Substitute Seduction (Sweet Tea And Scandal 2)

“It isn’t like it sounds—”

“Don’t lie to me. I want to know what’s really going on.”

Gathering a huge breath, she stepped up to the kitchen island and set her hands on it, leaning forward. “I’m trying to find out if your brother is hiding money.”

“Why?”

She bit her lip. They’d promised not to tell anyone about what they were doing. Yet hadn’t Everly broken their pact when she’d sent that audio clip to Harrison? What more could the woman do? Taint London’s reputation? Bad-mouth ExcelEvent?

In the end, cowardice ruled. “I’m not at liberty to tell you.”

For long, agonizing seconds he stared at her in silence, confusion and annoyance chasing across his features. “Why?”

“Because it’s not my story to tell.”

“So, us...?” The unformed question drained all animation from his eyes. “Was I a means to an end?”

She could try lying to him, but he knew her well enough by now to see right through it. “At first.”

He took the hit without reacting. “I suppose you want me to believe that things changed.”

“They did. I would never have...” She hesitated, unsure what came next. Thanks to the revenge bargain she’d become unrecognizable to herself.

“Never would have...?” He prompted. “Slept with me? Led me to believe your feelings for me were real?” Although his tone remained neutral, the tension around his eyes and the muscle jumping in his jaw displayed what was really going on inside him.

“I do have feelings for you.”

But even as the claim left her lips, London saw it was too little and too late. Harrison’s eyes hardened to flint, and her heart stopped.

“You don’t understand,” she protested.

He appeared impervious to her desperate plea. “Then tell me what’s going on.”

“I can’t.” Trapped between her mistakes and her longing to come clean, London closed her eyes and wished herself back in time to that fateful women’s empowerment function. How had she believed that doing something wrong would make anything better?

“You mean you won’t,” Harrison countered.

“It’s complicated.”

The lame excuse bought her no sympathy. Harrison crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her in disgust.

“Can you at least explain to me why you’re doing this?”

Maybe it would help if she did. She couldn’t tell him everything, but she could say enough that maybe he’d understand.

“I’m helping a friend. Your brother hurt her and I’m trying to...” This is where her story got murky. London no longer believed that what she, Zoe and Everly were doing would make any of them any better off.

“Hurt him back?” Harrison guessed.

London found it hard to meet his gaze. “That’s the way it started.”

“And things are different now?”

“Yes and no. There’s no question that Tristan is a bad guy who did bad things. I’m just not sure doing bad things to a bad guy is the answer. How is it helping anyone to get back at him?”

“I’ll be the first one to admit that my brother has not always been a decent individual and I turned a blind eye to a lot of his behavior.”

For a second London thought that maybe Harrison understood and could forgive her, but there was no sympathy in his eyes. Only regret.