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“So I guess this means you’re not really going to help your mother sabotage Kaitlynn’s chances of finding a job somewhere else then, huh?”
Cringing, I almost felt guilty for ever assuming he might take part in harming his sister.
He smiled mischievously. “Kaitlynn already has a job somewhere else,” he seemed devilishly pleased to report. “Brick hired her on as his secretary, so I wasn’t lying when I said I’d make sure she didn’t find work anywhere else other than at JFI. She’s already back there, on the third floor as my brother’s secretary.”
I grinned back slowly. “Well, you sneaky bastard, you.”
His chuckle was warm and satisfied. “When it comes to Lana, I live for finding loopholes.”
The moment grew friendly and quiet and maybe just a little too intimate. I cleared my throat and glanced out the side window at my apartment building. I knew I should probably go inside now, but there seemed to be so much more to say between us. And actually, I kind of didn’t want to leave him just yet.
When the man wasn’t pissing me off, I actually enjoyed his company. A lot.
He breathed out a slow breath. Was he thinking about our kiss too? It was definitely returning to my mind. I couldn’t help but remember the way he’d held on to me as if no one else could satisfy him like I did.
I shuddered, eager for that powerful, emboldening sensation again.
“So, I’ll pick you up in the morning and give you a lift back to Preston Estates?” he asked.
Okay, I guess he wasn’t thinking about the wild kiss we had shared. I looked up at him, a little disappointed, but then I shook my head. “You don’t have to—”
He cut me off with, “I assume Miguel will need a ride to school as well.”
As soon as he added my brother into the mix, I stopped resisting and let my shoulders fall. Why was it always so much harder to accept help for myself than it was to accept it for my loved ones?
“That would be awesome,” I found myself saying. “Thank you.”
He nodded, his eyes dark and seeking and his voice quiet when he answered, “I’ll see you in the morning then.”
When he didn’t lean any closer but stayed respectfully on his side of the car, I nodded too. “Yeah, see you.”
I opened my door and slipped out into the cool night.
The world felt oddly changed, like I’d become a different person in the space of one car ride. Hayden had done and said things I was certain I would never forgive, and yet I think I had forgiven him. And I think I didn’t hate him at all. In fact, I might even more-than-like him.
Strange.
Chapter 18
Gabby
The next morning, I found myself tiptoeing into my father’s room before anyone in the apartment was awake. I slipped the key to our family safe from the ceramic candy house with the hinged lid on his bureau and kneeled next to his bed. After easing out the small fireproof box he kept under there, I snuck both items out and retreated down the hall to the front room. There, I sat on the couch and perched the mini safe on my lap. After unlocking it, I popped the lid open.
There was no money or monetary valuables inside, except some Venezuelan coins Papá had saved as keepsakes and Mama’s wedding ring. Most of the contents were paperwork. I found my and Miguel’s birth certificates, along with our social security cards near the top. After a bit of digging, I found Mama and Papá’s marriage license and Mama’s birth certificate. And then there, Papá’s certificate of naturalization, proving he was an American citizen, lay folded under that. It had his registration number and signature on it and everything.
“Motherfucker,” I murmured under my breath, slipping the certificate back inside the box and piling the other paperwork back on top of it.
Lana had played me. She’d actually had me doubting my own father. What a total bitch. Ashamed at myself for falling right into her bluff, I closed the lid and relocked it, then returned it and the key to their rightful places before stalking to the kitchen to start breakfast.
She shouldn’t be allowed to get away with everything she did: finding people’s weaknesses and attacking them, casting doubt, and tearing relationships apart. I mean, causing her own son’s fiancée to leave him at the altar? That was some hard-core shit right there. Her heart had to be made of pure ice. I could see why Hayden was going to extreme lengths to pry her from his life. It made me more determined to help him with his plan to find some kind of evidence in her apartment to bust her.
And speaking of Hayden being abandoned at the altar.
That little nugget of information sure had blown my wig back.
Granted, a lot of things had surprised me last night. But picturing Hayden getting close enough to a woman to propose marriage to her had ranked up there in the top five on the shock chart. I kind of hated her: Francine or whoever she was. He’d obviously cared enough about her to want to spend the rest of his life with her, which meant he must’ve let her in enough to pull aside the curtain so she could see past his jerkier traits. There had to have been some kind of trust there. Emotion. Hell, he might’ve even loved her.
Ack. That idea caused a shard of molten hot bitterness to spear through my chest. I blinked past it and kept cooking, all the while gritting my teeth and hating Francine even more.
