One Week (HaleStorm) (17 page)

“This.” He gestured back and forth between them. “I like doing
this
with you. I’m glad you were here to help pull this project out of the fire.” He took a deep breath, a heavy weight in his chest. “I wish my father had gotten to know you. This way, I mean.”

She smiled. “I do too. And I’m glad I was able to help. I almost wish....”

Music to his ears. He wished, too. “We’ll figure this out.”

She looked worried. “What if we don’t? What about your company?”

He kissed her again. “I have you to help. We will. We’ll fix everything.”

She rolled her eyes. “So no pressure or anything.” She stood. “We should get back. Things to fix, as you said. We have that meeting tomorrow to get ready for.”

Her phone buzzed as they walked out, and she laughed at the incoming text. “God, poor Jeff. ‘OMG, if she tells me next that the Karen Summers brand demands bow ties and starched underpants I am so done’.”

Karen Summers.
Michael reached into his wallet and pulled out the business card he’d found in Becca’s kitchen. Karen Summers. Holy shit.

He turned to Elise and kissed her again. Hard. “Meet me back at the office. I think I just figured out a big piece of this whole insanity puzzle. I have to go.”

E
lise floated back into the office. Whatever Michael was doing, wherever he had gone, he left convinced he had the answers he needed to save his company. And he hadn’t spelled it out in words, but sure as hell left her with the impression that he wanted them to be together. Maybe it even meant she could be done working for him early. He’d said his divorce was only a matter of paperwork. They could date. Like normal people.

She’d heard a rumor about someone bringing in mini-cupcakes and decided to swing by the break room, giving the finger to her mother’s voice telling her she should hold off because she’d been “looking a bit heavy lately.” She waved at Penny, the kindly HR manager, surprised to see Becca sitting by her desk. Elise kept walking, not wanting to show her surprise.

“Oh, Elise! Come here a second, will you?” Penny’s call stopped Elise short when she had almost rounded the corner.

Damn. What was Michael’s ex doing here? After that prior uncomfortable encounter, the last thing Elise wanted to do was have yet another close encounter. What if there was more crying?

It wasn’t exactly that Elise felt guilty. Michael swore things had been over with his ex for nearly a year, and she believed him. She didn’t think it was a particularly good idea for her to get all buddied-up with the future-ex-Mrs.-Hale, either.

“Here you go,” Penny said as Elise approached. She held out a stack of papers, and Elise sat carefully in a chair, as if the force with which her butt hit the padding would affect whether or not the Hermes-clad lady next to her noticed her. “I have a few things I need you to sign so they can extend your contract. Mr. Hale said they had need to keep you on a couple more weeks.”

Elise nodded silently and took the forms, glancing from Penny to Becca and back again.
Way to play it smooth, Elise.
“Uh, yes. Sure. Thank you.”

Penny turned to Becca. “Okay, got everything done here?” She flipped through the pages, handing a few things back over. “You’ll want to keep this, it spells out your prenatal benefits.”

Elise almost choked on her tongue.
What in God’s name is she talking about?

Penny looked up. “Are you all right, honey?”

“Sure.” She smiled at both women. “Just a tickle. Dry winter air.”

Becca reached into her Coach bag and handed over a cough drop. How fucking thoughtful.

“Thank you.” Elise forced a smile. “So... you’re pregnant?” Her voice climbed at least an octave in her attempt to sound cheerful.

Becca beamed. How could anybody beam under fluorescent office lights? “I only found out recently.”

“That’s.... Congratulations.” Elise threw up her hands in mock excitement. She had no words. “Who’s the father?” Because it couldn’t be Michael. He’d insisted. Promised. Sworn. He hadn’t been with his wife for over a year. If he hadn’t said that, if he hadn’t been adamant that the relationship was deader than disco, Elise would never have as much as kissed him.

Still, even before Becca opened her bright-red smiling mouth, Elise knew. Why else would Becca be here, of all places, asking for benefits information?

Becca’s eyes widened. “Now that’s a crazy question.” Her hand went to her stomach. “My husband, of course. Mr. Hale.”

