The Tycoon

I opened the door to my penthouse and waited for the elevator to bing and open. When it did, and I got a good look at Veronica’s face, I realized why she wasn’t using the codes.

Something had happened. Something big. And bad.

She wasn’t here as my lover and would-be fiancée.

She was here to get some answers.

“Hello Veronica,” I said.

“Clayton.”

“You seem—”

“Upset? Yeah, upset is a word I would use. Confused, that works, too. I would even go so far as to say pissed. I am pissed, Clayton.”

I stood back to let her in and she stormed by me, bringing the smell of fire and brimstone with her. Dread settled in around me, but with it was a kind of awe. I could not pretend that I didn’t like her like this. Her hands so firmly on the reins of herself.

But considering I was the thing she was charging at, I knew enough to be worried.

Briefly I thought of the letter to Dylan, though there was no way she’d found out. Should she, that would be a problem. Madison had been right about that.

I shut the door behind her and followed her into the kitchen where she turned to face me. Her eyes shot off sparks and her skin was flushed.

Anger suited her.

“What’s happened?” I asked. I found myself sitting down in my calm, surrounding myself with it, another skill from my childhood. I’d used my calm as a buffer against my father’s rage. Not that it had helped, but if I screamed back at him, things got bloodier. Faster.

“Bea and I went out to the cabin.”

Cabin? I thought.

“Your cabin!”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know, Clayton. To see why you wanted that land so badly?”

“If you had asked—”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t make my not asking the problem here.”

I nodded.

“Maggie was there, she was the first thing I saw, and you know what I thought?” she asked. Oh, it broke my heart knowing what she’d thought.

“Maggie’s an employee,” I said. “A highly trained nurse. That’s all.”

“Yeah, I know. The conclusions I jumped to are on me. Totally. And I have to work on that. I didn’t even realize my dad left these scars on me. But the last thing I expected was your father.”

“Dale,” I corrected, a knee-jerk reaction. A protection mechanism I was exceedingly careful with.

“He’s not your father?”

“That man you met today. Sweet guy? Stroke survivor? Yeah, that…” This sounded stupid, even to my own ears. I looked away from Veronica, stepped into the dining room and the work I had spread out on my table.

“Don’t.” She caught me as I walked by. “Don’t pretend this is nothing. Don’t go do something else like what we’re talking about doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t,” I said, though I hadn’t meant to. “I’ve spent six years making sure it doesn’t matter.”

“Things don’t work that way,” she said. “I spent five years trying to pretend you didn’t matter, but look at us now.”

I sighed and pushed my hands into my pockets because I wanted to touch her. I wanted to touch her so we could stop talking about this. I’d picked up condoms on my way home and all I wanted to do was make love to her.

Distract her until she stopped caring about this.

“Clayton,” she said. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”

Right. Answers. Truth. No lies. That had never seemed so hard before.

“Dale is my father. He had a stroke six years ago and it erased…him.” That was literally the best way I could explain it. “He has no memories of me. Of his past up to the afternoon he had the stroke. Except of my mother.”

“Oh, my God, Clayton. That must have been so hard.”

My laugh was more bitter than I wanted it to be. “It was a gift. A gift I never saw coming.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she whispered. “You lost your father.”

My back teeth clenched hard, biting back the words that sought to get out.

She didn’t need to know the truth about my father. About my childhood. What good would that do? Those memories? That life? It was like a disease. I didn’t want her pity.

“Clayton,” she breathed, like she knew how hard it was. She touched my face and I flinched.

“I used to…” I swallowed and my mouth tasted like bile. “I used to take money out of his paycheck. Not a lot. Not enough that he’d notice. But just a couple of bucks every week. Kept it in a roll in the toe of an old gym shoe.”

“What was the money for?”

“A bike.” I blew out a long breath. “So I could ride the hell away from him.”

I could feel her attention like a cold breeze on a hot day.

“He was a drunk. A mean one who made his point with his fists. And he didn’t like me much. There were nights I was sure he wanted to kill me.”