Chapter Fifteen

Gabriel

I slammed the phone down and put my face in my hands, groaning. I had been calling Penny all day, but she wouldn’t answer the damn phone. At first, she was sending me to voicemail, but after I texted her several times, she just turned her phone off. It was so damn frustrating not being able to contact her. I knew what had happened this morning looked really bad to Penny, but she needed to hear someone out. It wasn’t my place to tell her about her father’s indiscretions, but if he forced my hand, and it meant being with her or not being with her, then I would tell her myself. That being said, it was pretty impossible to tell her anything when she wouldn’t pick up the phone. I thought about going over to her apartment but the last person I wanted to see at that moment was Randall. I was pretty sure I would punch him right in the jaw.

I picked up my cell phone and dialed Jay’s number. He always knew what to do, even in crazy situations like this one. He was an outsider looking in and might be able to give me some good advice.

“Hey,” I said when he answered the phone. “You got a minute?”

“Sure,” he replied.

“Penny overheard her father and I talking this morning,” I said. “She blew up and demanded to know what was going on. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her, and Randall cut me off anyway, so she stormed out. Now she won’t answer any of my calls or texts.”

“Give her some time,” he said. “Take a deep breath and give her a little space. Does she know about her father?”

“No,” I said. “I started to explain my part of it all, but he cut me off. She just stood there staring at both of us and I didn’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to wait for him,” Jay said. “If it were just rumors or you weren’t involved at all, then it would be his place, but that isn’t the case. You have the right to explain yourself without him butting in. Give it some time and then when she is ready, tell her everything.”

Before I could say anything, my phone beeped. I pulled it away from my ear to see who was calling, and my eyes widened as I realized it was Penny. I put the phone back to my ear.

“Jay, I’ll call you back, its Penny on the other line,” I said, frantically.

Pulling the phone back, I switched the calls, took a deep breath and put the phone back up to my ear. I really hoped that she was calmer. I cleared my throat and answered.

“Penny,” I said, with a sigh. “Thank God.”

“I want to know the truth,” she said, with an emotionless tone. “I want to know all the information, not just some of it. I want to know the truth, the unbiased truth, no matter what it is. I need to know what happened or I will never move past this.”

“I understand,” I said, quietly. “I can tell you everything I know, all the background. When and where do you want to meet?”

“Right now,” she said. “Meet me at the Lovehouse. And don’t bring my father.”

“All right,” I said nodding. “Penny, I want you to know that I never meant to hurt you. This was not something I wanted to affect our relationship. You are extremely important to me. I was put in a hard position and I made the wrong choice.”

“Whatever,” she said. “We can talk about all that when I see you. I just want the truth, Gabriel. I’m not a child. I am fully aware that my father is not a perfect man, but if there is something I need to know, something big, then I should be told. This is not a game and you are not protecting me by keeping me in the dark. You are hurting me more than you are helping.”

“Understood,” I replied. “I’ll leave here in ten.”

I hung up the phone and looked around the office, realizing that I might just be walking into the lion’s den. It didn’t matter, though. Penny was right: she deserved the complete truth. I asked my secretary to hold all my calls and reschedule my meetings for the rest of the day, not knowing how long this would take, and not wanting to rush Penny. I headed out of the office and to the limo waiting out front. We weren’t far from Central Park and I wasn’t sure whether I would make it there before her or not. When I arrived and walked in the door, I spotted Penny sitting at the bar. She stood up and started walking toward me.

“Mr. Matthews,” the hostess said, walking up beside me. “We weren’t expecting you.”

“Yeah,” I said shaking my head, “It was an unexpected meeting that just came up.”

“I’ll get your normal table set up then?”

“Uh, no,” I replied. “I’ll need something more secluded. Like maybe in the meeting room if it’s free?”

“Oh, of course,” she said, smiling at Penny as she approached, “Right this way.”

We sat down at the table in the meeting room and I ordered several things, then asked that they keep the door shut. We needed complete privacy. The hostess agreed and left the room, pulling a cart inside so we could get our own drinks. I walked over and poured two glasses of water, nervous as I sat back down in front of her.

“This isn’t a date,” she said angrily. “Please start talking.”

“Okay. I’ve known your father for about seven or eight years,” I said. “I met him before my company was worth billions, and I was looking for a way to push it over that threshold. Your father went right to work, trying to help me achieve my goals. He came to me with an offer, an offer that would make my company untouchable. It seemed too good to be true and I wanted to know what the catch was, so I took it to Jay, who is also my financial advisor. He picked up on it right away, without even five minutes with the contract.”

“Picked up on what?”

“The scam,” I said, looking up at her eyes. “Your father, if he had succeeded, would have stolen millions of dollars from me, and left my company in shambles. By the time I would have figured out what was going on, it would have been too late. Everyone would have assumed I was lying because my business was failing. Afterwards, I found out that I wasn’t the first person he had done that to.”

Penny’s face froze in shock. She shook her head back and forth, running things over in her mind. She was having trouble making sense of it, and I didn’t blame her at all.

“Why didn’t you just tell me about this? Why keep it a secret?”

“Honestly? I didn’t want to be the bad guy,” I said, looking down at my water. “I cared about you almost immediately, and I didn’t want to be the guy responsible for destroying your relationship with your father. I knew how close you were to him and there was nothing that could be done to change his past. All it could do was hurt you.”

She sat there for several moments, her hands folded in her lap, and tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. Slowly she lifted her head and stared at me, her blue eyes now gray. She took in a deep breath and shook her head, emotions taking hold. She stood up and looked down at me.

“You don’t get to make decisions for me,” she whispered.

She turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. I looked around the room, not sure what to say or do. I was completely beside myself, realizing that I had just ruined one of the best things to ever come into my life, and all because I was afraid of telling her the truth about her father. I knew I should have told her from the start, but it didn’t seem like the right thing at the time I may have just lost an amazing woman, and I didn’t know how to fix it.