Page 12 of Surprise! I'm Engaged To My Boss
I don't think I had ever seen that reaction in a woman who had gone to bed with me.
Not that, at that point, that was really an important issue. My ego was a little hurt, I admit, but it was the least of it compared to all the problems that night out could cause me.
The video came to an end, and I mentally thanked Janet for not showing it again. Instead, she told me what I had already expected to hear, “The Harris attorney sent me this video at 7:30 this morning, along with a very clear and direct message: either you drop the lawsuit, or this video will be included in the lawsuit as evidence against you. They are willing to make a deal if you decide to drop the lawsuit.”
“I don't want any deal with them.”
“Either you accept the deal, or you lose the case. And in a very embarrassing way, might I add.”
“I repeat that I will not make any deal with those sons of bitches.” The good part about it being just Janet and me there was that I didn't have to control my language.
The bad part is that she doesn't either.
“Think about it before you do something this big.” She stood up, starting to walk around the huge rectangular mahogany table. “What did we talk about, Michael? What was our agreement? You would takeover the management of your family's architectural firm, you would show up at the company from Monday to Friday, showing yourself to be an interested and responsible manager, you would stop partying, going out, drinking and, most importantly: stop messing about with women.”
“It was a company party; it was part of my job. And I thought it would be okay if I had a little drink.”
“A little? You were barely standing on your feet when you left the bar and did a ridiculous little dance in the elevator.”
“How was I supposed to know someone was filming me? And about the woman, she wasn't really in my plans. I approached her just to talk, not to end up in bed.”
“If you weren’t planning on ending up in bed, then explain why the hotel room was booked two hours before this footage of you two going upstairs?”
Two hours before?
The video in the hallway showed the time as one thirty-two in the morning. Two hours earlier, at eleven thirty, I hadn't even been talking to the redhead for an hour. It was already past ten thirty when I approached her at the bar. I didn't remember much, but I was sure that in an hour I hadn't been in a state of intoxication that would allow me to lose my mind like that.
I definitely hadn't made a reservation at that point.
Well, the exact time of it really didn't matter. I had fucked up, that was all that mattered.
“And with a company employee!” She got back to a point that was also quite relevant. “Can you imagine the kind of thing that could be alleged? I spent my entire legal career defending your father from lawsuits filed by employees 'seduced' by him. This could easily be brought up in the lawsuit and turned against you.”
That, for me, was one of the worst parts. Because I always swore to myself that I wouldn't be like my father. Not at that point, at least. As a father, he hadn't been the worst, but the reputation of a married millionaire who was always having affairs with employees of his own company always weighed on my shoulders.
“She seems like a nice girl,” I said, referring to the redhead. “I can talk to her.”
“Maybe that makes your situation a little less terrible, but it still doesn’t help. You’re in deep, Michael. And speaking as your lawyer and a long-term friend of your family, I strongly recommend that you agree to a settlement. It’s that or nothing — because you’re out of options.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. I didn’t want to come to any terms withMargaret and Caleb Harris. I hated the thought of even having to see their faces again—or many more times.
But if I had ruined everything with reckless drinking, I needed to at least try to contain the damage.
I opened my eyelids again and, looking at my lawyer who had stopped on the opposite side of the table to where I was, I asked:
“What kind of deal do they want to make?”
“Biweekly visits, lasting two hours, always in their home and under their supervision.”
I clenched my fist, slamming it hard on the table in front of me.
That wasn't enough. It never would be.
I was Alice's father. She was about to turn one year old, and I had seen her in person exactly five times. It was more than enough for me to understand that I needed her, much more than she needed me.
I was crazy about that little girl. She was my fucking daughter! I didn't care if my affair with her mother had been just a one-night stand, and she was the result of a broken condom. She was my daughter! My blood.
The damned Harris couple even tried, at the time, to convince me that their daughter had lied inthe email she had sent me just a few hours before the accident that took her life, and that Alice was not mine. At the time, I requested a DNA test just to have that documented proof of paternity, but for me that was not even necessary. Except for her blue eyes identical to those of her deceased mother, Alice looked like a photocopy of me. When her mother, Leah, sent me a photo of her attached to the email, I spent the first few hours comparing the image with a photograph of myself as a baby, startled by the surreal level of similarities.
