yourself about that.”
“You’re the one who said my face betrayed how I feel about my job.”
Her brow raised. “So, you hate it?” Her tone was sarcastic like she didn’t buy it for a second.
“Parts of it, yeah, I do. I’d much rather be working with financial services.”
“So move. Or quit.”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “It’s not that easy.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Jack groaned. “You don’t understand. My stepfather—”
“Who cares about your stepfather?”
“He’s Beckett Winthrop.”
Recognition registered in Raven’s eyes. “So you’re the son in Son Co.” Stunned, she sank into a chair at the table.
“It’s just a name for the shell company. It’ll be subsumed under WFG’s umbrella when we’re ready to publicize the purchase.”
Her head tilted. “Because you’re expanding in the diabetic monitoring market, and you want to keep that from your competitors,” Raven guessed.
Damn, she was smart. “I can’t confirm or deny privileged information,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Are you Beckett’s heir? Because it seems he’s trained you well.”
Jack nodded. “He’s promised to hand over the reins when he retires. That was supposed to be three years ago, but he keeps putting it off. When I run WFG, things will be different. I’ve got big plans. It’s why I can’t walk away now. I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for, and nothing will change.”
“So, in the meantime, you’re his lapdog,” she lashed him.
He snapped back like a whip. “I’m the Partner who runs Mergers and Acquisitions.” There was a long moment of silence before he spoke again, this time more softly. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know you worked at Paulson Diagnostics.”
Her head tilted in disbelief. “How is that possible? I was the highest-ranking employee let go.”
He shut his eyes, embarrassed to admit his shame. “When we take over a firm, I don’t deal with human resource issues. I give my deputy a staff budget, and she makes cuts to meet it.”
“Why did I have to go?”
“It was a term of the deal. Tiffany insisted that one of the executives be fired. I didn’t ask for details.”
“You didn’t stop to wonder why an idiot like Tiffany would want to dump the executive who’d driven the company’s growth?”
“Look, I hate the acquisition process. I do what it takes to close the deal and get the company online as fast as possible. Then I get the hell out of there for a long weekend to clear my head and reset.”
“My heart aches for you.” Then Raven sat up straight. “Wait. Lark scheduled your stay.”
Oh shit.
“Yeah, because we’re friends, and she told me she had a great vacation house.”
“Did she know why you needed a vacation?”
“No.”
Raven eyed him warily. “Yet you ended up here, on the same night I did. That’s quite a coincidence.”
He nodded. “It is. But your trip wasn’t planned.”
“It wasn’t. I came because I needed a reset, too. Since I’d been fired and escorted from the Paulson headquarters building, where you were holed up on the second floor. That’s another coincidence.”
“It would seem so.” Shit, she was putting this together. He was so fucked.
“Does it? Two coincidences. That’s almost . . . .too coincidental.”
“I couldn’t say.” He fought betraying even the slightest hint of guilt.
Raven laced her fingers and placed them on the table. “Jack, how did you learn about Paulson Diagnostics?”
Oh hell, he didn’t want to be the one to break this news. This was family-ending level shit.
“I’d heard about it through the grapevine. You’d be surprised how many private equity deals are discovered through word-of-mouth.”
She leaned forward. “From whose mouth did you hear it?”
Raven was not playing games.
He swallowed hard. “Uh, Lark might have mentioned a company that had tremendous inefficiencies and great growth potential.”
Raven’s vision turned red. Her sister. Her very own sister had betrayed her, setting in motion events that cost her job and ended the livelihoods of a quarter of her company’s workforce.
Her hands fisted. “Lark told you about Paulson Diagnostics?”
“She didn’t mean to. It’s my fault,” Jack said.
Bullshit. Lark wasn’t stupid. She had to have had an inkling of what she was doing. Everyone made excuses for Lark and her unconventional ways. Not this time. Now, her idiosyncrasies had upended Raven’s life.
Raven’s chair scraped against the floor, and she rose to her feet. “I can’t look at you.” She headed out of the kitchen.
“Don’t be angry with Lark,” he said.
She spun on her heels. “Don’t tell me what to do or think.”
“But you don’t understand—”
“I understand that you’ve wrecked nearly everything I cared about. My job. My employees’ lives. And now my