BWWM Interracial Romance 1: Professional Relations (8 page)

“What’s wrong?” Bradley asked her.

Regina bit her bottom lip to stifle the sob that threatened to rise up from her throat, swallowing it down and taking another deep breath. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” she said, trying to keep her voice firm and level and almost succeeding.

Bradley’s eyes widened. He stared at her in shock for a long moment before taking her hands in his, holding them tightly. “Regina, what brought this on? What did I do?”

Regina closed her eyes. If Bradley wasn’t the one behind the slander against her name, she couldn’t fairly accuse him of it—and in spite of his concern and upset, he could still be. Regina knew that her ex-husband had been an excellent actor. “It’s just… I’m not ready. I feel guilty seeing a coworker, and… I told you about my relationship problems.” She looked away. She hated to blame her breaking up with him on her ex-husband. It made her feel weak. But she had to give him some reason.

“Is this because I wanted you to meet my daughter? Because you don’t have to feel pressured to do that.”

Regina shook her head. “No, no, it’s not that. You’re not pressuring me. I just don’t feel ready for a relationship at all.” She gathered all of her courage and managed to look him in the eye. “There are other things going on at work, and I really need to focus completely on the job. You understand.”

Bradley’s eyes were watering as he stared at her. If Regina hadn’t been acquainted with how well some men could lie, could pretend and act, then she would have been utterly convinced that the man holding her hands and staring at her with such complete devastation on his face could never have spread slander about her. Bradley took a deep breath and Regina saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. “If you’re sure that this is what you want…” he said quietly.

Regina, feeling as though her heart was being literally torn out of her chest, forced herself to nod.  “I don’t know if this is going to be a permanent thing, but at least for right now… I just can’t, Bradley.”

Bradley took another deep breath and stood, relinquishing her hands and turning away from her. “I’ll see you at work on Monday,” he said, his voice flat and level.

Regina restrained the urge to call out after him not to leave—that she didn’t really want to break up—to come back. She bit her lip until she tasted blood to keep herself from saying the words. The minute the door was closed behind him, she began to cry, and continued crying until she fell asleep on her couch, exhausted.

Months passed in a haze of misery for Regina. Bradley didn’t pressure her, didn’t try and discover anything more about why she had broken up with him, but their work was tense and awkward nonetheless, and Regina reminded herself firmly that this was exactly why it had been a bad idea to get involved with him in the first place. She found herself crying at random, sitting at home alone, exhausted from an emotionally draining day of having to work alongside Bradley, reminded in tiny ways of how much she had enjoyed his company.

The worst part, she thought, was that even by breaking up with him, she was no closer to making her job more secure. She was frustrated and consumed with grief for the affection she had lost, for how little she had gained from breaking up with the man who had given her such peace—and had disturbed her thoughts so much at the same time. She found herself on the point of asking about Denise as the school year came around, remembering Bradley’s stories about how clever and intelligent his little girl was. She could have met her—could have told Bradley’s little girl that to her older sister, she was ‘little girl’ too—and always would be.

Abigail suggested that the best way to get over her romantic troubles as well as her career stress would be regular exercise. “It’s the best thing for working through something,” Abby suggested during one of their lunches, when an errant comment had reminded Regina of the depths of her grief. “I recommend it to all of my patients.”

So Regina got a membership to a gym, and even shelled out extra money to work with a trainer. She had been physically fit for most of her life, but she had had no idea how much fitter she could be until she’d spent weeks, then months being cajoled and pushed by Enrique, who was attractive—but not her type. Regina knew that he would be more than happy to take their relationship out of the professional and into a much more personal level, but she hedged at any compliment he gave her, at every opening he made to ask her out.

She became determined to fill every waking hour of her life with activity. When she wasn’t working late—alone—in the office, she was working out, or doing freelance work on the side, or getting involved in charity. Even though she fell into bed exhausted every night, her mind still churned with doubt and grief, discontent and frustration. She had no idea what was going on behind her back at work, no idea how to stop it, and in spite of the fact that she couldn’t yet absolve Bradley of involvement, she missed him with a feeling like an ache deep inside of her body. She didn’t want to miss his laugh, his smile, the way he had of caressing her, but she couldn’t deny that no matter how much she packed her hours, she still did.

