“Yeah.” Oh fuck. This isn’t good at all.
“Hey, Jenna left her purse here.” Gina reaches over and seizes Lainey’s bag before I can stop her, and I scramble to grab it from her grasp, but she jumps back in her chair, holding it out of my reach.
“Gina, that’s rude.”
“Seriously. You can tell a lot about a woman by what she carries in her purse.” She has her nosy face inside at lightning speed. I’ve always admired Gina for her tenacity. Not today. I close my eyes and wait for it, feeling beaten. “What the fuck?” she gasps, and I fold. “Tyler, why the hell is Lainey’s ID in here?” She pulls out a card, and I look at it, for no other purpose than delaying the explanation I have to give.
“Morning.” Lainey’s tentative voice drifts into the kitchen, and I look up and see her standing at the entrance to the kitchen in my shirt from yesterday, probably looking as equally fucked as I do.
My head falls into my hands. Great. Let the fucking fireworks commence. Gina’s a livewire. This could be messy. “Okay, time to go, Gina.” I stand and indicate the door, ignoring her incredulous look. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“You . . . you’ve . . . the whole time . . .” Gina trips up all over her words, looking between us, her head batting back and forth. “What the fucking hell, Tyler?”
“Not now, Gina.” I take Lainey’s purse from her hand and claim her arm, leading her to the door. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Yes, we will,” she hisses, snarling at Lainey as I walk her past. Credit to Lainey, she just backs off, out of the firing line of Gina’s viper glare. “You even think about screwing him over,” my assistant hisses, “I’ll hunt you down and stab you with my fingernails until I can grate cheese on you.”
“Gina,” I yell, shaking her arm, horrified by her viciousness. “Wind it in.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been fucking her this whole time.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then how long?”
“That’s none of your damn business.” I open the door and virtually throw her out of my apartment. “You breathe a word at work, you’re fired. Do you hear me?”
Her mouth snaps shut, her face dropping. It makes me feel like royal shit. She’s worried about me. I know that. But, fuck, she’s unwittingly thrown me a curveball and I’m less than prepared for it. “I hear you.” Her eyes drop to my feet. “Loud and clear, boss.”
I close my eyes and gather some calm. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I shut the door before I can fall to my knees and apologize. In no way, shape, or form did Gina deserve the words I just threw at her. She has had my back for years. Morning after morning, brush-off phone call after phone call, every moment organized, and not only her loyalty as a PA, but as a friend. The shit she’s put up with. Yesterday I wanted to give her a raise for keeping my viper ex away. She knows I would never fire her. She should fire me, truth be told. I wouldn’t be surprised if she went and found that MP and took him up on his offer. Fucking hell.
“She’s got it all wrong,” Lainey says from behind me.
I turn to face her, wondering how the fuck I’m going to approach this. “So you heard?”
“She’s not the quietest person on the planet.” She shrugs. “Sorry.”
“Did you work for that guy?”
“Yes.”
“So do you want to tell me about it?”
She smiles. It’s uncomfortable, and I cock a questioning look at her. “Like Gina said, he was a Member of Parliament,” she says on a slight shudder. She definitely shudders, looking away. Her discomfort, the fact she’s evading my eyes. I don’t like it.
“Sal mentioned he got references from your previous employer and they were glowing.”
She laughs, a soft, throaty laugh, the sound sinking into my ears and lingering for long after she’s stopped. “Oh, it would be.” She looks at me. “Payment for my silence.”
“Your silence?”
“It got . . .” She stops. “Pretty unbearable. To the point I threatened to take it to the papers if I wasn’t relieved of duty with the glowing CV I deserved. I gave him five months of service—good, professional service. “Making a quick buck off selling my story wasn’t something I was interested in. You know how it is—”
“No, I don’t,” I reply quickly, needing an elaboration.
“Being tarnished with the slut-brush. Being accused of lying. I wasn’t game.” She shrugs her dainty shoulders. “If I sold my story, no one would employee me again for fear of me slapping a lawsuit on them if they so much as smiled at me.”
Well, hasn’t that just put things into perspective for me? My balls shrink on the spot, and I swallow down a huge lump in my throat. “I’ve done a lot more than smile at you, Lainey.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I don’t know what to believe. This is kind of a shock, you know? Why haven’t you told me about this?”
She laughs, thoroughly amused by my genuine question. “Why? Tyler, this is why.” She motions up and down my tense frame. “The doubt, the suspicion. Before we got involved, I knew it would hamper my chance at Christianson Walker. After I got involved with you, I was worried about this. You dropping me like a hot potato and running for the hills, taking my job with you.”
Me running for the hills, Lainey losing her job. The question now, though, is whether the latter matters most to her.
I breathe in, clenching my eyes shut. “Jesus, if anyone finds this out, they’ll think you only slept with me to secure a case for sexual harassment. Trust will vanish, doubt will be rife.”
She smiles. It’s a smile that’s inappropriate, but it’s also a smile of acceptance. As if she knew this day would come. It angers me more than it baffles me.
“I guess it’s all out, then.” She swallows and backs away. “Sorry it turned out like this.”
Her easy acceptance stokes the building fury. That’s it? She just leaves and we go on like nothing ever fucking happened? She’s going to leave me with a heart in bits and walk away? That anger, it multiplies by the second until I’m positively seething, my fury filled eyes watching her back disappear out of my kitchen. The rage has nowhere to go. It’s burning at my insides, bubbling dangerously.
“Lainey,” I roar, swiping my arm across the worktop and knocking everything in its path to the floor on a loud crash, the kettle, the mugs, and anything else in my way. “Just like fucking that?” I bellow, not satisfied with the mess I’ve already made of my kitchen. So I kick one of the cupboard doors. Then I curse my fucking arse off as pain radiates through my foot. I look down to see my bare foot, already swelling. And to add insult to my agonizing injury—mental and physical—the fucking door drops off its hinges and lands on my toe. “Motherfucker,” I bawl, starting to hop around like a twat, clenching my foot, standing on shards of broken mugs and glasses. I make it to a chair and fall to my arse, throwing off a round of highly offensive language that might include the odd cunt or two.