“Come upstairs and don’t talk to anybody,” Blaine barks at me as he noses the vehicle into the underground parking garagefor his company offices. Once out of the car, he pushes me into a lift and hits the button for the top floor.
It ejects us into a foyer with soft carpet and tasteful artwork hung at regular intervals along the walls. He leads me between rows of desks with workers busy at their computers. They barely glance up as I walk past and my eyes are mostly fixed to the floor in front of me, trying to fight off the sense of impending doom.
“Take a seat,” he says inside the office, waving me towards a chair. My hands grip the arms with such force, my knuckles turn white.
“Let me text him,” I offer. “He’ll clear this whole thing up in a matter of seconds.”
“I don’t give a shit about his credit card. What Maddox spends his money on is his own business.”
I wave feebly at the office interior. “Seems a lot of trouble for someone who doesn’t care.”
He ignores me, opening and closing drawers, riffling through the contents. It’s strange to watch him now I’ve grown so used to Maddox. The father and son have the same build, the same features, the same depths in their identical blue eyes.
But Maddox stares at me with curiosity, with interest, with enjoyment. The man seated in front of me could burn my retinas with a single stare.
“Here.” He tosses a box onto the desk. A pregnancy test. He jerks his chin towards a door on the left-hand side of the wall behind him. “The bathroom’s through there. Go take the test, show me the result, and we’ll talk.”
A simple way of telling me he doesn’t know the first thing about his son. “I’m not pregnant.”
The eyes rake across my face again and I stare at the edge of the table, waiting for him to stop. “Then it won’t upset you to take the test.”
I pick up the packet, opening it to snag out the instructions. Another protest forms behind my lips but I keep it trapped there.
He’s right. It doesn’t bother me.
My feet drag as I head for the bathroom, but when I’m inside, it’s a relief to be free of Blaine’s glare. There’s a lock on the door and I click it, a temporary measure of safety.
With my underwear around my knees, sitting on the toilet, I read the list of instructions, then read through them again, only peeing once I’m holding the stick ready. A few drips hit my hand and I curl my nose in disgust, flushing before I scrub my hands with the fancy soap in the sink. A fresh bar. I bet at this level in the building, it gets replaced new each day.
I pull some tissues to protect my fingers as I hold the test, counting off the time in my head. Tears well in my eyes and I sniff them back. Ridiculous girl. Blaine obviously wants me contained or gone, miles from his son, but this isn’t a crisis unless I make it into one. The good thing about owning virtually nothing is it makes it easy to start again from scratch.
A pity those pragmatic thoughts do nothing to budge the knot forming in my chest. The connection that feels so much deeper than the short length of time Maddox and I have known each other.
Despite knowing I can’t be pregnant, I still experience a flush of relief when the symbols on the pee stick agree with me. I march into his office and place the test in front of him, slumping back in my chair.
His eyes barely touch upon it, the exercise more a demonstration of control than a necessity. “I told my son to stay away from you.”
The idea makes me snort. “And you thought that’d work? He’s a teenager, not your employee. You might as well have given him a green light.”
Blaine splays his hands, palms down, like he’s gathering strength from the solidity of his desk. “Tell me, is your ‘friendship’ with my son the reason you’re no longer at the club?”
“That and the last night I worked there, my landlord demanded a lap dance.”
His lips twitch and I turn to stare out the window. From here, there’s a clear line of sight across the lake, a few pleasure craft dotted about as the day’s fishing tours get into full swing. I want to get lost in the view, disconnect from everything in this power play of an office, but Blaine’s hard-edged voice demands my attention.
“How much is Maddox paying you not to work?”
“Nothing.” I steel myself to meet Blaine’s eyes, almost shaking as I force a show of nonchalance onto my features. If I’m being forced out, there’s no need to leave Maddox contaminated by the residuals of our fledgling relationship. A lie is easier. “He’s paying me to hide the fact he almost killed three people. Nothing to do with the club.”
“You’re not in a relationship?”
“We’re not fucking if that’s what you’re asking. Can I go now?”
“How much is he paying you to keep your mouth shut?”
The chair grows harder by the second and I shift so my left buttock is the one getting crushed instead of my right. “It’s not like that. He pays for clothes and food, treatment for my brother.”
His eyes narrow. “And how is Ant?”
