Bad Boy (An Indecent Proposal) (12 page)

We had no
future. None whatsoever.

My lips
began to quiver. I swallowed hard, over and over again. I wasn’t going to give
him the satisfaction of seeing me cry over him.

Stupid me.

All that
time, I had thought Chase cared for me. Even after finding the folder, my heart
came up with bullshit excuses—him being in trouble, involved with the
wrong kind of people, needing money.

Never in my
wildest dreams had I envisioned that I had been targeted because of something
my stepfather had done. That it might all be a ploy to get revenge.

In a deep
corner of my mind, I recalled tiny morsels of conversation between Clint and
his lawyer I had often overheard. As a child I had always assumed they were
talking about won trials, boasting about the things they had done and all the
money they had taken.

I had
realized a long time ago that Clint wasn’t who he pretended to be. I wasn’t
sure what to think anymore, but I was inclined to believe that Chase was
probably one of the people Clint and Aldwin had harmed.

Clint had
many enemies, so why wouldn’t Chase be one of them? It was impossible to like
someone like Clint who stopped at nothing to further his own gain.

Greed did
that to people. And Clint was as sneaky as was humanly possible. When he first
met my mom, he was a car salesman with the necessary character traits to make
it big—manipulative and passive-aggressive—two qualities he managed
to nourish in the following years.

Looking at
Chase, I realized maybe they had that in common.

“You said
your inheritance isn’t worth anything to you,” Chase said, interrupting my
thoughts. “If that’s really the case, it all doesn’t matter. It’s a marriage of
convenience. You wanted the letters, and I want revenge. What’s so hard to
accept?”

The way he
put it—cold and cruel, as if we were talking about a business transaction
rather than my family; as if nothing had happened between us, and I was only a
random encounter in his long list of women—I felt like slapping him.

Maybe you were like a random encounter, Hanson.
Easily forgotten.

My heart
began to bleed. If he could have seen inside, he would have seen all the blood
seeping out of me. There were cracks here and there, little pieces chipping
away, and large fragments crumbling to bits. My throat closed up. The air felt
devoid of oxygen.

We had no
future.

The
realization hit me hard.

None
whatsoever.

I knew it
all along, but had pushed it to the back of my mind. Now I had no other choice
but to face the truth.

And it hurt
like hell.

“I thought
you wanted to help me.” My voice broke so I cleared my throat to get rid of the
stinging sensation inside. “I never thought you had your own agenda. I thought
you cared about me. That’s all.”

“I do.”

“No, you
don’t.” I smiled bitterly and shook my head. “You used me.” A silent sob
remained lodged in my throat. “You didn’t care if I got hurt, Chase,” I
whispered. Tears began to gather in the corners of my eyes again.

I didn’t
want to cry and yet I knew I couldn’t stop the tears that would soon fall.

“I need
your inheritance to destroy him, Laurie.” Even though his voice was quiet and
steady, I could hear the plea in his tone.

“At my
expense,” I stated the obvious.

Chase
reached for my hand, but I leaned back, pulling it out of his reach.

“Admit it,”
I said angrily, the pain inside me sharp and raw. “You wanted revenge at my
expense. Just say it. We both know it’s the truth.”

He took his
time to reply, hesitating, as though his silence would make it all less real.

“It needed
to be done,” he said slowly. “Even if I weren’t a part of this, even if things
didn’t turn out the way they did between us, my brother would have made his
move on you. It was either Kade or I.”

He made it
sound like it was a positive thing. Like I could be passed around. Like I
should be grateful it was he and not Kade.

The thought
hurt me more than I cared to admit.

I had never
felt so insulted in my life.

“So, it was
either you or he,” I repeated, laughing darkly as I remembered how close I had
been to going out with his brother. “Boy, I’m so spoiled with choice.” I
grimaced. “Doesn’t Kade know we got married or why else would he be following
me?”

Chase
sighed and ran his hand through his silky hair. “I haven’t told him.”

I frowned.
“Why not?”

He closed
his eyes, his fingers pressing the bridge of his close. When he opened them
again, his expression was hard. His eyes looked like stones, tearing down my
wall. I could feel his hate for Clint seeping into my soul. “It’s not personal,
Laurie. If you just tried to understand why I did it then—”

“Then
what?” I cut him off. “I’d see your point? Trust you more?” I shook my head,
ignoring the little voice inside my heart that begged me to give him a chance.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t sign up for this.”

