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She stiffened. “Really? You want to be friends?”
He shrugged. “I like you. Is that so surprising?” Marc bumped his shoulder into hers. “And we can keepthatour little secret—mostly because Shane wouldn’t like it if he knew I was hanging around.”
“Yeah, I could see that.” She gave him a smile. “I can always use a friend.”
17
Shane
Shane felt like his neck was in a noose twenty-four-seven these days. He kept expecting Madeline to show up and do something terrible. She never did stop by after her conversation with Eloise.
And that utterly terrified him.
She was cooking up something, and he had a feeling it was going to be catastrophic. The longer she remained quiet, the more anxious he became. All this stress was messing with him, and now he’d just found his first gray hair.
Madeline and Marc needed to leave town, and soon. Otherwise he might start losing his hair. At this point he didn’t know if he’d prefer that over the grays. There were some pretty powerful men who were completely bald.
His hand reached up and he ran his fingers through his thick locks. No, he’d rather go gray than lose any of this.
Shane started pacing his office once more as he tried to figure out Madeline’s endgame. She wanted money. She wanted power. But coming out to this area would only give her one of those things. It was probably obvious. The problem was he’d never been very good at predicting what Madeline was capable of.
On the surface, it appeared everything had settled down. His relationship with Eloise continued to grow. Marc had stopped sniffing around.
But Shane knew better. The other shoe would drop. He just didn’t know when.
His office door opened, then shut just as swiftly. Shane glanced up and smiled.
Eloise was the breath of fresh air he never knew he needed. She leaned against the door, her eyes locking with his. If time were to be frozen in this very moment, he would happily accept it. She tilted her head in that way that drove him crazy and that soft smile she wore widened. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
Pushing away from the door, she headed toward him. “I was wondering if you were free tomorrow morning.” Her hand trailed over the back of the chair she passed by. “Because if you were… I wanted to take you riding.”
He met her halfway. “Oh? You want to head out to the Keagan’s ranch again?”
She shook her head. “No, I wanted to show you my favorite places at my family’s property. And maybe we could do a picnic breakfast.”
The mention of her family’s ranch put him on edge. Ifanyonesaw them together, there would be no telling how quickly Madeline would find out. She was bound to use Eloise to her benefit. He wasn’t sure how, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t hold anything back.
Shane swallowed hard, reaching out to graze Eloise’s cheek with his thumb. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
She stiffened beneath his touch and grasped his hand to pull it away from her face. “You’re still on that? We’ve been seeing each other for a couple weeks and—”
“And I still haven’t figured out every possible outcome that could happen if my employees found out. Technically, you’re a subordinate—”
“Subordinate?” Her tone was sharper than he’d anticipated. “You realize I don’t need this job, right? I could just as easily quit. That seems to be the one thing that you need me to do in order to be comfortable with dating me in public.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not it.”
“Really? Because you continue to insist on keeping this relationship a secret, and your only excuse is that you worry about what your staff would think. I feel like there are ulterior motives or something going on—like you’re keeping something from me.”
She didn’t sound angry anymore. The tone of her voice sounded more like someone who was unsure.He’ddone that to her. He’d made her worry about where they stood. If only he could tell her that this was all for her own good.
Maybe he needed to tell her everything—about Madeline and Marc, about what they were capable of and why he’d kept it from her in the first place.
That was a very bad idea. If she found out what he was up against, would she leave him? Would she decide to tell everyone he knew and, in the end, hurt his business?
He was stuck. Neither option appealed to him. Both would hurt her and himself.
