Give Up On Me (7 page)

Janae froze. She recalled how devastated her dad looked that morning, how she had to fight to get him to come out of his office. His company was his baby, the place he found solace after her mother left.

She took the folder and schooled her features before opening it. To her shock, Margaret had done her homework. When she said Janae didn’t know anything about her, she was right. Janae knew a few facts passed on to her. Margaret had done a thorough investigation and gathered up every speck of information about her dad and his business.

“Flip to the last three pages,” Margaret said, a note of delight in her tone.

Janae couldn’t resist taking a look. When she did, her knees almost gave. A strong hand encircled her elbow, and Kyler almost dragged her to a chair to sit down. She fell into it, panting.

“T-this is a lie,” she whispered. “My dad wasn’t involved in that bastard’s scheme to cut corners. The job for the apartment complex has been put on hold indefinitely because Larry is such a cheat.”

“Really? Because my information says otherwise.” Margaret sauntered over to Kyler’s desk and waved him aside. He moved, and she sank into the chair. “Larry Wilkinson will swear in court that your father offered him cheap materials and plans that would never pass city inspection. When Wilkinson protested, your father said not to worry, he had an inspector waiting to sign off on the project at completion.”

Janae jumped to her feet. “That’s a damn lie.”

Margaret shrugged. “That’s for a jury to decide.”

“You know if Dad goes to court even if he’s cleared his reputation will be ruined.”

“That’s right. His business is on the verge of collapse, and I’m thinking the smallest push will make it tumble over. Of course, paired with the Jenkins matter, there are all the others in that folder, former, current, prospective men and women I can buy and sell with the snap of my fingers.”

“All to get me out of Matt’s life?” Janae said dully.

“Exactly. Now, Janae, let’s talk about George Gonzalez.”

The room swayed. Janae raised her hand to her mouth. She pretended to clear her throat as she lowered her gaze to the floor until the dizziness passed. She would not throw up in front of these people and show them how much they got to her. Margaret had cornered her, and she needed time to come up with a plan to fight back.

“I get it,” Janae said. “You know about George and Annie. Let’s not go into details.”

Annie had cancer, and she needed treatment. If the company went down, not only would George lose his insurance, but his paycheck. They were just one family desperately counting on her dad.

“You have twenty-four hours to decide,” Kyler announced.

“What?” Janae shot up from her chair again. “You can’t be serious. I need to talk to my dad and—”

“And talk to my brother?” Kyler shook his head. “Let me make it clear to you, Janae. If you breathe a word of this to Matt, we will expose your father for the dishonest businessman he is.”

Kyler’s sour smile said he knew their trumped up folder was all lies. He just liked repeating it because lie or the truth, it hurt her deeply. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she tried to speak and failed. Rather, she raised her chin, turned, and walked out the door. Neither one of them tried to get a last word in. They had said all they needed to, and she was sure they felt she would be back—on her knees.

“
H
oney
, your voice sounds funny,” Matt said over the line. “Are you crying?”

“What? No.” She cleared her throat and wiped her eyes. Throwing him on mute real quick, she sniffed and pressed tissue to her nose. Afterward, she took him off mute. “I have a tickle in my throat because I ate a really sour pickle.”

He chuckled, and her heart cracked a little more. She had always loved his laugh and his voice.
And his smile, his eyes, his everything…

“Ew,” he moaned. “Make sure you haven’t been eating them when I get back next week. I want to kiss you.”

“So you won’t kiss me if I have?”

“I will, but it will be hard.”

“You’re cruel.” She almost had another crying fit but caught herself just in time.

“Honey, do you know how much I miss you?” Matt’s voice dropped so low and sexy, even with her being miserable, her body lit on fire.

“No, tell me how much,” she said.

He outlined it, telling her about every part of her body and how much he wanted to love on it with kisses and caresses. “And then when I get to that sweet ass, I’m going to nip it and spank it. Maybe I’ll massage the sting away.”

She dug into her box of tissue and came up empty. A bunch of wadded used ones lay all around her on the couch and on the floor. She thrust the box away and sat back.

“Matt, when are you coming home?”

“Next week, Wednesday. I wish it was sooner. I hate being apart from you. Tell me you miss me, Janae. I have to hear it.”

“I do miss you. I love you very much.” She had told herself she wouldn’t say it again, but the words sprang to her tongue unbidden. “Remember that every day forever, okay?”

“You say it like I won’t see you again.”

She forced a laugh. “Don’t be stupid. We’re apart so much because of work, and I want you to think about me when we are.”

“You never leave my thoughts, even when I’m with you.”

She choked. “H-hold on!”

