You Only (Cameron Farms Book 1) - Melanie Jayne Page 0,28
me that bullshit, tells me that you can’t see it any other way.”
She felt her hands shake so she linked her fingers together to try to hide it. “Today, I understand it a little bit better, but the twenty-one-year-old me, she didn’t. She saw that you chose to defend the man who had been drinking and who decided to grab Mary Joe on that steep staircase during their argument. All because she had filed for divorce and he was going to lose his easy lifestyle.
“You knew that she meant something to me. She helped me at school, she saw I was struggling. She tried to help me find direction. She didn’t look at me as poor Lydia’s daughter or Joe’s princess and the heir to Cameron Farms. She saw me as a girl who was lost, being pulled in so many directions that she didn’t know what she wanted.” She dropped her hands onto the top of the desk.
“Mary Jo tried to teach me to use my brain and she encouraged my love of numbers. She told me that I would need those skills in life, not that I was going to be rich enough to hire my own accountants.” Hale shook her head angrily and pursed her lips. “Mary Jo said that being important in this town meant nothing, if I couldn’t do good for others and that started by being good myself.” She paused to swallow the lump in her throat. “She pushed for me to do more and to be more and Goddamn it, she didn’t get to see me do any of those things. She got to see me parade around town, worrying about my hair color or planning what to wear to parties. I must have been such a disappointment to her. She deserved to live to see how I turned out, and to have happiness in her life without that man sucking her dry.” Her chest was heaving when she finished. She gripped the edge of the desk as she tried to rein in her anger.
“I asked you if there was going to be a problem with me working on the defense.” God, he sat there looking so calm and collected.
“You asked after you had accepted the case, Finn. It was one hour before you published the press release. I remember specifically asking if you could step down. I explained how much Mary Jo meant to me and to my dad but you continued on with him.” The muscles in her forearms quivered as she continued to grip the desk. The anger and frustration and the bone-deep hurt that Finn would even consider helping the man who’d taken away from her one of the few people that she trusted, hit her hard.
“I couldn’t step down after I accepted. Moe would have made me resign from the firm.”
She tried to get control of her anger, kept her volume low. “You should never have accepted the job, or you should have waited to talk to me, your fiancée. Moe and the others knew the ties the case had to my family and about us, they would have given you a few hours to discuss the decision. Instead, you accepted the chance to be the golden boy and when I threw a fit, you pretended to want my approval, but it didn’t matter. You were going to do what was best for you and your career.”
He dropped his foot to the floor. “You and your dad would have talked me out of it. You know your dad was involved with Mary Jo, it would have been a conflict to even have asked him for his opinion.” He lost some of this hold on his temper.
“Jesus, Finn, it was a conflict that you were on the case.” She stared at him for a few moments, when he didn’t respond she shut her eyes to gather her thoughts.
“I wanted them to get married after her divorce. Christ, Dad deserved happiness after his years with my mom. You will never understand what life with her in that house was like. She wasn’t just an alcoholic addicted to pills, she was truly an awful person. She made us all miserable.” Talking about her relationship with her mother was still painful. She had confided in Moe and Jasmine about that time. She had never told Finn very much about it.
“I wish Joe had found another woman after your mother. However, that isn’t how the job of being an attorney works.”