“Maybe. They accused me of stealing. They showed me documents with my name on them that made it look like I was the one who was manipulating the loan program. I don’t know how they did it, but they set me up. They knew I was onto them and they set me up to take the fall.”
“Oh.” Her eyes went wide.
He smiled without humor. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it could easily have been me and I’m just claiming to be framed. And you know what? I can’t prove it. If I could, things would have turned out much, much differently.” He grimaced.
“I was charged with corruption and grand larceny. You have no idea how crushing that was. How completely mortifying and humiliating. How frustrating to not be able to prove my innocence. How furious I was at the people I’d trusted, the people I’d committed my career to.”
He closed his eyes for a couple of slow breaths, trying to relax the hands that wanted to clench into fists.
“I got a good lawyer,” he continued. “I had to sell my condo to pay the legal bills. My family helped as much as they could, but it cost a hell of a lot. Then somehow, the shit hit the fan. I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know what happened, but I gather Swenarchuk and Burton got greedy. You’d think,” he said, shaking his head in wonder, “when I caught it, they would have cleaned up their act. But no. They kept going. Stupid assholes. My only consolation is they ended up in jail and I didn’t.”
Her eyebrows lifted in the unspoken question.
“I had to make a deal. My lawyer advised me it would be the best thing to do. I couldn’t prove my innocence and it looked bad, so we cut a deal that I’d testify against them in exchange for immunity. I was a small player in the company. And they had one problem with their case against me—they could never figure out what I did with the money.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Because there wasn’t any. So I got off. But…I didn’t really get off.” He bowed his head. “Just try to find a job with that hanging over your head. Not a chance. I spent months pounding the pavement. I’d had to sell my condo so I moved in with my folks. Not a happy situation for any of us.”
“I needed to start over, so I decided to come to Santa Barbara. Nick was here, he offered to let me stay with him while I got on my feet.”
Tara watched him intently, taking it all in.
“It was…humiliating,” he admitted, looking down at his hands. “And to be honest, when my grandma told me it was an olive company, I kind of went, holy shit, olives? But the truth was, I was desperate. I figured if I could just work for a while, I could do up a new résumé and in a while, when everyone’s forgotten about NCC, I’d be able to move back to San Francisco and find something new.”
He raised his head and met her gaze head-on. “I never intended to stay here, Tara. So you can rest assured, your job—and your company—are safe from me. I’m not trying to take them away from you.”
She nodded. Emotions flickered over her face, so quickly he couldn’t get a sense of what she was thinking. For a moment he thought he saw the gloss of tears in her eyes and her mouth tremble. But she quickly tightened her expression and nodded.
“Thank you for telling me that,” she said. “I suppose you know I have to tell my grandfather about this.”
He lifted his chin, tightening his jaw. “You don’t have to. Once again, Tara, I’m asking you to look inside yourself and ask—do you really think I would steal from my employer?”
She didn’t answer.
Fuck. She didn’t trust him. He knew that already—because of her refusal to submit totally to him. That required complete trust and if she believed he could actually be a lying thief—there wasn’t much hope she would ever trust him with everything she had.
“Please. Take me home now,” she said in a low voice.
He sighed. If she couldn’t come to him freely, knowing herself, accepting herself and accepting him—then there was no point in pushing it.
The drive back to Santa Barbara was excruciatingly quiet. Joe didn’t try to talk to her, to convince her of anything—his innocence, that she shouldn’t tell Grandpa, that they had more than just sex and bondage.
She’d listened to Joe’s words and had felt them like small stabs of a knife. He’d been fired from his last job for stealing from the company. He hadn’t told Grandpa about that. And he was planning on leaving.
What should have had her jumping into the air and pumping a fist—all of it—instead had her slumping into a disappointed, hurting lump.
She could go to Grandpa, tell him the truth about Joe and he’d have no choice but to fire him. He’d be gone and she’d be back on her own again, on track to taking over Santa Ynez Olives all by herself.
And he’d never intended to stay. That too should have had her jumping for joy.
Instead she felt a small crack in her heart, a painful, splintering crack.
And why was that?
She didn’t even want to analyze that. The pain in her chest terrified her. Surely to God she hadn’t had some crazy idea they could actually have something together?
That would just be insane. They’d had sex. Nothing more.
And she didn’t want anything more.
This was so not what he’d planned on happening when he moved to Santa Barbara.
Getting all tangled up with a woman—and not just any woman, but the woman he had to work with—hadn’t been in his plans. Even when he’d gotten the idea that if he could tame her, help her find herself, it would make things easier at work, he hadn’t foreseen that his emotions would get all snagged up in the sex and the domination. That her lack of trust would be so agonizingly hurtful. Shit.
Why the hell was that, anyway?
What had just happened between them was something he’d never experienced before. He’d had women who learned to submit. And some who did it naturally. He’d shown them pleasure, taken his own pleasure, taken their gift, but this…was something different. He cared about Tara. He wanted her to find herself and know herself for her own sake—so she could know the joy of submission and how freeing that was.
She was all bound by her own expectations, her grandfather’s expectations, society’s expectations—she needed to be set free like no one he’d ever met and he knew he could do it. If she’d only let herself go. A deep sadness filled him that she wouldn’t, that she wasn’t going to let herself know the freedom of submission.
And they still had to work together. As long as he still had a job, which likely wasn’t going to be much longer.
Sasha flipped through the newspaper Saturday morning, eyes hurting, head pounding, when a classified ad caught her eye. It was a job advertisement for a community outreach representative at the Southern California Museum of Art. As she quickly scanned it, she realized she actually met the qualifications, other than the fact she had no real experience.
A job. She bit her bottom lip. Maybe that’s what she needed. Despite the charity work she did, her life felt so empty lately. She needed to do something real. Something that had meaning for her. Like at the center—working with the kids and seeing the good things the center was doing for them made the fundraising work more meaningful. She’d actually be earning a paycheck and doing something she enjoyed.
Grandpa would have a heart attack. It drove him crazy that Tara worked and that was a family business. If she went out and got a job—he’d probably cut off her allowance or something. Except—if she had a job she’d have her own money and wouldn’t need to depend on him for every dollar. The job probably didn’t pay much, but it would be her own money—it would be her independence.
It was a crazy idea. She didn’t need to work. She’d just keep doing what she was doing. It didn’t matter.