The Pretend Girlfriend (30 page)

Gwen would have continued longer, but the machine cut her off. The whole bit about coming clean had come to her mid-message, but it felt right. Aiden would be better off without her. Henry would hopefully stop hounding him, sabotaging him. And maybe they could all move on with their lives.

It wrenched her heart to admit it, but she did.

Gwen looked down at her phone. The case warmed in the palm of her hand, the blank screen reflecting the ceiling. If Aiden called right now, she thought, if he called and asked me to breakfast, I would drop all this getting out nonsense. He would have some good reason or argument to stop her.

It was another thing like the horse race, putting it all on chance and destiny. Gwen stared hard at the phone, willing it to ring, willing Aiden's name to pop up on the call display.

She concentrated so much that the blood pounded against her temples, and her jaw started aching from clenching.

But apparently Gwen wasn't psychic, because her phone didn't ring. Letting her jaw relax, Gwen unlocked the cell and started scrolling through her call history, looking for that one particular number.

Finding it, she thumbed the button to call it back and pressed the phone to her ear.

After one ring, someone answered. "Mr. Henry Manning's office, how may I help?"

It sounded like the same secretary who'd called her in for that early morning meeting.

"Hi, yes, this is Gwen Browning. I need to see Hen... Mr. Manning right away; it's important."

"I'm sorry; Mr. Manning's schedule is fully booked. I can fit you in in say... three weeks?"

Gwen's anger flared. She'd worked up the courage to choose this course of action, and now Henry couldn't be bothered to speak to her? "That's not acceptable," Gwen said, wanting to put the sentiment in far less diplomatic terms. She refrained from doing so by reminding herself that it was Henry she hated, not his secretary.

"I'm afraid Mr. Manning has made his stance toward your unwillingness to accept his offer quite clear, Miss Browning."

Why did everything have to be so difficult, right down to giving up? Speaking through gritted teeth, Gwen continued, "Then you can tell Mr. Manning that I've changed
my
stance and that if he wants my cooperation he'll see me right away. Today, as soon as possible."

"Just a moment," the secretary said, putting her on hold before Gwen could say anything.

She shook her head, holding the phone away from her ear while some Beethoven piece played through the speaker. The music continued playing for several minutes, severely trying Gwen's patience.

It gave her time to think about just what this choice meant. Not seeing Aiden again, of course. That hurt, but she knew it would mean less trouble for him. It would also mean no more money, which led to no more apartment. Oh, she could find a roommate or a smaller place, but neither of those options sounded good.

A break, on the other hand, did sound good. She could take her mom or dad up on their offers for a place to sleep while she collected the broken pieces of her life and put them back together in some new design. What shape that might take, Gwen hadn't a clue. One thing was for sure though: she didn't think she'd be able to get over Aiden for a long time.

She was just about to hang up when the music stopped.

"Miss Browning?"

"I'm still here," Gwen replied.

"Mr. Manning has agreed to see you today. How soon can you come to the office?"

Of course Henry would never come to see her. Everything needed to happen on his turf. It probably made him feel stronger, more important, all that stuff.

"I'll get there when I get there," Gwen said. Even though she was throwing the towel in that didn't mean she couldn't make him sweat for a bit. And it felt good to prove to herself that this was completely her choice. Besides, she needed to shower and change her clothes.

The secretary sounded none-too-pleased, "Be sure that you arrive sooner rather than later. Mr. Manning has also authorized me to send a car to pick you up."

"Don't bother," Gwen said.

The secretary hung up. Gwen let her phone drop down on the couch.

"Well, I guess this is it," she said to no one. It felt like goodbye to her.

T
he waiting room adjacent to the office of Henry Manning looked even larger and more imposing than she remembered it.
A somewhat strange sensation
, she thought,
given that the mind usually exaggerated things.

Though it could have just been an expression of her mood. Despite there being no one else in the room, the secretary had told her to take a seat. So she'd sat down on one of a pair of wingback chairs flanking a teardrop-shaped coffee table.