I clutched
my bag and squeezed into my shoes. “The conversation’s over. I’m not listening
to you anymore. Tell the driver to stop the car.”

“No, I need
you to listen,” he said calmly.

But I
couldn’t. “Let me out, Chase.”

“We’ll be
at the hotel in a few minutes.”

“I want to
leave now!”

His lips
tightened. “Laurie, you don’t even know where you are.”

“That’s not
your problem,” I said harsher than intended. “Stop the car, Chase.”

“Please,”
Chase said softly. “I can’t let you go before you understand.”

“Trust me,
you were very clear when you said everything you did was out of revenge. What
more is there to explain?” He remained silent. I nodded. “Exactly. There’s no
point in wasting each other’s time. Now tell the driver to stop the car.”

When Chase
didn’t move, I turned around and leaned over the seat to hammer against the
divider in the hope the driver would hear me. “Stop the car.”

“The driver
doesn’t speak English,” Chase said. His voice was calm, but I could hear the
slightest hint of desperation in his tone. “Besides, I instructed him not to
stop, no matter what happens. I’m afraid you’ll have to listen to me for a few
more minutes.”

I stopped
the hammering and turned to face him, my face a mask of fury. “You have no
right to hold me here.”

“No, I
don’t. That’s why I’m asking.” His response surprised me. “Please, Laurie, you
haven’t heard it all. This is important. It involves our future.”

Not my
future.

Our
future.

“We don’t
have a future,” I said dryly.

Even if I
wanted to.

Even if I
had believed it at some point.

“Believe it
or not, we do have one. According to the contract, we have at least twelve
months together.”

I let out a
sarcastic laugh again.

That damn
stupid contract.

That
mistake was going to haunt me forever.

If I had known that Chase was such a pain in the ass, I
would never have hired him. Full stop. The first time I’d seen him, I thought
he was going to shake my world. Well, he shook my world, rocked it, and made
sure that everything I had known and believed in, crashed and burned.

“I’m still the same man, Laurie. I never meant to do you any
harm,” Chase said, oblivious to my thoughts.

I snorted.

He had never wanted
to.

Of course it hadn’t been his damn intention.

As if the knowledge would make me feel better.

When people said ‘I never meant to do you any harm,’ what
they really wanted to say was ‘I never meant to do you any harm, but things
turned out differently, and there was a choice: you or me. Guess what? You
lost.”

“I should never have believed you,” I whispered. “It was
stupid to trust you when you so clearly only think of yourself.” I felt the
pressure of my unshed tears gathering behind my eyes.

Stupid emotions.

Why couldn’t I stop them?

He set his glass down. Instead of replying straight away, he
moved closer to me, but didn’t touch me.

“I’m not doing it only for myself,” he whispered after a
pause. “I’m also doing it for you. Why do you think my brother doesn’t know we
got married?”

“You already said you married me because of your personal
issue with Clint,” I said matter-of-factly. “As for Kade, maybe you didn’t tell
him because you were waiting for the surprise party.”

His eyebrows rose slightly. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not
just having
issues
with Clint, as you
so eloquently put it. It goes much deeper than that.” He patted the seat next
to him, his voice rising up a notch. “Sit down. This will take at least twenty
minutes.”

I didn’t move. “Ten minutes. Tops. And I’m standing.”

“Fine. I’ll give you the short version then.” He motioned at
a nearby seat. When I made no attempt to move, he sighed.

“Guys like Clint pave the way so people like us wind up with
nothing,” he started. “He used your mother’s money—money he was never
supposed to touch—to set up a corporation. He uses the funds as loans to
small businesses in return for shares knowing that they can’t afford to pay
back the loans. Then he seemingly helps them so that the business takes off. It
all comes down to the business owner not being able to repay him, so he takes
over the business and everything else to get his money. That’s what happened to
a lot of families. This is the simplified version. Basically, many people have
lost their income. Their homes. Their dreams. Someone needs to stop him. That
someone has to be me.”

I ran my tongue across my parched lips, his words resonating
in my mind.

Holding my bag in front of me as if it was some shield, I
sat down, eyeing him carefully. “So, he supports them in order to cheat them
out of their livelihood?”

“I wouldn’t call that support. He sets them up for their own
fail.”

I frowned at his choice of words, my heart racing. “I don’t
understand. How does he do it?”

