SLOW HANDS

She sighed. “I’m in love with him. And now he hates me.”

All four men’s mouths rounded into Os. There was marked silence, and she regretted having blurted out that fact. Love was girly stuff, and none of the men looked like they had a clue what to say or do next.

“Look, I appreciate you guys. I love you all to pieces. I don’t know what I would do without you. I don’t expect you to fix this for me. I’m not a little girl anymore. I’ll figure out something. I just needed a place to lick my wounds and regroup.”

Peter frowned. “Now, you wait just one damn minute. You’re family, Chloe. I don’t care how old or how big you are.”

Even Darell scowled and nodded his agreement. Bryce merely squeezed her hand and told her bluntly to shut up.

“You can always come to us when you need us and we’ll be here for you,” Darell said in his soft, gravelly voice. “That doesn’t and will never change. We love you and we’ll always be here for you to come running to. You got that?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Now come here and give me a hug. Sounds like you’ve had one hell of a week .”

She scrambled up from the couch and threw herself into his beefy embrace. She squeezed for all she was worth and inhaled his scent.

“Love you, Darell. Thank you so much,” she muffled out against his shirt.

“I love you, too, Chloe. Don’t you forget it, either. Now back up and tell me more about this Timothy fellow and if I need to round up these guys to go beat him up.”

Chloe couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary”

—————–

Timothy’s office staff was avoiding him. Not that he could blame them. He’d arrived back at the office the next day after that evening with Chloe, acting like a bear with a sore paw. He’d briefly touched base with his assistant, long enough to tell her not to hurry back into work and to remain with her granddaughter as long as she was needed.

He’d gone over his last conversation with Chloe until it rolled like video footage through his head. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get it to turn off.

It was his own fault for pursuing Chloe so relentlessly. She’d been hesitant from the start, and he’d ignored all the warning signs… guess all she ever wanted was a fling and not a relationship. He’d never become serious about a woman who didn’t put him first. And he damn sure wouldn’t be involved with a woman who put more importance on what the world around her thought about her than on her relationship with him.

He scowled when a knock sounded at his door. One of the secretaries poked her head in and held up an envelope like a shield.

“This just came for you, sir.”

“Bring it over,” he said, waving her in.

She hurried over and all but threw the envelope at him before beating a hasty retreat out of his office. He shook his head. He hadn’t been that bad since he’d returned. Okay maybe he had.

With a sigh, he glanced at the envelope. It was an overnight package with the name of some corporation he’d never heard of before. It was marked extremely urgent..

He opened it and to his surprise it only held a folded newspaper. Nothing else. No letter, no explanation. He pulled it out and it fell open on his desk. It was turned to a specific page, and when he looked down, he saw Chloe’s picture, only it wasn’t one he was familiar with. She looked different. Maybe younger? And she looked terrified in the picture. She had one hand up like she was trying to avoid the camera.

Frowning, he scanned the article. He was so pissed by the time he got to the end that he had to go back and read it more carefully.

The photo was indeed of a younger Chloe when she lived and worked in New York. She’d landed a position with a prestigious advertising firm one year out of college.

She’d done impressive work and then she’d been promoted to senior executive-above several other junior executives who’d been there longer. A relationship with the CEO had been quickly revealed, and Chloe had been named in the divorce proceedings between the CEO and his wife. Chloe had fled in disgrace, and then she took a job with the smaller, on-the-rise golden gates promotions.

Only last week, intimate photographs of Chloe Gilbert with billionaire Timothy Kavell Packard had appeared in another article the day after Packard had reportedly signed a multimillion-dollar advertising contract with golden gates.

Blah, blah, it went on and on, vilifying Chloe and along with her, golden gates promotions. His stomach churned, and he felt the urge to go vomit. His gaze caught the latest issue of Advertising Media. Fresh off the press and delivered just this morning. It was just as Chloe had said. The announcement was there for the world to see, but it was tainted by those photos.

He picked up the paper and stared at it again. There was no way. No way in hell she’d done what they accused her of. He had known Chloe since they were young, and even if they had not reconnected for a long time, he damn well knew she wouldn’t have done something like this. If she did have a relationship with this bastard, it wasn’t so she’d get a promotion.

He wanted to go kill someone. Preferably whoever had started this smear campaign. No one messed with the woman he loved and got away with it. All the air left his lungs in a painful jolt.

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He liked Chloe . Liked her a damn lot. She was beautiful, vibrant, sexy as hell. She was a great lover and partner. He had fun with her. He loved her company. But did he love her? The knot in his stomach grew. How could he be so stupid about his own personal life? Surely it would have occurred to him before now if he was in love with someone.

He stopped and let his thoughts catch up with the breathless, panicky feeling in his chest. How had he not figured this out until now that everything was this way. He wasn’t at all sure he liked it, either.