the justice for Dad that I came to Maui for.
Slowly, I rise. Weariness beats me down. Fury bubbles under it all, simmering dangerously. I put a lid on it. Sure, I could be mad at her, but I’m far angrier with myself. Bethany was only being who she is deep down. I’m the dumb ass who fell for it.
When I make my way out of the break room, Andy is standing in the hallway, looking all too ready to point out that I wasn’t behind the bar at four o’clock, which makes me late. Instead, he takes one look at my face and frowns.
“Do you need the night off?”
I drag in a breath. Even that’s excruciating. My whole body feels ready to crumble. Goddamn it, I hate this thousand-pound weight of defeat crushing.
“I think…I need to quit. I wasn’t really here to work. I was here for Bethany.”
Andy heaves a sigh. “I kind of figured. You look like shit so I hate to ask, but can you stay for this shift? I’ll get Terry to cover you tomorrow. He owes me some extra time after being so sick. After that, I’ll find a replacement.”
I’d like to help a guy out, and I hate to think I’m too whipped by one lying bitch to perform a function as simple as pouring drinks with a smile, especially when the bar isn’t particularly busy, but I don’t know if I have it in me tonight. “I’ll do my best.”
“Thanks. I actually came back here to tell you that the tall blond guy who visited your girlfriend—or maybe ex-girlfriend—the other day is back. And whatever he said made her cry. She ran down to the beach. He followed. They’ve been gone a few minutes.”
I don’t care what Stephen said to her. Well, I try not to care. Did she bamboozle him, too? Or are they in on this scam together? It would be a sly but clever move for her to take advantage of the fact that her father has a vengeful enemy determined to see him locked up. Once Barclay was in prison, then she could make off with her lover and all the money. And that would conveniently set them up for life. Nice.
I murmur a thanks to Andy, who nods and wanders off. When I look up, Ash motions me over with a frown.
“What?”
“You look terrible.”
“It’s even worse than I thought.”
Watching Bethany work James Braden over with her mouth, then her lithe little body… Granted, she didn’t look as if she was enjoying being naked with the pompous windbag. But that’s neither here nor there. She’s not the prey wrapped up in her father’s web. She’s the fucking black widow.
“Jesus. I’m sorry. What are you going to do?”
I shrug. “What I should have a long time ago. She’s on the beach?”
“With that Lund dude, yeah. He came in all full of righteous anger and acted super protective of Beth. He murmured a few words to her in the corner, showed her something, then she fell apart.”
The smart thing to do would be to leave. Turn and walk away from her drama and her lies. Not give her another chance to sink her hooks into me because I have this terrible feeling I’ll take one look at her and my heart will ache to make excuses and I’ll be too fucking weak to resist her. I can’t let that happen. And I can’t let her have the last word. I want to look at her, face to face, and tell her what she’s done to my family. I want her to understand what an amazing man her greed killed. I want to show her pictures of my brothers so she’ll know the faces of boys orphaned before they were ready to be men. I want her to feel some fucking guilt for once in her life.
Is she even capable?
That anger brewing in my belly starts spewing as I march outside the bar and spot Bethany pressed against Stephen Lund. Her entire body shakes with supposed sobs. He’s holding her and stroking her hair, as if he’s comforting her.
Is any of it real? Or has she conned this poor sap, too? After all, why take the money from the Caymans and split it with a lover when she can have it all to herself?
Vaguely, I wonder why she even bothered to make this pit stop in Hawaii and why she worked in this nowhere bar doing this dead-end job if she had nearly a billion dollars waiting for her in the Caribbean. Some part of her cover? An elaborate ploy to keep the feds off her trail? But doesn’t she already have the perfect get-out-of-jail card with that video? James Braden won’t want to lose his position of power. I’m sure he’d do almost anything to keep this secret buried.
Whatever. I’m done trying to figure out how Bethany’s mind works. Time to confront her and end this.
“Hey,” I call out to them.
She wrenches out of his embrace, nose red, cheeks wet with tears—and eyes blazing with betrayal. “Clint Dietrich, huh? How long were you going to feed me that bullshit, you son of a bitch?”
So she knows my identity? A glance over at Lund, sharp brow raised, tells me he’s the snitch.
“Until I got the truth, which I apparently never did,” I spit back. “But congratulations. Now you have the real name of the latest guy you fucked over so you can add me to your long and distinguished list.”
Gaping, she lunges my way. “What the hell are you talking about? I believed in you. I told you some of the ugliest, most shameful details about my past. Things I’ve never really told any other human being because I loved you—”
“Aww, my heart is bleeding.”
Her eyes flash rage, but her sniffles offset the menace in her expression. “And you never even told me your real fucking name. When you came on strong day one, hot and gorgeous and so focused on me, I should have known it was too good to be true, that all your talk about wanting to get to know me was just lies. You only wanted information. You wanted to use me.” She shakes her head in self-recrimination. “I was the idiot who fell for how caring you seemed, how perfect we felt together. I’m genuinely sorry about your father, Mr. Holmes. I really liked your dad a lot. He was one of my favorite clients, one of the few who knew who my father really was. He told you, didn’t he? You came here knowing. And you blamed me, like all the others, because I was the face of Reed Financial.”
Is she really going to play the victim until the bitter end? “I watched my father die on my living room floor because you didn’t call him back when the news broke.”
Bethany recoils. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. I feel terrible about his passing—”
“Save your empty platitudes, Beth. You were never going to call because you were complicit in stealing the money he’d earned with his life’s work.” It feels both good and horrible to finally say that. The rage growing and growling inside me pats me on the back for laying that at her feet.
But my stupid heart is still breaking.
“What? No! I couldn’t call your dad—or anyone—back that day. The FBI was interrogating me. They thought I was complicit, too. I
eventually proved them wrong.”
“No, you proved calculating and cunning after you fucked the federal prosecutor. Congratulations. Did you do it to save your dad’s miserable ass? Or were you planning all along to take the money and run by yourself?”
Bethany’s jaw drops. She blinks, seems to reel, then shakes her head, looking beyond hurt. “Is that what you really think of me?”
I’ve got to hand it to her. If I didn’t know the circumstances and hadn’t seen the evidence, her crushed expression would convince me that I’ve got everything wrong and that my lack of faith is breaking her heart.
“That’s what I know. And don’t think I won’t use it against you.”
“Then we have nothing left to say. For the record, I slept with James Braden at my father’s request—something I hadn’t done to help him in over four years. Something I’d told him I would never do again. But I demeaned myself because, at the time, I thought Barclay was innocent. He’d convinced me the feds were on a witch hunt at Douglas Lund’s request because the man knows big people in high places. The father I’d looked up to my whole life was seemingly being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. His business—hell, my business—would undoubtedly crash down. Everything I’d ever poured my energy or soul into would be gone. First, I tried to talk to Braden, convince him using every other method I could. In the end, he told me he would look the other way, but only if I fucked him. You see, he was six weeks post-divorce after his wife left him for another man, and he was looking for revenge sex. He said I would do. So I let him use me. I wanted to cry the whole time. But what choice did I have? What would you have done, if you could, to save your dad?”
I think of the exhausting thirty-plus minutes of CPR I tried to perform—to no avail. I would have done anything, of course. Would I have let someone I didn’t love use me? Yeah, without hesitation. I also took Bethany to bed way after it was too late to save my dad. Does that make me worse? No. By then I was falling for her…
