He could tell from the look in her eyes that she did not believe him. He wanted to take her in his arms and get her the hell out of there. To prove to her that he was sincere.
“Actually, Lessa,” Sabrina interjected, “considering the recent turn of events, I’m hopeful that you and I might work out a deal. You only have to give him the company back if he prevents a takeover, correct? Which is dependent upon me selling you my shares.”
And suddenly he saw where Sabrina was going with this. She wanted to take advantage of Lessa’s emotions to try and talk her out of her stock.
“We’re two women who have been betrayed by Rick,” Sabrina continued. “Sisters in pain, so to speak. Sell me your shares. Give me the company instead of Rick.”
Lessa appeared to hesitate. She couldn’t really be considering this, could she? “Lessa,” he began, “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“He betrayed not only your father, but you,” Sabrina said. She grabbed the contract and ran it through her fingers, as if ready to rip it to shreds. She walked over and sat on the edge of her desk, directly in front of Lessa. “I sign this and he gets the company. Sell me your stock instead and I’ll give you the same deal you were going to give me.”
“That’s enough,” Rick said angrily to Sabrina. He took Lessa’s hand. “I had changed my mind. I wasn’t going to go through with it. You have to believe me. When I bought that stock you’d just fired me. I had no other options.”
Lessa pulled her hand away and closed her eyes, as if fighting back the pain.
How could he have allowed this to happen? The last thing he wanted was for her to get hurt. “I don’t want your stock anymore. We’ll renegotiate.”
Sabrina’s voice snaked in. “Desperate words from a desperate man. You can’t possibly believe him, can you, Lessa?”
“You’re right, Sabrina,” she replied. “I don’t want to give this company to him. But I don’t have a choice. I can’t bear the thought of you breaking it up and selling it off piece by piece.” She took the contract out of Sabrina’s hands and laid it on the table. She picked up a pen and handed it to her. “Could you sign this, please?”
Sabrina hesitated before finally signing. She begrudgingly handed the contract to Lessa. “You just lost everything,” she said. “For what?”
But Lessa didn’t answer. She walked over to Rick and handed him the contract. “You worked hard for this.” And with that, she walked out of the room and out of his life.
How could she have been so foolish as to believe he really cared about her, to believe he would not betray her? And finding out through Sabrina only added to her humiliation. How could he have done this to her? Tears stung her eyes as she hurried toward the car. Just as she was about to get inside, she felt a hand on her arm.
“I need to talk to you,” Rick said, steering her toward a private area by the beach. “This is a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding?” She shook her head sadly. “You warned me, didn’t you?” It had been a brilliant yet simple plan. A trap that she had walked right into. Did she really think Rick would ever agree to be partners, especially with someone he held in such low esteem? Their affair had been nothing but a distraction for him, an opportunity that she herself had offered. She didn’t blame him so much as herself. She had been a fool.
“When I bought that stock we were not involved,” he said.
“But after we were involved you didn’t tell me, did you?”
“I didn’t see any point until I could prove to you otherwise.”
“You planned everything, right down to your own firing. You pushed me into firing you just so you could buy stock. And then when I asked you back, you knew that you’d be able to get rid of me.”
“And I planned on firing you just as soon as I got my company back. That’s all true.”
“Revenge,” she said softly. She had fired him and he’d planned on doing the same thing to her.
“But that was before I got to know you. Before I began to care about you.”
She desperately wanted to believe him. But how could she? It might be another lie. The more she thought about Rick and Sabrina, the more she felt they deserved each other. Sitting there in that office, the two of them had been wily and frightening, firing each other, sleeping with each other, making deals behind each other’s backs. It made her sick. Maybe she didn’t have the stomach for this business after all. She needed a little time to digest all that had happened to her and consider her next move.
“When people care about each other, they help each other,” she said. “They look out for each other.”
“I’m giving you back your stock,” he said, as if that made everything all right.
“I don’t want it back.”
“I’ll pay you for it. I’ll pay a premium. Whatever you want.”
She looked into his eyes, desperately searching for some sign of the man she had grown to care about. She wanted to believe him, believe that this had all been a colossal misunderstanding, but how could she?
“You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about money. It never was.”
Thirteen
It was official. She was lost.
Lessa scooted forward in her seat as she drove slowly down the two-lane dirt road in Connecticut, hurrying toward a board meeting in the middle of nowhere. On either side of the road was a landscape more appropriate for Halloween than Christmas: deserted farmlands, their brown, dried-out grasses blowing in the wind. Every now and then she would see a lone abandoned house or barn with the roof caved in. Lessa followed the winding road down a hill and found herself enveloped in fog. She turned on her fog lights and continued, slowly making her way through the thick, cotton clouds. She had agreed to have the meeting at this out-of-the-way location because it was Christmas Eve and many board members were already at their vacation homes throughout New England. This just happened to be the halfway point. But the last thing she felt like doing on Christmas Eve was driving around dirt country roads in search of an ornery board and their deceitful, if charming, president.
At the thought of Rick, her stomach turned over. This would be the first time she had seen him since they had returned from the Bahamas. Despite his repeated phone calls over the past two days, she had not spoken with him. What was the point? He had her shares. Although she had been a fool, he had played by her rules. And she had lost.
And now she had no choice but to resign her position on the board. It was ridiculous to think that she could stay on. After all, she had never fit in with the stuffy and shortsighted people she was surrounded by, the same people who had fired her father. And now that she had lost her stake in the company, why would they keep her on? They would not. It was time to bow out gracefully.
Unfortunately, it was proving easier to walk away from the company she had thought she loved than it was to walk away from Rick. She had barely slept all night, filled with dread at the thought of seeing him again. Instead she had walked the floor, analyzing and reanalyzing the situation. She didn’t need Psych 101 to figure out what had happened. It boiled down to one issue: honesty. This whole thing could have been avoided if she had just been honest with herself. After all, did she really think that Rick would agree to be her partner? Did she really think that just because he had made love to her he would fall in love? Rick had remained honest to himself and his business. It was she who was the traitor.
She had underestimated his immense attraction. With one kiss, Rick could make a woman forget who she was and where she was going. It was the way he listened, the way he looked at her when she spoke. He made her feel as if she were the most interesting person in the world.
Time, she thought. She just needed some time to clear her head before seeing him again. She needed some time to think before even mentioning his name. But she didn’t have any time. In fact, according to her watch, the board meeting had already started.