“It’s all a bit of a gamble,” Chase said. “He lends them a
lump sump of money and convinces them to invest their money, their homes,
everything they own into their business. When things start to go well, he makes
sure that a competitor beats them in a series of events that leaves them in
greater debt than before, unable to fight him. I don’t have to tell you that
he’s the competitor. His loss is minimal, but the rewards are huge. In the end,
Clint is the one who owns the business and all the money invested in it while
the previous business owner is left with insurmountable debt.”

I frowned. “Is that even legal?”

“Is tricking someone into buying a car that is a piece of
shit, legit? Yeah, it is. Unfortunately.” He stretched out his legs, an angry
expression flashing across his face. “Clint is the reason why I became a
lawyer,” he continued. “For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be part of
the law so guys like him could be served justice. I want to fight; I want to
implement a change. Unfortunately, what he does is legal. In the legal sense,
all parties involved agreed to his contract. There’s absolutely no proof that
what he does is premeditated. Without that proof, an investigation is a waste
of time.”

“He’s using the gray area of the legal system to further his
own agenda. Just like you did with me,” I couldn’t help but comment.

“Just like me, yes.” He grimaced. “Except, my plan doesn’t
involve stealing your money or making you lose everything. Actually, quite the
contrary’s the case. I’m making sure that Clint doesn’t get your inheritance,”
he said. “I never intended to keep it. You have to believe me.”

I exhaled a sharp breath.

“Like I said before, I’m not interested in your money,” Chase
continued. “I want revenge.”

“How are you going to accomplish that?”

“As your husband, I can take him to court. Your mother’s
money is your family heirloom. It belongs to you. He had no right to take and
invest it. Just give me a year to sort it out, and he’ll be ruined.”

I frowned and let out a shaky breath I didn’t know I had
been holding. At some point, knots of unease had formed in the pit of my
stomach. “Are you saying that you’ll take him to court? A real trial?”

“It’d involve a little detour, but basically, yes. The
plan’s to make sure he loses the inheritance, the home that should be yours,
everything.”

“Oh, my god.” I shook my head, closing my eyes.

Fighting my stepfather in court was the last thing I
wanted—or needed.

The past few years, I had done my best to stay away from
Clint, minimizing contact, forgetting the past. Now that I was married, Chase
was trying to force me to face my past again.

I wasn’t afraid of Clint. I despised him. I resented him,
blamed him for my mother’s suicide.

“Once I take everything away from Clint and expose him for
who he is, I can return everything that is rightfully yours.”

“Aren’t you even asking if I want this?” I said weakly.

His brows shot up. “Well, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

My words rendered him silent for a minute.

“You won’t have a choice, Laurie,” he said coldly. “I’m your
husband. And I so happen to be your lawyer. You’ll have to leave it up to me.”

“I didn’t hire you as my lawyer, Chase.”

“I bailed you out so, technically, I am.”

My thoughts were racing, and at last I took a deep breath.
“I get it. What Clint does is terrible and I agree that he needs to be
punished. But why don’t you just move on and let karma do its job? Why is it so
important to you to get even with Clint? I’m not saying I’m justifying what he
does; I’m just trying to understand why you’re still living in the past when
you and your brother are clearly doing well. I mean, Kade owns LiveInvent. Talk
about wow. That’s a huge accomplishment. And you don’t seem poor, either.”

It was true.

LiveInvent was where the big-shot strategists and best
marketing professionals worked. In the few years it had operated, it had
quickly become a household name among celebrities and famous brands, and my big
dream ever since I realized they were behind almost every major campaign that
had won a prize in the past years.

 
“It took us ten
years to build LiveInvent. It didn’t happen overnight,” Chase said. “But you’re
right. There’s a reason why it’s so important for me to get revenge.”

I held my breath as I realized the moment I had been waiting
for had come.

“Clint is the reason my father committed suicide,” Chase
said. “When my dad couldn’t repay Clint’s loan, we weren’t just miles in debt;
we ended up homeless and without any hope. My father was desperate, not because
he had just lost his business. My mom grew sick, very sick, and there were
medical bills we couldn’t pay. When the medical insurance company refused to
pay, my father drove of a cliff.” His voice broke.

“You said your parents died in a road accident when you were
nine,” I said.

He shook his head. “It was a lie, Laurie. I couldn’t tell
you the truth, not when we barely knew each other.”

“I’m sorry.” I looked up and flinched at the intensity in
his eyes filled with pain.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Chase said. “There’s nothing
anyone could have done. For a long time, we thought it had been an accident,
until we found the note. He had killed himself out of desperation, so that we’d
get his life insurance money to pay for my mom’s medical treatment. He did it
so that my brother and I could still go to college and have a future; so that
my mom would get well. Needless to say, my mom’s treatment came too late and
she didn’t make it.” His gaze pierced my heart, his gray blue eyes both
beautiful and shattering. “So, as you can see, we have more in common than you
think,” he whispered. “We’ve both lost our parents thanks to Clint.”

