Unyielding (Tortured Love Book 1) (10 page)

She pushed the chair back where it had been earlier, then faced him across the desk. “But unless you can sit there, look me right in the eyes, and tell me there are no secrets in
your
past that you can’t tell me for whatever reason, you have no right to judge me. None.”

The emotion that passed across his face was quick, but it was enough to tell Lynda she’d struck a nerve, and she’d made her point. Her handsome, charming, sexy, volatile husband was hiding a few things of his own.

“That’s what I thought. Enjoy your evening.” She turned and walked out of the office, forcing her pace to remain normal. When she closed the door behind her, she didn’t glance at him. Then she went into her room and lay on the bed, wondering what the fuck she was supposed to do now.

It was ruined. All of it. All the hope she’d felt earlier, and all the elation at having made what she considered a breakthrough was gone. The loveless, cold marriage she’d envisioned at first was a reality. It always had been. She’d fooled herself into believing that scorching sex meant there might one day be something intimate between them.

Dare she even say it? She had begun to hope the fact that they were so compatible in bed might mean that one day, they’d fall in love. She was a fool. A stupid fool. That would never happen. The only thing keeping him in this marriage right now was the same thing keeping her in it. The company, and the pre-nup.

Chapter Fifteen

Merrick found it easy to avoid Lynda for three days, but only in terms of the physical layout of his apartment. She slept in her own suite, had her meals brought in there, and he did the same in his suite. If the staff noticed the two hadn’t spoken, they said nothing. He wouldn’t have expected anything else from them. They were paid to do their jobs and stay discreet.

What he found more difficult than he’d imagined was consciously avoiding speaking to her or seeking out her company. He missed his wife, and that shocked the hell out of him. To distract his thoughts of her hair and her eyes, he called Todd several times a day and night.

The phone went straight to voice mail every time. Something was very wrong, and Merrick had the uncomfortable sensation that whatever was keeping Todd from answering his phone was connected to the fact that Shelton Energy had been transferred to him on paper only. The money trail was still non-existent.

During the same three days, he tried, also without success, to reach Dean. The money transfer was supposed to have taken place by now, but his accounting team told him that never happened. They, too, had been unable to reach Dean. Even more disturbing was that no one Merrick could reach at Dean’s firm seemed to know why the hell he wasn’t answering his phone or emails, or why he hadn’t been in the office all week.

Merrick didn’t like loose ends, and he wasn’t used to Dean dropping the ball like this. What the fuck was going on? He thought briefly of asking Lynda if she’d heard from her father, but if she hadn’t, all that would do was worry her. Plus, he had to get his thoughts straight before he looked into her eyes again.

He’d slipped up during their conversation about Rey and the videos. When she’d made that quip about how she couldn’t have felt worse if he’d died, he’d let his emotions show. She hadn’t missed that. She was too sharp. She’d flat out asked him about it, and he’d avoided the question by turning the discussion back to her and Rey.

The hypocrisy of what he’d done wasn’t lost on Merrick. He’d berated her for not sharing a traumatic experience with him, when he was hiding this terrible secret and its aftermath from her. Telling himself the two experiences weren’t related didn’t change the facts. He
was
hiding it, and now she knew there was something in his past that he hadn’t told her.

Merrick was very busy for the next few days, but when he did think about the double standard, he was consumed with guilt. He didn’t like that. Not one bit. He’d never been one to concern himself with feeling guilty over past events, or with things he had to do in order to keep everything running smoothly. Who the hell was this woman that she’d unearthed these emotions in him?

By the end of three days, he missed her so badly that he’d taken to standing outside her bedroom door, listening. It took every ounce of his willpower not to go inside. It had been a long time since anyone had affected him this way, physically or psychologically. Merrick didn’t understand the power she held over him. It made him vulnerable, and when one was vulnerable, one was weak. One made stupid mistakes.

Thursday morning before the sun was up, he was in the workout room, and he was going at it hard. Days of pent-up frustration at not being able to reach Dean or Todd, plus having Lynda in the same apartment but unable to bring himself to beg her to fuck him, had him ready to explode.

