Chapter 49
Chapter Forty-Nine
Harrison
Ican’t believe my eyes, so I blink a few times, but the scene before me doesn’t magically disappear. Delaney sitting at a table having coffee with her perplexes me.
Why is she with the woman I naively allowed to steal from our company and my family?
I watch Delaney pull a catalog envelope—identical to the one she took from my office last night—and slide it across the table to the other woman. Cassandra’s face lights up, and she smiles.
Delaney scoots her chair back and, before she can stand, Cassandra grasps her forearm and says something. Whatever she says makes Delaney sit, but her posture is rigid, and she’s tapping her fingers against her knee like she does when she’s nervous or uncomfortable.
What’s making her feel that way? I stand about thirty feet from them, and they still haven’t noticed me. Seeing Cassandra again makes my blood boil, but it also brings back a storm of the emotions I felt the day I learned that, to her, I was just a piggy bank that never ran empty.
I grab my to-go mug of coffee and head to the living room, where I find Cassandra nestled in blankets on the couch, flipping through television channels.
Apparently, she’s not planning to leave my house right away this morning.
That’s been happening more and more when she stays the night.
She never wants to stay at her place; it’s always here.
I sit at the end of the couch opposite her, just as she stops channel surfing, settling on a show where people match up and then marry someone they barely know.
I clear my throat and then take a sip from my cup. Cassandra glances at me.
“I’m leaving for work in a second. Looks like you’re not quite ready to head out. No work for you this morning?” I’m never clear about when she works, but I imagine that as a paralegal for a law firm, she should be there more than it seems she is.
“No. They don’t need me today. Maybe I’ll come meet you for lunch.”
“Today’s not good. I have a meeting at eleven-thirty that will be at least an hour and a half. I’ll probably eat at my desk.”
She repositions herself so she’s sitting upright, then narrows her eyes at me. “When are we moving in together?”
I sputter as I’m swallowing another sip of coffee. I take several seconds to recover.
“Cassandra… that’s not on the table right now. We both agreed to take things slowly this time. We’ve only been seeing each other for,” I pause to think, “four months this time.”
“Yeah, Harrison.” Her words come out with a hint of whininess.
“Four months. That’s a long time. We should be together every day.
” She pauses, and her eyes roam over my face before she pierces me with her gaze again.
Her eyes mist, and I’ve come to suspect that she can cry on command.
She looks away and turns her gaze to the television.
“I thought we’d be ring shopping by now. ”
Where in God’s name did that come from? Shit, this won’t go over well.
“Listen, we’re not—” I’m interrupted by my phone ringing, which is unusual this early. Most of the time, I have until nine or ten before the calls come in. I slip the phone out of my pocket and find that it’s Leah, our accountant. That’s odd.
“I’m sorry, I have to take this.”
Cassandra rolls her eyes and turns away from me as I answer the call. I stand and walk to the kitchen for some privacy.
“Leah?”
“Hi, Harrison. Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure, I’ll call you back in a minute.”
I walk back to the living room, tell Cassandra—who ignores me—that I have to leave and make my way to the car. Once I’m in the car and backed out of my driveway, I call Leah.
“Hello,” Leah answers. “I’m sorry to call so early.”
“No, it’s fine. Call anytime you need something.”
“Thanks.” She pauses, and I hear blowing across the line that makes me think she just took a deep breath and let it out. Uh, oh. “I need to meet with you as soon as possible this morning.”
“Sure. I’m open until eleven thirty. Did you already call Henry to see what time works for him?”
“Um… No, Harrison, I think only you and I should be there at first.”
“Oh.” I pause for a few seconds as I wonder why she doesn’t want to meet with both of us, and I can think of nothing. “Okay. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Meet me in my office in, say, twenty minutes? That’ll give me time to get settled.”
“Yes, I can do that.” She hesitates for a few seconds and then says, “Goodbye, I’ll see you soon.” Her voice is low, somber-sounding, and it makes my stomach twist. Whatever she has to say is unlikely to be good news.
Forty-five minutes later, I’m sitting at the table in my office with Leah, nauseated after she’s shown me two and a half months of charges on my company credit card I didn’t make: Christian Dior, Prada, and Chanel, multiple instances totaling over eleven thousand dollars.
“I’m sorry, Harrison, but it gets worse. Much worse.” Leah says. She pulls out some papers and spreads them across the table in front of us.
“What am I looking at here?” I ask.
“Three months of bank statements…”
Over the next twenty minutes, she shows me all the instances that someone transferred money—twenty-five hundred dollars at a time—to the same bank account.
Another twelve thousand five hundred dollars.
Twenty-three thousand five hundred dollars in total, stolen from our company in just months. Little bits at a time.
“You and Henry are both on this account. I can’t call to get the name on the receiving account, but you can.”
“How the fuck did I let this happen?” I whisper.
“We don’t know for sure it’s tied to you.” Leah tries to comfort me with her words, but nothing can settle me right now.
“Let’s call,” I say.
