The Naked Truth Read online

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  Layla

  “Thank you for this morning,” Gray said as we took our seats on the plane—next to each other, in first class.

  I assumed that was another detail on my itinerary Gray had chosen to fix, because the seat assignment my assistant had provided was in row twenty-three. I didn’t complain about this change at least.

  “Anytime. Etta’s great. She cares about you a great deal.”

  “She’s more like a parent to me than the one I had. Most of my teachers in grade school thought she was my mother after my mom died. Etta was the only one who showed up for parent-teacher conferences and chorus concerts. My father never did.”

  I felt myself going soft, slipping back to the type of heart-to-heart conversations we’d spent more than a year having. I didn’t want to be mean when he spoke so nicely of a woman who was obviously important to him, but I also didn’t want him to use this situation to get back in with me.

  Offering a sympathetic smile, I turned to look out the window. Gray might be a lot of things, but at the top of the list was perceptive. He took the hint, and we were both silent for the rest of boarding and take off. I’d brought my headphones and had planned to put them on to avoid small talk with Gray, but after this morning, it felt ruder than I wanted to be.

  Fifteen minutes after we hit our cruising altitude, he shifted in his seat to look at me. “Now that your choices are jumping thirty-five thousand feet or listening to me, I want to explain myself.”

  We were in row two, so I could see the door of the plane. I eyed it. “Give me a minute; I’m weighing my choices.”

  He smiled before his face grew serious. “I’m not going to tiptoe around what I need to say. I’ve been waiting a long time to get it off my chest.”

  Our gazes caught, and he read my silence as safe to proceed.

  “I was married. Briefly. But technically, I didn’t lie to you when you asked me. I had the marriage annulled. Which means it never existed.”

  I felt a sudden, overwhelming wave of nausea. On a few occasions, I’d considered going back and calling him out on catching him in his lie, but I’d been so hurt and felt so stupid for falling for a guy who was in prison.

  It had been a year of bad choices for me, and I’d gotten to a point where I doubted all of my decisions. If Gray had been a regular guy I was dating, and I’d found out he was married, I’d have marched to his house to call him out on his lies. But with Gray, deep down I think I was a little afraid to give him the chance to explain. My heart had fallen fast and hard, yet my head was still screaming it was a bad idea.

  “She signed in as your wife on the visitor log.”

  “I can’t explain that other than to say when I’d made my list of visitors, things were very different, and she was still my wife.”

  “Why wouldn’t you have just told me that you were married, and the marriage had been annulled, when I asked if you’d ever been married? You also told me you’d never been in a serious relationship before. I think marriage qualifies as pretty serious.”

  Gray raked his fingers through his hair. “I was afraid to.”

  “Why? Being divorced or having a marriage annulled wouldn’t have scared me away. But being lied to and being made to feel like I was being played for over a year…that was awful.”

  “I know. I got that message when you sent back my letters unopened and stopped visiting.”

  “I don’t understand. Why were you afraid to tell me all this?”

  “Because you’d ask questions, and I didn’t want to explain what an idiot I was. I knew you were skittish about what was happening between us to begin with. Let’s face it, you met me while I was in prison. The deck was stacked against me already.”

  I looked out the window for a few moments as thoughts spun through my head. Do I believe him? Does it matter if I do? What if he’d been honest with me a year ago? Where would we be today? What about Oliver?

  A part of me didn’t want to hear Gray’s story. The woman in me didn’t want to give him a chance to come clean. I would never trust him again anyway. He’d broken more than my trust; he’d broken my heart.

  But the lawyer in me needed to get to the bottom of what had happened. And if I was going to be working with him, we needed to move past this mess. Otherwise, there would be something hanging over us forever. Etta seemed to think it would help Gray move on if he could tell his story and see that it didn’t change things between us. Maybe we both needed him to finally do that.

  It couldn’t put any more strain on our relationship to listen and accept his apology.

  I took a deep breath, put on my game face, shifted in my seat, and gave Gray my full attention. “Start from the beginning.”

  Gray studied me for a moment and then nodded. “Max and I started the investment company together.”

