More Layers: Book Two Layers Series (6 page)

“You flirted back.”

“You’re right, I did. My mistake.”

He turns and faces the window again. “Now it’s my turn to ask, why?”

“Your turn?”

“You go back to London to ‘fix things,’ then you disappear. I can’t find you. No one will tell me where you are. No one will even talk to me. With the exception of Nick, all your friends treat me like I’m some kind of goddamn leper.”

He pauses and runs a hand down his goatee. Up down. Up down. Holy hell. If he runs that hand, through his hair, I’ll lose it. Is he purposefully tying to fuck with my head? I shake it off.

“What did you expect? They’re my friends.”

He turns and leans his shoulder against the glass. “Picture this. A few months after you disappear, I’m standing in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire, when a man that’s walking in front of me drops a magazine. I pick it up and begin to call to him, when something catches my eye. It was a picture of you in living color, and a full-page article. I couldn’t believe it.”

Alexia Grant the mysterious reclusive billion-heiress, will soon take over as CEO of Grant International. No one knows much about this shy, beautiful, intelligent, young woman, who is furiously protective of her privacy. Ms. Grant is an Oxford graduate, graduating before her class, at the age of nineteen. After graduating, she worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh. Ms. Grant, like her grandmother, is a known philanthropist. She recently created a new foundation, called the Karen Ames Foundation. Karen Ames is thought to have been Ms. Grant’s late nanny, a major influence in her life. And like her Grandmother, she’ll collect no compensation for her duties as CEO, thus giving it to Grant International employees.

The matriarch and soon-to-be former CEO of Grant International, Lady Lizbet Grant, is well known for her fieriness, loyalty, and philanthropy. She took over as CEO when her husband, the late Sir Bruce Grant, died unexpectedly, and then again for her son, Alexander Grant, when he was killed in an auto accident. The accident also took the life of his wife Marie Lyn Avery and his young son, Keith Bruce Grant.

The Grants, like many other prominent and privileged families, are not immune to controversy. The late Bruce Grant was engaged to one Katherine McDonald, a longtime family friend, but instead married Lizbet Samantha Mills, a then, unknown American heiress. Later, Alexander Grant became involved with Marie Lyn Avery of New York, when he was married to Lucy Irwin Grant. And although the family has denied that Alexia Grant was hospitalized after an attempted suicide, reliable sources tell us that she spent months in a mental facility in Wales several years ago.

“Everything that I thought was real was a lie.”

Ditto. Bastard!

He continues. “So, I cancel all my meetings and fly to London. When I get there, I go directly to Grant International Headquarters, I ask about you, then get escorted out of the building. I stick around for a couple of days hoping to gather more information of your whereabouts, when I get a call from Nick. He tells me that he doesn’t know where you are, but you’re not in London. So, I fly back to New York and regroup. A few weeks later, I return to London, and when I check into my hotel, I’m given a message from Lizbet Grant. Fucking Lizbet Grant. The London Terminator, The Man-eater, The Grant Lioness. I was told, not asked, to meet her that evening for dinner.”

“I didn’t kno...” He cuts me off.

“I meet her, thinking—finally—I’m going to get some answers.”

He shakes his head.

“The first hour of our dinner, she lectures me about the embezzlement, and my many faults as a CEO. When I’m finally allowed to speak, I ask her what the hell is going on? I ask if you’re okay, and when can I see you? I ask her dozens of questions. She answers a few, but evaded most. I tell her that I love you, and needed to see you, to apologize for being such an ass. She tells me that her granddaughter has moved on, neither does she want me nor does she want to see me, but wishes me the best. After I picked the pieces of my heart off the floor...let’s just say, your grandmother and I had words. She told me not to test her. I thought, who the hell does she think she is? I’m not a fucking ten year old.”

He pauses, and shakes his head.

“The next morning she had me escorted to the airport by two men that identified themselves as police officers. They take me directly to my gate and tell me not to return to the UK for a while. Can you fucking believe it?”

“You have no idea.”

“A few weeks later, a friend of mine that lives in London, calls me and says he’d been invited to a dinner that you would be attending. I immediately book a flight and I’m in the air in just hours. When I get to customs, I’m denied entry into England. Can you fucking believe it? Your grandmother had me banned from the UK. God no wonder you’re...”

