It seemed like either way, I was going to lose. But at least I wasn’t going to lose my best friend. I should never have doubted her advice in the first place.
Chapter 27
Daniel
I STARED UP AT THE ceiling of my room, hating the emptiness of the room, the house, my life.
I was still seething about what had happened the previous night at the bar. I couldn’t believe that Gerrard had shown up there like that. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The guy must still be following me around even though I had fired him. I wondered if he still hoped to violate that contract he had signed, if he still thought that he could make a living off following me around and selling my information to the media.
It had to be trickier for him to do that no longer having access to my schedules and without having me telling him where I was off to every evening.
Not only that, but it wasn’t like I had been doing much in the way of partying lately. I had everything I wanted in those late evenings with Abby, back at the office. Sure, I had gone out a couple times with the daughters of some of my business associates. But that was just what was expected of me. That was just part of my job, really.
Every free evenin
g I had, I had been spending with either Abby or Austin. No one else. There wasn’t much for the media to latch onto there.
Except Abby. I knew the stories had to be out there about last night. Gerrard wouldn’t have made a scene like that if he wasn’t sure that the media was catching every minute of it. He’d get a nice paycheck from someone, I was sure.
Should I take him to court over it? It suddenly seemed like so much trouble. I just wished that none of it had ever happened.
I wanted to call Abby. I wanted to make sure she was okay and that she knew I wasn’t just using her to get into the papers, whatever Gerrard had said, whatever I had stupidly joked that one time. I had only made that joke because Gerrard had accused me of doing that once upon a time. I hated that it had come full circle to this.
But I doubted that Abby would pick up the phone and actually talk to me, not after the way she had stormed out of the bar the previous night. I couldn’t blame her. It was the same thing I had told her, when the previous news stories had broken about how I had fired Gerrard just so that I could replace him with a young and attractive female. My reputation drove people away from me.
At the time, just a week ago, she had said that it didn’t matter, that she wasn’t running. But there were only so many times a person could deal with this crap. She had reached her limit. I couldn’t blame her.
I had tried asking Austin for advice, and even he believed that I probably needed to give her some space. It had been a lot for him to handle, even, and he was my best friend. He’d been there with me through years of this crap. So if he felt like she probably needed space, he was probably right. He understood better than anyone.
I wished I knew what to do. But I couldn’t promise to keep her away from the paparazzi if we continued to date. There were bound to be stories about the two of us, and stories about how she was my advisor as well as my lover, and vice versa. People would talk.
I didn’t want to lose her as my advisor. But selfishly, I was more loath to lose her as the woman I was dating. I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to find another woman like her. Not in this lifetime. I couldn’t exactly ask her to give up her job just so that I could date her, though. Especially not since the media already knew that she was my advisor. They’d have a field day if I fired Abby over this.
HR would murder me, too, I was sure. It might be my company, but I was pretty sure it was a legal issue for me to fire a woman I had been sleeping with. Abby would be well within her rights to take me to court over it. That was more publicity that I didn’t need.
In another lifetime, what could things have been like for us? What if I were just some other employee of McGregor Enterprises? But then we probably wouldn’t have gotten to know each other the way we had. Things would have been different.
Besides, I liked that she worked alongside me as my advisor. That was just what made this all so difficult. I didn’t want to have to hire someone else. I knew no one else would do the job the way she had.
I sighed and hauled myself out of bed. I couldn’t just spend the whole day wallowing, as much as I might want to. Maybe I’d call Austin and we could go out for drinks again that night. Just to get me out of the house. But I had a feeling I would be a maudlin drunk that evening, and I didn’t really want to subject him to that.
I forced myself to go into my home office and do a little bit of work, but I was having a hard time concentrating on any of it. And not only that, but every time I had to make a decision on anything, I found myself wishing I could talk to Abby about it, to get her advice on things.
It was hard to believe that just a few short weeks ago, I hadn’t even known her. Now, it felt like everything I did had me thinking about her.
The doorbell rang, startling me. I frowned, wondering who it could be. I didn’t get door-to-door salesmen or politicians in this nice neighborhood, and as far as I knew, I didn’t have any packages to be delivered that day.
I froze when I saw, through the peephole, that it was Abby standing there, as though my thoughts had summoned her. I took a deep breath and pulled open the door. For a moment, we just stared at each other. “About last night,” I began. Then I paused, shaking my head. Where were my manners? I was so desperate to convince her that I wanted her that I wasn’t even thinking. “Do you want to come in?”
Abby stared at me for another few moments and then slowly shook her head. I knew right then, with a sinking heart, that this wasn’t going to be a good conversation between the two of us.
“I just feel like maybe we need to pump the brakes,” Abby blurted out. “You know, take things back down a few notches. I’m your employee. Nothing more. I can’t be anything more. That’s just how things have to be.”
I grimaced, looking out over her shoulder, having a hard time meeting her eyes. I was sure that if she saw my eyes, she would see just how upset I was. And I didn’t want her to feel any pressure. I wanted her to do what she felt like she needed to do, regardless of what that meant for me.
“I want you to be something more, though,” I said, before I had thought through the words.
Abby made a face of her own. “But I can’t be,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t be a part of the drama that is your life.” She paused. “It’s not just about me. I have a niece and a nephew who will be starting to read this stuff sooner or later. Kids who will look to me to be an example. I can’t let them think that their aunt is just another in a string of floozies who the whole fucking city is laughing at.”