A few minutes later, I throw up in my trash can after the bank manager tells us the name.
“Cassandra Blanders, sir.”
Cassandra used a relationship with me to steal thousands from our company. I remember the humiliation I felt as I sat in the conference room with my brothers and had to tell them what happened.
We didn’t report her back then. I didn’t want to deal with the negative publicity, but my brothers were more worried about me having to deal with a drawn-out trial. We made her pay retribution, sign an NDA, and agree never to come near us—near me—again.
Now I wish she had gotten everything she deserved years ago because then the scene before me wouldn’t be happening.
The pieces fall into place. Delaney showing up in the bar I was in, then at the wedding, and finally, getting a job at my company.
Finding her in my office, removing the files in the catalog envelope a few days ago…
My stomach roils with nausea when it strikes me that she’s played me. The woman I love is using me. I stalk over to the table and stand right between them. They both glance up at me.
Cassandra’s eyes widen, but she quickly gets control of herself and flattens her expression, as if she’s uninterested. Delaney, though, doesn’t even try to hide the shock on her face. She pushes her chair away from the table and stares at me for several long seconds.
“H-Harrison. Hi. Um, what are you doing here?”
“I’m asking myself the same question about you. Nice appointment.” My tone is harsh, and she’s not used to it. Her forehead wrinkles at the same time as her eyes narrow.
“This is Cassandra. My… Well, she’s my—”
Cassandra huffs. “You two know each other? How charming.” She doesn’t bother attempting to mask the bitterness in her voice.
“Piss off,” I hiss at her. “You should be in jail.”
I peer over, and Delaney has her bag on her lap. She grips it so tightly that her knuckles are white.
“Go to hell.” Cassandra stands. “Until next time,” she says to Delaney. She tosses me a dismissive tilt of her head. “Still an asshole.” Then she struts off without another word.
“Do you want to sit?” Delaney’s voice is just above a whisper.
I don’t answer, but I sit and clasp my hands together on the table. It’s the only way I can control the shaking.
“How long?” I ask.
Delaney’s gaze turns downward. “I had an appointment this morning with a women’s health—”
“Yeah, right. Your appointment.”
She looks up at me. Her eyelids droop, and the corners of her mouth form a frown. For a split second, I feel remorse, but then I remember what she’s done.
“Harrison?” Her voice is quiet. She reaches out to touch me, and I pull away.
“I’ve got to hand it to you both. Cassandra, wow, she doesn’t give up, does she?” Delaney opens her mouth to speak, but I keep going. “And you. What an actress you are! Was any of it real to you? Or was I just a mark the whole time?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please explain what’s going on here.” She’s pleading, distress written all over her face.
Because she’s a talented actress, that’s all.
“What did you take from my office the other day? Bank account numbers? Credit card information? Tell me what the scam is this time, what was in the envelope you gave her?”
She jerks back and gasps.
“What? Are you accusing me of stealing from you?” There’s hurt in her voice, but also a touch of anger, and it surprises me.
“If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and looks like a duck…”
“Harrison...” Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“Why were you coming from Leah’s office the other day when I couldn’t find you? Is that part of it?”
“Stop it!” She slaps her hands down on the table in anger. “Stop and tell me what is going on here because you’re crossing a line and you’re making me uncomfortable with how seething mad you are. Tell me what it ‘looks like’?”
It’s a good thing we’re in the outside seating area of this cafe. I assume we’d be drawing a lot of attention by this point, otherwise. Enough heads are turning our way as it is.
“It looks like my girlfriend, whom I thought I was building something with, is in cahoots with my ex-girlfriend—”
She sucks in a breath and grimaces.
“Are you saying you dated Cassandra, too?”
I close my eyes for a second and rub my hands over them before I meet her gaze again.
“Yeah, Delaney. I dated her for several years, altogether. Though I suspect you already know that. She pretended to care about me, and I gave her everything she wanted. But it wasn’t enough to—”
“You had sex with her? Kissed her?” I’m confused by the quivering in her voice.
We both know the answer to those questions, yet I can’t bring myself to respond. Instead, I need to get this conversation back on track.
“I gave her everything, but it wasn’t enough to stop her from stealing thousands from us before Leah caught on to her. She’s a gold-digger, and I was too foolish to see it. I’m not making the same mistake again.”
Her expression shifts as understanding spreads across her face.
“You think I’m like her?” she whispers.
I see the distress on her face, and for just a few seconds, I doubt myself.
“Say it,” she grinds out. “If you think I’m like her, then say it.”
“Can you prove to me you’re not?” The words don’t sound or feel right coming out of my mouth. It’s when I see the light leave her eyes that my heart skips a beat and my throat tightens.
Delaney stands, reaches into her bag, and pulls out another envelope. It looks identical to the one she gave Cassandra, and to the one she walked out of my office with. She sets it on the bistro-style table in front of me, grabs her phone, and walks away—all without sparing me a glance.
From where I sit, I watch her walk all the way to her car, get in, and leave. That’s when my brain kicks into gear.
What if I’m wrong?