Chapter 5
Tyler
I was not expecting to do any work after coming back from a long, frustrating trip.
The deal I was hoping to sign fell through.
And now instead of getting some restful trip, Seb called at the last minute saying I had to attend a pitch meeting.
Nothing stressful. The deal was close to being signed.
All I had to do was show my face and pretend to listen.
He had met the interior designer before, and her work was stellar.
Seb left out the most crucial part. The designer was Saffron Channing.
My wife. The woman I was blackmailed into marrying.
The woman who had the audacity to serve me divorce papers.
If she thought she could use me and discard me like I was Kleenex, she was snorting some high-grade coke.
The only good thing about this surprise was that she looked just as stunned to see me.
Her eyes widened when they landed on me.
She choked through her greeting, stammering over her words like a little girl caught stealing, but she gave the pitch to the rest of my employees without a hitch.
Her gaze kept darting to the back of the room where I sat, though.
I did not miss the nervous glance whenever she turned to a different slide.
“…and that’s what we will be bringing to you as The Marble Row.
High-quality decor that isn’t tacky but is understated in its luxurious tone.
” She ended her presentation. I had to admit begrudgingly, it was a good pitch.
Everyone in the room agreed. They were all nodding their heads as they thumbed through the Lookbook.
The head of the purchasing and procurement department started to clap but, when he registered my stern silence, stopped.
“I would like to speak to Ms. Channing alone, please.”
They all gave me surreptitious looks, but obeyed my command and filtered out of the meeting room, leaving Saffron and me separated by the large midnight blue oval table. “You have some nerve,” I said, crossing my arms.
She winced. “Hi Tyler.”
I hated how beautiful she still was even after five years.
That stunning oval-shaped face haunted my dreams, and nothing on it had changed.
She had grown even more beautiful. Thick eyelashes framed amber eyes, which many fake ones tried to imitate, but failed disastrously in doing so.
And that body of sin. The well-tailored black pantsuit she wore hugged her slim curves, accentuating the bosom that always appeared large on her delicate frame.
Her hold over me should have waned, especially after that night, but it was stronger than ever.
Even after all these years, I was still getting a semi in her presence. Fuck my pathetic body.
“You’d better explain yourself. What did you do to my brother? Did you lie to him?”
She blanched. “Excuse me? I did not—”
“There was no way he would work with you if he knew who you were.”
It was her turn to cross her arms. She bent her head to the side, her voice slowly rising as she spoke. “Trust me, if I had known you’d be here, I would never have come except to get my divorce papers.”
“Speaking of which, what are you trying to pull? Divorce? Really?”
“What? You don’t want a divorce? I thought you didn’t want to marry me in the first place! I must have been confused with all the husbanding you’ve been doing all these years.”
I scoffed. “Trust me, I would rather be free than be shackled to you.”
“So? What’s your fucking problem?”
“You know damn well if it weren’t for your father blackmailing me, I wouldn’t be in this position. There’s a woman out there I want to marry, and I can’t because of you.”
Her face fell. Her combative stance flipped back to apologetic. “Tyler. I did not know what my father did to you when you married me. But we can fix it now if you just sign the divorce papers.”
I got out of my chair and strode over to where she stood.
She was even more beautiful up close. She had tied her hair into a French chignon and left a few strands falling on her face.
I desperately wanted to push them away, to caress her supple skin and feel it under mine again.
The urge was so strong I balled my hands into fists.
“You know very well I can’t do it. Unless this is your game all along. Trigger a divorce so you can be free to send the information you hold on me to the press.”
Her face was full of confusion. She shook her head.
“Or maybe you know I can never say no to,” I pointed to her pitch that was still on the screen. “This. Because if I do, you will divorce me. Is that why?”
“Tyler, I only came here because my partner couldn’t make it. And she’s the one who approached Sebastian. Because trust me, I’ve been doing my best to avoid you and your family for years.”
I had to concede to that. When I spoke to Seb, he told me about a different person he was in communication with, but I still didn’t believe her.
