CHAPTER FIVE
“I didn’t call for a lecture.”
Smith had no choice but to set boundaries for this phone call. He understood his father all too well, and they’d gone head to head many times in the past. The first real showdown had been regarding his switch from law to business when he’d attended Harvard University. The threats of being cut off from the family trust fund had made him realize just how shallow and materialistic the Gallos family had become over the years.
Well, that crap ended with him.
“I’m sure you saw the news this morning regarding Brad Manon’s murder.” Smith didn’t doubt for a moment that Nathanial Gallo had been given every detail before then calling his contacts at the police station to obtain the rest of the story. “Manon Investments will no doubt be closing their doors within the next year. Who would benefit from that?”
Smith poured coffee into the two cups that were positioned on either side of the plate he’d filled with fresh fruit and toast. He and Laurel were due at the office to speak with Detective Nielsen at ten o’clock. It was only now going on eight. That left them enough time to clear any misconceptions she had about last night and what had, in fact, changed.
“It’s my understanding that no one would benefit from Manon Investments going under—not even Paul Slater, his partner.” Nathaniel Gallo wasn’t one to mince words. “I’ve already spoken with the police chief. Apparently, Brad Manon had some gambling debt. Quite a lot of money, from what I understand. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got involved with the wrong sort of people.”
That was Nathaniel’s way of saying that Smith had gotten involved with the wrong kind of people himself. Well, he wasn’t going to take the bait. His parents were in for quite a shock as it was when he brought Laurel to the charity dinner they were hosting soon. In his best estimate, it would be the perfect time to go public with their relationship, especially given that the now defunct partnership slot no longer required them to be discreet. He’d kept this quiet based on her wishes, but that had changed after last night’s usual tryst and their subsequent encounters with the police.
“Is that what the intrepid Detective Nielsen believes?” Smith asked, reaching into the refrigerator for the half and half he kept on hand for Laurel’s visits. She was never around in the mornings to drink coffee, but once in a while they enjoyed a cup after a private dinner or between rendezvouses. “What about Manon’s ex-wife? Did she have some type of outstanding life insurance policy out on him?”
“Manon did have a life insurance policy, but it was barely enough to cover the mortgage on the house she was encumbered with after the divorce.” Nathanial didn’t waste time getting to the root of his call. There were only two reasons Smith had answered his cell phone in the first place. One had been he didn’t want the noise to wake up Laurel, and the second was that his father would have vital information on an investigation that would impact both Smith and Laurel. “Listen, now might be the time where you reevaluate your choices, son. You have—”
“You’re right,” Smith said, cutting off his father from taking the conversation into territory he believed would lead them both over a cliff. “It is time for me to reevaluate, which is why I’ll be contacting each and every one of our investors to let them know they’ll have a place to invest their money with my firm. I would never have extended such an offer, but in light of certain circumstances, that landscape has changed. I’m sure that puts me in the suspect pool, but my lawyer can handle that.”
“Your own investment firm?” Smith’s father seemed to mull over that idea, allowing the words to roll off his tongue. He had taken issue with the fact that Smith had wanted to work for someone else in the beginning, rather than take the reins and have his own surname on the door. It wasn’t a surprise that he would now reassess the advantages and disadvantages of having his youngest son branch out on his own. “This might—”
“You were going to quit?” Laurel’s voice was loud enough that his father stopped speaking on the other end of the line. She was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, looking like temptation incarnate wearing nothing but the white dress shirt he’d given her last night. From the daggers shooting from those marvelous green eyes of hers, he could easily distinguish that she was also mad as hell. The combination had him hardening, reminding him that he hadn’t taken his pleasure before she’d all but fallen into a vegetative state after reaching hers. “When were you going to tell me this? After you won the partnership, leaving me high and dry with nothing?”
“Dad, I’ll have to call you back.” Smith disconnected the line before his father could get another word in edgewise. He gently set his phone on the counter by the breakfast tray he’d put together, accepting that his vision of gradually waking her by running a fresh-cut strawberry across her pink lips wasn’t going to materialize. “Laurel, it was always my intention to gain enough experience before managing my own fund. The partnership meant nothing to me, and I would have refused had Brad or Paul offered it to me. It was yours all along to accept or reject.”
Smith was only wearing trousers. He’d had every intention of climbing back into bed with her after speaking with his father, but that was looking more and more unlikely as the flush rose higher on her cheeks. He leaned back against the counter.
It was time they both laid their cards on the table.
“Mine?” Laurel took a step forward, pointing a French manicured fingernail his way. Her gorgeous tresses were tousled while her lips were still slightly swollen from their earlier tryst. “Do you realize that I put in more hours over the last three months than I have the last year? I’ve been running on four hours of sleep between analyzing companies, sitting in on various board meetings, and having sex with your traitorous ass.”
“Great sex, might I reiterate,” Smith reminded her with a small smile, throwing her own words back in her face. He held up a hand when she advanced another step. Okay. She wasn’t ready to allow him to lighten the mood. He was fine with that, but he’d wait until she was closer before proving she was right. “I touched base with Cynthia. We’re to be at the office this morning.”
