“So you got on your white horse and rode to her rescue.”
“Trainor Electronics employs thousands of people. What difference does it make if HR offers a position to someone who has both the skills and the need for it?”
“The difference is you’re sleeping with this someone. People would have found out, and Chloe, if she has the integrity you claim she does, would have felt like crap.”
“Maybe Chloe was right.” Nathan stared at the outrageously expensive bottle of scotch. “Maybe I’ve become insulated from the real world.”
“The plot thickens.”
“Today she wouldn’t let me get a specialist for her grandmother, who fainted and fell. When I pushed, she told me she was ending the relationship because it was wrong for her to be involved with her boss.”
“She works for you?”
“No.” Nathan glared at Gavin. “I may be besotted, but I’m not brain-dead. She works about three levels below me in the organization chart, in an entirely different department.”
“Besotted. Nice word,” Gavin said. “Is that what you are?”
Nathan ignored him. He didn’t know the answer to that. “She told me our relationship wouldn’t have lasted anyway because it was too unequal.”
Gavin held his glass up to the light, tilting it this way and that. “She has a point.”
Nathan slammed his glass down on the table so hard some of the precious whiskey sloshed out. “I was a military brat. I grew up on bases in run-down housing with an alcoholic mother and a father who tried to force me into the Marines. All this”—he swept his hand around the opulent room—“doesn’t change who I am.”
“Sure, sure.” Gavin looked unconvinced.
“And then she threw the bet in my face.”
“You told her about the bet?”
“No, she heard us talking at the charity dinner, so thanks to you for adding to the problem.” Nathan glared at Gavin.
“She must have been flattered when you explained it to her.”
“I didn’t. I was too pissed off.”
“I can see you handled it well, so let’s cut to the chase.” Gavin leaned forward. “Do you love her?”
“No one can fall in love in two weeks.” But he wasn’t sure about that. Facing the prospect of life without Chloe made him feel bleak at best, despairing at worst. “I’m just pissed off.” He knew he was repeating himself.
“I’m the last person who should give advice to the lovelorn . . . or the pissed off,” Gavin said, “but I want you to think about this. If Chloe walked through that door right now and said she’d made a terrible mistake, how would you feel? You don’t have to tell me. Just think about it.”
Nathan turned his head toward the heavy mahogany door that led into the bar and imagined Chloe pushing it open and looking around the room until she spotted him. Her face would light up the way it did when she walked out of that accounting firm and saw him leaning against the Rolls. She would head toward him, swaying on those high heels she loved so much.
His heart squeezed hard in his chest, and he closed his eyes with a grimace.
“Yup, you’ve fallen hard,” Gavin said.
A blast of light jerked Nathan awake. He opened his eyes and slammed them shut again as the sunlight jabbed into his eyeballs like a set of possessed screwdrivers.
“You have a visitor.” Ed’s voice sent the same screwdrivers plunging into his eardrums.
“Isn’t it Sunday?”
“Yes.” Something clinked on the bedside table, and Nathan slitted an eye to see a steaming mug. His stomach heaved as the usually welcome aroma of coffee hit his nostrils.
“I don’t have visitors on Sundays.” He rolled away from Ed and the light until a stupidly hopeful thought whispered that it might be Chloe. He lifted his head enough to look over his shoulder and then laid it back down with a groan. “Who is it?” he managed to growl.
“You should find that out for yourself.”
The chipper little voice got louder. Nathan knew he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Is it Chloe?”
“No.” Ed’s tone was flat and disapproving. Nathan couldn’t tell if the disapproval was aimed at him or Chloe. Or both.
“Then tell whoever it is to go to hell.” The misery that Chloe’s name had temporarily banished flooded back through him.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, son, but I don’t have a lot of time.” This had to be a nightmare, because the new voice sounded like his father.
Nathan pushed himself up onto his elbow even though the shift in elevation tightened the vise currently clamped around his head. He squinted at the two shapes silhouetted against the windows, trying to distinguish faces. “Sir?”