Chapter 6 #2
She’d finally be a free woman after all of the annoying back-and-forths, the asinine questions from Keith.
He’d called her constantly for months, drunk in the evenings, crying that his lawyer was insisting he ask for so much.
His lawyer had even made him go to strip clubs to take his mind off of everything because he knew that he wanted Allison back.
Voice note after voice note, texts that she used to respond to and finally learned to ignore.
Once he sobered up in the morning, he’d said she was imagining things.
Allison didn’t want to believe it, but a part of her hoped it was real, that he really was heartsick and broken over her after he’d broken her heart and his lawyer was making it worse, trying to use it for more money.
She walked into the conference room, her eyes adjusting to the bright light from the wall of windows.
Keith was leaning back in his chair so it was up on two spinning wheels. He looked at her like a sad puppy dog. “Hey, Al,” he said, as if they were in this together.
And not that this was entirely his doing after slipping and falling into his twenty-two-year-old employee’s vagina.
She stared at him, steeling herself. Seeing decades of time in that one puppy dog face.
All that wasted time and effort.
All those memories.
The suited man sitting next to Keith leaned up from rifling through his bag, and Allison stopped short.
“The fuck?” she whispered.
Wells—the man from the bar last night, whose tongue she’d happily welcomed into her mouth, whose thumb had done unspeakable things, who had her favorite pair of panties somewhere in his possession—stared at her with his mouth open.
Apparently, he was as surprised as she was.
“We ready to get started?” Allison’s lawyer said briskly as he walked in, putting his briefcase on the table. He reached over to the man in question. “Phil Brown, for Allison Gordon. Nice to finally meet you, Wesley,” he said, shaking Wells’s hand.
Phil had always called him Wesley when they’d talked.
Oh.
My god.
Wells wore an expensive charcoal-gray suit, a blue shirt, and a charcoal tie. He looked imposing, like a skyscraper. One who hated her, specifically.
“Wellesley Maroo, counsel for Keith Gordon,” Wells said, correcting her lawyer.
Allison blinked at his arrogant tone that sounded completely foreign.
Wells stuck his hand out to her. “You must be…Allison,” he said, as her mouth still hung open. “Or do you go by any nicknames I should be aware of?” He raised a pointed eyebrow.
She grasped Wells’s hand as briefly as possible and yanked it back, afraid touching him would set off a chain reaction, like everyone somehow realizing they’d made out last night. “Just…Allison.”
A mind-numbing ninety minutes later, as they sorted through everything—arguing back and forth over assets, finalizing any details—her lawyer suggested taking a break and left to take a call.
Wells as a lawyer was sharp, unkind. He went for the jugular, twisting her words and her lawyer’s words, maneuvering them so they were constantly on the back foot.
Nothing like the warm, generous man she’d met last night at all.
Which one was real?
Keith wiggled a metal pen. “Gonna go out.”
Allison rolled her eyes. She hated that he vaped.
As he left the room, Allison and Wells stared across the conference table at each other.
“You didn’t say you were married,” he said, his jaw set in a hard line.
“I’m not,” she said.
He angled an oh really eyebrow.
She pressed the wrinkles out of her skirt. “I’m…almost not. I’m obviously separated and would be divorced if you weren’t such a greedy, money-grabbing influence.”
Wells laughed in surprise, shaking his head at her as if she was out of her mind. “Me? I’m the greedy—”
“Yes.” She leaned forward across the table and whispered, “Keith told me how you kept making him ask for more money. He said you made him go to strip clubs to forget me so he’d go through with the divorce.
I can’t believe I kissed you, ugh.” She sipped her coffee, wanting any memory of his tongue in her mouth gone.
Wells leaned across the table at her, whispering, “You believed that I, the man who could not give two shits about you, was the problem? Not the man you’re divorcing for cheating on you?”
Allison gulped. “Was…was this a trap? Prove that I was sleeping with other people while I was still married so I’m no better than him?”
“Of course not,” Wells said, pushing back from his chair, eyeing the door. He walked to where the coffee pot was beside Allison and poured himself a cup so it didn’t look like they were talking. “It was pure chance. A completely mistaken coincidence.”
She didn’t believe him for one second.
“Keith—” Allison stood, hissing, “—never showed you a picture of his soon-to-be ex-wife?”
“Believe it or not, Keith isn’t the most…” He pointed at Keith, who was trying to find the door in the wall of glass panels. “…thorough client I’ve ever had. Look, I shouldn’t even be talking to you, but, I need to know you won’t say anything.”
“Will you say anything?” Allison was flabbergasted.
A clanging sound against the glass grabbed their attention. Keith had dropped his vape pen and was chasing it as it rolled away.
How on earth was I married to him? For over a decade?
Wells snorted, seeming to follow her train of thought. “How do I know you didn’t take one look at the picture on our website, look at me, and think, ‘Hm, I’d like to bag that one. Bring him down.’”
Allison laughed in surprise. “I would never. There’s like a million lawyers here, and I didn’t even know the right name of who was representing him.”
“From everything he says, you are cold and calculating.”
Allison gasped in outrage. “I’m the nicest person anybody’s ever met,” she hissed, hearing how controlling she sounded even to herself.
Wells bit into a pastry looking like he’d won. “As long as everybody follows your schedule and does exactly what you want?” Wells said, a smug smile on his face.
Allison felt the spike of shame, so she jabbed back. “You have pastry crumbs in your beard.”
“You’ve had lipstick on your teeth for the last hour and a half.” He smiled triumphantly, wiping the crumbs away.
Shit. She smoothed her tongue over her teeth. “I can’t believe I almost slept with someone as…as…disgusting as you.”
His eyes hardened as his jaw moved, anger brewing. “You were nowhere near sleeping with me. That whole ‘See you tomorrow?’ That was me letting you down easy after getting a taste.”
Her eyes blinked as she processed everything he was saying.
He’d lied to her?
She’d felt so sexy, confident for the first time in over a decade, last night.
And it was all…a lie?
He straightened his tie. “Try not to think of me tonight as you go to sleep. Actually? You know what? You can. My gift to you for all the money I’ve gotten from this case.”
Her mouth fell open in outrage, and hateful delight danced in his eyes.
“Truly the last thing on this earth I would ever want to do, Wellesley Maroo, would be to have sex with you,” she hissed as he walked away, smiling smugly. “And I want my panties back!”
The glass door to the conference room was finally flung open as Keith tumbled inside. “Oh shit,” he laughed. “This place is so weird. Everything looks like a door.”
Wells spoke loudly to the room, but he was staring right at her. “Ready to get this settled?”
Yes, and now she was out for vengeance.
Even if it was the last thing she did.