Chapter 20
Sherry
Sun trickled through my sheer curtains, and I cuddled deep into Ben’s warmth. His arm pulled me in close. I kissed his chest, loving the prickly feel of his hair beneath my lips. Last night hadn’t been just about sex. It had been… right.
“Mmm,” he moaned, and a smile bloomed on my face.
“Morning.”
His dark blond hair was a disheveled mess, and his green eyes popped open for only a moment before pinching tight and creating little lines in his skin. “Morning.” He adorably rubbed at his eyes like a kid being woken up for school.
“Hungry?” I asked, hoping my stomach didn’t take that moment to growl. We had multiple workouts last night, and I was starving.
“Famished,” he said.
“I’ll make us breakfast.” I pushed on his chest and went to head to the kitchen when his hand linked around my wrist and tugged me toward him.
“Hey,” I said as I collapsed against his pec.
“I’ll make breakfast. You stay here,” he said as he kissed my forehead and sat up.
“I can’t sit around. It’ll drive me nuts.” Once I was up, I was ready to be on the go. Sitting around made me feel like I was wasting time.
“Then come with me.” He stood, completely naked, stretching and completely unapologetic as his cock stood at attention. I eyed him, my teeth slipping over my bottom lip. “As much as I want to take you up on that look, if I don’t eat, I’ll pass out.”
I pouted, and he laughed. God, I loved that sound. He stepped into his briefs, and I sighed loudly and dramatically. He laughed again, snaked his hand around my waist, and tugged me into him. He kissed my forehead.
“Any requests?”
My hand trailed down his chest toward the bulge in his briefs. “Hmm.”
He grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles. “Sneaky.”
“I tried.”
He kissed my forehead, then grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head, eliciting another pout from me.
“I don’t want to risk bacon splatter on my chest. That shit hurts.”
“How do you know I have bacon?” I asked.
“I saw it last night when I put the Chinese away.”
My phone buzzed on my nightstand, and he nodded toward it. “See what that is, then come help me. We also need to talk.
I tilted my head. “I thought we said everything we needed to say last night.”
“Sex is not a conversation,” he said with a laugh. “As much as I wish it were.”
“Okay. We’ll talk.” I lifted on my toes and kissed his cheek. He smacked my ass before heading out of the bedroom and toward the kitchen.
I slipped a long t-shirt over my head and snapped up my phone, a smile settling on my face, my body feeling at total peace. I tapped the screen, and my eyebrow lifted at the influx of notifications from Rose.
She probably did another impromptu photoshoot and wanted to get my opinion.
I tapped into the messages, and confusion flooded through me.
A picture of Ben stared back at me. He was younger, his hair longer, smile not nearly as bright, and he was standing next to a stout man with an unmistakable smirk, one that said he was wealthy and powerful.
“What the hell?” I mumbled as I stared at the photo of Ben with our biggest competition and the current thorn in Chardonnay’s side as well as the entire Vineyards.
I scrolled to the text.
Rose: I figured out who Ben is. Call me.
My breath hitched, and an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. I scrolled to the next text.
Rose: Why aren’t you calling me?
And the next.
Rose: Are you with him?
And the next.
Rose: Please call me as soon as you get this.
The smell of coffee, the sound of bacon hitting the pan, and the sound of Ben in my kitchen drifted into the room. My body froze, unable to process what I was looking at. Why would Ben have a picture with that evil man?
A million scenarios ran through my mind, none of them good. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe this was what he wanted to talk to me about last night… and I told him not to. But that didn’t mean he got a free pass to keep lying. Or to lie to me at all, for that matter. It had been months .
I should call Rose back and hear what she found out. I was sick of secrets and lies. I wanted the fucking truth, and I was going to get it from the horse’s mouth. I stormed out of my room and into the kitchen.
Ben spun toward me, tongs in his hand, a smile stretched wide across his face. His eyes met mine, and his smile faltered. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, Ben. Why don’t you tell me?” I held my phone out to him, trying to keep myself from throwing it at his stupid, handsome face.
He took it from me, and I hated that when his finger brushed mine, my thighs quivered.
“Why do you have a picture with that man?”
Ben’s eyes slipped shut. He inhaled, his chest rising and falling. “This is what I wanted to talk to you about. Why I came here last night. Looks like Rose beat me to it.”
