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“Take a seat,” he says when I enter the room, but his chair is swiveled around to face the singular window. I feel like kids probably did when they were called into my father’s office back when he was a high school principal, a thought that makes me flinch. I shut the door and then lower down into the hot seat in front of Freeman’s desk.
“I heard from Lance Beckett, Royce,” he says, then finally turns his chair to face me. I can’t read his expression, but he’s obviously not pleased. Why would he be?
Ruthie was right. It’s a shitty thing I’m doing, thinking about walking out this soon. It’s not something you should do to a man you respect. I can feel her standing on my shoulder, poking me, telling me to shape up. My heart twists in my chest, feeling like a withered thing.
“Yes, sir,” I say, my tone coming out flat and wrong.
“I’m not surprised to hear that he offered you a job, son. I expected you’d be getting offers after you won that case for us.”
“I haven’t given him an answer yet,” I hedge, even though I’m ready to. Or at least I think I am. I’ve picked up my phone to call him half a dozen times over the last fifteen hours, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it.
“There’s something I should tell you,” I sputter, surprising myself because I know where those words will lead. There’s no point in telling him the truth. I can leave, move onward and upward, and the truth won’t matter. He’ll go on thinking Ruthie and I were married for years before I ever met him, and I’ll go on thinking he’s a nice man but too much of a putz to really make it. That’s how it should go down. But even though Ruthie left, she’s still in my head, giving me that look. Telling me that I don’t have to be an asshole—it’s just a choice I keep making.
“Go on,” Freeman says, his gaze lingering on me.
“When you met…” My brain supplies my wife. I let myself say it, because for now, at least, it’s true. “She…wasn’t my wife yet, sir.”
He cocks his head. “Oh?”
Has my duplicity robbed him of any other vocabulary?
I still have the chance to lie. I could say that Ruthie and I were already engaged, and it was just the timeline he got wrong, but shouldn’t he know who I really am? Then he won’t regret it when I prove to him, as I’ve proven to Ruthie, that I’m not a man who can be relied on to do the right thing.
“No,” I say, swallowing. “It was a misunderstanding, sir. You thought she was my wife, and when it became clear to me that you were only looking to hire a family man, one who’d fit in with the team, I let it stand. Because I needed a job. Myles had poisoned everyone in town against me.”
He meets my gaze. “She’s on your insurance. Wendy cleared the paperwork through me. Did you include all of us in your lie?”
This is where I’m going to look like a psychopath, but in for a penny…
“We’re married now,” I say. “Izzy needed health insurance so she could get her surgery. So Ruthie and I really got married.”
He makes a hm sound and leans back in his chair. “Why are you telling me all of this now, son?” he asks after an excruciating moment that has me sweating.
I don’t know.
But that’s not strictly true. I’m getting better at reading the emotions before I stuff them down.
“I respect you,” I admit through a dry mouth. Like my father, he’s someone who does the right things the right way. He cares about what he does—and does what he cares about. I may think it’s naïve to live that way, like a Pollyanna handing out lollipops and talking about world peace, but I’ll be damned if I don’t admire it.
“You didn’t.” He lifts his eyebrows. It’s a challenge I recognize—and accept.
“I didn’t,” I admit. “I thought…”
“You thought this job was beneath you,” he says, finishing my thought as if we’re an old married couple.
I nod, feeling a rare burst of shame. Remembering when my father sat me down the day after I talked Danny into giving me his favorite toy. Just because we have the power to convince someone of something doesn’t mean we should.
“Certainly we have different values than Myles & Lee. And Beckett Brothers, for that matter. But you’re wrong if you think I don’t see the value in bringing on people who do things differently and reach higher. Why do you think I hired you?”
“Because Ruthie…”
He lifts a hand. “Ruthie is a delightful young woman, and I think very highly of her. But she’s not the person I hired, even though I’d heard around town, from many people, that you weren’t a team player.”
It’s my turn to settle for “Oh.”
He rubs a hand over his face, and it strikes me that he looks tired and a little sad. “But I saw something in you.”
I half think he’s going to say, “I saw myself in you,” but we both know that wouldn’t be true, and instead he says, “You’re ambitious, and we need a bit of that energy around here. I thought you could make waves with us, Royce. Hell, you already have. You probably made history last week.” He lifts his caterpillar brows. “You think Beckett would have allowed you to represent that woman the way you did?”
