Page 122 of Worth Every Penny

If I was inclined to self-pity, I’d be dropping into an enormous hole of it right about now. As it is, I’m teetering somewhere near the edge, refusing to take that last step.

I’mfalling in love with you. I am in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for years.

I didn’t intend to say those words tonight, but now I’ve spoken them, I know they’re true. The last few weeks have solidified the feelings that I kept locked away for all that time, because you can’t hit on your best friend’s sister. Resistance was easier. But denial… that’s as sweet as it gets.

You can’t feel pain when you’re in denial. So much fucking denial. Not only about my feelings for her, but about what I’d done for her father and the impact that would have on us.

I might not have struck Gerard down with my own hand, but I played a role in events that overwhelmed him. That guilt has always tinged my grief, making it feel like a dirty thing I had to hide away.

At the funeral, I watched Kate toss dirt into the grave, and it was as if her pain subsumed my own. Hers was pure where mine was sordid. She was a broken-hearted girl whose perfect father was dead.

I didn’t want to be the one to destroy her memory of him, but nor could I be around her, continually having to face the lie I’d committed to tell. When my father summoned me to the States to learn the ropes over there, I jumped at the opportunity. Buried myself in work.

And yet, when I saw her standing on that balcony at Jack’s party, I knew I had to have her this time. She wasn’t a teenager undressing in a hot tub, trying to seduce me; I didn’t have to say no anymore. And somehow, I’d convinced myself that finally buying her father’s company made everything right again. Cleaned the slate so I could start over.

Only it didn’t. Not even close.

A battering starts up on my door. I jerk upright in my seat.

“Nico? Open the fucking door. Your security out here is going to kill me if you don’t open up.” Jack’s voice rouses me from my stupor. I check the time. It’s after midnight. My stomach lurches. Why the fuck is Jack here? Does he know about Kate?

“Mr. Hawkston?” The voice of one of my security team comes from outside the apartment.

I get up. “I’m coming.”

I unlock the door to see Jack, red-faced and furious, his arms pinned behind his back by my head of security. Jack’s a big guy, but he looks small, held captive like that.

“You can release Mr. Lansen,” I tell the man.

Jack immediately lurches forward as the huge bodyguard releases him with a slight shove. Jack turns to scowl at him, brushing down the sleeves of his dark overcoat.

“What the fuck?” Jack spits. “Your men are brutes.”

My bodyguard retreats and I close the door behind him. “What do you expect if you’re going to show up in the middle of the night, yelling the place down?” I reply.

Jack huffs and marches past me into my apartment before coming to an abrupt stop and spinning to face me.

“Martin Brooks is going to steal the spa project.” The words spill from Jack’s mouth, and suddenly his foul mood and panicked arrival at my flat make sense. He tips his head to stare at the ceiling. “That bastard is going to steal it from under our noses. He’s going to—”

“Jack, stop. Take a breath.”

But Jack is pacing like a confused greyhound trying to win a race, first one way, then the other. “He told Kate. He fucking told her everything. She called me and let me have it. She hates me. She’s never going to forgive me. This is an almighty fuck up. He told her—”

“I know.”

Jack’s frantic movement slows as he turns his eyes on me. Beneath his foot, something crunches. His attention drops to the floor as he raises his leather-soled shoe, revealing a crushed splinter of glass beneath it. Then, as if he’s seeing the apartment for the first time since he entered, his gaze roves, following the trail of glass to the wrecked picture.

The drawing itself is still in one piece, hanging in one half of the broken frame. Gerard Lansen’s serious side-profile staresinto the distance, Kate’s unmistakable signature in the bottom right-hand corner of the impressive charcoal sketch.

“What happened here?”

I say nothing, waiting for him to put the pieces together.

He crunches through the glass towards the picture, stopping a few feet away, toeing the red ribbon with his shoe.

My stomach dips, a knot forming in my chest. I’m too tired for this, but I brace myself for the moment of realisation.

He swings round to face me, nostrils flaring. “How do you already know that Martin Brooks told Kate? Has she been here tonight? Did she come here first? Did she come to you first?”

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