Elizabeth Harbison - Beyond Business

“It was best for you that you didn’t hear from me.”

She scoffed. “Best for me? Who do you think you’re kidding?”

“It was,” he insisted. The car behind them honked its horn and Evan looked up to see the light had changed. He drove forward and went on, saying to Meredith, “You’ll just have to trust me on this.”

“Evan, we’re grown people now. This happened more than a decade ago. I’d like to know what happened. This cryptic ‘it was best for you’ business just doesn’t cut it. Either tell me the truth or don’t talk about the past at all.”

“You’re right. We shouldn’t talk about it at all.”

She sighed. “Just tell me the truth.”

He laughed lightly. “Fine, Meredith. It’s simple. My father wanted to use our relationship, yours and mine, to his advantage over your father. He wanted me to get information on your father’s writers, the stories they were coming up with, how best to get in there and switch the facts around and cast doubt on your father’s credibility.”

Meredith felt the blood leave her face. “He wanted you to spy for him?”

“Essentially, yes. Though that’s a pretty dramatic label.” He blew a long breath out. “Either way, what it would have come down to was me using you, or appearing to.” The next light turned yellow, and Evan slowed the car again.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked at her. “Because I was eighteen and I didn’t know how to betray my father like that.”

“But you could betray me.”

“I didn’t betray you. I left the country. I cut out of the whole deal so I wasn’t part of hurting anyone.”

Which felt to her like a betrayal of the highest order. He had hurt her, and he still didn’t seem to realize it. “It was pretty damn easy for you,” she said, hating the bitter edge to her voice, even though she couldn’t soften it.

He shook his head. “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do!”

“But …?”

His gaze landed evenly on her. “But I did it. It was the best I could do for everyone.”

This wasn’t going anyplace good. Meredith knew she shouldn’t have indulged her impulse to talk to him about this. It made her regress to an angry, confused teenager, and she had gotten so far away from that until Evan had reappeared.

She didn’t want to be this person.

“Okay, okay. Uncle,” she said, glad to see they were approaching the entrance to the office building’s garage. “We’re not getting anywhere with this conversation.”

“Agreed.”

“So let’s drop it.”

He gave a single nod. “Consider it dropped.”

The entered the grungy grey garage in silence, the dim fluorescent lighting acting as the perfect punctuation to Meredith’s dissatisfaction.

“Okay.” She pointed to her little blue sports car. “That’s it right there.”

“I remember.” He pulled the car up behind hers and turned to her. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” She started to get out of the car, then stopped and turned back to him. “I’m sorry I had to cut dinner off. I hope you’re not starving.”

“I’ll survive.” He smiled. “I’ll just drive through and get a burger somewhere.”

She nodded. “Good night, Evan.”

He looked at her evenly, his gaze inscrutable. “Good night.”

She got out of the car and felt him watching her as she unlocked the doors, got in and started the ignition. He pulled his car away, and she backed up and followed him out of the garage. He turned right and drove off in the opposite direction of where she was going.

She was struck by the thought that soon he’d be back in the building, staying in his office overnight. It was a nice office, of course. Luxury accommodations by almost any standards. But what made her sad about it was the fact that he was staying at the office because he wasn’t going to be in Chicago long.

He was leaving. Again.

As soon as Evan’s car’s taillights were out of sight, Meredith put hers in Park and put her head in her hands. This was so much harder than she’d thought it would be. Her nerves were not as strong as they usually were.

Neither was her willpower, come to think of it.

What a fool she was to keep having these romantic leanings toward Evan Hanson. For heaven’s sake, he’d left her, abandoned her. Made promises he’d clearly had no intention of keeping, and when faced with the challenge of standing up and being a man against his father, or running away, he’d chosen to run.

Okay, that was then and this was now. The fact remained that Evan had always been a wild kid. It was as if he was incapable of following the rules. She’d seen it in school, then she’d seen it again when he ran away from his promise of commitment.

Guys like that didn’t change. People like that didn’t change, she amended.

And if being with Evan now was going to create this rush of longing in her, then she was just going to have to avoid him. As hard as that might be.

She drove home in silence, not daring to turn on the radio for fear of hearing some old love song that would make her feel even more melancholy. What was wrong with her? Why was she suddenly feeling so hung up on Evan Hanson again?

It wasn’t the Evan Hanson of the past that she was wanting, either, it was Evan today. Past Evan was the main obstacle, that was for sure. She couldn’t trust the today Evan because of what he’d done before, and it didn’t look as if she was ever going to get a satisfactory resolution to that.

And frankly, she felt like an idiot for even trying.

She got home and went inside, hating the emptiness of the house and the way her footsteps echoed on the hardwood floors. Once upon a time she’d crept across these floors on tiptoe in the middle of the night, trying to avoid the creakiest boards so she didn’t wake her parents up.

Now she could jump and yell and sing “The Star Spangled Banner” if she wanted to and no one would come.

It was lonely.

And it hadn’t struck her that way until Evan had returned. She hated how much she loved being with him, and more than that she hated how alone she felt every time he left.

She couldn’t wait until this job was over so she could move on. That he was staying temporarily in his office with the intention of leaving himself should only make her feel better.

She took out a key and went to the back room, where she’d locked her confidential work files. She found them, carried the folders into the kitchen and spread the information out on the counter.

Then she picked up the phone and dialed.

“Okay, I’m home,” she said when the line was answered. “And I’ve got the information you need. Are you ready?”

Evan knew he shouldn’t go back to Meredith’s house.

He knew, even as he turned the car onto Lake Shore Drive and headed across town, that it was a mistake.

What they had was in the past and, considering the fact that they couldn’t even talk about it at all without arguing, it was going to have to stay there.

But he was drawn to her. Not as the boy was drawn to the spunky cheerleader, but as the man was drawn to the woman. She was the realization of everything he’d ever wanted in a woman and hadn’t been able to find.

The only problem was that they had a past.

And that was precisely why it was so foolish of him to be retracing his steps down that path right now, parking outside the house she’d lived in with her parents, walking up the same walk, over the same cracks that had been there for years, going to the same door that would open to reveal the girl of his dreams.

Somehow he had to convince her of that.