Kissing Under the Mistletoe

"As soon as you left the room, Cord called," she told him, and he realized she had her own phone in her hand. "Looks like I’ll need to head back into Seattle today for what is evidently a really important last-minute meeting with the neighborhood retail association. Is everything okay at your office? Do they need you back in the city today, too?"

It was hard to keep his fury in check as he sat on the couch with her cradled on his lap, and stroked her cheek with the back of one hand. "Actually, your partner is the reason my colleague Ben called." Knowing it was best just to spit it out, he said, "I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Cord is stealing from you."

She blinked at Rafe with that look of shock on her face that made him hate days like this in the office so much. God, he hated giving bad news to people. Especially to a woman like Brooke, who saw the good in everyone and everything.

He prayed this one incident wouldn’t steal away her optimism.

Her soft hair floated around her shoulders and br**sts as she shook her head in confusion. "I don’t understand what makes you think Cord is stealing from me."

Just hearing her partner’s name made Rafe’s hands curl into fists. He wanted to take out his fury with every cheating, scheming, stealing ass**le in the world on the guy’s too-pretty face.

"As soon as we started spending time together and you told me about your new business partnership, even knowing you must have done your own background checks on the guy, I did one, too. That way, if there were any red flags, you could get out before you were pulled in too deep. Unfortunately, my team found one hell of a red flag."

Shock mingled with deep disappointment in her beautiful eyes. "You investigated Cord?"

Rafe suddenly felt like he was fumbling. Instead of being angry with Delacorte, she seemed upset with him.

"He withdrew money from the trust account your grandparents set up for you—the one you’ve barely touched since they passed away—and used it to pay for an extremely expensive fertility treatment. I’m absolutely sure their doctor will immediately refund the money as soon as we inform them of what happened."

"I don’t want the fertility clinic to refund my money." By the time she’d finished her sentence, she was off his lap and standing in the middle of the living room staring at him as if she’d never seen him before.

Rafe stood, too. "I know he took you in, convinced you he’s someone he’s not. But he stole from you, and you’re going to get every penny back from him and then some."

"No," she said with a firm shake of her head, "he’s not the one who convinced me he’s someone he isn’t." Her words had a horribly ominous tone. "At this point, I’m not even sure you deserve to hear the truth, but if I don’t tell you, I’m guessing you’ll just keep poking around in everyone’s background without permission until you can find a way to prove that you’re right."

"I’ve just told you the truth, Brooke."

"No," she said in a harder voice than he ever thought he’d hear from her, "you’ve just given me your sneaky, twisted, cynical version of what happened." She turned her face away as if she couldn’t stand to look at him. "After our meetings in Seattle were through this week, I asked Cord and his wife to have a quick drink with me. Despite everything going well with our business, I could tell how down he was, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. Their fertility doctor had just told them they had one more round of IVF left before it was time to give up trying to have a baby, but it had to be done right away or the clock would have run down too far for his wife, who is several years older than he is. They’ve already run through their available cash, and the rest is tied up in our business. I told them I wanted to help, but they wouldn’t take my money. But because we’re friends—real friends who talk about our feelings and dreams—I know how badly they want to have a baby and how hard it’s been on them to fail to conceive. I gave his doctor my trust account information for direct billing. That way, the money was already spent, and he and his wife, who is also now a friend of mine, had to take it."

Fuck. He couldn’t believe how badly he’d gotten things wrong. And yet, she had to understand why he’d done it, didn’t she?

"I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that he wasn’t stealing from you, but…"

The rest of his sentence fell away as he looked into her eyes and finally realized what heartbreak—and betrayal—looked like.

"Can’t you see that by checking up on my business partner like this, especially after I’d already told you that I’d done my research, you’ve treated me exactly like my parents always have—as if I’m not capable of making savvy business decisions? How could you, Rafe? Especially when you just told me last night that you see the real me."

"I do see you," he swore to her. "But you don’t know what else I’ve seen. Not just men cheating on their wives. Not just wives cheating on their husbands. But people planning horrible things. Extortion. Blackmail. Kidnappings. And worse. You have no idea what people are capable of, but I know exactly what could have been in that report Ben emailed me. Can’t you understand, Brooke? I needed to be sure. Completely sure."

* * *

Brooke felt everything that wasn’t already breaking inside of her start to shatter at his words.

"I needed to be sure."