“I’m in one of the meeting rooms with Stacey and Brian,” she said, her voice sounding scared. “Jonah?—”
“I’ll take care of it, Lexi. I’ll get to the bottom of this and find whoever spread this news.”
“Jonah. The journalist knew personal details about us. Like where we had our first date. At that restaurant where Cora met us. And about us living together. No one else knows about that except?—”
“—except my Dad,” I answered, grimly.
If he had planted this purposefully, he was done for.
“I’ll take care of it, Lexi. Stay safe, and go home with Evie right away if you need to. I’ll handle it.”
“Jonah,” she began, her voice guarded. “Don’t do anything dangerous, please?”
I laughed. “Is that a command, my princess?”
“Yes, Jonah,” she said softly. “It is.”
“Then I’ll be careful,” I said, and after telling her I loved her, I hung up.
I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t bear the thought of Lexi being dragged through the mud, her reputation tarnished because, for some unfathomable reason, he and Cora didn’t approve of her.
And damn it all, Lexi had been right all along, and I had argued with her over this. I’d stood up for my Dad, and told Lexi flatly that she was wrong in her understanding of him.
I set my jaw and stood up. I couldn’t completely reverse the damage this article would cause Lexi, but I wasn’t going to take any more of Dad’s bullshit lying down. It was time to put him in his place and make amends for what I had put Lexi through.
As soon as I had gotten up from my desk, someone knocked on the door.
It was Tom from HR.
“Are you busy?” he asked, walking in.
I struggled internally for a moment but decided to give in.
“I’ve got time for you,” I grunted out, sitting back down at my desk. “Let’s get to it, then. I’m guessing this is about that article?”
Tom gave me a strange look but he nodded. “PR needs to put out a response to that. They’re working on it.” He hesitated. “I need to know if?—”
“We are seeing each other,” I interrupted him. “And living together,” I said, deciding that I needed to be honest with him. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Tom looked taken aback and paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts.
“Well, actually, I was going to say, given the policy changes you implemented when you became interim CEO to end the internship-to-full-time conversions, it isn’t a problem anymore.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You mean?”
He nodded. “Lexi was never going to be offered a full-time position anyway. The policy doesn’t allow it. But now that the article is out, it actually works in our favor. She’s leaving at the end of her internship term this week regardless, so even if we start the investigation, it becomes moot once she’s no longer anemployee. We would have had to fire her if she’d already been a full-time employee.”
My jaw tightened. I’d implemented that policy to protect the company’s resources, never imagining it would one day protect me or Lexi in the process. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
“What else?” I asked gruffly, not liking this conversation one bit.
Tom continued. “We’ll have PR release a statement saying we’re reviewing the matter internally, and that should take the heat off the company until she leaves.”
I hated being a few floors above Lexi, knowing her future, and being helpless. I hated not being able to make life easier for her in any way.
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t create a position for her now. Not after this article. And staying on as CEO if she worked here was impossible anyway.
Then it hit me.
