Hard Rules (Dirty Money #1)(66)

No messages.

“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.” I punch the call button, but after one ring I get voice mail. “You have to call me,” I say at the beep. “You have to call me or … I am going to be forced to take matters into my own hands.” I end the message and rest the phone on my forehead a moment, and the magnitude of one bad decision changing my life doesn’t escape me. And yet, I think, resting my hands on the sink and staring at my now wildly messy brown hair and pale skin, had I not made that decision, I wouldn’t have met Shane.

Giving myself a mental shake, I stick the phone back in my purse, and grab the other one, and this time I find a message that amounts to a temp service offering me a low-paying job. In so many ways, Brandon Enterprises is a blessing. A knock sounds on the door and I jump. “Room service said fifteen minutes.”

“Great,” I say. “I’m starving. I’ll hurry.”

His footsteps sound and I stuff my phone in my purse, bury it in the bottom of a bag, and remove the toiletries, along with a flat iron I unwrap and plug in. While it heats up, I hunt down Shane’s blow dryer to remove the dampness in my hair and dress in a light blue pair of Nike sweats, matching V-neck tee, and tennis shoes. Another ten minutes pass and I’ve managed to apply light makeup in pale pinks and run a brush through my hair. It’s scented with some sort of musky Shane-scented shampoo, and is actually a shiny light brown, draping my shoulders. I like smelling like him. I like a lot of things about being with Shane.

Setting all of the bags in a corner out of the way, I head for the door, but stop before I exit. I just left a message demanding a returned call. I rush back to the bag and grab the appropriate phone, stuffing it in my pocket, and head back to the door. I’m not sure how I’ll handle it if it rings, considering under no circumstances can I take that call in front of Shane. My hand comes down on the knob, and I pause to force myself to make a hard decision. I set a deadline. If I can’t come up with a solution that lets me tell Shane the truth by Monday, I have to get fired and stay away from him.





Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.



—Michael Corleone





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


EMILY


Saturday afternoon finds Shane and me huddled inside his office, which is actually more of a library than anything, bookshelves sandwiching a massive pale wooden desk. Us claiming the dark brown leather sofa and chairs nested in a corner. Shane chooses to sit on the couch, while I settle onto the plush brown rug on the floor beside him, both of us placing the two MacBooks he has on top of the wooden coffee table that matches the desk.

Once we’ve reviewed what he wants achieved, it doesn’t take long for us to dive into his research, or for us to get creative and turn the one open wall into a giant bulletin board with a massive amount of data sorted by topic, organization, and people. It becomes evident almost immediately that we are just as good at working together as we seem to be at everything else. And I not only enjoy our sharing of information, but really, truly, get a real thrill out of the case law related to drug-centric lawsuits, but we argue about his risk or reward with certain product choices for the BP division.

One case in particular has Shane ripping a page off the wall, while I insist he leave it in place, detailing the reasons I don’t think it’s high risk, despite a massive lawsuit ten years ago. He ends up repinning it to the spot on the wall, and when he sits back down, he gives me a scrutinizing look.

“LSAT score,” he says.

“I never said I took it.”

“Did you take it?”

It’s a direct question, and I know he’ll know if I lie, and the truth is that it matters to me. “I took it. I killed it.”

His eyes light with approval. “I had no doubt. You don’t need to be sitting outside my father’s door. You need to be in law school.”

“I’m getting too old.”

“When we touched on this the night we met, I had a feeling age was holding you back. Twenty-seven is not old.”

“Oh come on, Shane. For law school, it is. You know it is.”

“We’ll agree to disagree on that one. Why didn’t you go after you took the test? You had to have had offers.”

Regret over the many things that went wrong and can’t be shared leaves me with only one answer that I pray he accepts. “It’s complicated.”

He studies me and I am certain he will press me, but instead gives me a nod. “Understood,” he says, and I don’t think he is talking about law school being complicated, but rather, me not wanting to talk about it.

We slip past that moment easily though, and by evening, we’ve spent more time on work than Shane planned, but I don’t mind. I’m also not complaining about our move to the bedroom, where we spend more hours naked than not, and discover we both love Criminal Minds, which launches us into a Netflix marathon. We laugh and talk, but I don’t miss that after the LSAT conversation he’s cautious about pressuring me for more personal details. I’m both relieved and sad at the limits I’ve placed on us, but still my phone doesn’t ring, and the more I think about Derek digging into my background, the more I know where my decision must be headed, and it’s not me staying with Brandon Enterprises or Shane. It’s a reality that cuts and burns, as hours later, I lay awake in the darkness while he sleeps, his big body wrapped around mine, and I try to chase a way out of trouble that I can’t seem to find.