Page 89 of When Glitter Meets Gold

“Nothing’s funny,” he says before turning to Kandi. “You were just leaving, right?”

Kandi makes a dissatisfied noise. “Whatever you say.”

Then she’s striding away from them, hopefully toward the exit. J doesn’t bother to look because Sara is the one who needs his attention, Sara is the one he has to talk to and make sure she didn’t possibly think that anything was going on between him and Kandi…anything worse than was actually the case.

“I realize how that must have looked.” The words rush out. “But?—”

“Why did she call youJack?” Sara interrupts.

Good question. It confused the hell out of him too.

“I guess she did some digging on me. She’s never called me that before.” He winces, because it’s not the way he wanted Sara to find out he and Kandi have a history.Shit,he should have told her before now.Shit, shit, shit.“Rememberthat situation I told you I was dealing with? Well, it involves her.” He sighs. “I wanted to tell you before now. I’m sorry.”

Sara opens her mouth, then closes it, her eyes searching his face frantically, like she’s adding everything up in her head, and from what he can see, the conclusion doesn’t look great.

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath, like she’s treading carefully. “If she was the situation, that means you knew her before I met you in Maine…” She shakes her head. A disappointed look he would trade his entire world for, appearing on her face. “Which means you’ve known her this whole time?”

Fuck. No matter how he answered this, the truth couldn’t hide that fact. “Yes. I should have told you before now.”

The disappointment is gone in Sara’s face, and now it’s just sadness.

“So, when you saw us together at Midas and discovered we work together…didn’t you think that was a good time to tell me you knew her?”

J jams his hands in his pockets, the urge to fix this coursing through his body like hot lava. “Honestly, I didn’t know how to bring it up. It’s a weird story. One I don’t have the energy to face half the time.”

Sara’s mouth hangs open. “So you think I didn’t deserve your energy about something like this?”

He groans. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just, there’s legal issues. But I’m going to tell you everything, I’ll tell you right now.”

The frown on Sara’s forehead deepens, and there’s a look on her face he doesn’t recognize. She’s angry. Not like she was on the trails, not like she was when they were at eachother’s throats. This anger ran deeper. That’s when he realizes it’s not anger at all. She’s hurt.

“I don’t care how farfetched the story is, Jack. I don’t care if she’s your ex-wife you married one drunken night in Vegas,” she shrieks, then takes a deep breath to steady herself. “She’s one of my colleagues, you should have told me.” She shakes her head. “You asked me to give you honesty. Don’t you think it’s a two-way street?”

She’s right beyond any excuse he can give. He’d just aboutconvinced her that he was worthy of her trust. Only to be bitten in the ass by the one rule he set in place for her,no more games. Honesty.Shit, he couldn’t lose her trust now.Fix this fuckhead.

It’s the worst possible time to hear the grating voice of Walter Schneider coming from behind him. “Rest assured Vandenberg, we have technical support carrying out extensive tests to see exactly who had access to the data. We are, of course, confident the leak didn’t come from our end.” He pauses. “I assume that’s what this serious looking conversation is about?”

Confusion takes over until J realizes he’s talking about the letter he’d come to look at.

Walter continues, “Wasn’t expecting you until later, but I’d be happy to skip my coffee break to discuss further. We both would, right Kirby?”

This guy. Still dictating Sara’s time.

“You got the letter?” J sighs, his mind reluctantly but quickly switching to business.

Walter plucks it from the inside of his jacket, awkwardly handing it to J.

He scans the document, and sure enough, it’s the same one his secretary received.

It’s from a journalist, who’s somehow acquired the figures of the food waste from every Vandenberg Group establishment. The same figures he’d given Sara the day he came to propose the collaboration.

The journalist wants to know why it’s taken him so long to do something about it, and why he thinks it’s acceptable that so many are starving in the city while the company’s food wastage is so high. The same words crop up over and over,greed, selfish…

The only difference with this letter is that it didn’t come with the accompanying letter that went to his secretary. The one threatening to leak to every newspaper in the city if he didn’t deliver a hefty sum. Jesus Christ, could he just get through one day without someone trying to extort the living shit out of him?

“As I said, we’re confident these figures didn’t come from our offices,” Walter repeats. “But you can expect our full cooperation. And just so you know I’m taking this matter seriously, I’d like to offer you a brand new team to work with.”

What?

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