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From the holiday party.
From the night his whole life changed.
Wait…what? But it hadn’t been Maeve that night—it had been Denise. She was the one who’d approached him that Monday after, revealing the truth. It had been Denise who had given him all the printed emails as proof it had been her.
Emails can be forged.
No, not those emails. They were identical to the ones he’d sent Swan. His Swan. It was Denise. She knew all the things he’d only shared with Swan.
She probably read the emails. Even then, though, when he’d brought up things Swan had spoken about in her emails—mugs, baking, and even her love of off-beat supernatural TV shows—Denise had seemed to trip over her responses, like she was coming up with the answers on the spot, rather than already having the truth at hand.
And it wasn’t just that that felt off about her. In her emails she seemed thoughtful, kind, like she went out of her way to do for others. The Swan who manifested as Denise had been rude, thoughtless, and pushy. The Swan of the emails was self-deprecating, and was shy about herself. She’d hidden in the dark for their first kiss, for God’s sake. The Swan that rode into town in the BMW was well aware of her charms, and had tried to use them at every opportunity.
The accent, the personality shift, the wrongness.
Things didn’t add up, but what other conclusion could he come to when the real Swan hadn’t put a stop to the supposed Swan imposter? Also, the emails from Swan had stopped. That could mean that she’d revealed herself as Denise and didn’t need to continue the charade…or that the “real” Swan disappeared completely, never having really existed at all.
So, was Denise really Swan? His gut was telling him no…and that only made him more frustrated. Angrier. All he wanted was to love and be loved. How the hell had it all gotten so twisted and complicated. He just wished he could make sense of everything. He just wanted the Swan from the emails to be real, and be…someone other than Denise.
He sighed, pressing the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Stress headaches had become a thing for him. He was popping Advil like they were candy, and he spent more time tossing in turning in bed than he did actually sleeping.
Instead of falling to sleep after a backbreaking day at the job site, he was ruminating on thoughts and questions that would probably never have answers.
Where would Denise have gotten the emails if she wasn’t the one he’d been emailing?
Then, the answer hit him so hard and fast, he nearly fell to his knees.
Denise Walters. Director of IT. She’d have access to all email accounts connected to the White Estate Corporation servers.
Like the accounts used by Harris Construction employees.
Like him.
And—fuck, he couldn’t believe he was about to consider this….
Like Maeve.
Just thinking her name unlocked his thoughts as things started to align in his mind. Like blue sky appearing through black storm clouds.
Lexi’s excited squeal broke AJ from his spiraling, frantic, revealing thoughts.
If the woman in the conference room was Maeve, why hadn’t she said anything when Denise showed up claiming it was her? Why hadn’t she come forward, disproving Denise’s claims that she was Swan? She’d had weeks already to tell the truth, and she could have revealed herself months ago. It wasn’t like he’d been an ogre to her at the office.
Yeah, but you weren’t really a prince, either.He’d largely ignored her, been all business with her. He hadn’t even had a personal conversation with the woman until that morning with the cookies situation. If she was Swan, of course she’d hide behind a computer screen—the office side of the screen wasn’t all that great.
There was so much more to this than he was prepared to think about right then, especially since Maeve’s blue gaze was pinned to him, concern etched into her lovely features.
And they were lovely. So lovely.
How had he not noticed that before?
Because you never looked at her like “that”. With an appreciative male eye. Not until that night at Velvet, when you acted like a total ass to her.
Ugh. And he was still walking on eggshells around her for that. There wasn’t anything he could say that would bring back the smile she’d worn that night, when she’d been so open, carefree, brilliant, and fearless. Nothing he could do to get her to let her walls down around him like they had been that night, when she was more alive and alight than she ever was at the office.
At least she wasn’t wearing brown anymore.
And that was one of the problems he’d been having lately. Since that night at the club, it was almost as if Maeve had been body snatched and switched with a more confident, carefree, sensual Maeve—at least in fashion. Sally had made Maeve her living doll, dressing her in clothes that did nothing to hide her luscious femininity from hungry male eyes. She’d become a Maeve he appreciated way too much for his liking.
