Double-Cross My Heart (36 page)

You lied to me and you did it first,
she’d said.

Slumping back against the couch, he struggled to come to grips with the situation. She was in the wrong, without question, but he couldn’t congratulate himself on his own actions. Far from it.

He’d not been at his best in this deal, but he’d done it all for her. He’d done it for her and she’d knifed him in the back.

Still…he couldn’t stop loving her.

Images flitted through his mind—Eden laughing, her arms sheltering him close. Her serious expression when she was studying a problem…the way her body fit so perfectly to his…their first meeting when he’d arranged for her to be mugged so he could rescue her.

“Shit!” he cursed as he poured himself another drink.

***

“Yes, I really like Bryan,” Lauren said, “and, yes, we’ll be seeing each other again.”

“Good.” Alex concentrated on walking next to her without jostling his brain.

“What’s the matter with you?” His sister asked, pushing the shopping cart down the grocery aisle. “I know you offered to help me with the groceries for Thanksgiving dinner—I’m paying for them, by the way, not you—but I can do the shopping if you’re sick.”

“I’m not sick,” Alex stated firmly, trying to keep the sound waves from his voice from reaching his bruised brain. He only rarely drank to excess. That was most likely the problem this morning—he needed to work up a tolerance if he planned on drowning his problems in alcohol in the future.

“Well,” his sister said, casting him a critical glance, “you look sick.”

“Not sick, hung-over,” he said succinctly, wishing he could rest his head on the ice surrounding the magnificent salmon in the butcher’s case. Even frostbite had to be better than this.

“But you don’t drink,” she told him with certainty. “Certainly not this much.”

“I’m branching out,” he declared, taking refuge in a morbid humor. He didn’t want to think about the mess he’d made of things with Eden. In particular, he couldn’t stand the thought of who she’d become. It had hit him hard last night. He’d started this, at least a significant part of the situation was at his instigation. She accused him of being her role-model, of doing exactly what she’d done, only he’d been there first.

If it weren’t for his intervention in the beginning, would Eden have plotted to over-throw Michele? Would she have been in a position where she took actions that threatened her integrity? Maybe she’d have tolerated working for Wendi rather than take this torturous course.

Hell, did she even know herself anymore?

She’d actually been plotting against him all this time. Scheming and lying. Pretending she cared about him.

The twist of betrayal turned in his gut even more than the nausea associated with his pounding headache. If he’d been less than honest with her in the very beginning, at least he hadn’t ever lied to her about the things that truly mattered. He’d fallen in love with her, dammit, and she’d acted like she returned his feelings while lying through her teeth.

It wasn’t just about her deceiving him, though.

Even worse than the lying she was doing with him, he knew in his gut, she was betraying herself more than she’d betrayed him. Eden was an honest woman. He couldn’t believe otherwise, no matter how much he tried. And he’d spent much of the previous evening trying. Somehow through his alcoholic haze, he’d arrived at the full-blown conviction that Eden’s actions were not only bad for him, but truly bad for her as well.

Trailing after his sister as she pushed her shopping cart down the next aisle, Alex couldn’t explain how he knew that this kind of deceit and trickery wasn’t Eden’s true nature. Maybe it was because she was right about him. Maybe he did manipulate and deal in trickery. At least, in the past.

He hated the thought that she was the worst for having been with him. Of course, some people would say Eden’s current double-dealing was likely to be the norm for her, but he couldn’t believe that.

No, she’d recently turned to the dark side and he, much to his dismay, was becoming convinced he’d helped turn her in that direction. Even while he was working toward her getting what she deserved, he’d been pushing into betraying herself.

Michele and Wendi and him—what a team.

“So…,” Lauren said, busy selecting onions from a bin, “what’s bothering you? Driving you to drink, I mean.”

“I’m realizing I’m a slimy, manipulative bastard.” As the words came out of his mouth, he knew they were true. In his desire to get to know Eden personally, he’d taken a serious wrong turn himself. Maybe he was fooling himself, in that even. Had he ever been scrupulously true to his values? Particularly when it came to money?

“What?” his sister turned to look at him with an incredulous, questioning stare. “I don’t think I’d phrase it exactly like that myself.”

“Eden would,” Alex said with difficulty. “She’s…very angry with me. She knows about my arranging to meet her when we were setting up the Michele Cosmetics deal.”

“Oh,” his sister said, lifting her eyebrows.

He knew she was feeling confirmed in her recommendation for him to confess to Eden, but Lauren didn’t say the “I told you so” he deserved. She didn’t have to.

“Eden’s really upset?” his sister asked, her expression holding more sympathy than he deserved.

“Yes.” His head feeling like it was splitting with each step, he walked beside his sister.

“So you guys have broken up?” The regret in her voice was clearly audible. “She’s not coming for dinner tomorrow?”

He shook his head with a short, self-mocking laugh, the movement making his head ache even more. He followed Lauren over to the pile of acorn squash. “No.”

“Oh,” his sister said. “I liked her.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, the words painfully true. He’d screwed this situation up on so many levels and he wasn’t quite sure what to do now.

“So,” Lauren said again, “does that mess up your business deal or your relationship or both?”

Alex sighed, trailing after the cart as his sister left the produce section.  “It messes up…everything. At least, the thing that matters the most—me and Eden.”

“So,” his sister said, “is your business situation the same? You can still force her to keep on helping you, but your relationship with her is ended because she caught you in your lie. She knows you hooked up with her to get control of the company?”

“I did not ‘hook up’ with her because of the company,” he denied emphatically, pausing as she stopped to select a package of dinner rolls. “I found her very attractive. I was interested in her. I didn’t
have
to get involved with her. I wanted to. And I told you, I never intended to force her to help me.”

