One Last Hold (12 page)

“No, thanks.”

“Look, Tim can be a little intense,” Wesley acknowledged. “He forgets you don’t have the power to hurt me anymore.”

Caitlyn’s blood fired hot before draining to her feet. A sound escaped her and she wrinkled her nose and turned away.

“Caitlyn,” he called. “Come on, I’ll take you back”

As if she’d spend any more time with either of those men. She delivered a dismissive backward wave and responded, “No, thank you. I’ll make my own arrangements.”

Caitlyn knocked on Blake’s door, didn’t wait for a reply, and entered, but hesitated when she noticed someone on the other side of his desk.

Blake shot up from his chair, looking guilty.

Should’ve knocked.

“Sorry,” she said, ire burning her feet into the ground. “I didn’t know you were with someone.”

She lingered by the door and eyed a crooked picture, but didn’t bother adjusting it. The visitor turned around and her world plummeted.

Johnson Webb.

Her body sagged against the door. She clasped the handle in an attempt to remain upright. Her mouth grew dry, palms sweaty as she gaped at the men.

Wesley’s dad regarded her as if they were old friends and he was happy to see her.

“Johnson?” she croaked. What was
he
doing here?

“Caitlyn, how nice to see you.” The room shrunk when Johnson rose. He strolled over to greet her, all casual-like as if their meeting was an ordinary occurrence.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t even accept his handshake. He took her sweaty palm anyway and covered his warm hand with hers. She was too numb to notice anything else.

Johnson dropped her hand and turned to Blake, who had his forearms planted against his desk to hold himself upright. “I got to run, but we’ll catch up later.”

“No. No.” Caitlyn shrunk into the door, preparing to bolt. “You go ahead and finish.” She was too shocked to say anything else.

“I can meet up with Blake later,” Johnson said. “I have some things to do now. Good to see you.” He thumped her on the top of the shoulder in an awkward hug, then moved her aside and opened the door, leaving just a memory of his presence.

He walked down the hall before she closed the door and propped against it.

“That was Wesley’s dad,” she whispered.

“You interrupted a very important meeting,” Blake said. “Haven’t I taught my employees to knock or buzz me before entering?”

“What was Wesley’s dad doing here?”

Blake turned away from her and stared out the window, the horrid purple drapes pulled aside and tasseled by a thin twine.

She held up the papers she’d written last night, totaling close to fifty pages, and flapped them his direction. She’d gotten home last night to find a new assignment in her email and had stayed up all night to write two stories.

“Here’s the article on Wesley. And the one on single life, which any person in this office could do. But why not choose me? It’s not as if I don’t have a billion other things on my plate.”

“You know you’re the best writer here and you’ve always been able to handle the work load before.”

Caitlyn flung the papers to his desk and sat. The vinyl crackled as she tried to find comfort in a chair that seemed to be carved from stone before being sandblasted with plastic.

She pointed her thumb at the door. “Tell me why Johnson Webb was here. But first let me tell you that if I’m going to do this story on Wesley, then I refuse to do other assignments. And the next time you give me one, it’s going to go undone. Period.” She sliced her hands through the air for affect, but Blake didn’t notice. His chest rose and fell, but everything else about him remained still.

“Now is where you tell me why Johnson was here.”

Blake dropped the curtain and faced her. “He’s not crazy about us doing a story on his son.”

“And he came all the way here to tell you that?”

“Yes.” Blake sat at his desk and grabbed the papers, shuffling them around before fumbling through his desk drawer in search of his antacids. Obviously not finding any, he slammed the drawer closed and tore a corner of the paper off, then stuck it in his mouth and chewed.

“That can’t be good for you.” Caitlyn hunted in her purse for a peppermint and pitched it at him. “I don’t appreciate being left in the dark about this. You know this is the hardest assignment I’ve ever taken on, not only because the subject is a hard-ass when it comes to the media, but because it brings up my past. Not to mention, you’ve placed me in a dangerous situation. There is a murderer on the loose! Then, I find out you might have connections on the inside after you bring me his private cell number.
Then,
I walk into your office to see his dad sitting here.”

