One Bossy Offer (120)

I’m just rinsing shampoo away when there’s a knock at the door.

“Jenn! Can you hear me in there?” Pippa screams through the door.

What now?

“Jenn!” she calls again.

I turn the water off and wring out my hair. “What’s wrong? I’m almost done.”

“Someone wants to talk to you,” she says.

What?

The urgency in her voice makes me throw my clothes on, pull my wet hair into a ponytail, and walk out the door. But there’s nobody in our room.

Pippa slips in from the open door to the balcony, waving me over. “Come on! We’re out here.”

Whoever I expected to find, it’s definitely not Ava Wickes.

She has her back turned, but even before I see her face, I can tell she’s in tears, red faced and gripping the railing for support.

“Ava?” I start softly. “What’s wrong—”

“I knew people wouldn’t buy it. I just knew it and I tried to tell her. I told her he’d worked with so many women over the years and never had a complaint. Not once. The man was a Boy Scout, and the way he always was with his wife...”

She trails off, her shoulders shaking. I stand there in companionable silence, letting her breathe, my own breath stalled in my lungs.

“God! What was I thinking?” Her hair whips her shoulders. “Someone had to call our bluff, and honestly, I’m glad it was you. But she was so insistent.” Her voice cracks again.

It rips through me every time she says she.

I don’t need to ask.

“Ava, are you okay?” I ask. “If you need to come in and sit...”

She wipes her face angrily with her hands.

“N-no. No, you shouldn’t worry about me. I’m a horrible person. I should’ve grown a spine and told her hell no from the very start.” Her face screws up as she struggles for composure. “I lied to the whole world, pretending Royal wouldn’t promote me unless I slept with him. Jesus.”

I don’t know what to say.

If I wanted some big confession, here it is. But somehow, this doesn’t feel like a win.

It’s just heartbreaking.

She shakes her head again, wiping her eyes.

“Her... her name is Simone Niehaus, but I’m guessing you know that. She founded Rising Stars. She went to see Michelle at school personally one day and talked up the scholarship like it was a sure thing. Like Michelle was the only one it was meant for. It seemed too good to be true and—and it was.”

“That’s so underhanded,” I whisper. “You didn’t know.”

“But I did. Nobody shows up granting magic wishes without asking for their pound of flesh. Oh, but she didn’t ask me to make the allegations until later, when I was counting on the money. When I refused, she said she’d pull Michelle’s scholarship if I didn’t. She... she said she’d have Michelle blocked from every university she ever applied for.”

She’s crying so hard now she can’t speak.

I pull her in for a hug.

I don’t know her, but I do.

She’s one more human being lured into a terrible thing, and the rights and wrongs can wait until she has a hug.

“You did what you had to for your daughter, Ava.”

“Y-yeah. Michelle wants to be a doctor. She got into NYU, and I can’t send her on my income. But it’s not just that. My husband is sick. Bone cancer, three times, and we’re always waiting for it to come back. If Simone could blacklist Michelle from college, I knew she could put the screws in me, too. She could cost me my career with her connections, and I have to be able to work.” She sniffs at the air. “I’m sure she threatened that other poor woman, too. Jillian. Because when I insisted no one would believe the line of crap she gave me to sell, she promised they would. She told me she had another person lined up. I’m so sorry. Earlier, when you came at me in the bar, I panicked. But once I calmed down, I knew I couldn’t let it go on like this. I had to come clean. I had to...”

I don’t let her finish before I hug her again.

Over Ava’s shoulder, I see Pippa, standing with a melancholy smile on her face that says told ya.

“Ava, listen. You’re not the one who should be apologizing until you’re blue in the face. You were under duress. I’m pretty sure what she did falls under criminal blackmail. But if you want to make this right, I’m not the one you should be talking to.”

“I... I know,” she stammers.

“I’m sure you met Miles?”

“A few times,” she says, nodding shakily.

“He loves his father. What Simone did to bring down his company and trash Royal is totally personal. She’s toying with him, and I bet he blames himself for it happening.”

I draw a slow, deep breath and hold it.

“If you want to make this right, you have to tell him. Let Miles know what happened so he can use his resources. So he can fix this,” I urge.

She looks down sheepishly.

“You think he won’t hate me? Or try to put me in prison?”

For a split second, it’s a dark uncertainty.

Miles is the type of man to go on a warpath over his family, torching anyone who’d hurt them. But I think he’ll know she was a pawn, attacked and powerless.