“So fucked up,” I answer for him.

“Sorry.”

“Gram never told me she’d met with you, and I didn’t know about you being denied into the UK.”

“She didn’t say anything to you?”

“No.”

He shakes his head. “Was it true, about not wanting to see me?”

“Yes. It took me awhile to deal with...everything. I was devastated, then I was overwhelmed, with...life.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not the one that gave up on us. You hurt me when you accused me of leaking to the press. I was overwhelmed, angry, and confused about everything that was going down. When I told you that you needed to let me in Lex, I wasn’t ending us, I was saying that we needed to take some time to get our shit together and figure out our next move. I’m sorry I didn’t respond to any of your messages before you went to London. I thought I was doing the right thing—giving you time and space.”

“What? We’re talking about two different events. I was referring to what happened that night.”

“What happened that night? You said you were staying with Marco and Henry.”

“I was...that night.”

“Okay...what happened that night?”

“Nothing happened that night; we got drunk. No, that’s not true—Henry got drunk.”

“Are we still talking about the same night?”

“We are now, but we weren’t before.”

“What?”

“This is worse than ‘Who’s on first,’ I was talking about the night at the Eventi Hotel.”

He pushes his shoulder off the glass. “What night at the Eventi?”

“Seriously! This is how you want to play this?”

“Play what?”

I laugh—so I don’t cry. So I don’t walk over and push him up against the glass and rip off his balls.

He walks from the window and stands in front of me. “What night at the Eventi?”

I pause and think before I respond. I’m angry and on the verge of tears. I cry a lot lately—catching up from years of suppressed tears, I suppose.

“You’ve always devastated me, Jaxson. First, it was the way held yourself, the way you walked across a room, the way you negotiated a deal. Then it was the way you smiled, the way you ran your hands through your hair, the way you looked at me. Then it was the way you talked to me, the way you held me, the way you made love to me. But, I think what devastated and devastates me the most, is the way you lie with such ease, such grace, and unbelievable cunning.”

“What?” he exclaimed. “I’m not lying. I’ve never lied to you.”

“Grow some, Jaxson. I’m not that, naive.”

He throws his hands up. “Fine! Whatever! I came here for an explanation, for closure. What the hell was I thinking?”

He walks to the door.

“I guess you were thinking you wouldn’t get caught. Or maybe you and Mia planned for it to go down that way because you didn’t have the balls to tell me to fuck off. Or maybe you thought I’d like to join in. Like that would ever happen. What every girl dreams of...a threesome with her lover and his ex-fucking wife.”

He stops. “What the hell are you raving about? And what does Mia have to do with any of this?”

I get up and walk to the bar, pour a drink, and laugh. “Closure. That’s a good one, Ryan. Go ahead and go—coward.”

He walks to the bar and stands before me. “Coward? You’re calling me a coward, when you were the one pretending to be someone else? Who in the hell does that? Then when things got a little too real, too personal, you ran away. I loved you, goddammit. I wanted to marry you.”

“Marry me? Are you for real?”

“Do I look for real?”

“Then tell me, Mr. Ryan, because I’m confused. How do you go from loving someone, wanting to marry them, then in a few short weeks, sleep with your ex-fucking wife?”

“What are you talking about? “

“My good God, are we back to that? I’m talking about that night at the Eventi Hotel; the night I flew back to see you.”

“If you came back, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come and see me?”

“I did, you asshat! What do you think I’ve been trying to...wait a minute, she never told you?”

“Who never told me?”

“Tinker Hell.”

“Mia?”

“Who else? She never told you, that I’d found you two out?”

He takes the drink from my hand, puts it on the bar and then puts his hands on my shoulders.

“Woman. You are driving me shit-assed crazy. Tell me what happened that night at the Eventi with Mia.”