She could have easily used her so-called partner as a covert way to get to me.
But then again, why would she do so after all these years? What did she want?
“Doesn’t matter. What I want to know is how you got into this room. How did you know I was here? Are you stalking me?”
She rolled her eyes. “I told you I don’t even want to work with you. I didn’t even know you’d be here; I thought I was meeting Sebastian. If it were up to me, I would not have bothered.”
“And yet…”
In the short time we were speaking, I had moved closer to her, or had she come to me?
Either way, she was inches away from me now, and I could not stop obsessing over how the red lipstick she had on matched the complexion of her skin so well.
She had enticing lips that made a man think of the nastiest stuff they could do as well as want to kiss them forever.
My obsession with her seemingly never ended, and right now I wanted her under me.
Saffron must have caught the lust in my eyes because she frowned and stepped back, putting more space between us. I drew back, shame washing over me like a pervert caught ogling a naked woman.
“Should I assume I am not getting this deal?”
“Fuck no.”
I expected more fighting words from her.
A snappy retort or at the very least a snide remark under her breath.
But her shoulders dropped, and she disconnected her laptop from the projector, closed it, and slid it into her bag.
Resigned, she turned to face me and said, “Nice meeting you again, husband. But if you’re not going to give me this deal, then I really want those divorce papers signed. ”
I watched as she cat-walked out of the room, her years in the modeling industry showing in the way she swayed her hips.
Like father, like daughter. Blackmailing me again.
Was the money I was sending to her not enough?
She acted as if her coming here after sending me divorce papers wasn’t linked, was all a coincidence, only to threaten me with it as she left.
I had to say; her innocent-looking face almost fooled me.
She could have been a marvelous actress had she pursued the career.
Frustrated, I left the boardroom a few minutes after her.
I went back to my office and tried to work, but I couldn’t.
So I gave up and went home. I didn’t want to think of her, and the office kept reminding me of my wife.
The loft, however, was just as bad. For the first time in five years, I couldn’t stop thinking about our sexual encounter and how it began.
Bile filled my mouth as the memory of her father showing me the bribery came to mind.
When I didn’t believe him, he then sent me images of my father meeting with the commissioner.
And that wasn't all. He also had images of the two of them exchanging what suspiciously looked like a briefcase full of cash. And what’s worse?
They weren’t alone. Another man was with them, a well-known Mafioso. It did not look good.
His proposal to bury all of this? Marry his daughter, and all of this will not come out.
I balked at the idea, but then he offered I marry her for a minimum of seven years.
And all I had to do was attend an auction, barf, where his own daughter was on the auction block and bid for her hand.
Marry his spoiled child. He even had an amount in mind—fifty million dollars.
The money would go through Olga, and Olga, I presumed, would wash it so he didn’t have a suspiciously looking fifty million dollars popping in his bank account.
When I heard he had cancer a couple of years ago, I asked him if he could give me back the material. He had laughed in my face and told me if he were to croak, the material would be in the hands of someone close to him, and if I tried anything, that person would release it.
I told myself I would only touch her once, and I did.
But it felt like it wasn’t enough. My body craved more even though I had her every which way a man could have a woman.
Lying in bed, unable to sleep, I wondered if I hadn’t been combative and actually asked her for an encore in that boardroom, would she have said yes?
Probably not, doofus. She was divorcing you, remember.
I tossed and turned, failing to find sleep until the early hours of the morning. I blamed it on jet lag, but my body knew better. I went to work hoping for a productive day, but the next morning was worse than the previous day.
“You threw out the Marble Row deal?” Sebastian burst into my office, his face flushed with anger. I had barely taken off my jacket when he came through like a storm. He might have shattered the door if it wasn’t so sturdy.
“Morning, brother.” I handed my assistant my jacket just as he handed me a tablet with my schedule.
Matt immediately extricated himself from my office as soon as he had hung my jacket and coat, leaving me alone with Hurricane Sebastian.
