My eyes shoot open. He’s still inside me. We’re still intertwined. His body is flush against my chest. I can feel each erratic beat of his heart as he regulates his breathing. As I regulate mine.
I raise my hands and forcefully push him up. He lifts but doesn’t leave my body. His brows knit over unfocused eyes. “What’s going on? Why are you freaking out?”
“You’ve got to get off me,” I say with more force, and he pulls out.
“Bridget—” he starts, but I raise my hand.
“Don’t. Don’t say anything. What the hell have we done?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want the first time to be like this. I just—”
“Stop. We both did this, but we need to pull ourselves together. We’re in the office, for fuck’s sake.”
“Breathe,” he says calmly. It’s as if he sees nothing wrong with this. How can I be the only one of us who sees what a colossal fuck-up this was?
“We’re in the office. Anyone could’ve seen or heard us.” I throw my hands in the air. “What about the fact you’re married and we’re supposed to keep this under wraps as to not lose investors?”
“You’re right. It was careless, but I don’t regret it.”
“Your wife is in the building. You just cheated on her and she’s in the building.”
“That’s an entirely different matter. One I don’t give a damn about and you know it.” He steps away from me, pulling his pants back into place. His smug indifference to my freak-out only pushes me farther over the edge.
“Say something,” I demand.
“First off, it’s not actual cheating when the marriage is mine,” he mumbles.
“What the hell does that mean?” I balk.
“It means for all intents and purposes, we aren’t married.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
He grabs a tissue and hands it to me, then makes work at removing any evidence of our tryst. I stand there glaring in his direction. He walks to his chair and sits as if we’re about to have a goddamn business meeting.
“Sit,” he says.
“I prefer to stand,” I reply in defiance, suddenly feeling like an insolent child. The truth is, every time Chelsea’s name comes into play I get hostile. It’s not lost on me that I’m being irrational, but I can’t help it. She holds all the cards for my life and I hate her for it.
“I said sit,” he demands, but when I don’t move, his mouth opens. “Please.” His tone softens and a chink in my armor gives way.
I nod and take the seat across from him—the seat I’ve taken so many times in the few weeks I’ve worked for him. Now, after everything that happened on this desk, it’s hard to concentrate.
“I’m going to tell you a story, and after I do, you can decide how you want to proceed. Okay? Can you do that?”
“Yes. Talk.”
He sighs at my indignation. “Seven years ago, I was fresh out of business school and had just started working for my father. He owned and operated Lancaster Holding Company. He was grooming me to take over.” His eyes look lost in a past he obviously wants to forget. “When I started working, I met a beautiful young woman there named Chelsea Roberts. She came from a poor family, was hard working, and in the short time I was in college, she’d gone from a receptionist to office manager. She was smart, beautiful, and most of all exotic. She was everything I wanted. I needed her from the moment I met her.”
Jealousy coils in my blood as he speaks of his wife. I want to dash out of his office and cry. His words make me hate him more. They make me hate myself more. Chelsea sounds like a normal girl who fought her way to success. She’s someone I can admire, as I’m striving to advance the same way she did.
“I thought I loved her,” he whispers out, but there’s no mistaking the venom in his voice. “And I thought she loved me. We were going to take over the world.” He rakes his hand through his tousled hair. “One day I told my father I intended to marry her. He knew there was something between us, but he never imagined I’d want to marry the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She wasn’t good enough for me in his eyes. He demanded I have her sign a pre-nup.
“When I spoke to Chelsea about it, she started to cry, asking how I couldn’t trust her. She broke everything off with me and tried to leave. I was so in love with her, I begged her to stay. I was so young and dumb, Bridget. She had me duped into believing we were truly in love and my father was the enemy.
“I marched into his office and told him I wasn’t leaving Chelsea. He tried to reason with me, but in the end, he gave me an ultimatum.” Grant grimaces as he remembers the past. “Her or the company. It was black and white. My father had wronged me. He chose business over family, so I did what I thought I should. I chose her.”
I sit here nodding, not knowing what else to do. It sounds like something straight out of a Shakespearean play. Romeo and Juliet without the double suicide.
“I lost everything that day, but I didn’t know it then. It took me six months to realize how big a mistake I made. Six months for the paperwork to go through telling me I was officially written out of everything Lancaster.”
“I’m so sorry, Grant. That seems harsh. How in the world were you able to do all of this?” I gesture around to The L in wonder.
“My trust kicked in at twenty-five, so I had money. From that, I had enough money to invest wisely and afford The L.”
“Your father took those things away from you, not Chelsea,” I point out. It seems he’s unfairly blaming her for everything . . . unless there’s more to the story. “What does any of this have to do with your current marital situation?”
“We ran off and got married right after my fight with my father. When the paperwork came finalizing my expulsion from Lancaster Holding, Chelsea showed her true colors. She wasn’t content with only being my wife. She married me to take over the world, and without my family that wasn’t a reality. That’s when I realized she never really loved me. She loved the money and power my family held.”
“What happened with Chelsea, Grant?”
“She wanted a divorce. As far as she was concerned, I was worthless to her. She’d just reached out to an attorney when we found out she was pregnant with Isabella. After that day, everything changed. The one thing we both agreed on was that we wanted more for our daughter, so we sat down and made a plan. That’s when the idea of The L was born. Fueled with rage in my life for my father and for Chelsea, I set out to take over the world and ruin him.”
“But—” I’m confused. I didn’t even know where to start.
“My marriage to Chelsea is merely for show. We haven’t been together in years. We formed a partnership to take down my father and build our own fortune for our daughter’s sake. A few months after Isabella was born, Chelsea stepped out on me. That picture you found, that was taken right before I found out my whole marriage was a lie. There have been numerous affairs over the years and I’ve known about most of them.”
“You’re okay with your wife sleeping around?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t see her as my wife, Bridget. She’s merely my daughter’s mother and a business associate.”