“After our interview and after I told him to hire you.”
I held my head tall, knowing she was looking for a weakness she could pounce on. Maybe she was doing it to protect her brother, maybe she was just that kind of person.
“We have a meeting with the board at nine. Our first since Gabe took over.” So, she called him Gabe as well. Score one point for telling me the truth, but the amount of lies he’d told me still left the tally uneven. She picked up the picture of Reid, and I wanted to grab it from her, feeling protective of him. Her eyes jumped to mine, perfectly groomed brows furrowing. “God, he’s Gabe’s, isn’t he?”
“Did he fail to mention that?” I snapped, biting my cheek because this was my first day and it wouldn’t do for her to fire me within the first hour.
Her hard exterior slipped, regret deepening the hues of her amber eyes. She looked back at the picture. “He looks just like my brother did when he was that age. Before…”
I swallowed, knowing what she was about to say, remembering his story of the abuse. Another truth. And suddenly my view of this woman morphed. The older sister who had wanted to protect her little brother, but he had been the one who had protected her all those years. What had she suffered knowing all he had endured? And had her life been any easier?
She returned the picture to my desk. “Did he know?” she asked. “Before he left?”
Guilt slashed her features, and I wondered what she would have to be guilty about.
“No. I found out two and a half months after he left. I tried to tell him, but…” The agony returned. “He had moved on already, so no, he never knew.”
She looked like she wanted to say something but shut her mouth before she set the words free. Pushing her hair off her shoulder, she sauntered out of my office saying, “Welcome to the team,” without turning back to me.
Scratching my head, I tried to put the strange conversation to the side. Tina had given me my credentials, and so I logged into the system, amazed that they had my information loaded already. The technology differed from Bradman’s, but Gabe’s assistant Sean had swung by earlier and scheduled time later that morning to train me on the systems.
It would be a learning curve, but I’d had the same when moving to my last company. I spent the next twenty minutes acquainting myself with the rest of the floor, meeting the other executives in the company. I had just returned to my office whenGabe walked in. The air rushed from my lungs, and suddenly I was in Jacksonville again, twenty-four and in love. It didn’t matter how much I hated him, my heart would always be his, and it leaped every time I saw him.
“The board has arrived. We’re heading down to the fourth-floor conference room to meet with them.”
“You don’t use the conference room up here?” I asked, not sure what else to say and surprised I’d found my voice.
“No, that’s for our team meetings. The board doesn’t get that luxury.”
Confusing to say the least since the board was an oversight to any company. Disdain had tainted his words, which left me even more confused.
He stepped further into the office. “Are you all right?”
Eyes squinting, I said, “Am I all right? That’s an odd question coming from the man who left me devastated two months before our wedding, left me to clean up the mess of RSVPs and cancel arrangements all while trying to convince myself to keep breathing because the pain would someday cease. Which it did not, by the way. Oh, and then learning I was carrying his child and having him ignore my calls to tell him that.” I walked around my desk and right up to him. “And you know the worst part? The one that really drove the knife through what remnants there were of the heart you shredded? That you were with another woman when I was curled up on the bathroom floor clutching the pregnancy test in tears.”
His mouth fell open, confusion creasing his eyes.
“Yeah, guess you know now that every time you lied to me about not leaving me for another woman, I knew the truth. Unless you just moved on that fast. I’m not sure which thought hurt more, but they both did. So don’t ask me if I’m all right when I now work for that man.”
“Tori, I didn’t?—”
“Don’t, Gabe.” I turned back to my desk and grabbed my notebook and pen. “Let’s just go to the meeting, and then I’ll question my sanity as to why I subjected myself to this.”
Hazel eyes fractured with color and a wounded look met mine when I turned back around.
“Time’s ticking, you two,” Olivia said from the hall. “It’s your show, William.”
Another moment of conflict. She only called him Gabe to those who were close to him, using William for business and the others they worked with. Yet more layers to a man I had thought I knew but in reality, was a mystery to me.
“Sure,” he said, running a hand through his hair.
Demeanor morphing, he straightened his suit jacket, his eyes hardening. I had to admit he looked sexy, even if I didn’t want to. Suits were his thing, and he made them look good. I bit my lip as he turned and walked out of my office without saying another word.
I remembered how darkness would shadow his features, hiding the playful, sexy man and turning him into something frightening. This was that man. The one he had kept from me but who had slipped in occasionally. And I stood frozen, wondering if this was the expectation and with me he’d been free of it. Able to be himself, the man he wanted to be.
I shook off the thought and the sensation that was burning in my chest. Catching up, I hopped into the elevator with Gabe and Olivia.
“Did you bring the paperwork, Liv?” he asked her.