And one more glance at his face said we were a long way away from dissipation.
I knew he was going to be mad. It was evident from the multiple texts he sent this morning. None of which I replied to.
“You better have a goddamn good reason you threw away the best and, dare I say, bargain-basement cheap interior designers in all of Manhattan.”
I sat down in my chair and shrugged. “Inexperience.” I couldn’t say the real reason. Not yet anyway.
“Inexperience.” He repeated my words with incredulity. “Now, suddenly you care how large our designer’s portfolio is? Aren’t you the guy who would rather hire an art student than a stuffy professional obsessed with beige? Or am I getting the Vanity Fair quote wrong?”
“I can’t believe you’re bringing up Vanity Fair again. They thought I was the CEO. They. I didn’t say that.”
Sebastian’s nostrils flared. “You know very well that is not my issue.”
Fuck. I hoped that starting a fight would work. If it was related to him being seen as my younger brother rather than our equal partnership, it was easy to drag my brother into a fight.
“Why did you kill the deal?” Sebastian belatedly realized he had been shouting and went to shut the door. A few people were loitering closer to the office, pretending to need something from Matt or Seb’s assistant.
“Because of Saffron.”
“Oh my god, do you hate her that much? Enough to tank a good deal? What the fuck, Tyler?”
“So you knew she worked at Marble Row. She told me you two didn’t meet.”
“Yeah. People don’t need to meet to know each other.”
“Doesn’t matter. We can’t work with her.”
Sebastian raised his hands in surrender. “Well. Grow up, Tyler. I am sorry she thought you were hot and tried to force you into dating her, but that was a long time ago.”
“She did more than that,” I said under my breath.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.
I might as well come out with it. “She forced me to marry her. Which eventually happened, by the way.”
“Uh…”
“Yeah. Her father blackmailed me into marrying her.”
“Now? I thought he was dead.”
“No,” I sighed. “Five years ago.”
I explained everything that happened to him.
The documents Channing showed me. Ones that initially I thought were fake, only to learn they were in fact real.
Our father’s bribery to the commissioner who approved our first New York building.
I told him about the seedy auction. I left out the sex, and when I was done, Seb sank into the visitor’s chair and blew out air.
“Why didn’t you tell me? When it happened. Why were you silent?”
“I didn’t want to bother you with it. You were going through a rough patch with Kendra, and I didn’t want you to get even more worried.
Then, of course, we had that period when we almost lost the business.
I just… I should have told you. I am sorry.
And now…” I took the divorce papers from the office drawer and threw them on the desk. “She wants a divorce.”
“Okay?” Seb threw up his hands again. “Give it to her. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“I don’t trust her not to release the documents. It would be a huge scandal if it happens. They look really bad, Seb. Oh, and the commissioner committed suicide and made a mention of the bribe in the suicide note. It won’t be good.”
“Fuck that bastard. And Dad? Why did he think he had to bribe the inspector? We did everything aboveboard.”
“But we might not have gotten the approval to build on that land. Maybe he thought he was helping.”
Seb raked his hands through his hair.
“You see why I want nothing to do with her. I don’t want to be married to her. And I want her business even less. She has been haunting me for years, and now you want me to work with her. Fuck no.”
Sebastian sighed. “I see what you mean. But you have to, unfortunately.”
“Come on, Seb.”
He shrugged. “They’re really good. Their work is amazing. I was actually thinking of buying them outright and taking them in-house.”
“Oh, hell no!”
“We can’t let them go, Ty. Talent like that is rare. We’re lucky I found them in their infancy. They don’t know it yet, but their business is going to grow, and they’re going to be sought after.”
My brother didn’t want to drop them. Whatever you can say about Seb, he had an eye for spotting great people to work with. It’s the reason why our company grew exponentially over the years. That and our take-no-prisoners approach when it came to our competitors.
“You’re not going to budge, are you?” I said.
Seb shook his head. “You’re going to find a way to work with your wife.”