CHAPTER NINE
The original Beaumont dealership didn't care about scandal, which was why Tiffany went there the next morning.
Cars still pulled into the service lane at seven thirty, advisors still greeted customers by name, and a child still pressed sticky fingers to the vending machine glass while his mother signed a repair order.
The old building hummed with the ordinary rhythm of work, the kind that didn't trend online because it wasn’t glamorous enough to be shared and was too necessary to be ignored.
Tiffany stood beside the service desk with a paper cup of bad coffee and listened to Gus Ramirez argue with a parts supplier in a tone that suggested the supplier had made the final mistake of a troubled life.
“No, you listen to me,” Gus said into the phone. “When I say the part arrives by noon, that’s not a wish. That’s me giving you the opportunity to remain a vendor.”
Tiffany sipped the coffee and felt some of the tightness in her chest ease.
This was the company. Not the ballroom, not the billboard, not Alan’s smile projected above six lanes of traffic.
This place, with its service bays and loyal customers and people who knew trust was not a tagline, had been the first proof of everything her father believed.
Gus ended the call and looked at her. “Part will be here by noon.”
“I assumed.”
“You hiding out?”
“I’m working from a different location.”
“That what lawyers call hiding out?”
“That’s what CEOs call visibility.”
He grunted. “Good. People like seeing you here.”
“People are probably curious.”
“People are always curious. Doesn’t mean they deserve answers.”
A customer at the lounge entrance looked over, recognized Tiffany, and hesitated. Mrs. Alvarez had bought three vehicles from Beaumont over eighteen years and still sent holiday cookies to the service department. She approached with her purse tucked tightly under one arm.
“Mrs. Chambers?”
“Tiffany, please,” Tiffany said.
Mrs. Alvarez’s eyes softened with the kind of sympathy Tiffany had spent two days trying not to receive. “I saw that video.”
“I’m sure many people did.”
“I just wanted to say your father would’ve been proud of you.”
For a moment, Tiffany couldn’t answer. Compliments about her composure slid off, and praise for her strategy strengthened her, but her father’s name opened a door she hadn’t locked.
“Thank you,” she said carefully.
Mrs. Alvarez patted her arm. “And my son needs an SUV next month. We’ll be coming here.”
After she walked away, Tiffany looked down at her coffee until the emotion passed. Gus pretended not to notice, which was one of the reasons he was still alive in a business that had killed gentler men.
By midmorning, Tiffany had reviewed service numbers, approved a customer goodwill repair, handled two manufacturer emails, and rewritten a statement for location managers. She was in her father’s old office reviewing board materials when Alan appeared in the doorway.
For once, he didn’t look camera-ready.
He wore a sport coat instead of a suit, no tie, jaw shadowed as if he had slept badly or not at all. His eyes moved over the office: the old photos, the worn desk, the Beaumont sign visible through the interior window. He looked uncomfortable here. Tiffany had never noticed that before.
“This place still smells the same,” he said.
“It works the same too.”
He stepped inside and closed the door. “Can we talk?”
“We’re talking.”
“Privately.”
“That depends on whether you plan to lie.”
His mouth tightened. “I deserve that.”
“You deserve worse. I’m busy.”
“Tiff.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I messed up.”
The phrase was so small compared to what he had done that Tiffany almost admired its audacity. She closed the board packet and rested both hands on top of it.
“You mess up a dinner reservation,” she said. “You attempted to install your mistress as a brand ambassador for my company.”
He flinched at mistress. Good. He should.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that.”
“You don’t understand what I was trying to do.”
Tiffany closed the folder in front of her. “Then educate me.”
He took the chair across from her father’s desk. Tiffany hated the sight of him there and loved that he looked smaller in it than Harold ever had.
“The brand needed new energy,” Alan said. “We’ve been talking about younger buyers for months.”
“We’ve been talking about younger buyers. You’ve been sleeping with one.”
His eyes flashed. “Do you want to punish me or do you want to save the company?”
“The company isn’t in danger because I found out. It’s in danger because you forgot it wasn’t your toy.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, Alan. Fair would’ve been you telling me you wanted out before you put her hotel charges anywhere near my marketing budget.”
“I didn’t use company money for the affair.”
Tiffany opened the folder again and slid one page across the desk. Hotel charge. Vendor code. Approval line. His signature.
He looked down. His face changed, not dramatically because Alan was too practiced for that, but enough for Tiffany to see the first real crack. He had realized she didn't merely know emotionally. She knew on paper.
“That was a content planning meeting,” he said.
“At the Vesper Coast. In a suite.”
“We met with a photographer earlier.”
“And then?”
His silence answered. Tiffany leaned back because she wanted him to feel how little she needed to chase what he was already giving away.
“Don’t make me drag every truth out of you,” she said. “It’ll only make you look worse.”
He looked toward the window, where the service lane moved with competent indifference to his crisis. “Hailey got excited. I let it go too far.”
“Hailey got excited?”
“I was trying to help her.”
Tiffany laughed once. It was not a kind sound. “You were trying to help her?”
“She has potential.”
“For what? Champagne captions?”
“That’s cruel.”
“No. Cruel was letting her sit in my marketing meeting and talk about a younger face for the company my father founded.”
Alan’s jaw worked. “You’ve always been so damn superior about the business.”
The words came out hot enough to be honest. Tiffany folded her hands, feeling the click of another piece sliding into place.
“So that’s going to be your excuse.”
His eyes snapped back to hers. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
“You came here to minimize.”
“I came here because you’re blowing up our life.”
“Our life?” Tiffany looked around the office. “This was my father’s life. Then it was mine. You were invited into it, loved into it, promoted into it, photographed in front of it. You started believing the invitation meant ownership.”
Alan stood then, agitation breaking through. “I made this company famous.”
“You made yourself famous.”
“The customers know me.”
“The customers trust the experience I built.”
“My face gets them through the door.”
“My service departments bring them back.”
His hands curled at his sides. “You wouldn’t really remove me.”
Tiffany rose too, slowly. In heels, she was still shorter than him, but in her father’s office, with the receipts on the desk and the old Beaumont sign behind her, height felt irrelevant.
“You removed yourself when you tried to put her name on my company.”
He stared at her.
For the first time since she had discovered the affair, Alan looked afraid of her. Not angry, not inconvenienced, but afraid in the specific way men became when they realized the woman they’d underestimated had stopped negotiating with their illusion.
He lowered his voice. “What do you want?”
The question was almost funny. Men like Alan always asked that after taking too much, as if the answer were a negotiation rather than a consequence.
“I want the review completed,” Tiffany said.
“I want Hailey removed from any association with Beaumont Chambers. I want a full accounting of every dollar you spent on her through or near this company. I want legal separation between your personal stupidity and my father’s name. Then I want a divorce.”
His face drained.
“Tiffany.”
“You should leave.”
He took a step toward her, then stopped when she didn't move. “I never stopped loving you.”
The line every guilty man saved for the moment facts became expensive.
Tiffany picked up the folder. “You stopped respecting me.”
Alan’s mouth opened, then closed.
Outside the office, Gus passed the window and glanced in. He didn't stop, but Alan saw him. He saw the old guard watching. He saw the original dealership continuing around him, loyal to the woman he had tried to embarrass.
He left without another word.
Tiffany waited until his car pulled out of the lot before she sat again. Her hands shook then, and only then.
She let them shake while the service department kept moving beyond the glass. When the trembling stopped, she opened the board packet and wrote Alan Chambers, President and Chief Brand Officer beneath the proposed suspension language.
For the first time, the title looked temporary.