Liam continued, “he got Joshua’s charges dropped, him out of jail and across the country. The kid didn’t learn and has raked up another huge gambling debt. A mafia-type organization has bought that debt from the original crew and it’s rocketed to an impossible sum.”
“How much?”
“Seven million dollars,” Liam replied. “Several weeks back Teresa was told that he’d been kidnapped but that turned out to be BS. Teresa’s been informed that she needs to repay his loan, but she doesn’t have that kind of cash, and they’ve never called her back, as far as I know.”
“Pay it for her, offset it against the cost of the shares you are going to buy from her when she’s completed her yearlong mandatory stint on the board of Christopher Corporation,” Matt suggested. “As per the terms of your father’s will.”
“Teresa is hoping that she can delay repaying them until she’s sold her shares. She wants to keep me out of the equation. Hell, maybe she’s shopping around for a better deal for the shares.” The thought of Teresa selling those shares to anyone else made his stomach whirl. If she did that, he would no longer have the thin sliver of control over Christopher Corporation he did now.
“Nobody has given Teresa, or Joshua, a firm deadline for the repayment of the debt.”
“Weird,” Matt agreed. “So it should be imperative that he keep his head down, even stay out of sight. Then why would Joshua crash a highly visible, live-streamed event?
“What does Teresa think?” Matt asked, after a moment’s silence.
“I don’t know since she blew me off and hightailed it back to Seattle in Abbingdon’s private plane,” Liam muttered his sour reply. He pulled his cell out of his pocket and hit the speed dial number that would connect him to Teresa. It didn’t mean anything that he’d moved his personal assistant, Duncan, to number two on his list and Teresa to number one. It meant nothing. At all.
Liam listened to her phone ring and urged her to pick up. He needed to know that she was okay, that Joshua was okay—God, the kid hadn’t looked, or sounded, good. And he wasn’t talking about the bruise his fist made on his jaw. Her phone went to voice mail and he dropped a hard “Call me” order into her message system.
Liam placed the bourbon bottle on the coffee table, sat down in the chair opposite Matt and rested his forearms on his knees. He released a series of low but intense f-bombs.
“That kind of sums up my feelings about this evening,” Matt commented. “I’ve been doing damage control but there’s not much spin you can generate when everything is caught on video and then live-streamed.”
Liam winced. “How many views?”
“Far too many.” Matt lifted his glass in a sarcastic salute. “I’ve got to admit, when Teresa messes up, she does it properly.”
“She didn’t know her brother was in town, never mind that he was going to do that,” Liam retorted.
“So defending her seems to be your default reaction tonight,” Matt commented, hitting the nail on its head.
Liam sent his best friend a hard stare. “What’s your point, Matt?”
“It’s been one drama after another with her, starting with the fact that you thought she had an affair with your dad.”
“She explained that. My father was her mentor and good friend.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “They had to be very good friends for him to leave Teresa a twenty-five-percent stake in Christopher Corporation worth millions.”
When Matt put it like that, all his fears and insecurities about their relationship floated to the surface. Was he being conned? Could he believe Teresa’s version of what happened? In his final hours, Linus did confirm that there had been nothing between them but friendship and Liam wanted to believe him, them. But he’d been raised to believe that everyone lied so how the hell could he trust anything they said? Anything anybody said?
He thought he could, at least, trust his parents to some degree but their latest lie had been the biggest of his life. As his father lay dying, he realized that it was scientifically impossible that his parents, with their blood groups, could produce a child with his blood group. Ergo, either only one of them was his biological parent or he was adopted. Hell of a thing to realize at the age of thirty-two.
Was it any wonder he was so messed up when it came to relationships?
It was late and Liam was done with talking. He wanted this conversation to end so he told Matt that Teresa wanted nothing more to do with him. Liam caught the look of relief on Matt’s face. “You’re happy about that?”
Matt shook his head. “Happy is the wrong word...” He sat up, swinging his feet off the table. “It’s just that relationships shouldn’t be this hard, bud. Over the past few months you’ve thought that she’s a liar, a gold digger and an opportunist. You’ve slept with her and then slept with other women.”
No, he hadn’t. “I tried to sleep with someone else to get her out of my system.”
Matt waved his explanation away. “Whatever. She hit the tabloids, dragging you along with her. Those scum-suckers informed the world that she had an affair with your father and that she only slept with Linus to get her hands on the company.”
He knew this. He’d goddamn lived it. “Do you have a point and are you going to get to it in the near future?”
“My point is that, while I actually like Teresa—”
“You could’ve fooled me.” Liam’s interjection was bone-dry.
“I do like her,” Matt said. “She’s smart, super-organized and she’s an amazing event planner. Yeah, I’m mad as hell that tonight ended the way it did, but intellectually, I get that it wasn’t her fault. But her career did not need this and if she was boycotted before, it’s going to be nothing like what’s going to happen to her now.”
Liam gripped the bridge of his nose. God.
Matt’s long sigh was audible. “But at the end of the day, my loyalty is to you. And, as your friend, I am telling you that I don’t think she is good for you because, frankly, you look like crap.”
Well, that wasn’t news.
“Are you in love with her?”
Liam’s head shot up and his eyes slammed into Matt’s. His throat closed as panic crept up. In his sappier moments lately, he’d flirted with the idea of love, but that was just a result of hormones and stupendous sex. No, of course he wasn’t in love with Teresa; he didn’t believe in love. But he was attracted to her, stupidly so. And attraction was easily confused for that other emotion. He croaked a “No.”
Matt stood up and gripped his shoulder. “Can I then just point out that this woman you profess not to love has the innate ability to mess with your head and your life? That’s an enormous amount of power for someone you just like to sleep with.”
Craphelldammit.
“Go to bed, Matt.”
Matt