She even tried going out on a blind date, at her sister’s insistence. “You’re never going to get past that guy unless you meet someone new,” Abby told her. “Come on; let me hook you up with one of my patients. He’s really cute.”

Regina went on the date, but discovered that she had absolutely nothing in common with the man. It would have been a complete disaster if she had let it get beyond dinner—if she had given into his aggressive pushing to let him take her home to his place. Regina was surprised at the way she stood up for herself, adamantly refusing to sleep with him on a first date, finally getting into an actual argument with the man, telling him that not only would she not go home with him then—that she wouldn’t go home with him ever, nor would she ever see him again.

If nothing else, she thought, her relationship with Bradley had at least taught her something of her own value. She told her sister that while she appreciated the gesture of setting her up with an acquaintance, she was going to take her own time recovering from the breakup.

Abigail had smiled, saying that she could see that Regina already had—at least a little. “And I’m not talking about Bradley.”

While she was laying in bed, trying not to think of the man she had left, Regina’s mind turned increasingly to the husband she had divorced. She was able now to think of the things he had done to her without crying, without feeling as though she was being stabbed repeatedly in the chest, in the stomach. She was finally able to recognize—to fully understand—that nothing Richard had ever done to her had been her fault. It was one of the steps to recovering from the train wreck that her life had become, and while Regina knew intellectually that realizing that was part of the process, it had seemed so obvious that she had scoffed at the step, saying that of course she knew that none of the abuse she had been given was her fault—why else would she have left the man?

But understanding it intellectually, and knowing it emotionally—letting herself feel anger instead of fear, and then acceptance of the fact that it had happened, as terrible as it was—were two different things. Regina almost overworked herself in one of her sessions with Enrique, distractedly lifting weights beyond her normal ability to perform, consumed with sudden rage that Richard had ever thought he could simply hit her, simply degrade her; that he hadn’t given her even a quarter of the value that she knew she had. Enrique had had to stop her, telling her to sit down and rest for a few minutes before she made herself faint or vomit.

In the office, Regina was more dedicated than ever, logging her time, taking extra calls from the client reps, working with her team to ensure that everything was completed as quickly and thoroughly as it possibly could be. She took on more and more of the projects on her own, asking Talitha for extra work, speaking up in meetings when other assistant project managers had a quandary. She was determined that even if she didn’t know the source of the bad feeling towards her from the upper management, she was going to prove them absolutely and totally wrong—somehow. She tried but couldn’t seem to discover who it was that was dripping poison all over her reputation.

When she let herself have even an hour of unfilled time, Regina found herself crying—over losing Bradley, over her sense of futility, her increasing frustration at the entire situation. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically. She was at the breaking point, she realized; if she didn’t get to the bottom of the situation soon, she would be forced to try and find another job, to do something to change her growing and unbearable discomfort.

When she was at the point where she thought she couldn’t handle any more suspense, or any more tension, Regina stumbled across the answer. She was walking through the office, distracted by the details of a new brief that she had to put together; Alistair-Pole-Richards wanted to add another new product to their ongoing contract with Pater-Gray, and since they were more than happy to pay more, Regina and Talitha alike were happy to oblige them.

She barely paid attention to the management people who came out of the conference room in front of her, their backs turned to her as they started traveling in the same direction she was going. Regina had intended to visit with the accounting manager to tell them about the need for a new invoice, but when she heard the whispering going on between the two managers, she slowed down, listening, from sheer curiosity. She almost stopped short when she heard her name. One of the managers was going on about her, totally ignorant to the fact that she was less than five feet behind the two of them.

“I’ve heard that she’s completely useless. She gets ahead by sleeping with coworkers or bosses, and then gets someone to take on the heavy lifting once she’s in the new position.” Regina’s heart was pounding. The man who was speaking was not one she knew well, but he had an influential position in the company, with seniority as well as rank. He had been friends with the company’s president for years—the two of them going on poker cruises, out to golf games. He was in a very good position to destroy her, she thought, but why would he want to? He had never worked with her before.

As they turned a corner, Regina followed, in spite of the fact that it was in the opposite direction of where she had wanted to go. She was fascinated; horrified at the slander that was leaving the man’s lips. The other man he was speaking to—a slightly lower level manager, not quite a toady but certainly a yes man of sorts. “How did you hear about this?” he asked the other manager, almost as curious as Regina was.