Throwing the phone on the couch, she ran down the hall to the bathroom and dropped to the floor in front of the toilet. Coughing and gagging, she struggled to draw in a breath. Her stomach muscles contracted, determined to get rid of the food that wasn’t there. She had lost her appetite from the first moment she opened that folder Margaret gave her.

She rinsed out her mouth and brushed her teeth then returned to the living room. “Matt?”

“What happened? You’re not lying to me about being sick, are you, Janae?” His voice held a note of worry.

“No, I’m fine.”

Just dying inside. No big deal.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, tell me about what you’re doing.” She brushed the tissues on the floor and laid on the couch, her head propped up with a throw pillow.

“I conducted a management class. One of the managers is having a hard time, and a couple of the long-time employees are clashing with him. His choice of response wasn’t the best, so I had to step in to make peace.”

“What did he do?”

“Do you really want to know?”

She wished she had a blanket and ice cream. “Yes, tell me everything. I want to hear you talk.”

“You miss me, honey?” His tone gentled so much, almost like a caress.

“Yes.” Her voice cracked. She sobbed a little before slapping a hand over her mouth.

“Janae!”

“No, it’s nothing, Matt. I’m about to come on my period. You know how I get.”

He sighed. “Yeah, angry this month ready to kill me and next month emotional. Don’t scare me like that, honey. I was about to book the next flight home.”

“You’d do that?”

“In a second if I thought you needed me.”

I do need you.

“False alarm. Just hormones all wacky.” She tried to sound normal and failed. “Talk to me some more?”

“You got it.”

He shared with her every detail of what he had done since they were apart, and she encouraged him to keep going. Late into the night, she listened to his voice, letting it soothe her aching heart for the time being.

J
anae cradled
her phone in her hands as she sat at her desk. She had cried the rest of the night after she got off the phone with Matt. Only a couple hours remained until she needed to be in Kyler’s office giving him and his grandmother her decision.

She heard the door to her office open, but she didn’t look up. The chair on the opposite side of her desk squeaked, and a heavy hand came down on her head to stroke her hair. She clenched her teeth together.

“Don’t, Dad.”

He drew back. “Are you all right, Janae?”

“Nope.”

“I can’t tell you what to do, and I won’t pressure you. It just kills me that that woman would go to these lengths to control her grandson. The two of you should be planning your wedding and preparing to give me grandkids.”

“Dad, for real?”

He slammed a fist on her desk, jarring her head. She sat back in her chair. Her father’s cry of outrage told her she looked a sight from crying. She’d need to go wash her face and put some makeup on before she headed over to Kyler’s office. They didn’t need to see how they broke her.

“I’m going to tell them I’ll end it between Matt and me.”

“We can’t let them win, Janae!”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to pressure me.”

He winced and rubbed his neck. “Yeah, sorry. But—”

“They’ve already won. I can’t come up with a single idea of how to get out of this. If I tell Matt they threatened me, he’ll fly off the handle and destroy whatever relationship he has with them.”

Her father harrumphed. “What do we care?”

“We care because Margaret already said even if Matt comes to my defense, she’s going to ruin him and you. I can’t let that happen. And honestly, there’s more than you and Matt at stake, Dad. There’s the Gonzalezes and the other families dependent on this company.”

“You can’t take the weight of the world on your shoulders, Janae.”

“No, not the world, just my small part of it. I don’t see where I have a choice. At least I’m all cried out now.”

“Janae.” The pain in her father’s words couldn’t touch her own, but there was nothing she could do.

With her mind unable to focus, she remained holed up in her office until it was almost time to go. She cleaned up her face and headed out. A short while later, she parked in the lot beneath Kyler and Margaret’s office building and headed up to their floor. This time, instead of the receptionist looking at her as if she were navel lint, she buzzed for Kyler, and he arrived to lead her back to his office.

Margaret was already holding court when Janae strode in. She sat at Kyler’s desk, and after he led Janae to a chair, he joined his grandmother at her side. Janae couldn’t help feeling that she was on trial, and the jury had already voted her guilty. The judges were eager to hand out her punishment.

She sat straighter, her head high and her jaw tight. “I’ve made my decision.”

“Yes?”

No, Margaret’s not a judge. She’s a damn spider ready to wrap me in threads and have me for lunch.

Janae suppressed a shiver and buried the hopeless feeling in the pit of her stomach. Yet, how could she fight when she was effectively giving in to it with her decision?

“Matt loves me, and he won’t let me go easily,” she began. “I can’t just dump him and say I don’t want to see him any more. He won’t go for it. He’ll try to win me all over again.”

“You’re pretty sure of your ability to ensnare him,” Margaret snapped. “You’ve had a lot of practice?”

“You would know. I’m sure you looked into my background.”

“If you think that’s reason enough to make me back off, you’re wrong.”

