Page 55 of Reunion With Benefits

Carter kept his focus solely on her as he spoke. “Look at the photos.”

Spence picked them up, filed through them, hesitating on the second before looking at them all again. With every movement, every shift, Abby felt her happiness drift away. Jeff had set her up. Somehow, he figured out how to get to Derrick. Worse, to Spence.

“What am I looking at?” Spence turned to her. “What are these?”

She couldn’t avoid taking a turn now. She stepped up beside Spence and reached for the photos. Nothing in them proved to be much of a surprise. Her at the restaurant with Jeff. Jeff leaning in. His smile. It all looked intimate, so completely wrong and out of context to what really happened.

Never mind that she hadn’t done anything wrong. That she’d turned Jeff down not once but twice. Several times, actually. She could feel the collective heat from the Jameson men’s stares. It pounded down on her as she focused on the photos.

Jeff Berger was a piece of garbage. And he was determined to ruin her because she refused to dance at his command.

“There’s a note.” Derrick’s voice sounded flat as he handed the sheet over to Spence then turned to her. “He says you approached him about working in his company. Offered proprietary information to him, saying he could expand and take us out of the market. He says he’s warning me as a favor.”

Her stomach dropped. She literally expected to see it hit the floor.

Her hands shook as she let the photos slip onto the desk. Denials and defenses crashed through her brain. She wrestled with the right thing to say, with how to explain what happened.

A warning as a favor. She wondered how long it took Jeff to come up with that gem. The man was a complete liar.

“Are you going to say anything?” Carter asked.

Derrick held up a hand. “Give her a second.”

This time Carter snorted. “For what? She either has answers or she doesn’t.”

They were talking around her, over her. Derrick and Carter, but not Spence. All she cared about was his reaction. It took all of her strength to look at him.

She glanced over. Saw his wrinkled brow and eyes filled with confusion. Not hate or hurt, or anything like what seemed to simmer under the surface with Carter. No, Spence was struggling. She could see it on his face.

“It’s not what you think.” That wasn’t the right thing to say but her brain refused to function. Her skin itched from being on display. Standing there in the middle of all of them having to defend herself...she hated Jeff for that. She would always hate him for that.

Spence hesitated for a second before he said anything. “Well, I think Jeff Berger is an ass.”

Relief surged through her, but she tamped it down. She refused to get excited or believe that he wouldn’t turn on her again. They had been through this sort of thing before. Denial mixed with disbelief.

“He insisted we meet.” She left out the part about Rylan’s role in all of this. He’d been complicit, but this part—all the trauma of this moment—was all on Jeff. This was about his vendetta against Derrick. The one she’d been dragged into the middle of and now had to fight her way back out of again.

“He did.” Carter repeated.

She couldn’t tell whether he believed her or not. Right now, the only thing that mattered was that they all listened. She needed Spence to step up and believe her. “Around the time you left, after the kiss and the mess with your father, Jeff contacted me. I was upset and frustrated and half convinced I was going to get fired...”

She stopped to catch her breath. She expected them to jump in and start firing questions at her, but they stayed quiet. They watched. Stood there taking it in with those matching blank expressions on their faces.

With no other choice, she pushed ahead. “I agreed thinking I might need to find another job.”

Derrick frowned. “That was never a possibility. I begged you to stay.”

“I know that now, but put yourself in my position. I’d fallen for a Jameson brother and now he hated me—”

Spence shook his head. “Abby, no. That was never true.”

“Let her finish.” Carter issued the order in a strangely soft voice as he sat on the edge of Derrick’s big desk.

“It made sense that in a choice between me and Spence—worse, between me and Eldrick—that I would lose. So, I was looking at other options.”

“I would have done the same.” It was the first positive thing Carter had said.

That glimmer of support spurred her on. “Well, Jeff did offer but he wanted business secrets and information on Derrick. I said no. I stopped taking his calls. Made every contact from his office run through my assistant first to make sure it was legitimate and work-related. He kept at it, checking in now and then. I ignored it all.”

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