Bad Boy (An Indecent Proposal) - J.C. Reed Page 0,40

us, so it’s only fair that I destroy and ruin what is his.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, struggling to find the words as confusion wreaked havoc in my head. “What you’re talking about is a personal issue. It’s…my God, it’s—”

“Revenge.” He looked up. I shrank back at the intensity in his glance. “Revenge, Laurie. You were the only way to get close to him, I guess.”

My heart started to hammer—fast and hard, just like his words.

I held my breath as I took him in—the way he let the golden liquid swirl in his glass, his face drawn in concentration, as if it took great effort to do so.

He downed his glass before he continued, “When we first heard of you, we thought you had a close relationship with him. I mean, he adopted you.”

“I don’t have any relationship with him.”

“We didn’t know that back then,” Chase said and shook his head. “He sent you checks every month.”

“Which I always sent back,” I interrupted.

He shook his head again, as though it didn’t matter. “Anyway, we dug deep. We found out that his business is tied to your mom’s money, your inheritance, so the plan was to marry you and ruin him.” He put the glass away, and slowly turned his whole body to me. He eyed me as if I was an object, not a human being—with cold, calculating eyes that scared the crap out of me.

I had never seen him so detached. So—

Different.

“So what I am to you?” My voice sounded awfully thin. “A pawn in your play? Collateral damage?”

He didn’t reply.

Worse yet, he started to bite his lower lip. In the short time I had known Chase, I had learned that it meant whatever I’d just said was true, though he wouldn’t admit it.

Piece by piece of me began to crumble to bits. My throat closed up. The confined space felt devoid of air.

We had no future. None whatsoever.

My lips began to quiver. I swallowed hard, over and over again. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry over him.

Stupid me.

All that time, I had thought Chase cared for me. Even after finding the folder, my heart came up with bullshit excuses—him being in trouble, involved with the wrong kind of people, needing money.

Never in my wildest dreams had I envisioned that I had been targeted because of something my stepfather had done. That it might all be a ploy to get revenge.

In a deep corner of my mind, I recalled tiny morsels of conversation between Clint and his lawyer I had often overheard. As a child I had always assumed they were talking about won trials, boasting about the things they had done and all the money they had taken.

I had realized a long time ago that Clint wasn’t who he pretended to be. I wasn’t sure what to think anymore, but I was inclined to believe that Chase was probably one of the people Clint and Aldwin had harmed.

Clint had many enemies, so why wouldn’t Chase be one of them? It was impossible to like someone like Clint who stopped at nothing to further his own gain.

Greed did that to people. And Clint was as sneaky as was humanly possible. When he first met my mom, he was a car salesman with the necessary character traits to make it big—manipulative and passive-aggressive—two qualities he managed to nourish in the following years.

Looking at Chase, I realized maybe they had that in common.

“You said your inheritance isn’t worth anything to you,” Chase said, interrupting my thoughts. “If that’s really the case, it all doesn’t matter. It’s a marriage of convenience. You wanted the letters, and I want revenge. What’s so hard to accept?”

The way he put it—cold and cruel, as if we were talking about a business transaction rather than my family; as if nothing had happened between us, and I was only a random encounter in his long list of women—I felt like slapping him.

Maybe you were like a random encounter, Hanson. Easily forgotten.

My heart began to bleed. If he could have seen inside, he would have seen all the blood seeping out of me. There were cracks here and there, little pieces chipping away, and large fragments crumbling to bits. My throat closed up. The air felt devoid of oxygen.

We had no future.

The realization hit me hard.

None whatsoever.

I knew it all along, but had pushed it to the back of my mind. Now I had no other choice but to face the truth.

And