Chapter 45

Michael

My heart beat hard in my chest, and a whooshing sound took residence in my ears. I stared at the little boy in front of me, the echo of my words clung to the still air of the room.

“You have a son?” I growled, flashing my teeth.

Rainey stood there, her mouth falling open.

Her resignation letter remained on the floor at her feet.

“T-Tanner,” she said finally and ushered him out of the room.

I took in the small apartment before me. No wonder Rainey never wanted me to come here. She lived in a place the size of my living room. But the biggest reason for hiding her life had been the pint-sized human that she failed to mention.

I stepped into the room, needing to explore the life that Rainey so carefully hid from the start. This changed everything. For one, she lied to me. At the interview, she told me she didn’t have anything in her life that would hold her back from being on call, traveling, or being at my beck and call. Did she somehow have enough money to pay for a nanny? The child, Tanner, was possibly in school but Rainey had put in some late hours with me at the office. Was all her money going to child care? I doubted her apartment cost much since it was above a house. But still, she claimed to need the money so badly. The pieces of her life didn’t add up.

I rubbed my forehead, the beginnings of a headache slowly moving to the front of my skull. I wished Rainey hadn’t lied to me. Now I had a lot more on my plate than I wanted. With the whole situation surrounding Sal Rossi, I could protect her. But now there was a kid in the mix. Children and spouses tended to be used as leverage in these situations. Even though Rainey had kept a tight cap on the secrets in her life, one could easily follow her home where she picked up her kid at the bus stop or whatever. She had just become more of a liability for me.

And her lying about this made me want to know what else did she lied about. Did she really have an ex-husband who was “harassing” her, or was she fielding phone calls to someone else when we were at work? Maybe she was speaking in code to her babysitter or nanny so that I would be off her scent. Now I was onto her. She wasn’t the person I thought she was.

Rainey came back into the room. Her eyes were wide with fear.

Good. I wanted her to fear me. Gone was the man who came here to tell her I loved her and wanted her forgiveness. She had a lot to make up for, and I wasn’t going to cave in. I supposed I came here at the perfect time. If I was going to be with a woman long-term, I needed her to be honest with me.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” I asked.

“I could ask why you’re at my home,” she said, crossing her arms.

I scoffed. “You lied to me.”

Her gaze moved to the ground, touching the resignation letter before popping back up to mine. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I didn’t want to use Tanner as an excuse for anything. I busted my ass in school to get where I wanted to be.”

“That’s a weak argument,” I said. “It doesn’t hide the fact that everything I’ve ever known about you is untrue.”

“No,” she said. “Would you never have hired me if you knew I had a child?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but that would have been a lie too. I needed someone with dedication to the job. I knew I couldn’t be biased to someone’s family situation, but it would have helped my gut decision not to hire her. It might have tipped the scales, and I wouldn’t be in this mess. I might have picked another candidate, and I wouldn’t be standing in front of someone I barely knew. But I couldn’t tell her she was right. I wanted to believe I would have focused on her qualifications, but at the end of the day I needed someone who was as dedicated as Rainey was, but someone honest too.

“Exactly,” she said as if reading my mind.

“I didn’t say yes,” I said.

“You didn’t say no either,” she said. “Being a mother is an important job.”

“I know that,” I said. “And if you trusted me with knowing everything about you, you might see that I would have understood.”

She shook her head slightly. “Michael, you wouldn’t have hired me. I know that now.” She spread her arms out as if encompassing the entire situation we were in.

Even if I did hire her, knowing she had a kid, I would have shielded her better with the Sal situation. Thinking she was only divorced and single with no child in the picture, I brought her into my world, knowing I could protect her. If I knew differently, I would have acted differently.

I couldn’t help thinking of her motives. “Were you trying to trap me?”

“What? Michael, no! How could you ever think that?”

I shrugged. “I have a lot of money. Clearly, you don't,” I said waving my hand around her tiny apartment. “Was this some ploy to trick me into paying for your secret life?” As the words came out, I regretted them. But I wanted everything in the open. I’d been with gold diggers before, and while Rainey didn’t act like one at all, in fact, she acted quite the opposite most of the time, I had to get everything out in the open.

“Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you think that.”

“I don’t, Rainey,” I said. “But what else should I think about this? What about those phone calls you’ve been avoiding when we’re together? Do you have an ex-husband? Why isn’t he helping out with your kid?”

“While I don’t think any of this is your business—”

“It is my business, Rainey!”

“Keep your voice down,” she hissed.

My blood pressure rose. I wanted to shove my fist through a wall or smash something. Rage built up within me, and I had no idea how to get it out. I hated that she tricked me. I was always steps ahead of everyone, and she had changed that. How could I have been so blind? I felt like an absolute fool which didn’t bode well for my blood pressure.

“Rainey, I told you things about my life,” I said, trying to keep my cool. I focused all of that pent-up energy on my fists, and they shook by my sides. “I let you into my life. And you continued to sit there and keep this huge secret from me. What should I be thinking?”

She sighed. “I’m sorry, Michael. But Tanner is my number one priority.”

“Exactly,” I said. “You’ve been selfish from the start.”

She flinched as if I’d slapped her. “Everything about my life that I’ve told you is the truth, except for Tanner. And I don’t regret that. Now I see what dealings you’re involved with and I’m happy that Tanner isn’t a part of that.”

I was too, but now she linked Tanner to me whether she liked it or not. I didn’t tell her that, as I didn’t want her to worry.

“When I opened my personal life to you, I hoped that you would have done the same,” I said. Working relationships were hard enough when people thought you were playing favorites. But after spending so much time with Rainey, I did love her. She challenged me in so many ways, but this challenge was too much for me. I wasn’t going to take on anyone else’s responsibility for a child. That wasn’t in my nature. And that was why I chose not to get involved with women outside of one night stands. I should have stuck with the lifestyle I had before, the one that Frederick always encouraged for me. I thought that I could find love again, but I now knew that wasn’t true.

“What you said about my ex,” she said, breaking the silence. “I do avoid Killian’s phone calls. But he’s the one who chooses to be out of my life. Our lives.”

I raised my hand to stop her. A part of me wanted to know more about her, giving her the opportunity to make things right. A sliver of hope shone through the anger, but I quickly extinguished it. Nothing could fix this. It was too little, too late, and she needed to know that.

“I don’t want to hear anything else,” I said and turned away from her. I didn’t want to make things worse by saying something I regretted.

Then my manners got the best of me. I turned back around to face her.

She now held the resignation letter in her hand, and she was staring at it.

“Goodbye, Rainey,” I said and snatched the letter from her hand. “I’ll take your resignation after all.”

I opened the door leading to the stairs outside and closed behind me. I let out a sharp puff of breath, and it appeared in front of my face in a giant cloud. Outside in the cooler temperature, my skin felt hotter than it had inside. It wasn’t the first time Rainey affected me so, but it would be the last. I was done with her and her lies.

I crumpled the corner of the resignation letter in my hand as I made my way up her driveway to the idling black car parked in the street.

Constantine glanced over at me and cocked his head before getting out of the car. “That was quick,” he said.

I didn’t feel like talking about it, so I gave him a little grunt. He nodded his head, understanding that I wasn’t in the mood to talk.

I got into the car and threw the letter onto the seat. I sat down and shoved it away from me. I stared at Rainey’s apartment. She wasn’t in the window, watching me leave. I doubted I’d ever see her again. I probably ruined any relationship with her, but that wasn’t completely my fault.

Though with her out of my life, she wouldn’t be a target for Sal’s goons anymore. I supposed that was a good thing.

Now I was stuck without an assistant. It was a good thing that the Christmas charity was wrapped up, but that still left me short-handed at work.

I pulled out my phone as Constantine drove away from Rainey’s apartment. I texted Sandra to start pulling applications from the previous assistant candidates. I finished typing out the email, but for some reason, I couldn’t force myself to press SEND. I saved it to my draft folder and put my phone down on the seat next to me.

Why couldn’t I come to grips with Rainey leaving me for good? Admittedly, my pride was hurt. I hated that I put myself out there for someone who turned out to be a complete liar. But I learned a valuable lesson about trust, and I wasn’t going to open my heart up again to anyone unless I knew for sure that they were exactly who they said they were.