Chapter 24
GRACE
Grace was surprised. She was apprehensive. She knew she should kick Alex out of her apartment, again, and tell him that she was going to do this on her own.
Yet she couldn’t do that. He loved her. And despite everything, she believed that.
She’d seen how Alex cared for her throughout her pregnancy, from the small gestures, like bringing her mints whenever he saw her, to the big ones, like making sure she never felt alone and never went without.
Alex’s past and his love for his job had blinded him, but now, he seemed to truly mean what he said. He was choosing her and the babies.
She’d given him a chance, a week ago, to say whether he was in or out. When he hadn’t answered, she’d understood that to mean that he was out.
But Alex hadn’t answered then. She’d answered for him. He was answering now—and he was choosing her.
Alex looked at her with deep worry in his eyes. She could almost feel the emotion radiating off him. How much he cared about her. How scared he was to lose her and the babies. How much he wanted this second chance.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay?” Alex blinked. “Okay… what?”
“Okay.” She looked up at him, her green eyes meeting his blue ones. “One more chance. Just one. You said you want to prove yourself to me, right?”
“Right,” Alex agreed.
“I’ll give you the chance to do that. But you don’t have to sell your company. All you have to do is show up for me, always, no matter what happens. And the same for the babies.”
Alex nodded. “I can do that. I will do that.”
“And…” Grace bit her lip. “There’s something you should know.”
“What is it?”
Grace summoned every ounce of her courage. Every bit of bravery she’d built up over the last weeks and months. And she spoke the truest words she could, the ones she’d fought against and tried to deny. The ones she could now fully embrace.
“I love you, too.”
“You do?” Alex’s eyes widened, and he squeezed her hands.
“I do.” Grace smiled. “Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.”
“You should.” Alex pulled her into his arms, and Grace went willingly. “You absolutely should.”
“Does this mean that we’re done pretending?
” Grace asked as she allowed herself to relax into his arms. Her head rested against his firm, broad chest, and she could hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and smell his masculine scent.
“Next time we have a problem, we won’t just pretend it away—we’ll talk about it? ”
“Yes.” Alex looked down at her, gently pulling back so that he could look into her eyes. “And now, I have a request for you.”
“What is it?”
“I’d very much like to kiss you.”
Grace’s heart lifted as she nodded. Alex bent his head, Grace lifted onto her tiptoes, and their lips met.
They’d kissed before, months ago, the night the twins were conceived.
In the following days and weeks, Grace had wondered if she’d imagined just how perfect that kiss had been.
But now, as Alex kissed her again, she realized that, if anything, she’d underestimated the power of their connection.
As Alex kissed her, softly at first, the world seemed to freeze around them. Nothing else mattered—not the sound of the cars outside or the breeze from the open window or Patrick or their pasts or anything. All that mattered was the two of them, and the future they would build together.
Grace deepened the kiss, hungry for reassurance that this was really happening. Alex responded willingly, pulling her to him, kissing her as though she was all that mattered in the world. Her heart rate sped as he brushed his fingertips along her spine and threaded his hands into her hair.
After what could have been seconds or centuries, Alex and Grace broke apart. Grace’s lips tingled, and she brushed her fingertip across them, already reliving the sensations of the kiss.
“Wow,” she said. Alex grinned.
“Wow indeed.”
“Now.” She gently removed herself from his arms. “There’s something we have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“We have to fix this.” She headed for the door, grabbed her shoes, then laboriously sat down to try to put them on. Her pregnant belly was already getting in the way of a lot of things.
“Fix what?”
Grace looked at him as if he were an idiot. “The situation with Patrick. We can’t let him get away with this. You told me that he was the one who really stole the laptop and framed me, right?”
“None of that matters now.” Alex shook his head. “The only thing that matters is our family.”
“Agreed.” Grace smiled at him. “But also, this matters a little. Patrick hurt both of us. He almost made it so that we couldn’t trust each other enough to have a relationship. And he tried to sabotage the company you’ve spent your life building.” She shook her head. “We have to fix this.”
“How?”
“Easy.” Grace grinned. “Let’s pay him a visit. I’ll drive.”
They went down the stairs and got in Grace’s car. Grace was still in disbelief about everything that was happening, but it felt good to be with Alex again. And it felt good that they’d finally gotten to the bottom of what had happened at MatchupNow.
Patrick’s offices weren’t far. For most of the drive, they just sneaked looks at each other, as though neither could believe that they were really together again. When they arrived, they headed straight up, and when they reached Patrick’s secretary, Cecilia, Grace smiled at her.
“Hi there. We’re here to see Patrick.”
“I’m so sorry, but he’s busy,” Cecilia said. “He isn’t taking visitors.”
“He’s not too busy for this. Ask him.”
Cecilia called Patrick’s office, and a moment later, she nodded.
“He’ll see you.”
Grace and Alex entered. Patrick was lounging behind his desk, looking at his phone.
When they entered, he sat up with a crocodile grin.
