Page 44 of Sweet Surrender

“Danielle Stevenson. Doesn’t ring a bell?” When I lifted a shoulder, he laughed bitterly. “No, I guess it wouldn’t. Not with all the women you run through like Kleenex. Let me refresh your memory. I brought her to the holiday party last year when my girlfriend got sick. Dani needed a night out, and I wanted to impress her a little, I guess. Ringing any bells yet?”

Last year’s holiday party. How was I supposed to remember that? “You’re saying I slept with your sister?”

His lip curled in a snarl. “I’m saying you slept with my sister, her husband found out, and he left her. She had nothing. She went into a deep depression, wound up… sick.” His voice broke, but he pushed past it. “She ended up having to live with our parents again because we’re afraid of what she’ll do to herself if she’s left alone. And that’s on you.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to your sister,” I told him, choosing my words carefully. “But I don’t sleep with married women. That’s a line I don’t cross. She must’ve taken off her ring.”

“Besides…” Maxim interjected. “That wouldn’t be Mr. Goldsmith’s fault. She made a decision, and it’s unfortunate how things turned out. Is that why you orchestrated that article?”

It was a gamble. We didn’t know he was behind the article. Even his presence at the rec center didn’t mean he was the culprit behind the photos.

Except it paid off.

“Not his fault? I should’ve known you’d take his side!” He was shaking, red-faced, sweat now trickling down the sides of his thin face. “Guys like you think you can get away with it. Whatever you want! You throw some money at a problem, and it’s done. You meet a woman, you fuck her, you abandon her, and forget she exists. What’s it matter? You’ll just find somebody new, right? Who cares about what happens to them?”

“Which is why you tried to destroy my reputation.” My fists tightened, hidden from view by my desk. “To get back at me.”

“Hell yes, that’s why.” Lifting his chin, he added, “I did it for Dani.”

What a fucking hero. “So you would’ve destroyed the company that employed you and your coworkers to get back at me for something I didn’t know had happened and couldn’t have changed anyway?”

Realization dawned upon the prick, but it was too fucking late.

“Security will escort you from the building,” I announced as Maxim went to the door and waved someone inside. “Once you’ve taken your personal items from your desk, you’ll turn over any keys to the properties you manage before you leave.”

“You fucking bastard.” Luke snarled, but it was too late for that. Hell, I might have respected him more if he’d been a man about it and dealt with this face-to-face. He was still arguing, shouting, and shaking as two guards came in at Maxim’s signal and took him from the room.

There was a lot of hushed whispering and shocked exclamations out there. I released a deep breath, sinking against the back of my chair.

“Imagine that.” Maxim shook his head as he watched things unfold from my doorway. “Trying to tank your life and the whole company all because his sister decided to cheat on her husband with you.”

“He needed somebody to blame,” I muttered. “It’s over now.”

The truth behind my words hit me like a cannonball. It was all over. Luke had done me a favor in the long run. He had given me a reason to go to that party at Club Caramel to find Sienna there and connect with her. He had also driven us apart, following me to that rec center, selling those photos to the tabloids. He had brought an end to what he had started. It was all over.

I didn’t know where to go next. I didn’t know anyone who could show me a direction to go in.

Or did I? There was one person who wouldn’t bullshit me because he never had. Considering I couldn’t talk to my best friend about his sister, there was only one other man to turn to.

Picking up my phone, I reluctantly sent Dad a text.

Me: Can you meet for a drink at five?

“It’s not that you got involved with Sienna.” My father sipped his scotch, wearing a thoughtful expression. “That’s not what everyone got so upset about. I can speak for your mother when I tell you that.”

The bar was still fairly quiet this early in the evening, which was not something I would complain about. Pouring my guts out to my dad was enough of a pain in the ass without worrying about witnesses. “What is it? Because I need to make things right with a lot of people. Now that I have this work issue put behind me, I can deal with my personal life.”

“It was the sneakiness behind it, for one thing. The fact that you were supposed to be working together to save your reputation and company, but you ended up doing the very thing that got you into trouble in the first place. One day, when you have your own kids, you’ll understand what it’s like to be a parent standing on the sidelines, watching your son do precisely the wrong thing. It’s difficult for a parent to sit back and witness that.”

I could see where he was coming from as I stared into my glass, mulling it over. “Neither of us intended for it to happen,” I admitted. It wasn’t easy opening up to my father this way. While we didn’t have the sort of contentious relationship Colton used to have with Barrett, we weren’t exactly warm. I wasn’t Rose.

“For what it’s worth…” he said. “Sienna could do much worse, and you sure as hell could do worse than Sienna,” he added, rolling his eyes. “God knows.”

“Well, that’s over now. I’ll have to patch up my reputation on my own while she does the same for herself since I ruined it.”

“Haven’t you figured out by now that people have very short memories? I’d bet the cabin in Vail that if Sienna had her team publish a story about one of your employees going out of his way to ruin you, this would all be wrapped up with no problem.”

A tempting idea, for sure, but… “It’s better if we don’t have anything to do with each other now.” I went out of my way to avoid his penetrative stare.

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