A Not So Meet Cute(116)

Too much goddamn time. And now I know why he’s been blowing off meetings with me. The bastard.

“Uh, yeah,” I say, trying to keep my composure, but I’m not doing a good job of it as sweat breaks out over my upper lip.

“Solid guy, though, even if he has his quirks.” Dwayne claps his hands together. “Okay, should we go over the Malibu estate?”

“Um . . .” I hold up my finger and stand from my chair. “Would you be able to give me one second?”

“Of course.” He pulls his phone from his suit pocket. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to call Maxine to make sure she’s okay. There’s a message from her, and as she was having odd back pain this morning, I want to check up on her, make sure all is well.”

“Ask Karla for access to the conference room. She’ll be more than happy to help you.”

“Thank you,” Dwayne says, standing from his chair.

He makes his way out of my office, and the moment the door clicks shut, JP asks, “What the actual fuck? Dave knows?”

“First I’ve heard of it,” I say, pushing my hand frantically through my hair.

“How the hell does he know? You didn’t say anything, did you?”

“Are you insane? Do you think I’d tell him the truth while trying to secure this deal with him? A deal it seems as though he has no intention of taking, seeing he has plans to capitalize on our goddamn idea.” Angrily, I stand from my chair and start pacing the room.

He knows.

Dave fucking knows.

And he’s telling people, people I work with, ruining my reputation.

My worst fears come to the surface, pinning me in the chest with mortification.

“Who else do you think he told?” I ask. “Fuck, this could be bad.”

“This could be really bad,” JP adds. “If he told Dwayne, then he’s told others. Dwayne is cool enough to laugh it off, but I couldn’t say that about everyone we work with.”

“Especially people we might want to work with in the future.” I grip my hair with both hands now. “Fuck, he’s probably turning us into a laughingstock with everyone. What the hell do we do now? I have a meeting with him tomorrow.”

“What the hell for? Clearly, he’s not going to sell us the properties,” Breaker says, his face contorted in a worried expression. My stomach plummets from that one look.

This is what my brothers feared would happen, that my mistake and ignorance would come back to bite us in the ass. I’m not only fucking over myself, but I’m fucking them over as well, and that hurts more than anything.

Through thick and thin, they’ve been there for me. We’ve created this business together, from the ground up. We’ve grown, we’ve been through the aches and pains together, the ups and downs, and the successes with minimal failure. If this lie took me out individually, that would be something I’d have to live with, but taking out my brothers . . . fuck, I can’t imagine carrying that burden on my shoulders.

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“I think you need to figure out how he found out,” JP says.

“And how do I go about doing that?” I pin my brothers with a look, and I can see it on their faces. The same thought is going through their minds that passed through mine.

“Dwayne said Ellie knew,” Breaker says gently. “I think—”

I shake my head. “Don’t say it.”

“You need to ask her,” JP says. “You need to confront Lottie.”

And there it is, the elephant in the room, the one thing I didn’t want to consider.

“I don’t think she said anything,” I say, defending her.

“Didn’t she hang out with Ellie in the beginning? Before you two were a real couple?” Breaker asks.

“Yes, but she wouldn’t have said anything.”

“You don’t think she might have said something out of spite? You two fought a lot in the beginning. I’m pretty sure you said there were times when you thought she actually hated you.”

There were times when I think she could barely look at me. Didn’t even want to be around me.

But . . .

“She was under contract.”

“Sometimes that doesn’t matter to some people,” Breaker says. He glances over his shoulder to see if Dwayne is coming. “Either way, you need to ask her, because if it was Lottie, we need to know exactly what she told Ellie.”

“Fuck,” I say as a nervous tension fills my muscles.

“I hate to say it,” JP adds, “especially since I like Lottie so much, but he has a point. We need to get to the bottom of this. She’s the only one I can think of that would have that close a connection to the truth and tell Ellie.”

I drag my hands over my face. “And what if she did say something? Then what?”

Breaker leans back in his chair. “Then I think we call it like it is—we were fucked over. And not sure if we’re going to recover.”

And that right there sends a cold chill of resentment through my veins.

Fuck with me—fine.

Fuck with my brothers—that’s a different story.





Chapter Twenty-One





LOTTIE