“Oh, I’m acquainted with someone from her life—her ex-husband. While I’m sure there’s two sides to the story, I have to believe that he’s got a good idea of what the woman’s really like.” Regina stopped in her tracks as the men continued to move forward, utterly and completely shocked. She had thought of many possibilities when she had been wondering who and how and why someone was lying about her; she had never even remotely considered that her husband could somehow be part of it.

Regina abandoned the task of visiting the accounting offices and made a beeline for her own office instead, closing and locking the door behind her. Conflicting emotions rose up: anger, sadness, fear. She had thought—had honestly thought—that the divorce had made everything between her and her husband come to an end. She had foregone any kind of alimony payments because she had known that her husband would fight them tooth and nail, that he would drag her name through the mud just to avoid having to pay them. She had given him the lion’s share of their assets, wanting nothing more than to get the divorce completed. When she moved away, started a new job with new coworkers, she never thought that her husband could be so vindictive as to follow her and ruin her career.

His words came back to her with chilling clarity.
“You’re nothing without me.”
He had said it over and over again, and he was apparently determined to prove it. Regina slumped to the floor, feeling overwhelmed and anxious, even as the sparks of anger inside of her began to grow. What had Richard even hoped to accomplish? Just because her job was in jeopardy didn’t mean she was any more likely to go running back to his hateful embrace. He was so determined to see her fail that he was willing to find and make friends with people in her company who didn’t know her—just so he could sow the seeds of her destruction.

Regina threw the file she was carrying across the room, consumed with sudden bitter rage. She had stood up to him before, she thought. She could do it again. But would standing up to Richard, telling him that she had figured out his stupid, petty trick, really solve the problem? She had to be smart about the situation. She was so enraged she could barely think. Regina stood up, walking across her office and throwing herself into her desk chair, growling with the anger that burned through her stomach and into her heart.

She had spent years kowtowing to him. She had submitted to his demands, had taken her beatings, had listened to him rant and rave at her over nothing at all. Finally, she had gotten the courage to leave him, to tell him that she wasn’t going to be his punching bag or his emotional whipping boy any longer. And now he saw fit to take away even the tiny victory she had managed to gain in leaving him. Regina shook her head, staring unseeingly at her computer screen as her rage continued to smolder. She would deal with him separately, she decided. She needed to take care of her career first—she had to find out a way to implicate that manager, to prove that she was more than worth the value of her salary.

Regina didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she knew it had to be done. She wracked her mind, trying to think of who she could go to. She could talk to Talitha, but her boss was already struggling to keep her on, already stressed out. She could go to Abigail with the information she had gleaned, but apart from general advice—and vitriol at Richard—Regina knew that Abigail couldn’t exactly help her.

Finally, Regina’s thoughts turned to Bradley. He had to be unaware of the situation—she had just received confirmation that he was not behind the slander to her name as she had suspected him of being. He also had some clout with the upper level management, a certain amount of seniority and a reputation within the company that made him hard to shake when it came down to it. Regina started to get up out of her chair, and then faltered. She had pushed him away. She had broken up with him over an ultimately trivial reason, and had never so much as intimated since that time—almost four months—that she wanted anything to do with him.

Could she trust him to help her? Even when they had been together, Regina had kept her previous marriage a secret, never trusting him enough to divulge what a monster her husband had been. If she went to him with the news of what she had discovered, would he even believe her? Regina was as filled with doubt and worry as she had previously been with anger and indignation. She thought with regret over the effort she had made to forget him, over the fact that she had never given him the trust that he had ultimately deserved. She had questioned his every motivation when they were together, even as she had accepted his affection.

She left exactly on time that night, knowing that she needed distance and time to think. She would have to find someone to talk to, someone she could trust. As she drove home, Regina’s thoughts turned again and again to the way that Bradley had always made her feel. She skipped her workout for the evening and spent the night remembering their times together, remembering his daughter and the pain he had gone through. If anyone could understand why she had behaved the way she did, Regina thought, it would be Bradley. If he didn’t believe her—if he couldn’t bring himself to help her—she had lost even more than the security of her career. She realized as she fell asleep that if she had really lost Bradley for good, she had lost one of the best things that had ever happened to her. She didn’t know if she could bear it.