Pain shot through my cheeks when I offered him a tight smile. "Your insanity will make everyone at this party talk.” Even now, I could feel eyes branding that awful word—IMPOSTOR—into my back.
He lifted a broad shoulder. "Nobody's paying attention to us. They're all more interested in the free booze."
"That almost sounds convincing if it weren’t for the fact every single woman out here wants to throw her panties at you.”
"Gemma," he murmured seriously, his voice low enough where only I could hear him. The intensity behind my name—my real name—startled me. “I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since I left your place.”
Didn’t he realize that it had been the same for me? That nearly every time I closed my eyes, I saw the heartbreak that wrecked his features the night he confronted me about who I was.
“Yeah, well ... I know how that feels,” I said at last.
“Tell me something.” His hand clenched on my back. There was something about his touch tonight—something that summed up every bit of longing going through me—and fists rammed against my ribcage.
“Yes?”
“How long were you planning to keep up this charade?”
When I didn’t reply, his hand moved from my back, finding my face. His knuckles stroked my high cheekbone. "Not going to answer me?” I shook my head, and he said, “All I can think about is ripping this dress right down the middle."
Even though I knew he was probably telling me that to get a rise out of me, a visible shiver coursed my body, spreading like wildfire.
Dear God, I needed an intervention because all he had to do was murmur a few words and I was ready to tear the dress off for him. Pleased to have elicited the response from me he wanted, Oliver said, "But since that’s not possible and since you’re being evasive, right now I’ll just hold you.”
“And tomorrow?”
His fingers moved from my chin, to the column of my throat, and finally to my collarbone. His touch was fire and ice on my skin—a bittersweet echo that pulsed through my body—and I fluttered my lashes together.
“If you’re not going to answer me, why would I tell you?”
“Asshole,” I whispered.
Although my eyes were still closed, I felt his heavy sigh. It rumbled against my chest, through my body, and I wanted to melt into this man. Wanted to wrap myself around him, and feel him everywhere—beneath my fingertips, on my tongue, inside my body.
But most importantly, I wanted the man himself.
And because of that, because I knew what he was expecting from me the next day, when the song ended thirty seconds later, I left the courtyard.
*
“Margaret’s looking for you,” Oliver informed me ten minutes later, and the manila folder I was gripping fell from my hands. Closing the office door behind him, he locked it. “Don’t worry, she won’t come up here because she assumes you’re gone, but I figured this might be where I’d find you.”
Trembling, I grabbed the folder from the floor and snapped it shut. Not only had found nothing that might help me solve the last few pieces of the puzzle, the man I’d let down so horribly had discovered me in yet another compromising position. His eyes studied me carefully as I returned the folder to its rightful spot, and I slammed the drawer shut.
Standing upright, I came around to the side of the desk. “I can’t imagine the awful things you must be thinking about me,” I said, my movements jerky as I threw my phone inside the blue satin clutch that matched my dress. He glanced at my gloved hands and then to my face. “But I’m not a bad person.”
Your mother is.
He paced the office, trailing his fingertips along the various white furnishings. “You said you never took a penny from Margaret.”
“I didn’t. After my mom died when I was sixteen, I came to Los Angeles to ask Margaret for help. I came here stupidly thinking she’d take me in, and we’d be this big happy family.”
“And what happened when you arrived?”
“She sent Michael Scott to meet with me. She sent him to tell me that my father’s will was solid and that I didn’t have the power to contest it. He offered me a settlement—I don’t know how much it was for—but I didn’t take it.”
Gripping the edges of the desk, I let out a rough noise. “Pride can be a vicious, vicious thing.”
“Yes it can.” Focusing on the wall of bookshelves at the left of the room, one corner of his mouth moved in a grim smile. “But what I want to know is what changed for you? What made you decide to come here pretending to be someone else to get close to my mother if you’re not after money.”
Supporting my weight against the desk, I glared at the floor and shook my head. “I can’t do this,” I whispered, and I heard him move closer to me. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can.” I could nearly taste the scotch when he moved his face inches from mine. As he got rid of what little space was left between our bodies, he held my face between his hands. “I want to hear what changed for you.”
I dragged a breath through my nose and replayed the call that had started this mess in my mind. I rehashed every truth—every disappointment—I’d faced since that call. And I broke.
“Six months ago I received a call from a man who told me I didn’t know everything about my father—that there was more to his death than I thought I knew. He didn’t block his number, so I called him back. The call came from Emerson & Taylor headquarters.”
“Someone at the company called and told you that shit?” Oliver demanded, and I moved my head slowly. “Do you know who it was?”
“No. I wish to God I did, but I have no clue. All I know is I couldn’t sleep after that call. I couldn’t think clearly, or do my job, and I had to know if what he said was true.” At his blank expression, I let out a strangled cry. “I know it probably doesn’t make sense to you, but it was important to me!”
“I never said it didn’t make sense to me,” he growled against my mouth. “So after that call, you came up with this elaborate hoax?”
“Yes.” Ashamed, I squeezed my eyes closed. Saline stung the back of my eyelids, and I prayed the deluge wouldn’t spill over. “A friend helped me come up with Lizzie and the rest...”
“And did you find anything?” When I didn’t immediately respond, he tilted my face back, and I felt tears trickle from the corners of my eyes. He brushed his thumbs over the dampness. “You came all this way looking for answers. Did you find them?”
“Yes.” My shoulders drooped, and I sagged my body forward, letting him hold me. “We figured out that Margaret and Michael Scott forged my father’s will. My father left everything to me, and they took it all.”
A harsh noise leapt from the back of his throat, and I opened my eyes just as he dropped his hands from my face and staggered back. He dragged his palm over his mouth. “Do you have proof of that?”
“I have the original will and the forgery. I have proof your mother has been doing every shady thing under the sun at that company.” And then, I found myself telling him everything from the beginning, leaving out nothing but Pen’s involvement and our suspicions about his ex-girlfriend.
When I finished, the muscles in his neck were tight as he brought me to him again. “And you haven’t gone to the police? Gemma, this is dangerous stuff.” His heartbeat thudded through his suit jacket, pounding my chest.
“I wanted to make sure I had everything,” I whispered brokenly. “Are you happy now?”
He shook his head, his light brown hair falling into my face. “Hell no. You just told me my mother fucked over a child. How could that ever make me happy?”
I ran what he just said through my head and forced myself to breathe. “You have everything you wanted from me, so what are you going to do now?” I gripped my hands in the black fabric of his jacket. “Are you going to tell Margaret before I get the chance to finish what I started?”