Dirty Little Secret(17)

“For what?” he asked.

“For winning her over.”

He ran his hand back and forth across his chest, the rasp of the T-shirt against his skin a dim reflection of the grim resignation scouring his mind. “No plan.”

“What? Why? Alex—”

Gently shaking his head at her, he pointed out, “There is no win-win solution here. If I’m with her and someone finds out… It can’t happen. And what kind of offer is that? ‘Hey, let’s fuck. But you can’t tell anyone. And you can’t be seen with me in public. Oh, and by the way, I’m not really a prick for sleeping around on my wife, but I can’t tell you why.’”

“Alex—”

“No! We’ve talked about this. I will not jeopardize you. He cannot know.”

Sara Beth shivered, and he gathered her back into his arms, resting his chin on the top of her head, surrounding her with his strength. His priorities had been set years ago, long before their six-month-old marriage, and loneliness or horniness or whatever this was wouldn’t change them. He loved Sara Beth too much to even consider it.

Several minutes passed before she stirred. “Do you regret it?” she asked him softly.

Alex pulled back to stare straight into her eyes. Brushing her long ginger-red bangs away from her face, he brushed his lips just as tenderly along the corner of her mouth, the same spot as this morning, the spot where he always kissed her. His spot. “Not for a moment, love. Not for a moment.”

Forcing himself to walk away from Cailin tonight had felt like a kick to his gut, but he’d known it was necessary. He wasn’t free to have her, not now, possibly not ever, and she deserved better than the self-serving asshole he would be if he allowed himself to take her again. How they’d both make it through the next months, he wasn’t sure, but one thing was certain: if he’d thought his life had been a hard, private hell before, he hadn’t seen anything yet.





Chapter Five

“Mr. Keane on line one, Mr. Brannigan.”

Alex gritted his teeth. After being subjected to it for the past two weeks, Cailin’s clinical tone irritated him almost as much as the knowledge that he’d have to talk to Sara Beth’s father. It wasn’t like he could get out of it; the man was CEO of Keane Industries. Sometimes it seemed he existed just to make their lives a living hell. There was a time when Alex had respected him tremendously, back before he had seen how John Keane treated his daughter, but that respect had come and gone a long time ago.

Clicking his Bluetooth to the correct channel, he braced himself to be pleasant. “John! How’s sunny California?”

He thought he’d miss California when they moved here to Atlanta, especially the milder weather, but Alex would have gladly given up the next six years of sunny-and-seventy days to get Sara Beth away from her father’s constant interference—which was, in effect, what he’d done, wasn’t it?

“Alex.” That stern tone still had the power to draw starch into his spine. Old habits. “What’s going on with this problem in development? Can’t that Walker idiot get his head out of his ass? I sent you out there to fix things, not let that fellow float into the exosphere and make them worse.”

As if Alex could really control Ian, not that it was his job. The man was fast becoming the most recognized researcher in the field of augmented-reality applications, essentially the use of overlay displays on real-time pictures to “augment” or enhance what a viewer was seeing, and he worked much better without interference. Sara Beth understood that, and her running of the development department had freed Ian to focus on his research, as well as giving her a position of power within the company. Eventually, they hoped, that power could be garnered into influence on the board and disarm John’s threats to cut her out of the company now that her husband was in charge. “I’m waiting on Sara Beth and Ian for an update now.”

John humphed. “Don’t have time for you to be sitting on your hands, young man, especially not waiting on a woman. We need results. This research has been six years in the making—”

Ignoring the dig at Sara Beth, Alex said, “And will handle six more minutes, John. Relax.”

Alex could practically feel the blood beginning to boil in the man’s veins through the phone line, but John’s only response was a grunt.

Might as well get it over with; John was never in this bad a mood unless he’d had words with Sara Beth. “Is it just me today, or is there something else bothering you?”

“Usually it is you,” the other man grumbled. They’d known each other long enough for John to use him as a scapegoat for his ill humor and for Alex to mostly let it slide right off his back. Mostly. “Sara Elizabeth called.”