When he finished two hours later, he showered and then decided to work from home for the day. He was in no mood to see anyone at the office. He’d been surly and rude to everyone all week, and that wasn’t likely to change until he reached Todd and Dean.

It was best if he stayed home until this blew over, only Merrick wasn’t sure if that would happen. He had the feeling things might get worse. The air this morning felt off, like a bad storm was brewing. Even after he’d eaten and was hard at work in his office, he still felt unsettled.

Someone knocked on the office door around eleven, and thinking it was the staff to see what he wanted to do about lunch, he told them to come in. He caught a whiff of perfume he recognized and glanced up. It was Lynda, and she looked like someone had just given her very bad news. His heart pounded as he rose and walked around the desk toward her. “What’s wrong?”

She held out her cell phone. “My father finally called me back and left a message. I just found it.”

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. “What do you mean your father
finally
called you back?”

“I haven’t been able to reach him since Sunday night.”

Holy fuck.
He had no idea she’d been trying as well.
Perhaps you should have talked to your wife, you fucking idiot!
“What does the message say?”

Her color was unusually pale, and her hands shook. When he took the phone from her, he was alarmed to find her skin so cool. “Lynda, what the fuck is going on?”

She let out a gasping breath. “I’m so scared, Merrick.”

He pulled her close and held her. She started crying, but it wasn’t the delicate tears he’d watched slide down her face the afternoon she’d told him about Rey. This was hard sobbing. Her entire body shook with the effort.

“It’s all right.” God, it felt so fucking good to hold her! He had missed her so damn much. He stroked her hair and back. “Tell me what happened. What does the message say?”

“He’s left.”

What?
“Left what? What do you mean?”

“Merrick, listen to it. I can’t … I don’t know what to do.”

He gently disengaged the embrace and then listened to the message. His head spun, and hot rage built up inside him until he was reluctant to stand this close to anyone, especially his wife.

He couldn’t breathe. He needed air.

Merrick walked out onto the terrace and sat in one of the wicker chairs, then listened to the message again.

Lynda was suddenly at his side, sitting on the concrete slab. Her eyes looked hollow, and she had a confused expression on her face, as if she wasn’t quite sure where she was. At least one thing was certain, and Merrick was grateful for it. No way had she known about this. She had nothing to do with her father leaving the country. This was as much a shock to her as it was to him.

But sitting here wouldn’t change it. He had things to take care of, and none of them could wait. “I have a lot of calls to make.” He rose, and she did, too.

“Please let me stay with you.”

His heart melted at those whispered words. She sounded and looked like a frightened child right now, and he couldn’t refuse her. “Of course.”

The relief and gratitude on her face made him feel even worse. He’d been so wrong to ignore her for three days. But dealing with that would also have to wait.

Todd and Dean—the attorney he’d known and trusted with his life for years now—had betrayed him and Lynda in the worst possible way. The money was gone. The company was bust. Those two had taken all the remaining assets and fled to a country that would not extradite them, even if they could be found.

Dean
had done this to him, and that was bad enough. But Todd had done this to his
daughter
. Merrick had no explanation for that one, but he now had confirmation of something he’d wondered about since the wedding reception. He’d been right about the strained relationship between Lynda and her father. But even that was small comfort.

This betrayal exceeded anything Merrick had experienced. Even William Shaumberg turning on him and ordering the hit on Theresa hadn’t felt like this, because Dean had been one of the few people Merrick trusted with his life.

Christ.
Did the others in his firm know yet? He had to call them first.

****

Lynda sat in an armchair in the corner of Merrick’s office, her legs tucked up under her body, listening to him on the phone. The past few days had been hell for her, but she’d stubbornly refused to reach out to him first.

Now, the whole damn thing seemed silly and pointless. What her father and Dean had done to them both topped Rey and his damn videos, ten times over.

Merrick was on the phone with a man named Alan, and from what Lynda could gather based on Merrick’s side of the conversation, Alan was either a retired or current detective, and he was dirty as hell. Her husband had secrets of his own he was keeping from her, and that knowledge had been enough to keep her from making the first move these past few days.

