21. Lauren
LAUREN
Lauren stared at the email in front of her. Her blood pressure rose until she was seeing red, and her heart hammered so hard she was worried it was going to beat out of her chest. She scanned the email again.
Dear Lauren,
I just wanted to let you know that I was approached by a sales agent at Pembrook PR.
He offered great benefits and low cost – better than yours, honestly.
I turned him down and told him I was going to renew with you, but I wanted to let you know that this was happening.
Other people may have heard from them, too.
It was signed by one of Lauren’s current clients whose contract was about to expire.
Lauren was so angry, she could hardly breathe.
This was the fifth such email she’d received in a couple of days about Pembrook PR staff reaching out to her clients whose contracts were going to expire.
They always offered great benefits and low costs — better than Lauren could offer with her small company and tiny staff.
Plus, she’d lost several major clients at the end of their contracts in the last few weeks, probably to Pembrook PR.
At first, she’d written it off. There were always clients being poached back and forth between the major PR companies in San Valentino, including hers. This was the last straw, though.
James’s company wasn’t just going after a few clients, as usual.
They were going after all of them. Sudden clarity came to Lauren.
This was some kind of revenge plot by James.
He was upset that she’d said they shouldn’t sleep together again.
Or maybe he was upset that they had slept together.
Or maybe this was the culmination of the plot he’d come up with when he’d first offered to marry her, as Lauren had suspected.
No matter what it was, he was going after her clients and her livelihood. She couldn’t let it stand.
Lauren grabbed her bag and headed straight home, pausing to thank her employees as always on the way out. By the time she arrived at James’s penthouse (she could hardly think of it as hers when she was so furious), she’d planned what she was going to say to him.
He wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t. Lauren should have known he’d be at work.
She grabbed her phone and sent a message asking him to come home straight away and saying that they needed to talk.
James responded a few minutes later, saying he was on his way.
In the meantime, Lauren went into her bedroom and gathered a few items. She already had an idea of how this conversation would end, and she wanted to be ready.
After twenty minutes, the elevator doors dinged open. A few moments later James appeared in the kitchen, where Lauren was sitting at the table.
“Are you okay?” He scanned her as though looking for injuries. “What happened? Did your lawyer say something?” There was something close to panic in his voice.
“I know what you did,” Lauren said coldly.
James paused, his brows furrowing. The frenetic energy drained from him.
“What I did? What did I do?”
“Don’t play dumb. It isn’t a good color on you.” Lauren stood and crossed her arms. “You’re trying to poach my clients.”
“I’m not,” James protested. “What do you mean?”
Lauren opened an email on her phone and showed it to him, then swiped to show several others. “Don’t lie to me. If you aren’t poaching my clients, how do you explain this? There are other clients who left my company suddenly, and I have to imagine they got similar emails.”
“I don’t know what happened here,” James said, spreading his hands. “Maybe your clients are angling for a better deal with you by saying someone else is trying to poach them.”
“So, this is somehow my fault.”
“I didn’t say that.” James frowned. “I hurried home because I was worried you were hurt or in trouble, not to be accused of something I didn’t do. What is this? You don’t talk to me for weeks, and now you’re shouting at me?”
Lauren scoffed. “What did you think I’d do when I found out you’re trying to steal all my clients? Just roll over and let you have them? And you’re the one who hasn’t talked to me in weeks. I’ve been perfectly friendly.”
“Right. Just like I was the one who said what happened in Mexico was a mistake,” James snapped back.
“I never said it was a mistake. I said it shouldn’t happen again, and you agreed with me! Didn’t you?”
“I didn’t get much of a chance to explain. Kind of like what’s happening now.” James’s eyes narrowed.
Lauren held up her hands. She didn’t want to think that James missed their closeness in Mexico — she did, too. But he could just be saying that now to throw her off, as the culmination of his long con.
“We’re getting off track,” she said. “I called you here because I need to know what in the world you’re doing with my clients, and I need you to promise to back off. Now.”
“Lauren.” James crossed his arms. “I would love to explain, except that I… Don’t… Know. And I can’t promise to stop doing something that I’m not doing!” He seemed genuinely offended, which made this so much worse. Lauren was the one who’d been hurt.
“Don’t play dumb!” Lauren repeated. To her horror, tears sprang to her eyes, but she brushed them away.
“The timing of this is just too perfect. I told you we shouldn’t be together, which I now find out that you might not have been on board with.
