Chapter 9 #2
“She’s a beautiful woman,” Lanny shared sadly, “like really drop-dead gorgeous, and it just made me feel as if I could never compete. After I saw them together, I realized that she had everything, and I had nothing. So it didn’t matter what I said or did.
Robert would never come back to me, as he was as enamored with Caroline as Kurt probably was. ”
“And were you …” Kate hesitated, knowing this would likely bring on a ton more tears. “Were you in a romantic relationship, or were you friends with—” Kate left it at that because she needed Lanny to make a statement, not push her into it or put words in her mouth.
Lanny stared at her, then replied, “I’m pretty sure that the phrase would be friends with benefits. However, in my defense, I thought we were having a relationship up until—”
“Until you saw Robert with Caroline, right?” Kate noted how Caroline had at least some relationship with both men. “And, in the case of these two men, what about Angel? Did you know Angel Delaware?”
Lanny frowned and shook her head. “Who’s she?”
Kate didn’t say anything.
“Who is Angel?” Lanny cried out, her voice louder.
Kate looked over at her and went back to writing her notes. “Another person who thought she was having a real relationship with someone but was not. Did you know John Smith?”
Lanny frowned again, then nodded.
“Did you date him?”
Lanny shook her head.
Kate nodded. “Angel Delaware had been in a very long-term friends with benefits arrangement with Mr. Smith.”
“How long-term?” Lanny asked, staring at her in shock.
“Two years.”
“Oh my God,” she cried out. “He didn’t tell her?”
“Tell who what?” Kate asked, staring at her. “Did he tell you anything?”
“No. God, no, he didn’t. He didn’t say anything.” She sat back and sighed. “I was really a fool, wasn’t I?”
And that was a direction that Kate really did not want to go. She asked Lanny, “Can you tell me about any other women who Robert or John or Kurt may have been involved with?”
“No, no, I can’t. I won’t.”
Kate glared at her and repeated, “Won’t?”
“Yeah, I … I knew about Caroline after I saw them together. I didn’t know about anybody else. God, I didn’t know,” she muttered, now bawling her eyes out. “That would have been enough to stop me. I would have completely broken up with Robert.”
Kate just watched her for a moment, gauging her reaction, which could be honest, but lots of anger was there too.
Lanny nodded. “I would have. I mean, I was still completely overwhelmed at finding out about Caroline,” she explained. “Caroline was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, so a part of me accepted that, of course, Robert’s with her. Earlier Kurt had been with her too.”
Kate asked, “What about John Smith? Did you ever see him with Caroline?”
Lanny shook her head. “Maybe John dated her too. I just didn’t see it with my own eyes. Caroline’s everything that I’m not,” Lanny cried out. “And then I just—I just wanted to try harder. I just wanted to be with Robert and to show him how much I cared.”
“And how did that go?” Kate asked.
She stared at her and sighed. “Probably the way you would expect. He took everything I had to give, telling me that he had never made any promises, but he really cared about me, and he wanted to continue to see me, but it was totally okay with him if I didn’t love him enough to not try to change him.
God, even saying that makes me sound like a complete and total idiot. ”
Kate sighed now. “Look. I get that you’re probably going through all kinds of things right now,” she began. “But I need to focus on these three men, see if somebody else was involved with them as recently as the past weekend, and, if they were, to what extent.”
“I don’t know,” she wailed, staring at her, the tears coming again.
“I didn’t … I didn’t know. I didn’t have very much experience with men, and I guess, …
I guess I got suckered in,” she admitted.
She stared off in the distance, tears now flowing onto her cheeks.
“I don’t know how that makes it any better, but somehow it does. ”
“It makes it better because you now realize that you didn’t lose the man with whom you would spend the rest of your life. Instead you were separated from a toxic and harmful relationship in many ways.”
She stared at her and whispered, “That’s possible, but I’m not sure I can deal with that logic quite so soon.”
Kate shrugged and asked, “How long have you worked there?”
“A little over two years,” she replied.
“So, you didn’t know much about Kurt?”
“No, Kurt died not too long after I got there, but he was flirty with me, paid some attention to me. However, I didn’t really know him.