The chair had looked comfortable, but seemed designed to achieve the opposite effect. She kept shifting, but no matter how she sat, something prodded her, or felt too hard or too soft.

And of course there weren't any magazines or newspapers to be found anywhere. Probably too plebeian or bourgeois or something like that.

Feeling like a kid sent to study hall for detention, the secretary being the shrewish, draconian vice principal in charge of discipline, Gwen surreptitiously took out her phone, crossing her legs and hiding it behind her thigh. No calls, no messages, no emails. Even Facebook was dead. Given the hour, that wasn't surprising. She kind of wished at least one of her parents understood texting. She felt so isolated and alone, and she didn't think the secretary was up for some small talk.

She even got to the point where she wished she'd brought her laptop or some of the books so that she could get some school work done.

This is all just some tactic of Henry's to give him the upper hand, Gwen thought. Everything that man did was to secure some advantage for himself. The mean secretary, the imposing waiting room with its lack of any sort of distraction, both ways to create and amplify weaknesses in his opponents.

And it was also clearly a way to get back at Gwen for making Henry wait for her to be ready.

Gwen reached the point where she questioned the reasoning of her coming down in person to get this done. Surely an email or a telephone call would have sufficed? Maybe, she thought, one or the other still would.

Yes, I'll just get up, go home, and write him an email and attach an electronic signature or something. That sounds like a plan.

Relieved to get out of there, Gwen stood and started heading for the door.

"Miss Browning?" the secretary said, her emotionless, robotic voice freezing Gwen in place, "Mr. Manning will see you now."

"Oh..." Gwen said, shooting the doors out of there a desperate glance, wondering if she could still get out of there, "Fine. Okay. I will just, um, go and see him then, I guess."

The secretary's lips tightened in a polite, fake smile even as her eyebrows lifted lightly as though to say, "Sure. Nice job trying to get away."

When Gwen entered Henry's office, she again both felt and saw the way the ceiling climbed to its incredible height. The atmosphere in the place crackled, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Henry sat at his desk, his fingers steepled. He looked so smug. And, Gwen knew, he had reason to.
He thinks he's won
, she thought.

"Miss Browning. Gwen, right?" Henry said.

Gwen started to balk, but reminded herself that Henry liked to play games. Of course he knew her name. He knew just about everything about it, even made it his business to do so. This was just some potshot to throw her off kilter.

She could play that, too. "Yes, Bob, you're right."

If getting his name wrong had any effect, Henry didn't show it. The small, closed-lip smile didn't waver.

Gwen walked over to stand in front of his desk, her footfalls echoing off that high ceiling. When she arrived, Henry didn't ask her to sit down, despite there being an available chair across from him. Nor did Henry stand up.

"So you've finally come to your senses about this charade, I see," he said, sliding a leather-bound folder across to her. "It's a pity you weren't smart enough to do it when it could have made you some money."

"I wouldn't take your money anyway," Gwen replied, flipping the folder open and scanning through the pages. It was an agreement not to discuss the contract with anyone, as well as to cease any current and future contact with Aiden or the corporation.

"But you already have. I own this corporation; Aiden gets paid by this corporation... I'm sure you can see my reasoning. In any case, that is beside the point."

Gwen found herself wishing Aiden were standing beside her, helping her face this man down. But that desire ran opposite to her goal, so she tried pushing it down.

"If I may ask, exactly what caused you to come to your senses? Was it that emergency conference?" Henry said. He took the same pen as he'd offered her before from his inside jacket pocket and slid it across the desk beside the opened folder. Gwen made no move to pick it up.

"It was Aiden," Gwen said.

"So he's come to his senses, too, I take it? I can't say I'm surprised, given the material he chose to work with," Henry said, using a quick, appraising glance at Gwen to communicate what he personally thought of the quality of the "material."

Gwen ignored the jab, instead forcing a smile onto her face as though his words just rolled off her back. "I'm only signing this on one condition."

"Well, I'm not exactly seeing your leverage to make any such demand..."

