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For a brief moment, she smiled. But it vanished just as quickly when she thought about how hard it was going to be to say good-bye again. Mitchell and Lucas hadn’t told her that they were willing to be with her without Jason, should that become necessary, but she sensed they would.
Not possible. I love them all. I won’t separate them.
Being with Mitchell and Lucas now, in Chicago, was crushing her. There was a void, an absence that kept pounding at the back of her mind. Jason. Trying to build a life with one or two of the brothers would only end in heartbreak. Each was unique and wonderful, but all three were connected and reminded her of the others.
Finally, Mitchell and Lucas seemed satisfied, allowing the trio of Braxton men to come into the conference room.
“Hello, Ms. Blue.” The tallest of the three, and clearly the leader, held out his hand.
She took it. “You must be Mr. Jenkins.”
“Yes, I am. Nice to finally put a face to a name.”
“It is. This is my assistant, Ashley Vaughn.”
“These are my associates, Nicholas Walker and Sylas Hayes.”
Someone was missing. She’d come to talk to the company’s vet, not these people. “And where is Harrison Rutledge? He’s the one I’m deposing.”
Jenkins’s face tightened. “Mr. Rutledge will not be coming today, counselor.”
She’d come all the way to Chicago to talk to the man. What were they trying to pull? “Then why am I here, sir?”
“Please sit, Ms. Blue. There’s been a change you need to hear.”
“Five minutes, Mr. Jenkins. Please don’t waste any more of my time.”
“I won’t.”
They all took their seats.
“Braxton is withdrawing their case against your client,” Jenkins began. “Harrison Rutledge is no longer with the company. Mr. Walker and Mr. Hayes discovered several discrepancies in the records on file.”
Phoebe had, too, but was saving that information if the case made it to trial.
Jenkins turned to the two younger men. “Give me the file, please.”
Both his associates were quite handsome and were having quite an impact on Ashley, who couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off of them.
Mr. Jenkins pushed a file in front of her, its contents the official withdrawal of the case. “This whole thing was a mix-up.”
“More than that, I’m certain. My client will be relieved to hear Braxton is dropping the case. I know Mrs. Steele well. She will not take Braxton back to court to seek compensation for any kind of damages, I can assure you. Off the record, what else did you find?”
Jenkins studied her for a moment before turning to the other men. “Tell her what you uncovered.”
“We found that Mr. Harrison Rutledge was a total fraud,” Walker said. “He came to Braxton a year ago with a resume containing credentials a mile long, all of them false.”
“Didn’t your HR department verify the information on his resume?” She couldn’t wait to let Jennifer know they’d won, but even more she wanted to get back to Destiny and back to trying to find Sh
ane.
“They did,” Hayes said. “That’s what’s so strange about this. When we got to digging after we suspected Rutledge had falsified the records, we rechecked everything, hoping to find something that would lead us to a connection to why he would do such a thing. Every place we contacted—his university, prior employees, prior residences, even his credit history—was blank. It was as if he never existed.”
“I don’t understand. How would he benefit if Braxton won a case against Steele?” Ashley asked.
Jenkins answered, “He wouldn’t have. That’s what is so very strange. He wouldn’t have gotten one red cent. There’s got to be more to this than we know at this point.”
Walker shook his head. “Rutledge has vanished into thin air, but we do have the police trying to locate him and our own personal detectives.”