I remove his hands. “You should’ve been able to figure it out, even if Mia didn’t tell you. But I’ll tell you so we can get this over with. After I’d settled some things in London, I flew back to New York. I wanted to tell you everything. How I was sorry about not telling you who I really was; why I became Alexia Keith; about taking over as CEO; and about my asshat ex-husband. I couldn’t reach you, so I called Lane to come and pick me up from the airport. He found out from your PA that you were staying at the Eventi Hotel. He dropped me off. I went inside, and had the front desk ring your room. They did, and then you told them to send me on up. So, I went up to the Eventi suite. I knocked on the door and Tinker Hell answered the door wrapped in a fucking bed sheet. A fucking bed sheet! I was devastated. You broke my fucking heart. Fucking shattered it into a fucking million pieces. Yes, I lied to you about my identity, and that was a terrible thing to do. I told you that being with me was a big mistake, but you wouldn’t stop. You just wouldn’t stop.”

“What the hell?”

I down my drink, pour another, and walk to the other side of the room. I can’t be near him; I can’t breathe when he’s next to me. I take a large sip, seeking more liquid encouragement.

“I flew back to bare my soul and I got the bare ass of your ex-fucking-wife, practically shoved in my face. She told me she doesn’t know who I was. I must have the wrong room. She knew exactly who I was. She was reveling in my pain, salivating over it.”

I pause for a second, as the memories take me over.

“God how I didn’t want to believe it; I wanted it to be a bad dream. I waited by the door because...I had to know. Then I heard you calling from the bathroom. ‘Mia? Is that room service? I ordered champagne. Dinner’s not until eight, if you’re hungry you can order something.’“

“Lex I didn’t...”

“I get it, Tinker Hell didn’t tell you. Looks like she played you, after you ‘played’ with her. I’m guessing she didn’t want to risk you feeling guilty and coming after me. Who the hell knows, what her game was, who even cares? You broke my heart, Jaxson, and hurt and disappointed everyone who loves you—over a woman that you said you hated. I never told Lane, in case you were wondering. He figured it out. You lied to him about being in LA, because you knew he would rat you out. It broke my already damaged heart when I found out that he’d moved from the estate. Do you have any idea how much that kid looked up to you, idolized you? You were like a brother, or even a father, to him. And do you have any idea how much you’ve hurt Mary and Lester? They were your family. Mary loved you like a son. She felt like your surrogate mother. I was able to give them both a new home and employment at Grant House New York, but the Ryan estate meant everything to them. And poor Louie.”

“What about Louie?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“He died five weeks ago of a massive coronary.”

“I...I didn’t know.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

He doesn’t say anything, so I continue.

“So, here we are, Mr. Ryan. I lied to you because I was a coward. You’re an ex-wife-fucking, lying, cheating, bastard and now our two best friends are getting married and we have to find a way to get past this shit storm and make nice, or pretend to make nice.”

He walks to the bar and pours himself a double and downs it.

“Jaxson...I want...Hell, I don’t know why I care, or why I still want to know. Maybe I’m curious or just plain stupid, but I want to know why. Why couldn’t you just tell me that I wasn’t enough? Why the lies and the deception?”

He remains silent, staring into his empty glass.

“Gram’s theory is that you and Mia found out my true identity and you intended to blackmail me. Pay up or be exposed. She thinks you two were behind the Ryan embezzlement. But when I discovered what Will Harris had been doing for over twenty years, your plan was foiled. She believes that’s why you had me stay at your estate; so you could control me...control what I found out. Oh shit, did I say ‘your’ estate? I meant your ‘former’ estate.”

I pause again waiting for him to say...something...anything.

As I swirl the ice in my glass, he continues to stare down into his. So, I continue to think out loud. “Gram thinks that I was just too damn smart for my own good. I figured out what Will had done, and it would be just a matter of time before I would link you and Mia to it all. I didn’t find any link to you or Mia when I investigated him, but then again, I didn’t dig that way. But there was a file on your laptop with my name on it. I was going to ask you about it, but then...well, you know the rest. Yeah, Gram’s theories are just...theories. I haven’t had the energy or the time to prove or disprove them, and to be honest, I don’t know if I can handle the truth. Sometimes it’s best to remain on the fence or in the closet. You know what the craziest thing is about this whole...stupid mess? I would have given you the money if you’d asked me for it. I wouldn’t have been happy that you would be sharing it with Mia, but I would have done it.”