“No, she hasn’t. I haven’t called her. I want to hear it from you.” I inhaled, trying to control all the emotions running through me. “Stop with the secrets and tell me the fucking truth.”
Ben flipped the dial of the burner off, placed the tongs down, and stepped toward me, but I didn’t want to be near him, so I sidestepped him. He had the nerve to look hurt.
He dropped his hands to his sides. His jaw tightened and ticked. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. I imagined he was swallowing down the lies and hopefully searching for the truth. “Sher, please. Just listen.”
“I’ve been trying. I’ve wanted to, but every time I get close, you shut me out. You gave me pieces just enough to keep me hooked, then you pulled away. And now I see this.” I held up my phone. “And it all makes sense.”
The boxes of financial records I had caught him going through, the way his body stiffened any time someone brought up Gold Crest…
His lips parted, but no words came out. He thrust his hand through his hair. If he was trying to build a lie, he was wasting his time. I could see through him now.
“You’re working for them, aren’t you? Sleeping with me to try to get some sort of intel.
” I stepped toward him, thrusting my finger into his chest. “I bet you get some sort of sick pleasure out it. Get a good laugh as you tell them about how you manipulated me.” I poked again and again, wanting to inflict pain, wanting to keep myself from crying.
“No.” Ben grabbed my hand, pressing it to his chest. I blinked up, eyes burning with unshed tears as I met his. “You weren’t. I swear to God, that’s not what this is.”
Heartbreak and frustration slammed together in a lethal mix. “Then what is it, Ben?” My voice cracked at the fury rising inside me.
His gaze snapped to mine, and for the first time since I knew him, he looked ashamed. Broken.
“He’s my father.” The words came out like an exhale he’d been holding in for too long and they punched me deep in the gut.
My eyes blinked, once, twice and a third time as I tried to make sense of it all. “What?”
Pain etched into the lines around his eyes, and damn it, it tugged at something deep inside me, but I couldn’t let myself feel sorry for him, not when he was the one to betray me.
“Why?” It was the only word I could manage.
“You know about my private label. Everything I told you was true. The only part I left out was that my dad helped finance it. I agreed to pay him back with interest, and I was so fucking confident that I could. We came out the gate fast and hard. Sales were coming in, our name was getting out there, the future looked so fucking bright. Then it started to crumble. Little things at first… A distributor backed out without warning, a shipment got lost, one of our best accounts suddenly dropped us without an explanation. It didn’t make sense.
I was so caught up in trying to fix it, to hold it together, I didn’t question it.
“When I had no choice but to shut down the label, I didn’t have a penny to my name.
All the money my father gave me was gone.
I used my trust fund to keep from asking him for more help, but by the time I realized it was a lost fucking cause, that was gone, too.
Now I owe him. That’s what brought me to Vine Valley. ”
“So you are a spy.” He looked tired and haunted and not like a man trying to deceive me, and yet, he had. My hand wrapped around the paper towels, and I flung them at his head. “How could you?”
He ducked, holding his hands in front of him as if that would stop the anger surging through my veins. He lied by omission, played a role while I broke my own rules and fell for his stupid smirk and infuriating charm.
“I swear to you, Sher, everything between us, everything I feel is real. I love you.”
“Oh fuck off!” I turned from him, unable to look at him right now. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to drop this fucking bomb on me then try to smooth it over with an I love you.”
He moved toward me, taking my hands and forcing me to face him. “I’m a fucking fool from keeping everything from you, but I swear I wanted to tell you.”
“Did you? Is that why you pushed me away?” The idea of him wanting to protect me started to clear in my mind. “Why you bolted after dinner? It started to become too real for you, and you realized you couldn’t thread me along like some puppet in your fucking scheme.”
His eyes closed, jaw clenched like he was holding back the weight of everything he hadn’t said. “Yes.”
I yanked my hand from his grasp and turned away, but he jumped in front of me. “But only because I realized then I cared about you too much.”
“And before that?”
“None of this is coming out right.”
“Then make it.”
“The night we went out to dinner, my father’s goons showed up at my place.
I was ignoring my dad’s calls because I was done with his manipulative bullshit.
. They forced me to talk to him. He was getting impatient; I hadn’t given him anything to work with.
And not just because your family runs a clean ship, but because I didn’t want to hurt any of you.