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Get away. You can’t have him.
“But your birthday is soon?” I blurt.
“I want nothing to do with it. It’s a thing with me.”
“Fine. Your birthday is just another day,” I say.
“Say it again,” he turns to me, eyes hooded.
“Just. Another. Day.”
Just another day—with one big difference, I decide.
I’ll give him a present he’ll never forget—the papers that transfer Smuckers’s shares of Locke Worldwide to him. It’s a few days short of the twenty-one-day cooling off period, but it’s close, and the papers aren’t technically telling him. I already hired a lawyer to do it. I told him to buy a ream of that thick parchment paper to print the stuff out on it so it would feel more impressively gift-like.
I want everything ready.
But I can’t be in his life anymore. He’s too high profile for me not to be revealed as Vonda.
It’s not just about the hate in his eyes. It’s remotely possible he’d believe me, but it wouldn’t matter even if he did.
My getting outed as Vonda would hurt the people we most want to protect.
The publicity of Vonda would attract my mother’s attention and she’d take Carly back in a heartbeat, use her to squeeze me. Maybe even Henry. Or just use Carly as a meth ticket somehow.
And Vonda O’Neil linked to Henry Locke? So toxic to the trust and stability of the Locke name. To his family he protects. All those people with names he memorizes so carefully. He can’t be linked to Vonda.
I need to stay away from him. Get out of his life and stay out. He’ll love his birthday present. It’ll make him so happy.
I visualize myself getting out of the limo. Walking to my door. Alone. It’s not where this night is going, but things need to take a U-turn.
My heart hurts. I’ve never wanted to be real with somebody like I want to be real with Henry.
Smuckers fusses, and I use it as an excuse to free my hand from Henry’s, like his fussing is this emergency that requires snout-smoothing caresses and a deep gaze into doggie eyes.
I try to think of some unromantic thing to talk about.
“One question,” I say. “And you need to answer honestly. What is up with the Dartford brothers? Do they just sit around rubbing their hands and dreaming of building what people most don’t want them to build?”
“And then laugh maniacally? Something like that.”
“They were mad,” I say. “I’m glad people could see they were jerks.”
“It wasn’t just showing them up as jerks,” Henry says. “It was how you were. You have to understand, at these meetings, usually there’s nobody on the side of the everyday people. I think they sense their powerlessness sometimes. Then you step in with the Smuckers thing, and it was brilliant. And you were on their side, and they knew it was genuine.”
“They should’ve known you were on their side.”
“Yeah, I’m still the developer. Whereas the way you blazed in, you were their ally. I think Brett and Kaleb are going to need months to recover. Shit. Kaleb’s protests? We couldn’t have staged it better if we tried. Like we’d written a script for him. It couldn’t have been better. It really was like a dog is pushing everyone around, which I guess it was. It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in all my years in business. You and Smuckers did what we couldn’t do in an hour of yelling—you made them open their minds and listen. You opened the door to a redesign of the Ten.”
“That you thought of.”
He brushes my neck with his knuckle. Hot blood courses through my veins. “God, Vicky,” he says. “Battle of the jerky titans?”
“Umm…” My cheeks heat.
“You don’t like rich, entitled guys. That’s what I think.”
I like one of them. A lot.
