Man of the House(42)

“Have your expectations changed?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer right away, staring out over the water. I watched him and felt that strange thing inside of me again, that welling-up of genuine tenderness. I wanted to reach out and touch his face, to tell him that everything was going to be okay, but I didn’t. There was a closeness and a distance still between us that I didn’t exactly understand yet.

“Yes,” he said finally. “My expectations have been lowered in some ways. But in others, they’ve gotten higher. I believe in what my company can do. I believe we can bring meaningful change to the world through the internet still, and it doesn’t need to be just about advertising dollars. I guess I’m still an idealist at heart.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve done a lot already.”

“I want to do more. It’s just hard. Sometimes I feel like I’m two people.”

“What are the two people like?” I asked, fascinated that he was opening up so much.

“I’m part selfish asshole and part idealist, I guess.”

I laughed. “I just get the selfish asshole part mostly.”

He grinned at me. “That’s what you like.”

“I don’t know. I like idealists, too.”

“You get that part of me. It’s just harder to see.”

“Right. Because it’s buried underneath all that cocky asshole behavior.”

“Pretty much.”

We both laughed together and I felt a little bit of the stress of the day fade away. Things weren’t better, exactly, but they didn’t feel so pressing. I didn’t feel like I was in a rush to do something, anything.

“Come on,” he said finally. “Let’s get back.”

“Okay,” I said, and we stood. As we walked back to the car, I suddenly grabbed his hand and stopped. He looked back at me, eyebrows raised.

“I want to see that other side of you,” I said softly. “Eventually, I mean. If you’ll let me.”

He looked at me then took my chin and gently kissed me. “We’ll see,” he said finally. “You’ll have to earn it.”

“Asshole.” I couldn’t help but smile.

He smiled back as we reached the car, got inside, and headed back home.





22





Carter





I parked the car and took Emily inside, making sure she got into her apartment okay. I shut the door behind her and headed back toward my room, anger rolling through my body.

I couldn’t prove that any of this was the work of Bruce and Cox, but I knew it had to be them. All of the scare tactics were classic Bruce, and the spy shit was right up Cox’s alley. The guy following Emily had to be Cox’s doing, but I couldn’t decide what the point was.

They must have wanted her to know they were following her. Emily wasn’t exactly trained to spot a tail like the vast majority of people weren’t. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to spot a tail unless they wanted to be spotted. Which meant that Cox wanted Emily to know she was being followed and, by extension, wanted me to know as well.

Why? What fucking game was this asshole playing?

It had to be another scare tactic. They were trying to force me to step down completely from Valor and were willing to do whatever it took. Scaring Emily and using that fear against me was just part of their mind-fuck.

I wasn’t going to give in to that. They wouldn’t actually hurt Emily, no matter how much they threatened it. And if they wanted to release all of the photos to the media, they could have done that already.

No, there was something else, some other thing going on. Until I knew what exactly they wanted, I wasn’t going to do a damn thing. I wasn’t going to bend to the will of lesser men just because they were playing some fucking game.

I wanted to kill them. I wanted to hunt them down and murder them in some glorious shootout. Unfortunately, the real world didn’t work that way. As soon as I fired a single bullet, I’d likely get arrested or killed myself. No, shootouts were for fantasy books and the movies, and not for real people. As much as I wanted to kill them, I knew that I couldn’t.

I had to find some other way to get back at Bruce and his helpers.

As I headed back to my room, an idea slowly came forward. It was a half-baked idea, vague and not fleshed out. I didn’t know exactly how it would work, but I had a notion. Not thinking too much about it, I got out my phone and called Nelson Pitts, my closest ally on the board.

“Carter,” he said, answering right away. “How are you?”

“I’m good, Nelson. I was actually wondering if you could help me out?”

“Sure thing, of course. What do you need?”