“Because he’s controlling,” Elijah growled. “Because he has an idea in his mind of what my life ought to look like, and he has never been able to accept that I’m not living up to what he wants—even though what he wants and what I want have nothing to do with each other. That doesn’t bother him. It’s never been about my happiness.”
“But…” Jeremy hesitated. “But you were happy. Weren’t you? I mean… you really liked Stephanie. I know you, Elijah. Paying a woman to hang around you shouldn’t have worked. You don’t get sucked in like that. You’ve always been the one to walk away. You were with her because you really liked her. Regardless of what your father may have thought about it all, this woman mattered to you. And she still does, doesn’t she?”
Elijah looked away. “If she was lying to me the whole time, then she was never the person I thought I cared about.”
“He’s right, Jeremy,” Marco said. “He walks away from women because he doesn’t usually get played. He doesn’t fall for it. But she must have been really good, because we all fell for it. You and I believed she was different. We can’t judge Elijah for having thought so too.”
“I don’t judge,” Jeremy said. “I just think… there must have been something worthwhile about her. Something different. That’s all.”
“Even if that were true,” Marco said stoutly, “the fact that she was collaborating with Oliver to trick him is a complete dealbreaker. How could Elijah ever trust her again? She sounds like just another gold-digger to me.”
Elijah stared down into his glass, wishing he could get lost in the liquid there.
What Marco was saying was true. It made perfect sense. HowcouldElijah ever trust Stephanie again, knowing what she had done? Every time he looked at her, he would be thinking about it. He would be wondering whether there was more she hadn’t told him, whether she was still in touch with his father.
They don’t even know about the pregnancy. I can’t tell them that. It’s too much. But, my God, if that was part of my father’s plan I will never forgive him. And I can’t possibly forgive Stephanie either until I know for sure.
He got to his feet. “I think coming out today was a mistake,” he said. “I’m going to head home.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Jeremy said. “We haven’t seen you in forever. Hang around. Get her out of your system. There are lots of cute women here. We’ll hook you up with someone else—someone your father has never even heard of.”
“We’ll go around to a few places with her so you can be sure to get photographed,” Marco suggested. “That’ll pay him back for messing with your life.”
But Elijah shook his head. The truth was, that solution would have appealed to him before. But now the idea of parading around town with some woman he hardly knew made him feel sick. How could it hold a candle to lazy mornings in bed with Stephanie?
She got me hooked on her, and then I found out she was poison all along.
Oh, how he didn’t want to believe it! He wanted to think she was the woman he had always believed her to be. But every time he so much as considered picking up the phone and calling her, he flinched away from the idea of it. Talking to her would be too painful now.
He had to separate from her. He had to find a way to move on, to forget all the good times. But throwing himself back into the whirlwind of his previous life didn’t feel like the way to do it.
So I guess you’re getting what you wanted after all, Dad. Lucky you—you aren’t even having to pay for it.
On the walk home, his phone buzzed again two more times with messages from his father insisting that Elijah call him. Elijah strongly considered blocking his father’s number. But in the end, he settled for silencing his phone and tucking it in his pocket.
There was no one he wanted to hear from.
CHAPTER 21
STEPHANIE
“The meeting with the marketing company is rescheduled for four o’clock, like you asked,” Stephanie’s assistant, Kaylie, said. “And Oliver Norcross called.”
The name hit Stephanie like acid. “Thank you, Kaylie,” she murmured.
The girl nodded. She was just out of college and an eager member of the SilkSoft team, but Stephanie was beginning to feel anxious about the possibility of over-reliance on her. It was going to be difficult to manage the amount she allowed Kaylie to do for her now that her life was undergoing such a massive change.
She’d been to the doctor two days ago to confirm the pregnancy and to get the vitamins she’d need. The whole thing had seemed to pass in a fog. It was surreal that she was talking to a doctor about pregnancy when just a week previously she had been lying in Elijah’s arms. She had gained this new adventure, but… she had lost him.
It was impossible to think about that day. The day she’d learned she was pregnant. The brief, blinding joy she had felt when he had learned the news and reacted happily. And then the cold horror when he had looked at her email and she had known—she’d seen it the moment before it had happened—that everything was about to be ripped away.
I should have told him right from the start about the deal with Oliver. The moment I knew I was beginning to have real feelings—that was when I should have said something instead of letting myself off the hook about it the way I did.
But how could she regret having kept it to herself? If she had, he would have ended things with her weeks ago. They would never have grown close. If anything, his response had only demonstrated to her that she’d been right to keep the secret. She had never had a real hope of coming clean and gaining his forgiveness.
I shouldn’t have accepted the deal with Oliver in the first place. That was where I went wrong.
That much was certainly true. But even that, she couldn’t quite bring herself to regret. After all, if she had never taken that deal, she would never have had the chance to get to know Elijah at all.
