Chapter 22
Brenden
My phone was dead in the morning but I didn't regret my late-night ramblings with Faith. In fact, it was saving me from calling Darin yet again. The thought of my friend shifted my thoughts away from pleasant memories of Faith to Darin's underhanded dealings. His obvious avoidance of me was just making me more determined to talk to him.
I plugged my phone in as soon as I got to my office. I had come straight from the airport where a chartered jet had finally brought me back to U. S. soil early in the morning. My eyes were blurry but I charged my phone and turned on my computer.
While more emails flooded in, I went to my executive bathroom and ran hot water. I splashed it on my face and then ran my fingers through my hair. I was exhausted and desperate for a hot shower, but I couldn't go home yet. My assistant had warned me that Darin had an early meeting and it was my one chance to catch him.
I tugged the dry-cleaner's plastic wrap off the extra white shirt and pulled it off the hanger behind the door. At least with a crisp white shirt on, I didn't feel so rumpled and jet-lagged.
My entire body ached to go to the coffee shop and find Faith, but I paced down the hallway, counting my steps to the conference room instead. It was too early for most of the office but the door was open and I could hear voices.
"Darin, there you are. A word before you big meeting gets here?" I strode into the conference room and cornered my friend.
"Sure, yeah. Go ahead and bring that coffee, Dolores," Darin said. Our receptionist edged out of the room. "This isn't the best time, Brenden."
"This is the only time. You've ignored all of my text messages, my phone calls, and my carefully worded voice mails. What more do you want from me?" I kept myself between him and the door. "We're going to talk this out no matter how it goes."
"Talk what out?" He sounded honestly confused.
I stopped for a moment and then stepped closer to him. "I know there's more than just these backroom dealings at work, but let's start there."
"Backroom dealings? What are you talking about?" He skirted around the conference table to put some space between us.
I leaned on the table edge. "Idiotic denial is not going to get us through this conversation."
I heard him grind his teeth. "So what if I took a few meetings without you?"
"You really thought I wasn't going to notice?" I balled up my fist as I realized that had been exactly what Darin thought. "You of all people should know just how perceptive I've been. Shit, Darin, you've been with me since before my sight faded!"
"I didn't try to hide it," he said.
"No, you just assumed that I was so handicapped that I was now bad at my job. You figured you'd swoop in and my clients would be so glad that you and your two working eyes were here." I gave him a mean smile. "How'd that work out for you?"
"You have a lot of loyal clients," he mumbled.
"Loyal. That's a lot more than I can say of some people," I spat out.
"What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked. “I thought you were off on some great weekend fling."
I took a deep, burning breath and forced myself to calm down. "I was also checking in with my out-of-town clients. They've all been contacted, some actually visited on my company card, by you or your secretary."
"You wanted me in on the business. You practically dragged me in when everything started happening." He paced up and down in front of me. "So don't even tell me I was going behind your back."
"Whoa, you had that line ready, didn't you?" I zeroed in on his indignant breaths and stepped closer. "And you've had this in mind since I started losing my sight, haven't you?"
He tried to splutter indignantly. "What? How can you say that?"
"Because that's when I made my choices. I committed to my family's business, to making it thrive. You realized if you stuck close, you could goof around for a few more years before swooping in and taking it out from under me."
"You sure this is about business?" he asked.
I stopped and gave a cold laugh. "Wow. So you had Rachel set up to, just to distract me at the last minute."
"What? No! Jesus, Brenden, how cold do you think I am?" He shifted from foot to foot. "I was jealous of your work. I hated that you had something to do. The Rachel thing was totally an accident."
That admittance, however casual, knocked me back a step. "So, you slept with my girlfriend and betrayed me over and over again."
"Come on. We all know you and Rachel were not meant to be. I'm doing you a favor, right? She’s a mess," Darin said.
I was torn between defending Rachel and condemning them both. The Rachel walked into the conference room. Her perfume assaulted me and then the sharp digging step of her stiletto heels as she stopped dead in her tracks.
"What is he doing here?" Rachel asked Darin.
"He's blind, not deaf," I snapped. "How are you, Rachel?"
She scoffed at my polite question. "He's got me in a chain hotel and keeps dragging me to these meetings, so, yeah, I'm doing great."
I chuckled and turned to Darin. "Good luck with all that. You know she's only in it for the money, right?"
"I never said I was a billionaire," Darin protested.
Rachel ignored him and reached out to brush my bicep. "And how are you, Brenden?"
I stepped back. "Fine, thank you."
"Fine?" Darin's voice cracked as Rachel continued to caress my arm. "He's more than fine. He's romancing some poor waitress too mousy and desperate to put up a fight or care about his eyes."