"You fancy yourself a good judge of character, don't you, Henry?" Gwen said.

Henry shrugged.

Gwen continued, "So you know that when I threaten to tell everyone about the girlfriend contract unless you accept my condition, I mean it."

That earned her a slightly raised eyebrow. "You will be in breach of a non-disclosure agreement if you do that. There will be consequences."

Gwen leaned forward to make sure that he got a good look at her eyes. "I don't care, Henry."

The elder Manning's eyes flicked back and forth between hers, analyzing them, testing them, searching for any sign of a bluff or lie. Their search found nothing. Henry leaned back in his plush black leather executive's chair.

"Didn't you just tell me that you wouldn't take my money?" Henry said.

"I'm glad you were listening when I said it," Gwen replied.

Spreading his hands, Henry said, "Then I fail to see what you could possibly want."

It all came down to money with Henry. Money and power: the bottom line. It was beyond him why someone could possibly want anything else, apparently. He projected onto everyone else, unable to see any other motive.

"My condition is that you leave your son alone. You stop sabotaging his efforts to make this company better, you stop trying to undermine his charity work, you stop trying to turn him into a younger version of you." Gwen needed to clasp her hands together to keep them from shaking. It took a Herculean effort of will to keep eye contact with Henry the whole time, but she managed. Neither of them blinked.

"That sounds like three conditions to me."

"Whatever. Take them and finish with this, or don't and deal with the fallout. I wonder how many points the stock will drop? I hear investors and speculators spook easily."

Was it going to work? For several lengthy heartbeats, it looked like Henry might just laugh her threat away. He didn't.

"I agree to your terms. I'll have the new agreement drafted and couriered to you this afternoon. And I also feel the need to say that you are mistaken about Aiden. You think he cares for you, but I can tell you that he doesn't. There are things about him you don't know and understand..."

Gwen was tired of listening to him, tired of standing in that office with its polished floors that made the soles of her feet ache, tired of everything about this, really. "Things like how you blame him for the death of his mother? Things like your dysfunctional relationship? Things like how the way you treat him tears him up on the inside? You don't even know your own son, Henry; you can't tell me that I don't, either."

Henry swallowed heavily. One hand strayed up, about to tug at the tight, perfect half-Windsor knot of his tie, but he stopped it. For the first time since she came in, he broke eye contact.

Gwen wanted to feel triumphant at being able to get to him, but couldn't. No, she only felt sorry for him. Here was a man who'd spent his whole life building up a huge, multi-national corporation to try and replace his wife, while simultaneously alienating his son, who was his wife's true legacy. And Gwen could see that, at some level, Henry recognized this, too. He'd just been doing things one way for so long that he didn't know how to do them any other.

Nothing ever went the way she expected it too, apparently. She actually got the urge to apologize for snapping at him like that, despite his deserving every word of it.

Henry reconstructed his facade of detached composure, steepling his fingers again, and said, "So we're in agreement regarding the terms of the new contract? You will sign it when the courier delivers it later today?"

Before Gwen could answer, the door to the office burst open behind her.

"Mr. Manning, I'm sorry, I couldn't stop him!" the secretary said, looking decidedly nonplussed at having to abandon her roost behind her desk.

However, Gwen's attention never really focused on the secretary. Aiden strode into the room in a crisp black suite and a red tie. He looked perfectly composed, as though nothing had happened the night before. Just seeing him made Gwen's body ache again.

He looked to her for a moment, their eyes meeting, before shifting his gaze to his father. "What are you trying to get her to do?"

Henry considered his son, then pushed back from his desk and stood up, the castors on his chair swishing against the floor. The tension mounted in the room as the two Mannings engaged in a brief stare down.

Henry relented first. "You may go," he told his secretary (who beat a hasty retreat). Turning to his son, he said, "I am not trying to get her to do anything. She came here of her own free will. Demanded it, from what I gather. I was merely... facilitating," he glanced at the opened contract on his desk, the shiny pen sitting beside it.