I let out a shaky breath. Chase’s words felt raw, intimate.
In fact, they were more intimate than anything he had ever told me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I had no idea.”

I wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him, take away the
pain, while another part of me demanded that I stay away.

He shrugged, as though his life story wasn’t a big deal.
“It’s fine.” He looked away. “Now you know why I have to do it. My father was a
victim. We all were. Believe it or not, I do care about you,” he said quietly.
“But this is something I owe my family. Because everything he owns is connected
to your inheritance, I can make him suffer. For once, I want him to feel the
pain we felt. I want him to lose something he loves—and in his case
that’s money.”

“That’s why you married me,” I said to process the news.
Shaking my head, I poured myself another glass of wine and gulped it all down.
Only after the liquid had traveled down my throat, leaving a bitter trail in
its wake, did I turn to face Chase.

“You wasted your time,” I said softly. “Even if I wanted to
help, all I get is a quarter. If you had been upfront with me before, I would
have been able to help you. You shouldn’t have lied and tricked me into
believing you cared for me. I would have understood. But now the whole thing
was in vain. I signed an agreement before I married you, so the inheritance is
practically his.”

“Is it?” Chase counteracted.

“Is what?” I asked, confused.

“Is the inheritance still his if he never received the
signed agreement?”

My eyes narrowed as I took in his words. Was it my
imagination or had his expression softened?

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I gave him the signed agreement
before we got married.”

“That may be true, but what if the contract you signed
disappeared?” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Maybe it never existed.
Would you say it was still valid?”

I shook my head, confused.

“Of course it exists. I signed it.” I stared at him. “What
are you getting at? It sounds as though you’re trying to pull me into that gray
legal area with you, and I’m not interested in getting involved.”

He leaned back against the seat. “I might or might not have
it.”

My heart skipped a beat. Then another. I felt as though I
was stuck on a roller coaster ride and everything was going too fast.

“You do not have it,” I said slowly. “Because if you
did—”

It would be illegal—just like about everything else
that involved Chase.

“Okay, maybe I don’t have it, but I did until it burned.”

“You broke into Clint’s home and stole the contract?” I
asked in disbelief.

He regarded me with an amused glint in his eyes. “Not into
his home, but his lawyer’s.”

I let out a brief laugh.

Holy shit.

The guy was trouble.

“That breaks the law on so many levels.” I shook my head,
unable to comprehend the way his mind worked. “Chase, you’re a lawyer. At least
that’s what you’re claiming to be. Why would you do that? Aren’t you supposed
to stick to the rules?”

He cocked a brow. “Do I look like a cop? No, I’m a lawyer,
and in all the years I worked as one, I learned a lot. Sometimes, to achieve a
goal, you have to break the rules,” he said. “Everyone does it because the
law’s corrupt. Ask any lawyer and he’ll tell you the same thing. Clint doesn’t
have the right to take what’s yours. He had no right to take what was
ours.
Now that I’m your husband, I have
the power and the right to take legal action against him.”

“Was that really your plan all along?”

“To contest your mom’s will? Yes.” He nodded his head, the
motion strengthening his words.

 
“Even if I
wanted to, I can’t allow it,” I said frightened at the thought of welcoming
more chaos into my life.

 
“When I said you
won’t have a choice, I meant it, Laurie,” he said. “You should have asked for a
prenup. Without one, I have access to everything that belongs to you, unless
you get a divorce, in which case you won’t see your mom’s letters.”

Maybe what he said was true, and maybe it wasn’t.

For the first time, I realized how naïve I had been. He was
a lawyer, I wasn’t. He was prepared to do whatever it took to further his
agenda; I wasn’t.

I swallowed hard, but couldn’t quite get rid of the lump
lodged in my throat.

“It’s not your right to interfere in my life,” I said
angrily. “Just so you know, Clint never forced me to give him anything. I did
it freely. He’s been offering me money for years—money I never took.”

“I know that.” Chase nodded slowly. “Your mom told you not
to take anything, right? It’s the reason you gave up everything.”

My whole body tensed.

He was right.

It was the
only
reason,
something I might have mentioned to him. But he knew way more than the bits and
pieces of information I had fed him.