Rachel's caress became a claw raking down to the bare skin at my wrist. "That waitress from the coffee shop?"
"The dumpy, dull little one," Darin sniped.
I wrenched my arm away from Rachel and shocked them both by lunging accurately at Darin. I caught him square in the chest and knocked him back against the conference room wall. The breath puffed out of him as I pinned him there.
"Faith is more beautiful than you will ever know," I growled.
"She's beneath you, Brenden," Darin croaked. "Low-hanging fruit."
I shoved away from him and heard him crumple to the conference room floor. I knelt down to make sure he heard me. "I don't need my eyes to see how jealous you are. Of me, my life, my future. You've always been obsessed with your steady decline but you've never done anything about it. And now you're realizing everything you grabbed onto is only going to sink you farther."
Darin tried to laugh it off but his voice was tight and it came out closer to a sob. "I don't get it. What's with this Faith?"
For a moment I felt a wave of pity for my friend. Darin had been raised in comfortable wealth, but his parents had not invested well. He knew from a young age that the family fortune would not last past him. He’d watched as his parents continued to live their opulent life and decided he didn't care either. What would it matter if he used up everything before he died?
The money was running out faster than anyone in his family wanted to admit.
He’d thought that Rachel was in the same boat. Their family status was similar, but he'd missed one key difference: Rachel was gorgeous. She had never once had to work for anything and, even if she actually loved him, she'd move on. Rachel followed the path of luxury and ease with a single-mindedness that only her beauty could sustain.
That's why she’d left me. Her beauty had to be admired on a surface level.
Darin was a nice soft landing before she moved on to someone better. I helped him up as I realized Rachel's ploy—use Darin to hunt down one of my handsomely rich clients and step back into the life she wanted.
"Faith doesn't want anything from me. She just enjoys my company," I said.
"Gross. What do you have in common?" Rachel asked.
"She's got ideas and ambition and is always curious about something," I told them both. "She makes me want to get out and do more, be more. I want to be better just so I can be with her."
Rachel didn't like what she heard so she started scrolling through her phone and pretending she was too engrossed to hear. Darin wanted to retreat to the other side of the room until I left, but something had him cringing closer to me again. I could feel his hesitant, scooting steps.
"So this all works out for the best then, right?" Darin asked.
I shook my head. Darin always was smooth when he needed money. "I'd say 'we'll see' but I can't, and I really don't care how it ends up for you."
"Oh, come on, Brenden. We've been friends for too long--"
I cut him off. "Exactly. Too long. And I was wrong to drag you into my business. I even went so far as to have a salary package drawn up for you."
"Wait, what?" Darin jumped in front of me now.
"I trusted you, but that was then," I said.
He leaned against the conference table. "And what now?"
"And now you're fired," I said. "Security has been informed and is waiting at the elevators to escort you from the building."
Darin snorted. "You can't do that. I have a meeting. You don't want to look bad in front of your clients, do you?"
"I've already notified all of my clients that we are not affiliated. We are old acquaintances but no more, and I do not vouch for your business acumen," I said.
"They won't go for it," Darin said. "We've already got verbal agreements."
I shook my head. "Null and void due to the false pretenses of the meeting. Now I suggest you leave before security comes to get you. There's an actual company meeting in here in less than half an hour."
He was indignant but also ready to leave. Rachel was the one that balked at the door. I heard her heavy purse hit the doorframe as she whipped back around.
"I don't have to leave," she said. "I should have never listened to you in the first place."
I laughed. "No, you're leaving. I don't care if you two leave together but you are not staying anywhere near me."
Rachel squawked and Darin blustered until security came and escorted them out. I was mortified but walked them to the elevator. I needed the office to see that this was strictly business.
The fact that I left the office shortly after the meeting was normal, due to my busy schedule. No one needed to know I was desperate to hear a friendly voice. As far as my company knew, I had handled an unfortunate situation, completed my morning meeting, and left to meet another potential client.
I rang Faith's doorbell and then crossed my fingers. When I heard her bright laugh through the peephole, the tight band around my chest finally loosened. I took a deep breath and felt amazingly better by the time she opened the front door.
"What happened? You look awful. Sorry! Is everything okay?" She took my hand and tugged me into her apartment.
"Jet lag. And drama. But it's over," I said.
She led me around her crowded apartment and down a short hallway. "The trip or the drama?" she asked.
"Both. And the first thing I want to do is this." I caught her around the waist with my free hand and pulled her back against me.
She pressed her back to my chest and then wrapped my arm around her body. Then she tilted her head back and reached up for my kiss. I heard her soft sigh and found her lips.
"There," I whispered. "Now my feet are back on the ground."
"Welcome home," she said.