Alan was on his way over to the apartment to pick up Lynda’s cell phone. He was going to try to extract any information from the message that he could use to pinpoint Todd’s whereabouts, at least at the time he’d made the call.

Merrick had also said something to Alan about a computer and an external hard drive that Alan was bringing over, but Lynda didn’t understand what that meant. More secrets, no doubt. She’d have to let those wait. This was more important right now.

Merrick then spoke with someone named Jimmy Landers, whom Lynda figured out worked at his accounting firm. It sounded like they were all in chaos over there because of this latest development. She imagined Merrick was grateful that they hadn’t been in on it as well. She couldn’t imagine the pain he felt at realizing a trusted friend like Dean had stabbed him in the back.

He then spoke with a woman named Angel Sommerville, whom Lynda deduced was a partner in the same law firm where Dean had worked. Merrick put the desk phone on speaker while he paced the office, talking to Angel.

No one over there had known a thing. Dean had simply vanished, and they’d been trying to reach him all week as well. As the conversation went on, Lynda learned that Dean and her father had known each other as long as Merrick had known Dean.

Merrick asked if she had known that, but Lynda said she couldn’t recall hearing Dean’s name that often while growing up. So much of what her father had done and said was lost to her. They never talked, and when they did it was never about his business practices.

Merrick then spoke to several employees at his office, issuing orders to cancel this and reschedule that. He cleared at least two weeks from his calendar. Lastly, he spoke with someone Lynda swore worked at the FBI, and it sounded like he’d had dealings with this person before. Who was this man she’d married?

When he was finally finished, he glanced first at her, then at the lunch tray on a stand close by. “You should eat something. I’m worried about you.”

His own tray was also untouched. “I will if you will.”

He almost smiled. “Touché. It doesn’t seem important in the grand scheme, does it?”

She shook her head.

“Lynda, I know this is the last thing you want to do right now, but I need your help. Can you think of anything, no matter how insignificant it might seem, that could give us a clue why he would do this to you?”

She sucked in several deep breaths to try to calm down. Inside, she’d been screaming all morning. This couldn’t be real, and yet it was. The only saving grace was that Merrick realized she’d had nothing to do with it. Thank God for that. One massive accusation this week was all she could handle.

“I’ll try.” She closed her eyes and thought back to her earliest memories, at around age six. “I don’t remember my mother. She died when I was a year old in a car crash. I have pictures of her, but no conscious memories.”

“I didn’t realize that.”

She opened her eyes because of the tone in his voice, and her heart went out to him at the look of pain on his face. It was similar to the one she’d glimpsed Monday afternoon. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask again, but she didn’t. He needed her help, and she was determined to find a way to do that for him. His past would have to wait for another time.

He was her husband, and no matter what had happened Monday afternoon, this was an unrelated matter and they had to address it together.

“I don’t remember her, Merrick. I only remember nannies and private tutors. I didn’t attend a regular school until I was ten, and then it was a private school whose families were all rich. You’d probably recognize most of their names. I came home, did my homework, and sometimes went to friends’ houses to hang out, but I was a loner. It was what I was used to. It was where I was most comfortable.”

“How was your relationship with your father?”

“Nonexistent. I rarely saw him, and when I did, he would ask the automatic questions. How is school? What do you want for your birthday? But he’d never
talk
to me. He’d never sit down and listen to a problem or a concern. He didn’t know I was making designs until I was fourteen, and all he said when he saw them was, ‘Well, they’re nice, but you’ll never make a living doing that.’”

“That must have hurt.”

“Not really because I knew what he meant. He wasn’t saying they weren’t good. He was saying go to college and major in business. Which of course by that time was totally hypocritical to me, because every week he was in the tabloids for some scandal involving the wife or girlfriend of one of his collogues.”

Merrick nodded. “Is there anything you can remember that would lead you to believe he was shady in business dealings as opposed to personal situations?”

“No, but honestly I never paid attention.”

“What about your uncles? They owned the business, too, didn’t they?”