Even having expected to hear it, Elise was sure her blood froze in her veins. She took a careful look at the future ex—or maybe not?—Mrs. Hale. Her clothes hugged her petite frame, she couldn’t be any larger than a size two. The lady couldn’t be more than a handful of weeks along.

“I should really....” Disgust churned in Elise’s gut. At herself, for what she’d done. At Michael, for lying to her. She should have known better. Married men, telling lies—her mother’s husband had done it, returning to the mother of his children.

But Michael had promised.
Promised
.

Elise damn well should have known better.

She stood and held up the forms. “I need to check in with Tom before the end of the day. Is it all right if I bring these to you tomorrow?”

“Sure, honey. So long as you remember.”

“Great.” She turned to the glowing Mrs. Hale. “Congratulations again. Good luck with everything.”

If anybody said anything after she turned to walk away, she didn’t hear them. She ducked into the hall bathroom and dialed her supervisor at PermaSolv. The call went to voicemail. “Hey, Hailey, it’s Elise. I think I’m coming down with something. I may need some time off. I know HaleStorm Engineering requested to keep me on for a while longer, and I wanted to see if maybe you had somebody else you could send? They need someone detail oriented, with strong problem-solving skills. Project management skills and being well-versed in contracts would be a plus.” She sighed. “They’re dealing with something mission critical and I don’t want to leave them in a lurch, but I don’t think I can be here right now.”

She coughed a little for the sake of effect, and hung up the phone. With a tired exhale, she leaned her head against the cool tile of the bathroom wall, trying to calm the war being waged through her insides before she went out the door to face all of her mistakes.

***

M
ichael pulled up in front of the house he’d lived in with Becca, thinking of how much he’d loved the place when he’d found it. How Becca had spent her time remodeling every fucking square inch, because she hadn’t.

Well. It would sure as hell increase the resale value.

While he waited in the car for Becca to get there, he called Elise so he could share his good news.

“Hello, Michael.” Oh, shit. The frost in her voice went straight to his heart. Something wasn’t right.

“Hey.” The sun was setting. He looked around, watching for Becca. The security guard at HaleStorm had called to notify him she was on-premises again. Unless she’d gone someplace else, she should be there shortly. “Called to give you an update. Is something wrong?”

Silence.

More silence.

“Elise?”

Finally, a loud breath came though the phone. “Why don’t you ask your wife?”

Shit, shit, shit. “What did she do?”

“It’s a little more like what you did.”

Michael’s fist pounded the console. “Do us both a favor. Stop speaking in riddles and tell me what the hell is going on.”

“That’s a little hard to do in the middle of an office building. Hang the hell on.” From the sounds of things she closed a door, perhaps to the conference room where she’d been working during the previous week. “She was in here getting benefits information from HR. For prenatal care. She said she found out
recently
that you guys are expecting a child soon.” A hiccup sound came through the phone. “Goddammit Michael you said it had been a year—”

“Since we’ve lived together,” he growled. “You wanna know how long it’s been since we’ve fucked? And I mean fucked, because I don’t know when we stopped loving each other enough to call it anything else—”

He slammed his fist against the window. “It was a hell of a lot longer than a year ago.” His head fell backwards. “God damn her. I don’t even know what she’s trying to pull. I cannot
fucking
believe her.”

Rage raced through his system, heat and tingles jumped over his skin like live electricity. On the other side of the phone, he heard only silence. “Elise, this is the God’s honest truth.”

Nothing.

“Elise.”

“I don’t know what to believe. Who signs up for prenatal care if they’re not really pregnant?”

“Listen to me. Becca used to be a sweet girl but in the past couple of years a lot has changed. She’s playing a shitty, manipulative game. You can’t buy into this. You can’t. I
swear
to you, she’s lying.”

He took a calming breath and thought of Elise. His lips against hers, his skin against her skin. “Now do you want to ask me how long it’s been since you and I made love? Because I can sure as fuck tell you,” he growled into the phone, “that even when we went at it over the conference room table, I absolutely made love to you.”