His words sounded lame despite the truth in them.

“What you ‘intended’ and what you did don’t appear to be the same thing,” Lauren said in a dry tone.

“I realize that.”

“Yes, well, most women, in this kind of situation, would find it hard to believe that you really care for them,” Lauren said severely. “Eden believes you were totally motivated by your desire to get hold of the business.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell her the truth about the beginning set-up,” he said.

“So,” his sister said, “she’s known all along that you arranged to meet her and she’s been pretending to work with you so you wouldn’t squeal about her big secret?”

“Yes. Also, she’s been scheming to get control of the company herself. She says she’s going to try to block my acquisition of Michele Cosmetics.”

“Wow! Gutsy woman. So you guys had a big blow up? What did she say to make you keep your mouth shut about her uncle?”

“Nothing,” he responded absently. “We didn’t even talk about that. Not specifically. I stumbled on the proof that she’d been lying to me about some of the business things and I confronted her about them. Then the whole story spilled and she yelled at me and stormed out.”

“So, are you going to discredit her?” Lauren asked evenly as she pushed her cart toward the front of the store. “Squeal to her boss about Beauty by Georgette? Since she’s going to fight your takeover?”

“No. Absolutely not. I never was going to do that.” He walked along beside his sister in silence for several moments. There was no way he could deliberately hurt Eden. Even as hurt as he was by her betrayal. Maybe she didn’t feeling anything but enmity toward him. But he loved her, all the same.

He said quietly, “I’m not going to use the information. I never planned to and I’m not going to do it now, regardless of what she’s done or what she expects me to do. No company is worth that to me.”

Lauren got in a line to check-out. As usual at holiday time, there were people waiting at each register.

“We’re talking about a lot of money, aren’t we?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said heavily. “But I have money.”

His sister looked up at him. “I’ve never known you to back away from a fight. Particularly one where millions of dollars could be made. She must be pretty important to you.”

“Yes, she is,” he said.

Now if only he could help her to see that she had been betraying herself even more than Michele or him.

***

Later that morning, Cheryl walked into Eden’s office and announced, “I’ve finished with the board reports for the meeting. I think I’ve included everything—sales numbers on the major products, development reports and the marketing department major campaigns. If you’ll look them over, I’ll send everything to be printed this afternoon.”

“Good,” Eden said, pinning a tired smile onto her face. She hadn’t slept more than an hour or two last night and she had a splitting headache.

No call from Michele yet. No summons to the older woman’s office to be summarily fired. Why didn’t Alex act? What was he waiting for?

“It’s been really quiet this morning,” she said to her assistant, trying to keep the strained note out of her voice. “I don’t think the phone has rung once.”

“Thank the Lord,” Cheryl said piously as she laid the stack of reports on Eden’s desk. “If I’d had any interruptions, I don’t think I’d have gotten these finished in time to get home this afternoon and start the turkey.”

Looking down at the stack of folders, Eden said quickly, “Why don’t you go on home? I’ll take these down to get printed when I’ve proofed them.”

“Would you?” Cheryl said with real appreciation. “My kid’s at home and I hate to miss any of our time together.”

“Sure,” Eden replied. “Go on home.”

“Thanks!” Cheryl scooted out of the office and Eden heard the outer door close behind her only moments later.

Silence filled the room, with few noises filtering from the hall and other offices. Eden guessed many of the other employees were cutting out early for the holiday, as well.

Frowning over the board reports, she tried to ignore the nagging tension between her shoulders. Why didn’t Alex get it over with? The waiting was the worst. With each passing moment like a sword hanging over her head, she kept wondering when the phone would ring. When Michele—or worse, Wendi—would sweep into her office with scathing denunciations on their lips and security on their heels.

That the moment would come, she was resolved to. She’d have preferred the truth be withheld, even from Alex, until the day of the board meeting—only two and a half weeks away now. But she’d been discovered in her unpracticed deception and the shit had hit the fan. At least, with Alex it had.

Soon Michele would know the truth. She’d be informed that the employee she’d invested in and nurtured had decided to fight back against her betrayal.

Yes, Eden thought, leaning back in her chair and putting up a hand to rub her tight neck. That was the truth. She was fighting back against betrayal, for the other employees of the company, as well as for herself.

All day she’d been worrying about what Alex would tell Michele. The part that worried her the most—the one action she’d have a hard time defending to the board—was the meeting she’d had with the reporter from the
Wall Street Weekly
. The company stock had lost a few points after the article, but not a lot.

She hadn’t really said anything too defamatory to the reporter, she told herself. Wasn’t the press supposed to keep their sources confidential? Even if Alex did tell Michele or Sol Klineman that Eden had been the source of that article, couldn’t she just deny it? He had no proof.

Of course, he could tell Michele and Wendi that she hadn’t given them accurate reports about the anti-aging cream. That was an incontrovertible reality. The anti-aging cream was to be her big announcement at the board meeting. If Alex claimed she’d known all along that the cream was good and had sent deceptive reports to Michele and Wendi, as well as to himself—that might concern the board enough to shake their faith in her.

Sol Klineman knew Alex. Hadn’t he been talking with Alex at that damned fundraiser all those months ago?

Getting up, Eden went over to the refrigerator in the closet. She grabbed a small carton of milk and got out an aspirin for her pounding head.

Alex could also tell Sol and Michele that she’d arranged a secret meeting for him with Dave Sanders.

Eden shuddered involuntarily. Any way she looked at it, the last few months had been a string of compromises. The board wouldn’t necessarily care about those unless the bottom line was effected.