Let me guess. I was the first person ever to deny you anything, and so you decided to take revenge on me.
The timing is way too perfect for it to have been anything else.
Unless you were planning something like this from the moment you offered to marry me, and you figured I’d be too distracted by falling in love with you to even notice. ”
“Falling in love with me?” James asked, his voice low.
“I didn’t mean—” Lauren shook her head, embarrassment and anger fighting for control within her chest. “Forget I said that.”
“Listen.” James took a half step closer.
His voice was softer now. “I know we haven’t been talking a lot these past few weeks, but we’re still friends.
Let me check in at work and figure out what’s going on.
I swear, I wouldn’t have stolen your clients on purpose.
And I obviously haven’t been planning this since I asked you to marry me. I don’t even know what’s going on.”
Lauren teetered on the edge of disbelief. She wanted so badly to agree to James’s plan. To give him a chance to make this right. To trust him.
Yet she’d been let down too many times before, and this was just another of those times.
Whatever excuses James had, the truth stood.
His company was stealing her clients. He must know about it; he knew about everything that happened at Pembrook PR.
He’d told her as much. Now, he was lying to her face and trying to emphasize their “friendship.” It was just another deception in a long line of deceptions.
“We aren’t friends,” Lauren said softly. “Friends wouldn’t do this to each other.”
“Again,” James said. “I’m not doing anything to you. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Come on, let’s talk about this.” He sounded frustrated, like it was Lauren who was being obtuse.
“I’m sorry.” Lauren shook her head slowly. “I can’t do that.”
“Lauren—”
But she’d already brushed past him. During the hours she’d been waiting for James to come home, she’d packed her suitcase with the few items she’d moved into the penthouse.
The frantic packing had reminded her of the night she’d left Ottawa to go to college.
Back then, she’d been unsure until the last moment if she’d really go, but this time, she’d been almost certain.
A part of her had known exactly how this conversation would go before it even started, and she’d been right.
James followed her into the hallway, and his eyes widened as he saw her suitcase and backpack.
“Lauren, think this through,” he urged. “Imagine what will happen if people find out our marriage is over.”
“There is no marriage,” Lauren replied. “Not really. And I’m starting to think I’ll be better off on my own.” She strode down the hallway to the elevator, where she pressed the button to go down. James stood beside her.
“This isn’t the right move,” he said. “When I prove that I’m not stealing your clients, you’re going to feel really badly. You’ll regret this.”
“I hope so,” Lauren said. “But I don’t think you can prove that, James. And I can’t trust your word anymore.”
The elevator arrived, and Lauren stepped in. Between the doors, James stood on the landing, his brown eyes fixed on hers. There was something she couldn’t place in his expression. It looked almost like desperation.
Well, it made sense that he felt that way. Lauren had uncovered his plans before he’d been able to follow them through. Now, she’d reach out to all of her clients to offer incentives to stay, and it would be harder for him to steal them.
Plus, if the marriage fell apart, he’d look almost as bad as she did.
“Lauren—” he said, but then the doors closed, and the elevator began to descend.
Lauren leaned against the back wall as tears sprang to her eyes again.
That had been hard. Harder than she’d expected.
She had wanted James to have some explanation — or at least to admit what he was doing and apologize.
Maybe then, she’d have been able to find a way to forgive him.
But instead, he’d lied to her face, over and over, and played dumb.
And Lauren had admitted she’d been falling in love with him. What an idiot she’d been.
Lauren had wanted so badly to trust him. Back in Mexico, it had seemed almost possible. They were equals. They were friends. They understood each other. Or she’d thought they did.
Instead, James had proven himself to be just as bad as her family.
Worse, maybe, because Lauren had let herself trust him, even fall for him, and he’d hurt her.
Just like she’d worried he would do when she agreed to the marriage.
He’d lured her into believing that he cared about her.
He’d made her almost forget that she’d been sure he was plotting something when he’d suggested getting married. Then he’d betrayed her.
Or maybe it was Lauren who’d betrayed herself by letting herself believe, even for a minute, that James was more than an arrogant, entitled jerk who’d do anything to get ahead.
As soon as word got out that Lauren had left, the marriage would fall apart, and she’d end up back in Canada. But maybe, finding a new path back in Ottawa would be better than the pain that surrounded her here.
At least now, she knew that risking her heart would always be a mistake.