Headlights appeared in his rear-view mirror. Damned timing. “Listen, I have to go. Do me a favor and promise me you’ll wait and talk to me about this. Meet me at the apartment tonight after work. Please.”

Silence.

“
Please.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you.” He hung up the phone and got out of the car, walking slowly up the sidewalk and down the driveway while Becca killed the lights and got out of the car.

“What were you doing at the offices today?”

She whirled around. “You startled me. What are you doing here?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “What, you thought I simply wouldn’t find out?”

Her mouth opened. “What?”

“I hear congratulations are in order,” he said. “Who’s the father?” He leaned forward, raising one eyebrow. “Sure as fuck isn’t me.”

Her mouth closed again.

“I do owe you an apology,” he said. He studied her, looking pale and small in front of the massive home that had belonged to only the two of them. “You were never happy with me, and vice-versa. I was a terrible husband, I was never home, and you deserved better.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I hope whoever got you knocked up will be that guy. But. You’re gonna have to do it without using my company’s health insurance. Sorry.”

She started crying then. “But don’t you remember? It was that night two months ago when you picked me up from that happy hour because I’d had too much to drink. You carried me into the bedroom, and....” Her lip trembled. More tears streamed down her cheeks.

Michael prayed for patience. “Yes, you had too much to drink. I brought you home and carried you to the bedroom, and you fell asleep as soon as I put you there. Not even a button out of place, I might add. I told you then, and I am reminding you now, that I can’t be the guy you call for help anymore.” He took a step back. “Especially not when you’re busy trying to turn the company my father built into rubble.”

Wide eyes. Blank stare. Her chin fell to the driveway’s frozen blacktop. “What?”

He pulled Karen Summers’s business card from his pocket. The card he’d found in Becca’s kitchen. “I had an interesting meeting before I came here. Did you know Karen Summers specializes in high-end commercial and residential real estate in the Tysons Corner area? Of course you knew. You had her business card. It happens that I’ve met her nephew so I recognized the name.” He flipped the card in his fingers. “I didn’t make the connection right away, but I figured out after awhile why you’ve been so reticent to sign those divorce papers. All the development going on in Tysons Corner. The value of HaleStorm Engineering’s commercial property has gone up quite a bit.”

Becca sniffled. “You can’t possibly think I’d be so awful.”

Michael smiled. “Oh, I do. If my company went under and then my only choice was to leverage the real estate, you’d be entitled to a piece of that action if you were still my wife, right? Was that the idea?”

She shivered. The tears started pouring down her face. “No,” she whispered. “I wanted you back. You were always married to that company more than me. I thought if you didn’t have the company— and then we’d have the money from selling the property as a fallback.”

Michael stared, long and hard. “Was getting pregnant part of that plan?”

“It was a mistake,” she wailed. “A stupid, drunken mistake. It was one time.”

“A big mistake,” Michael said. He drew a long breath. “But I sort of doubt it was one time. Anyway.” He clapped his hands together. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ve already explained to Karen Summers why my offices aren’t for sale. She is, however, preparing to let her nephew list this house. So you need to get ready to move. You will cease and desist in any and all dealings with either Anya Evans or any current and past HaleStorm Engineering customers. You will sign that divorce agreement.”

His hands clenched and released. “You will sign it without any further delay. If I have not heard from my attorney that those papers are signed, notarized, and at his office by the end of the day tomorrow, I will call the private investigator I hired a year and a half ago and have him send the photo evidence that you violated our prenuptial agreement.”

Becca’s mouth dropped open again. “But—”

“
If
you are in fact pregnant, those images are date-stamped. I can easily show that you didn’t wait for me to walk out the door before you started interviewing replacement fathers. I did warn you, and I do not bluff about these things. Am I clear?”

She simply stood there, face red.

“I’m waiting.”

She bowed her head. “We’re clear.”

“Good. I don’t want to hear from you again, Becca. And my clients better fucking not either.”

With that, he left

W
hen Michael got to the apartment, Elise stood in the center of the room with her coat on. Her bags, her keys, everything she’d brought with her the night before lay neatly stacked by the door, ready for her to leave.