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“I might have,” Mia said, “if I hadn’t already been planning to have a few words with your new BF, here. By the sounds of it, though, I won’t have to twist his arm after all.”
Yep, just as he’d suspected. Mia may not have recognized him the instant they’d met, but she’d gone home and done her research. Though this certainly wasn’t ideal, he was relieved she hadn’t spilled the beans to Del before he’d had a chance to clear the air. Hopefully, hearing it from him, she would be more inclined to believe his side of the story.
“Please, Robert,” Mia encouraged. “Continue.”
“Why do you keep calling him Robert?”
Del looked to Isaac, wariness now joining the confusion etched into her features. Mia, however, said nothing, her gaze remaining fixed on him. What must it be like, having an older sister willing to come to your rescue? Though, as Mia was about to find out, there was really nothing to rescue Delaney from. He just prayed they would believe him once he’d told his side of the story.
“Because that’s the name most people know me by.”
Del leaned away from him, and he fought the urge to resent Mia for what she’d done. It was his fault that he’d kept secrets from Del, not hers. Now it was time to make things right.
“Yes, I’ve kept a few things from you, Delaney. But please, before you condemn me for that, just hear me out. I’ve had my reasons, and this affects more people than just me. My telling you anything is breaking a promise I made to Will.”
Louie, being the best friend that he was, came to rest a slobber-covered chin on his knee. Isaac pet his bully, summoning the strength he needed to go on.
“Everything I’ve told you tonight has been true. In fact, I haven’t lied to you about anything. I just held a few things back, trying to protect the family I just told you about.”
“You mean at your company,” Del said, skepticism in each word.
“Yes. They got sucked into this mess because of something I did, which is why I’m here and they aren’t.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Like I said before Mia arrived, after college Will and I built our company from the ground up. We scraped together money, recruited young, talented programmers, and submitted responses to every IT-related app design bid sent out by small companies that we could find. Will went by William when scouting for work, and he convinced me to use my middle name of Robert as my business name because he thought it sounded older and more professional.
“Eventually, Manning & McManus IT Services won a few accounts. We threw everything we had into those early jobs and developed a great rapport with those clients. They told others about us, and soon we were being requested to submit proposals instead of the other way around. With more work coming in, Will’s role shifted to being the face of the company, mine to verifying the plausibility of work we were quoting and to lead the programming team. Eventually, we hired some administrative staff to help keep us techies and our deadlines straight. Five years in, we dug out of the red and into the black. Proposals were being accepted, work was stacking up, and we were able to afford office space in a nicer part of the city. Everything was going great. And then Katrina came along.”
“The hurricane?” Del asked.
“No, though Katrina Gibbons caused a completely different kind of storm for us—a social media storm.” He shook his head. Damn this dark cloud that had found its way above him once more. “She was a courier for a company we used often when exchanging bid proposals to potential clients. You would think in this day and age that everyone would want them sent digitally, but many still require proposals be submitted in print. We were on Katrina’s usual route, and she stopped by our office fairly often. We got along well, usually joking about the weather or talking sports. Then one day, she asked me out for coffee.”
He could still picture that moment, her standing there in the sunshine outside their office, smiling as she teased him about his Yankees. He’d been surprised by the offer, flattered even. With her raven-black hair and smoky gray eyes, he’d always found her attractive. Finally, someone had offered him attention instead of Will.
“Go on,” Del said, crossing her arms.
“I figured coffee seemed harmless enough, so we went. And we actually had a good time. So we met again for lunch the next week. And then drinks the week after. By our fourth or fifth date, though, my friends started noticing some red flags. Like her glaring at my female coworkers when my back was turned, and the way she started making plans for the both of us throughout the week. If I had to work late, she’d be there, too, bringing me dinner and staying until I was done. I just thought she was being sweet; my friends saw it as neurotic and controlling. Eventually, though, I did start to feel smothered. When she stopped by after work to see me that next week, I knew I’d be there several more hours trying to wrap up a huge proposal. I told her I’d have to catch up with her the next day. She took it better than I’d expected and wished me luck in getting done at a decent hour, then proceeded to sit outside my apartment building waiting for me to get home. I only know this because another of my friends has a place in the same building and saw her out there.
“Needless to say, when I found out she was more or less stalking me, I knew it was time to part ways. We grabbed coffee the next afternoon, and when she started laying out ‘our’ plans for the week, I gently suggested that maybe it was time we saw other people. She demanded to know who had caught my eye, and I was honest in saying there wasn’t anyone, but work was getting busier and I really didn’t see this thing between us going anywhere. Katrina looked down at her empty coffee cup, crushed it in one hand, then threw it in my face and told me I’d regret making a fool of her in front of the other patrons.”
“After she threw her coffee cup at you,” Del said, eyes narrowed. “Lovely woman.”
“It gets worse,” her sister murmured.
Yep, Mia had done her homework.
“Much worse,” he agreed. “A few days later, Will comes rushing into the office, freaking out about a Twitter post that’d gone viral overnight containing a video of me from a Giants game Katrina and I had gone to the weekend prior. In it, I was shown going off about how women were idiots and should never have leftthekitchen. The post questioned our company values and hashtagged us as misogynists and corporate pigs.”
“Did you really say those things?” Mia asked.
Isaac hesitated, knowing things were about to get tricky.
“Yes,” he said, watching their eyes widen as expected. “And no. See, I’d worn my favorite Eli Manning jersey to the game that day. And while I was making my way to the concession stand after the first quarter, a group of six or seven highly intoxicated women came stumbling through the order area. They all had on matching T-shirts advertising someplace over in Hell’s Kitchen, and one had a sash advertising her as a ‘Bride to Be.’ Anyway, they were being absolute jerks, shoving their way through the crowd. One of them lost their footing and toppled into a waiting customer, causing a domino effect in the already congested space. Trays went flying. I managed to catch the wife of an older couple just before she face-planted onto the concrete floor, but her husband wasn’t so lucky. He went down hard on his left knee, and their tray full of drinks and cheese-covered nachos rained all over me.
“Needless to say, I was livid, not just because of my jersey, but because the drunks were being horrendous and people were getting hurt. I flagged down security, who caught up with the intoxicated group and tossed them out before anyone else got hurt. By the time I finally made it back to our seats, I’d missed most of the second quarter. I didn’t know it at the time, but Katrina recorded me going off to the guys sitting around us about how those women should have never been let into the game and how they never should never have leftHell’sKitchen.”
Del frowned. “I don’t get it. Why would you, going off about idiot drunks, be such a bad thing?”
“It probably wouldn’t have been if she’d left the video alone. But she tampered with it, editing out half the words to make it sound like I was bashing all women and suggesting they should never have left the kitchen. Here, I’ll show you.”
Despite Katrina’s insistence that she knew little about computers, she’d been savvy enough with whatever video editing app she had on her cell phone to create a plausible new clip. To a casual observer, the splices were hardly noticeable. After pairing the short video with a handful of trending sexual discrimination hashtags, she easily pulled the wool over the Twitterverse’s eyes. Isaac pulled her tweet up on his phone and played it for them, watching their faces closely for a reaction. Would they believe his story or Katrina’s?