“No, I’m stating the truth. You can choose not to believe me, and we can see where it gets us.”

Kyler interjected. “What she says makes sense, Margaret. Matt is stubborn. He’ll see it as a challenge if she just breaks it off, especially if he still believes she cares about him.”

“I do love him!”

Janae drew in a breath and blew it out. She pressed a knuckle to her lips. No going off on them this time. She needed to keep control of her emotions and see this thing through. The faster she laid out her terms, the better.

“In order for me not to hurt Matt any more than this already will hurt him, it might be better if I go away.”

A baseball lodged in her throat. She took a minute and was glad the two of them waited for her to continue. Janae kept her gaze focused on the diamond earring hanging from Margaret’s right ear because if she looked the woman in the eyes, she’d probably see her disbelief and get pissed off.

“If I go away, you have to get Samuel Bennett to work with my dad. You have to assure me that you won’t get in the way of any of his business dealings from now on.”

“I can do you one better,” Margaret said, grinning evilly and making Janae’s stomach turn. “I have it in my power to send a few more clients his way and put his company on stable ground. That is,
if
you go away.”

“No good,” Kyler said. “Matt will hire whoever he needs to, to find you. You will have to convince him you’re no longer interested.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” she said.

“You mean you don’t want to!” Margaret glared at her and leaned forward. “We will tell him you came to me demanding money.”

Kyler sighed. “He won’t fall for it.”

Janae agreed.

“Then there are ways of making people disappear,” Margaret said.

Janae gasped and looked into her eyes. “Say what now?”

“Calm down.” The old lady waved a hand. “I’m not threatening to kill you. I mean there are ways a person can deliberately disappear without a trace.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure it would cost a pretty penny, which as you know, I don’t have.”

Margaret drummed the desktop with her fingers. “I’ll arrange everything and even give you enough money to live off of for quite some time.”

Janae blinked. She was offering her money? Wasn’t that what she was trying to avoid with this fiasco? No, it was more than the money as far as Margaret was concerned. Janae herself wasn’t good enough for her grandson.

She went over everything in her head, but she kept coming back to the same issue—that Matt wouldn’t sit still believing she left him. Even if he didn’t know his family had used their means to help her to disappear, he would hire someone to look for her, and he wouldn’t stop searching himself. He wouldn’t actually go on with his life. Maybe eventually he would move on, but she wanted to curtail even a little hope so his heart would heal that much faster.

“Record me,” she said, and she clutched her purse tight on her lap, hoping it would keep her from cracking. Regardless, tears formed in her eyes, and she blinked to stop them from falling.

“What?” Kyler was looking at her so hard she squirmed in her chair and then forced herself to stay still.

“Record me. I will play the roll of demanding money from you. I’ll say I need it if you want me to go away. You can play the victims, and you can let him listen to it as proof.”

Janae cursed under her breath when tears slipped down her cheeks. She scrubbed them away quickly and cleared her throat.

“Yes!” Margaret jumped all over the idea.

Kyler pulled his cell phone from his pocket with hesitance. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“It’s the only way I see, unless you have another idea?”

“No.” He kept looking at her in that odd way as if he was trying to read her motivations. His image of her didn’t matter because in a few minutes, he would have proof that made her look like trash, proof she couldn’t take back.

“You should start the recording in the middle of me speaking as if you had a sudden idea to record me. That way it might sound more authentic.” Another tear dropped, and she brushed it away. “Are you ready?”

Both of them gaped at her, and then Margaret slowly nodded her head with a grin.

Janae stood to her feet. “J-just a minute.”

She slipped out into the hall and shut the door behind her. A sob escaped her, and she glanced up and down the passage. Since no one was around, she indulged in a fit of self-pity for a few seconds, crying hard. After a couple minutes, she found tissue in her purse and mopped her face. Whether she looked a hot mess or not didn’t matter now.

She slipped back into the office, and Margaret and Kyler cut off whatever they were talking about. She looked at Kyler, and he nodded.

“What are you doing here?” Margaret said, obviously getting into it.

“I’m here because I want money. I want enough to live on so I can get out of Boston.”

“What are you saying? I thought you loved Matthew.”

Janae almost gagged. Margaret was not the greatest of actresses, especially when she tried to sound like the wounded grandmother, concerned for her grandson. Janae stared at her and shook her head. Color dotted the old woman’s face.

“I’m not the marrying kind. I thought I would charm him at first playing the I don’t care about money role, but I’m sick of it.”

“So you were using my brother all along?” Kyler asked.

Janae looked at him, and she faltered. He checked his phone and signaled for her to speak. She had trouble saying she used Matt when he was her entire world. Maybe she shouldn’t love him as deeply as she did, but regardless, she knew she would die for that man.