Unexpectedly His(57)
“Then why go down for it?”
There was a pause as he considered his answer. “Because I’m the one who gave him the tip. Not intentionally, of course, just a casual mention about the merger of a friend’s company—stupid of me, really.” He eased back in the chair, as comfortable as if he were telling a fairy tale. “Next thing I know, the SEC is knocking on the door looking for answers, and Jason is claiming he made the trade honestly, not knowing it wasn’t public information. Named me as the tipster.” He shook his head. “What was I going to do? Call my daughter’s fiancé a liar? I had provided Jason with information.”
“Makes sense to me,” Nick said.
John chuckled and held out his upturned palms in a simple, eloquent gesture. “Hell, I was guilty. I failed to do my due diligence, trusted the wrong man, and the transaction was technically done under my watch.”
“No offense, sir. But I’d think that Jason would know better than to act on inside information.” Hell, he’d caught wind of “insider tips” a time or two. That didn’t mean he’d ever acted on them.
“Yes, well…” Marianne’s father drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, his expression equal parts angry and indifferent. “Marianne was engaged to Jason. I’d have gutted my business to save her pain, so…” His words trailed off.
“So you gave him a pass and skipped an investigation.”
“I had the insider information, and my company profited. So, yes, I made the deal with the Feds. No public mess or trial, an easier investigation. Everybody wins. Never considered the backlash to my daughter’s career, but she always loved the numbers, not the money. Not sure she ever loved Jason, though, not after the way she handled him at the party the other night.”
Nick leaned forward in his seat. “Yes, about that…”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right?” The older man winked and gestured toward the ankle monitor. “But I don’t think we’ll being seeing him around here anymore. Not now that Marianne is finished with him.” He eased back into the chair and looked him square in the eye. “She loves you, Nick. Even an old fool like me can see that.”
Nick shifted in his seat, uncertain a woman like Marianne could love him, but damn sure he loved her. “We could still go to the Feds, find a way to set the record right.”
The older man smiled. “That means a lot to you—setting the record straight.”
“Without a doubt.” Nick looked over at him, ready to make his case. “My father was not a man to stand up for anyone or take the high road. Doing the right thing is important to me.” Especially when it came to Marianne. He wanted to make sure nothing could hurt her—or their future—and he wanted to bring her home.
“Nick, from where I sit, you’re nothing like your father, but there’s nothing to set straight here, nobody to protect, because it’s all water under the bridge. A short stint in prison was a small price to pay for what I believed was Marianne’s happiness. No point looking back.” He picked up his coffee and raised it in a toast. “Never a saint, I probably earned the time, anyway.”#p#分页标题#e#
“But sir—”
“It’s settled. Jason made plenty of legit profit working for me. Invest his money or send him packing, whatever works, but don’t dredge up more pain or another scandal, let the past go,” he said, definitively. “Just be good to my daughter.”
“I will,” Nick said, a small measure of hope seeping into his heart. “If she’ll let me.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I guess I wanted love more than anything else in the world.”
—Marilyn Monroe
Marianne stared at the impossible matrix score. There must be some way to fine-tune the total. Her fingers flew across the screen. Perhaps it was a correlation issue. If she took the number of minutes she’d spent with Nick and divided them by the numbers of times he’d sent her mind and body reeling… She shook her head. No, obviously that was not going to work. Her fingers trembled above the keys.
She needed to find an adjustment to confirm her decision to break off their relationship, some confidence interval or standard deviation to prove the matrix was wrong about her and Nick. She wrinkled her nose at the screen. Hells bells, computer models predicted behavior all the time, not to mention explaining the occurrence of natural phenomena, hurricanes, earthquakes, so why not predict, or better yet, control love?