“This isn’t right,” he muttered. “The two of you… this isn’t right.”
“No,” Alex said. “What isn’t right is that you expect to be handed everything. Your daddy gave you money to start your company, but you still couldn’t make it successful. The only way for you to succeed was to bring me down, right? So, you did whatever it took. I should have known that you’d try something like this. Guys like you have no scruples.”
“But you didn’t know!” Patrick’s blue eyes gleamed, and he stood suddenly. “You blamed poor Grace. You fired her. Even though she was pregnant with your children!” He turned to Grace. “You can’t let him get away with that. It doesn’t matter who really stole the laptop—he blamedyou. How can you trust him now?”
Grace smiled. She squeezed Alex’s hand.
“He made a mistake,” she admitted. “We all do sometimes. But what matters is that he owned up to what he did wrong. He apologized. And now, he’s making it right. You could learn something from him.”
“So, that’s it?” Patrick asked. He was seething now. “You two are just going to ruin me and ride off into the sunset?”
“We aren’t going to ruin you,” Alex said. “Yet.You’ll give the laptop back. We’ll leave. And we’ll give you one more chance to be a good person. Stop it with stunts like this. Let your company succeed—or fail—on its own merit. We’ll be watching you closely. If you try anything like this again, we’ll ruin your reputation so fast that even your rich parents won’t be able to bail you out.”
Alex spoke calmly, which was all the more frightening. Patrick’s face paled, and he nodded slowly.
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Get the laptop, then,” Grace instructed. Patrick reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the laptop, which he handed to Alex. Alex let go of Grace’s hand to tuck it under his arm.
“To be clear,” he said coldly. “You aren’t ever to contact Grace again. Leave her, leaveus, alone.”
“Fine.” Patrick rolled his eyes. “Anything else you want to take from me?”
“No.” Grace smiled sweetly. “We have everything we need. Have a good life, Patrick. We’ll be watching you.”
“Shall we, my dear?” Alex asked, holding out an arm.
“Yes. Let’s go.” Grace took it, and they left Patrick’s office once and for all. Finally, they were free of his manipulations. Free of his plots. It was just the two of them, soon to be the four of them.
“What should we do now?” Alex asked.
“Let’s go home,” Grace said. She smiled at him. “We have a lot to talk about.”
CHAPTER 25
ALEX
They went back down to the car, both a little giddy, and climbed in. Then Alex turned to Grace.
“About home… I know we’ve only just reconciled. I know this is a lot. But it would mean everything to me if you and the babies would move in with me.”
Grace glanced at him. “We haven’t even been on a proper date, you know.”
“Well, we went on that one date.”
“The one where you got me pregnant?”
“That one.”
“True.” Grace grinned. “Okay. I suppose that one date is enough of a basis for us to move in together. Given that it did lead to pregnancy and all.”
“Really?” Alex’s heart lifted. “Do you mean that?”
“Of course.” She grinned at him. “We’ll have to get everything from my apartment eventually, but it does make sense for us tolive together. You can wake up with the babies at night if needed. And it’ll be much harder for you to run off if I’m already in your house.”
Alex winced, but she laughed softly and punched his bicep.
“I’m joking. We have to be able to joke about this, or we’re no better than Patrick.”