He worked at a different office in the company, but we occasionally had business meetings together.
But I do remember Caroline being pretty upset about his death,” she shared.
“And I had seen them together, knew they’d had a thing, though I don’t know about the rest of the office. ”
“What does that mean?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know about any other women from work,” she muttered, staring at Kate.
“It’s really frowned upon, dating someone from the office.
I almost lost my job because of it, and Robert agreed to be very, very quiet and keep it a secret after that.
Just us, you know, special, just us,” she repeated, a bitterness in her tone, one that indicated she was finally coming awake from the dream she had created in her head.
“And I, of course, was more than happy to just be special with him. God, I’m such a fool,” she muttered.
“No, not a fool, but you were looking for a whole lot more than you were getting,” Kate pointed out.
“And that’s one of the sad things about these kinds of relationships.
Now you have a chance to figure out what you could really use, what you would really like, and the kind of man you really want.
And maybe go for somebody who is not into clandestine office relationships with a dozen women at the same time,” Kate noted, as she stood up.
Lanny stared at her in horror. “Please tell me that you’re joking about the dozen women.”
Kate shrugged. “We don’t have exact numbers at this point, but Robert’s been very active, as have Kurt and John,” she shared.
“So, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he dated twelve women at once.
Yet the number doesn’t matter. He’s dead, he’s gone, and I need the reports back, but whether it was an accident that he took too much or was given too much, I don’t know.
I need to get to the bottom of it and fast.”
With that, she stared at Lanny and added, “I’ll leave you alone now, but, if you think of anything that could be helpful, please contact me as soon as you can.”
*
Sitting in his favorite coffee shop, paperwork covering the table in front of him, Simon pored over the reports to check his options.
He needed to be ready for the hammer to drop.
The angry part of him wanted all his finances transferred to another bank immediately, but there were penalties in a lot of this that he really did not want to deal with—but he would if needed.
As he perused his records, his phone rang. He looked down to see it was his ex-banker friend. He almost smiled at that phrase because, in the business that he was in, he had absolutely no room for this BS.
Now that he understood exactly where his friend stood, Simon was now looking at other options.
He ignored the ringing phone, checking to see if it went to voice mail, which it did.
He listened to the recorded message, David telling him that he was trying to find other options to help him out, but, so far, he wasn’t getting anywhere.
Simon moved on from the voice message. David and his manager couldn’t do anything, but Simon was certainly in a position to change his own stuff if they definitely found an unfairness attached to the docs.
When Kate phoned a little bit later, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
He stared down at the phone and frowned. “Who said anything was wrong?” he snapped.
She snorted. “I felt that temper from here.”
In a silky voice, he quipped, “So, maybe you are becoming psychic.”
“Shut your mouth,” she snapped, and, for the first time today, he burst into laughter. And her response was even more hilarious, when she added, “That sounds better.”
“Yeah, it sounds better,” he agreed, “but it’s still definitely rusty.”
“It is. So, who’s pissing in your pot?”
A phrase he hadn’t heard but absolutely enjoyed.
“The bank,” he noted, his tone light. “I have been told that they don’t like the amount of loans I have—already approved and signed and in force, mind you.
While they didn’t threaten to shut me down instantly, they more or less threatened no more loans and hinting at taking another look at our existing contracts. ”
“Can they do that?” she asked.
“No,” he stated, “but you can bet that having had that position presented to me, I’m seeing my lawyer in the next hour. I’m going over the related paperwork right now.”
“So does that mean we’re broke?”
He stared down at the phone, and then he started to laugh and laugh and laugh. Her question was so innocent and clearly completely uninterested, but it lightened his mood. “If I were to say yes, what would you say?”
“Nothing, but, in that case, we’ll need to get my apartment fixed pretty fast then,” she stated. “I can afford to maintain that one. I don’t know about your place though.”
He smiled. “My place is 100 percent paid for, so, even if the bank wants to be a dick about this, we’re not losing that.”
“So you haven’t used it for collateral?” she asked rudely.
He smiled and replied, “Don’t you worry. I’m not even close to broke.”
“If you say so,” she remarked, “but is it worth the stress to continue doing what you’re doing? You’ve bought an awful lot of properties lately.”