“We?” Laurel was already shaking her head to the contrary, pushing aside his attempt to change the subject. “I’ll speak to Cynthia myself regarding my interview with Detective Nielsen. We won’t be doing anything together. This…”
“Great sex?” Smith offered, filling in her words when she kept circling her finger to encompass what was between them. He was no longer smiling. She didn’t get to end this. “Lovers? Relationship?”
“We both decided to keep things casual, so don’t you dare stand there and make this out to be more than it really is.” Laurel took another step closer as she attempted to disengage from the bond that had grown between them. “We always understood where the line was drawn in the sand, and neither of us were allowed to cross it. This was always meant to be a temporary alliance. I was going to tell you yesterday after work, but…”
Laurel didn’t have to finish her description of what had taken place the moment she’d walked through his door yesterday evening. Of course, that was before she decided to sneak out after midnight while he was asleep to avoid his usual request that she spend the night.
He’d taken a shower before her arrival and had answered the door with nothing but a towel around his waist. The large cotton cloth had still been left by the front door when he’d walked out after receiving the call informing him that Brad Manon was dead and the police needed to corroborate Laurel’s whereabouts—which she’d actually had the balls to question him on whether or not he would lie about such a thing.
“You were going to tell me that we were over?” Smith kept his tone even, wondering how he would have played that scenario out had she actually attempted to end their relationship. He could still hear his name falling from her lips after pleasuring her. No. Things between them were far from over. She was in denial. One important detail needed to be addressed before moving on to another. “Laurel, what misconception makes you believe that I’m out of your league?”
Smith truly wanted to hear how she could arrive at that conclusion, when he’d done everything in his power to even the playing field from the very beginning.
“Why? Because I went to an Ivy League school? I graduated with a business degree, worked at two investment companies over the span of ten years, and managed to pay my father back for every penny he put into my highly overpriced education. Is it anything you see in this apartment?” It was Smith’s turn to wave his hand at their surroundings, but he was very measured in how he spoke. This was not the time to lose the upper hand. “I bought every item with the money I earned from the long hours I’ve spent learning the way the gears grind in the financial industry—the mechanisms of making money. Being a Gallo has been nothing but a hindrance ever since I’ve tried to break out on my own, but you wouldn’t understand that, would you? Because you never bothered to look beyond the great sex. So let me ask you now that you’re beginning to understand where I’m coming from. What could possibly make you imagine that I’m out of your league?”
“Since when did you want anything more than a quick fuck?” Laurel had purposely devalued what was between them, but Smith let it go with an annoyed grimace. He could see the panic written across her features that they were once again entering territory she usually shied away from. “You can’t rewrite our history, Smith.”
“I might not be able to rewrite your understanding of history, but I can damn well set the course for our future together on a different path.”
“Our future?” Laurel gave a disbelieving laugh and must have decided the distance between them was causing a problem with their communication. She finally took those last few steps to get her point across. “We don’t have a future, Smith. Brad’s murder put that azimuth one hundred and eighty degrees out…that changed everyone’s future. Regardless of the fact that you were going to resign from the company, Manon Investments will close their doors. I’ll probably end up going to New York, while you stay here and pretend you’re not a Gallo. Speaking of which, that is exactly why you’re out of my league, so don’t pretend to be dense, Harvard boy. I don’t run in your family’s circles. I will never run in those mythical social microcosms, just as you would never set foot in my old working-class neighborhood. I worked through my high school years, Smith, just so I could buy clothes that weren’t from a secondhand shop. I worked through college so that I could have a car and lived off of ramen noodles instead of spending my last few dollars on nights out. I didn’t accomplish all of that just to throw it all away on…”
“Great sex?” Smith experienced a bit of déjà vu when he reached out to wrap his fingers around her wrist, but they no longer had time for what usually transpired afterward. That didn’t stop him from pulling her forward, using her momentum to spin them around so that she was pinned against the granite countertop. He leaned down so that they were eye to eye and she couldn’t misinterpret anything he said or take it out of context. “You’ve told me more about yourself in the last minute than you have in the past three months that you’ve occupied my bed, so let me share a bit about myself. I gave you those three months to get used to the idea of us, Laurel, because I realized from the first time you said no that you weren’t like the other women who only wanted what my name could provide. With each day that passed, I noticed you called the mail boy by his name, treated every employee as if they were as important as the CEO, and never stabbed anyone in the back…even when the SOBs deserved it.”
“So you think you want something more than sex because I’m nice to the mail boy?”
Laurel stressed her question as if it were inconceivable, causing another rush of anger to course through his veins. She was either purposefully being obtuse to what he was saying or he hadn’t chipped away nearly enough cement from those walls she’d put up around her heart. From the defensive way she had her arms crossed in front of her waist, he guessed the former. After all, she’d all but surrendered in his arms last night. Which meant he needed to spell it out for her so that there were no more misunderstandings.
“You were never a quick fuck to me, sweetheart.” Smith leaned in a bit closer to drive his point home. “You were always meant to be mine.”