“Don, we take this one step at a time,” Dale says.
“The lien. How can we get rid of the lien if we don’t even know what the Steel Trust is?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Dale says.
“I’ll help,” Callie says. “You’ve already asked me to research. I can find the trust, figure it out.”
I sigh. “I’m not sure what I ever did to deserve you, Callie Pike.”
She smiles. Sort of. This isn’t the kind of thing that anyone wants to smile about. God knows. “I’m not sure what I did to deserve you either.”
Dale scoffs. “Get a room.”
Ashley grabs his hand again. “If there’s nothing else to drop on us, I think this might be our cue to leave.”
“You guys sure are taking this better than I imagined,” I say. “I was ready to pull out of the whole thing. We still can.”
“We can,” Dale says. “But we’ve started now.”
Even though the women have taken the news well and Dale wants to go forward, I can’t. Already, in my own mind, I’ve called it off. I don’t want to do this. I can’t do this. I’m an officer of the court. What would Mom think?
“Easy enough to call a halt. Say there was a mistake. Then we don’t trespass.”
Dale’s face goes blank. Seriously unreadable. Finally, “All right, Don. If that’s what you want.”
Yeah, it’s what I want.
Our grandfather may have bent the law. I don’t want to be that guy.
“I’ll still owe Lambert, but I can deal with that,” I say. “But yeah. I want out. I’ll tell Murphy I was able to get some research done and the gas line is fine. It was just a precautionary thing anyway. Or a mistake was made. Yeah, that’ll fly better. And then…”
“Then what?” Dale asks.
“Then…we pay him. We pay him big, and we go in and find what we need to find. With his permission.”
A giant weight has been lifted from my shoulders already. Relief sweeps through me.
My mother trusts me to run her office while she’s otherwise engaged. To think I almost really fucked it up.
I can fix it. There’s still time. I can make it so this never happened.
Thank God.
Callie smiles weakly. “Are you sure?”
I cock my head. Is she upset with me? No. I must be imagining it. “Yes, I’m sure. Already I feel a thousand times better. I’m not sure I’ve tasted food since this whole thing started. And then there’s Dad on top of the rest of it. Fuck.” I thread my fingers through my hair. “What was I thinking?”
“You were thinking you wanted to know what’s going on with our family,” Dale says. “So do I. But you’re the one who’d pay the most dearly if we were ever found out, so this is your call, little brother.”
“I’m calling it,” I say. “It’s over. I’ll fix it in the morning.”
This is the right thing. My mother didn’t raise me to be unethical.
I’ll find a way to do this on the up-and-up. Callie’s research. Talk to Murphy. He’s a good guy. He’ll let us do what we need to do.
And if he doesn’t?
I can close on the lien.
I hope it won’t come to that, but at least I have a remedy that’s a hundred percent legal.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Callie
I love Donny even more.
He’s so in tune with his ethics. Sure, he faltered a bit. Took it a little too far, but he’s going to fix it.
And I wonder…
What will happen if he finds out what I’ve done? What I helped to do?
Nothing unlawful, for sure.
But unethical?
It’s a fine line.
Rory and I—and the others—had valid reasons for everything we did. Really valid reasons.
Would I change any of it if I could go back?
We didn’t have anyone to turn to at the time. Our mother and father didn’t have any money to help us, and we weren’t close enough to anyone in the Steel family to even ask.
Had we been? We still wouldn’t have asked. Just like with the fire. The Pikes don’t take charity. We never have, which is why Pat Lamone’s assertion that Rory and I are gold diggers will never fly. Still, he has some ulterior motive.
I could be honest with Donny right now. Ashley and Dale are gone. It’s just him and me here, and already I see the look of desire in his eyes.
He’s feeling so much better now that he’s decided not to go through with the breach of ethics that could have turned into a breach of the law.
I’m being pulled in two different directions.
I desire him as much as he desires me.
How tempting it is to follow him to his bedroom. Let him make passionate love to me. Allow myself the beautiful escape.
Yet in reality, escape is impossible for me.
My past has come back to bite me in the ass.
Will Donny still want me? Because he will find out.