She held up her hands in a
what-gives
gesture.

“I doubt you have any murderer to worry about.”

“Really?” she mocked. “You think so?” Curling her fingers around the armrest, she scooted to the edge, her spine as straight as the pencil on Blake’s desk. But she wasn’t about to get up from this chair until he told her what she wanted to know about Johnson.

“That murder was personal.”

“Well if you know so much, maybe we should let the cops in on it.”

“Stopping being so dramatic, Cait.”

“Tell. Me. About. Johnson,” she commanded.

“Sit back. Relax a minute.”

“I’m fine.”

Blake nodded and tore another piece of paper, adding it to the one already in his mouth. “You know how I told you I started this business from the ground up, with barely any money in my pocket?”

Caitlyn nodded and glared as Blake spit the paper in the trash and fumbled to remove the candy wrapping of the peppermint. He plopped it in his mouth before he continued.

“I’ve actually known Johnson for a long time.” He paused, expecting her to say something. But she would hear him out before she gave him a reaction. Even if she did want to kill him right now. “I needed some finances to get this business started and Johnson, being a friend of mine, was willing to be an investment partner. He didn’t want control of the business and didn’t want to have anything to do with it so he decided to be a silent partner. I could pay him back, but he doesn’t want that, so to this day he continues to be a partner.”

Her mind raced as she tried to absorb his confession. This is the last thing she would have expected to hear.

“You told me you started this business by yourself with a lot of hard work and barely any money.”

“It did take a lot of hard work, and I did start with barely any money. It was my idea, something he was interested in, so it went from there. I’m sorry if you can’t understand, but you wanted to know how I knew Johnson and that’s how. He doesn’t have any say in the going-ons of the company, so I thought it best if no one knew about him.”

“Did you know about me and his son when you hired me?”

“I rarely speak to him anymore. He’s left me and the business pretty much alone.”

Caitlyn planted her palms on Blake’s desk. “Did you know about me and Wesley when you hired me?”

The look on his face was the only answer she needed.

She shot out of the chair and paced, her movements short and jerky and self-contained. White-hot anger infused her, disbelief trailing a close second.

He’d lied to her.

He’d covered up his lies.

He’d used her.

What else did he know about Wesley?

“How long have you known Johnson?” she finally asked as she stopped pacing and clutched the back of a chair.

Blake adjusted his collar. “Since college. But we lost track of each other for a while.”

“So you knew his wife?” she accused. Why not get to the point? Was he out for a story that would make his paper famous? Or maybe he was trying to blackmail Johnson into giving him complete control?

“No…no, I didn’t know his wife,” Blake said. “And I didn’t know about you. Not at first. That’s not why you got this job.”

“Johnson doesn’t want you to do a story on his son. Are you using me to get back at him for something? Maybe you want complete ownership of the company and he won’t give it to you?”

“No, that’s not it.” Blake stood and went to his filing cabinet, removed a stack of paper. “You want to read more fan mail? This is why I’m doing a story on Wesley.”

The letters landed with a whack on the desk.

“You didn’t have those before we began this story.”

“I have requests from all kinds of different people on stories, and sometimes I use those for my next idea. He’s a good subject, and Johnson wouldn’t shed any light on him. Mail and email have been pouring in ever since the first story. I printed each email.”

“So I’m off the assignment now?” she asked, hoping and dreading of what his answer might be. “The big boss man doesn’t want us to do a story on his son.”

“He’s not the big boss man,” he groused. “And I’m not closing this out just yet. I won’t disappoint the fans. That’s what we were talking about. I showed him some of these letters and now he understands.”

She collected the papers but remained standing, unable to react. He’d used her. No matter what he told her, he’d used her. Anger flamed down her arms as she leafed through the pages. The words swam in front of her.

Johnson, a private partner in the business, knew Blake for years now? Blake knew about her relationship with Johnson’s son when he hired her? How could she ever trust him again?

