She dialed his number, only for it to ring and go to voicemail.
She’d been a fool to trust him. Perhaps she should have done more due diligence about him before diving headfirst into a relationship with a man that she barely knew.
No.
Before she jumped to conclusions, she owed it to Connor to let him attempt to explain.
And she did know him…she knew him as intimately as a woman could. He couldn’t have been pretending to have a relationship with her for information, could he? Friday night couldn’t have been faked, could it?
She dialed the phone again and got his voicemail for a second time. His phone was never out of his reach.
What if he were ignoring her?
She turned to the third page. A simple pros and cons.
Under pros: Was initially a Finch asset before being taken over by Dyer.
She placed her phone down on the table and picked up the presentation.
…initially a Finch asset?
What? It had never belonged to anyone other than her father and mother. Why on Earth would Connor think it had ever been anything other than her family’s?
Oh my god. That night. When he’d come over, he’d picked her brain about the distillery. She’d told him everything she knew. She’d even shown him photographs. And he’d pushed back then, asking if there had ever been another partner. He’d wanted to get her to admit to something she couldn’t, that there had once been another partner. Had he been trying to catch her out or garner a confession of sorts?
But which Finch thought they had owned it? His father?
Yes, she’d definitely been a fool.
Emerson picked up the phone again, letting it ring again. This time when she got voicemail, she was ready.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, Connor. But finding out I’m an acquisition target for you by mail is a shitty way to draw a line under things. And to think I let myself fall in love with you.”
When she was done, she steeled herself. For the first time in months, she was going home early. Somewhere she didn’t need to explain how the bottom had just fallen out of her world. She felt like the tail of the gin. Lost, unfocused.
She just needed to get home before she fell apart.
“You heard me, Connor. Is it true that you’re in a relationship with that Dyer woman?”
Donovan Finch stood behind his desk, his face flushed and sweating, a sure sign his father had moved beyond anger into rage.
When his father’s assistant had called to ask him to come upstairs urgently, he’d assumed there was a business emergency. A supply chain screwup, an unexplainable profit and loss gap, perhaps a negative press complaint. Emerson’s number had popped up on his phone as he’d jogged up the stairs, but he’d sent it to voicemail, knowing she’d understand that he had work to attend to.
When he walked into his father’s office two minutes later, his father had greeted him with a simple statement. What is your relationship with the Dyer woman?
His father wouldn’t be this incendiary about a rumor.
Connor wrestled with what to say next.
His phone rang again. Emerson. If his father saw who it was, he might just have a heart attack.
“What is it you think you know, Dad?” he asked as calmly as he could muster.
“I have it on good authority that you’re in an intimate relationship with the Dyer woman, and I want to know why my son would do that?” His father slammed the desk as he spoke.
Connor looked to the vent system that he knew filtered through to Cameron’s office. “Unless you want the whole office to hear this conversation, I suggest you take the volume down a notch.”
His father’s eyes narrowed, and Connor could feel the invisible daggers. Perhaps antagonizing his father wasn’t the best idea.
“Do you think if I actually gave a shit what the people here thought, I’d still be doing this job long after I said I’d retire? Wait, is that why you did this? To get back at me because I didn’t retire?”
Connor huffed. “Of course not. I’m not a fucking twelve-year-old pissed that his allowance got cut. Am I mad you dropped your decision on me in front of people who work for us? Yes, I am. But did I go and build a relationship with a woman just to piss you off? No.”
His father sat down. “So, you are admitting that you’re in a relationship with the Dyer woman.”
“Her name is Emerson. Stop calling her the Dyer woman just because you had a beef with her father a million years ago.”
“A beef? A beef? Need I remind you, Connor, that he took everything that was important to me?” His father stood again and began to pace back and forth in front of the window. “You have no idea how hard it was to come back from that. Everything I did after was five times harder.”
Connor took a deep breath. He was so done having this conversation over and over with his dad. “I do, Dad,” he said calmly. “You’ve told me repeatedly. I know it’s been your goal to smash him to the ground, to beat him using some metric you’ve never shared, but the man is dead. It’s time to let go.”
“How dare you—”
“How did you find out?” Connor’s temper simmered beneath his cool veneer. He had no idea where the conversation was going to end up, but now he was fully in it and determined to walk away with all his questions answered.
His father pivoted suddenly, his pacing coming to an abrupt halt. “Why does it matter how I found out? It’s true, so why should you care?”
Connor shrugged. “Fair point. The truth is, now that you know, I don’t care. But it would be good for you to confirm it’s the snake I think it is who came running to you to wipe his nose for
