Page 77 of Power Play

“What did the defense do?” I asked.

“It was gross. They tried to make her sound like a whore. Showed pictures of all these dresses she wore. Like she was jerking all these guys around to set them up. And I kept staring at her dad waiting for him to object or something, but then I realized it was his idea to set her up like that. To use her like that. I swear it took everything in me not to lay that fucker out in the courtroom.”

My hands were in fists at my sides. I never met the guy. Never even saw him. But I wanted to beat him to a pulp. “The prosecution pointed out that there were no witnesses called who could corroborate that. So yeah, I believed her.”

What if they’d called me? I wondered. For a while after that night, I’d told myself she must have slept with half the guys her dad robbed. But I had to work hard to try and believe that, and in the end – I never really could. She wasn’t an actress. Or a liar.

She was exactly what I thought she’d been that night.

Real.

The biggest con my dad played was on me.

“She was going to go to school to be a teacher,” I said.

“Yeah. There wasn’t any money left for that and he wasn’t about to give up one of his biggest assets and let her go to school,” Dillon said. “A few months after it was over, she tracked me down at a charity event in New York. Offered me everything she had left after the lawyers and the penalties were paid.” Dillon shook his head. “It was a couple thousand dollars. I tried to convince her, her father’s sins were his own. Told her I wouldn’ttake a dime, and she needed to start thinking about the future. But I got the impression, she wasn’t ready to do that.”

No. Instead she’d sought out other victims, doing the same thing she’d done with me. That she’d done with Dillon. Fuck, I’d been an ass to her. Had other guys done the same?

She’d spent five years paying a debt that wasn’t hers.

“She doesn’t owe you jack shit, Liam. I hope you know that. I hope you’re not some guy dicking her around just to be an asshole because you lost some money.”

I was totally a guy, dicking her around, just to be an asshole. But not because I lost the money.

Because I lost my heart.

“I gotta go,” I said, pushing away the coffee. “Thanks, man.” We shook hands.

“Hey, you guys are welcome to come here for dinner any time. The wings are pretty great.”

“Thanks, but Tess is a vegetarian.”

“So is my son!” Dillon said. “We have good veggie options. Come on by, you’ll be taken care of.”

I nodded,told him to say goodbye to the kids for me, my mind on what I needed to do next.

Go home and have a long overdue conversation with my nanny.

And then I had to fire her.

I foundthem on the wide, sandy beach. They wore sweatshirts over swimming suits. Hats and sunglasses. They were bent over something in the sand and two other kids were with them.

Do not stare at her ass, I told myself.You’ve messed this up enough. Staring at her ass will only make it worse.

As I walked down to the ocean, wondering how in the world I wasn’t going to blow this, the three kids raced to the water, rinsed off the things they had in their hands and then raced back to Kit. She examined what they had and pointed to a driftwood log further up on the beach out of the reach of the tide. Like lemmings, the kids ran over and set their treasures down.

“Hey,” I said, a few steps behind her. She turned and lifted her hand to cover her eyes. The green sweatshirt she wore pulled up enough that I could see the tie of her bikini bottoms on her hip and the smooth perfect skin of her thigh. The curve of that spectacular ass.

Jesus, man, stop thinking about her ass and just fire her already.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked, looking over at the kids who were now focused on that tree limb.

“Finding some shells,” she said. “The tide is going out so we found a horseshoe crab and a whole bunch of other things. They’re drying out on the limb over there and then we’re going to go into town and get another book on shells.”

Oh my God, was I really going to fire this woman?

“Where have you been?” She asked with a smile. “You were already gone this morning when we got up.”

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