Caitlyn ditched the papers on the desk. No point in trying to read them right now.

“What’s going on?” There was more to the story than what he told her. The only reason Blake was in business, obviously, was because of Johnson Webb. Blake told Caitlyn he started the company by himself, with little money and lots of work. Years later, Blake wants to do a story on his partner’s son, who hates the media, and Johnson comes here to tell Blake he isn’t happy about it? “Are you trying to ruin Johnson?” she asked, her voice cracking. “Ruin Wesley?”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. Not everything is as complicated as you make it out to be.”

*

This wasn’t going to be easy. Calling Wesley after she’d walked away from him. She’d hoped he would chase her this time. Lord knows he didn’t last time.

But chasing would mean he cared, and he’d already made it obvious he didn’t.

She had to tell him about his dad and her boss, so she called him, then sent him a message when he didn’t answer. He called her ten minutes later, but his reaction surprised her when she’d told him. He wasn’t too concerned, and she wondered if he had something else going on that he couldn’t give her his undivided attention. He’d invited her back to Tim’s Race Shop to watch him practice, and so now, here she was.

She watched as he spun his car around Tim’s practice track. He and his car were beautiful, in perfect harmony.

She stood with her feet flush against the track, the closest she’d ever been. A low murmur echoed in her belly as the car whizzed around the track. She took pictures and wrote in her notebook with the intensity she felt. The sound of the engine as he drove by was almost orgasmic, but she probably shouldn’t include that in her story.

That feeling faded when Tim approached.

“What are you writing?”

“Working on my assignment.” She continued to write. She didn’t expect him to like or be nice to her and she wasn’t about to let him criticize her.

Wesley had lost contact with his dad over the years, and most of that was Wesley’s doing. Caitlyn worried he’d have a new reason to distrust her.

“You want to drive it?”

Her pen froze on paper and she glanced at Tim, trying to determine if he deceived her.

“Good addition to your story,” he replied. “Look, I owe you an apology but still stand by my feelings.”

Licking her lips, she nodded but didn’t reply to that statement. “You’re right. Driving the car would be an awesome addition to my story.”

Wesley stopped his car a few hundred feet away and slid out the window. “Woo-hoo,” he yelled as he took off his helmet and handed it to someone. His crew slapped him on the back and gave him a high-five.

She could almost see the adrenaline coursing in and out of his body. He wore his uniform—looked damned good in it too—and lust engulfed her. Why, out of all the men here who were just as athletic and comparably dressed, was he the one her body gravitated to?

Wesley was never happier than when he was racing. She longed to experience why and Tim had just given her that opportunity.

“Caitlyn wants to drive,” Tim shouted.

Wesley signaled her over. She strolled forward and set her bag on the ground. He nabbed her camera. “Got to get a picture of this,” he said.

“What do I need to do?”

Wesley showed her the basics of the car, placed a helmet on her head, and helped her slide into the cockpit. She settled in, took a deep breath, and wrapped her fingers around the steering wheel. He gestured to her, mock flipped a switch in the air, and she followed suit. Suddenly, the roar of the engine was in the bottom of her stomach.

“Woah,” she said before realizing nobody could hear her. The adrenaline she imagined in Wesley earlier now oozed through her. He stomped his foot on the track mimicking pushing the gas pedal and she did the same, only for real.

The car darted off and pushed her into the seat. Her heart was like the accelerator, stuck to the bottom of the floor. It felt like she was following the car instead of being in control. She breathed deeply and let off the gas as she focused her attention on controlling the car. She took it slowly around the curve, picked up speed on the straightaway, and let off the gas on the next curve until she finally got some sort of hang to it. She didn’t take it nearly as fast as the racers did but got her speed up to eighty-five on the straightaway. That alone was horrifying, yet deliciously gratifying.

She came to a stop and just sat there, in awe, in complete surrender to what just happened. She couldn’t move, could barely think. Wesley walked up to the car, stooped through the window and flipped the switch to turn off the ignition. He helped her climb out, his hands landing around her waist before he removed the helmet from her head.