The office, with its dark walls and mahogany desk, was everything Grace remembered from her previous meetings.
The thought of his manipulations made her stomach twist.
“If it isn’t Grace and Alex,” he said. “Grace, dear, I thought I told you not to talk to Alex directly. It might hurt your case.”
Grace approached the desk and leaned her palms against it so that she stood over Patrick.
“There is no case,” she said, enunciating each word.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Patrick looked between the two of them. “Don’t tell me that Alex tricked you into dropping the case. He fired you! I’m the one who’s been helping.”
“Don’t even…” Alex said, joining Grace and taking her hand. “We know what you did.”
“I helped a poor pregnant woman who you used,” Patrick said.
“Which, by the way, was a big surprise, Alex. I thought you didn’t date.
How was I supposed to know that you were dating your employees?
” He shook his head. “This won’t look good for you during the lawsuit.
Or have you decided to settle out of court? ”
“Again,” Grace said. “There is no case. I’m dropping it. As soon as we leave here, I’ll let the lawyers know that I’m out. There won’t be any more of your manipulations.”
“Manipulations?” Patrick put a hand to his heart as though wounded by the mere suggestion. “I would never manipulate you. Not like Alex here.”
“Cut it out, Patrick,” Alex said. “It’s over. Grace and I talked. It’s time to return the laptop.”
“What laptop?” Patrick made wide, confused eyes. “I don’t know who has it.”
“We know you do,” Alex said. “I’ve seen bits of my code show up in your app. Which, by the way, you’ll need to remove.”
“Your code? Not at all. My developers came up with that.”
Grace slammed a hand on the table. “Enough. Patrick, if you don’t give the laptop back, I’m starting a new lawsuit. Against you. It’ll detail all the ways that you manipulated me and the way you framed me.”
“And I’ll add details of how you stole my laptop, which is intellectual property theft,” Alex added.
“You’ll never win,” Patrick said, but there was a hint of worry in his voice now. “I have excellent lawyers. They’ll protect me.”
“Oh,” Grace said sweetly. “But it’s like you told me, Patrick. We don’t need to win. The case itself will ruin your reputation. Your stock values will plummet. Your employees will quit. Users will avoid your app. And we won’t settle out of court, will we, Alex?”
“Certainly not,” Alex said. “We’ll make the case as public as we need to.”
“I have to add something, though,” Grace said. “No matter how good your lawyers are, they can’t argue with hard proof.”
“True,” Alex said. “And I have emails between you and my assistant, Louisa, in which you planned this whole thing. For someone who works in the digital space, you should have been more aware of how big a footprint an email leaves.”
Patrick’s eyes narrowed. Grace even spotted a few beads of sweat on his forehead.
“This isn’t right,” he muttered. “The two of you… this isn’t right.”
“No,” Alex said. “What isn’t right is that you expect to be handed everything.
Your daddy gave you money to start your company, but you still couldn’t make it successful.
The only way for you to succeed was to bring me down, right?
So, you did whatever it took. I should have known that you’d try something like this. Guys like you have no scruples.”
“But you didn’t know!” Patrick’s blue eyes gleamed, and he stood suddenly.
“You blamed poor Grace. You fired her. Even though she was pregnant with your children!” He turned to Grace.
“You can’t let him get away with that. It doesn’t matter who really stole the laptop—he blamed you. How can you trust him now?”
Grace smiled. She squeezed Alex’s hand.
“He made a mistake,” she admitted. “We all do sometimes. But what matters is that he owned up to what he did wrong. He apologized. And now, he’s making it right. You could learn something from him.”
“So, that’s it?” Patrick asked. He was seething now. “You two are just going to ruin me and ride off into the sunset?”
“We aren’t going to ruin you,” Alex said.
“Yet. You’ll give the laptop back. We’ll leave.
And we’ll give you one more chance to be a good person.
Stop it with stunts like this. Let your company succeed—or fail—on its own merit.
We’ll be watching you closely. If you try anything like this again, we’ll ruin your reputation so fast that even your rich parents won’t be able to bail you out. ”
Alex spoke calmly, which was all the more frightening. Patrick’s face paled, and he nodded slowly.
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Get the laptop, then,” Grace instructed. Patrick reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the laptop, which he handed to Alex. Alex let go of Grace’s hand to tuck it under his arm.
“To be clear,” he said coldly. “You aren’t ever to contact Grace again. Leave her, leave us, alone.”
“Fine.” Patrick rolled his eyes. “Anything else you want to take from me?”
“No.” Grace smiled sweetly. “We have everything we need. Have a good life, Patrick. We’ll be watching you.”
“Shall we, my dear?” Alex asked, holding out an arm.
“Yes. Let’s go.” Grace took it, and they left Patrick’s office once and for all. Finally, they were free of his manipulations. Free of his plots. It was just the two of them, soon to be the four of them.
“What should we do now?” Alex asked.
“Let’s go home,” Grace said. She smiled at him. “We have a lot to talk about.”