  “You told me about him. You said your partner set you up.”

  He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Max isn’t a him. You assumed that, and I let you to avoid telling you the truth. Max is a woman. She was my partner, and my wife for a period of time.”

  “The partner who set you up was your wife?”

  Gray looked down. “Yeah. I saw none of it coming.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Enough time to royally fuck up my life.” He paused. “Two years after we started the firm, we were managing upwards of a half-billion dollars in investments already. When we closed the biggest account we’d ever landed, Max and I took a trip down to the Dominican Republic to celebrate. We were both workaholics. We spent twelve hours a day together, but things between us were strictly business until that trip.”

  “Okay.”

  “We celebrated for a long weekend, and shit happened between us. The night before we left to come back, we got drunk and wound up getting married. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, or at least I thought it was at the time.” Gray shook his head. “I had no idea it was the beginning of a set up that would literally steal years from my life.”

  “And you got it annulled when you came home?”

  “No. That’s what I should’ve done. But instead, I started to warm to the idea of being married. I worked long days and didn’t have the time or desire to put into a relationship. Whenever I’d go out with a woman, I’d be upfront about not wanting a commitment. They’d say they were good with it, but that always changed after a few dates. Being with Max made it easy.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I did. Not so much as a wife, but as a partner and friend, at least.”

  “How long did you stay married?”

  “Almost two years.”

  “You’d told me your partner set you up, and you took a plea deal because the evidence was so strong against you that you could’ve gotten ten years more than the deal they offered you. So you knew it was her and just couldn’t prove it?”

  Gray blew out a deep breath. “I took the deal for her. It’s a long story. But she made it seem like one of the guys who worked for us had set both of us up. We were both being investigated. I was indicted first. Hers was supposedly on its way. I took the deal because our lawyer said there was a good chance we’d both get more than ten years. I would’ve risked it for me. I was fucking innocent. But I couldn’t let Max—my wife—go to prison. My lawyer was able to negotiate a deal where I’d do a few years if I took the blame for the entire thing. Max got immunity from prosecution.” He shook his head. “Betrayal doesn’t come from your enemies. It comes from the people you care about.”

  My eyes widened. “So you took a plea deal to keep the person who set you up from going to jail?”

  He smiled sadly. “How’s that for irony?”

  Emotion surged inside me. Sadness. Guilt. Anger. Pity. Surprise. Fear. I was afraid to believe him, even though somewhere deep down, I knew he was telling me the truth.

  “You could have told me…”

  “I was embarrassed. And you
were nervous about getting too close to me to begin with. I didn’t want to scare you away with any of this shit—an ex-wife, how gullible I was. I just wanted to move on with my life and not look back anymore.”

  “When did you realize it was Max who had set you up?”

  “About a month after I started my sentence, a buddy of mine came to visit. He’d been on the subway and happened to see Max, only she didn’t see him. She was too busy sucking face with Aiden Warren.”

  “So you got suspicious because she was cheating?”

  “Aiden Warren was the guy who we thought set us up.”

  My eyes widened again. “Shit. So the two of them set you up together?”

  “More than ten million in profits from insider trades went into and out of an account with my name on it—none of it was ever found or recovered. I had my buddy hire an investigator and dig on Aiden. Apparently the two of them had been a couple since before I hired him as an employee.”

  “Can you prove all of this? Did you consult with your lawyer about getting the guilty plea withdrawn?”

  “My lawyer said it’s tough to get any guilty plea overturned once you’ve been sentenced—even tougher after the sentence has been served. We have some evidence, and I’m still working on it, but I’m not even sure I want to waste time fighting that battle.”

  “But getting it overturned means you wouldn’t have the uphill battle to get your Series 7 license back.”

  “I know.” He nodded. “I had thirty-nine months to do nothing but think about my life. I was born with money. My father ran a successful investment firm, and I was on track to follow in his footsteps. Always working. Never home. No amount of money ever being enough. I married a woman because it was convenient with my job. My father didn’t pick women he worked with. After my mother died, he picked women who didn’t care if he was home and were happy spending his money. But eventually they got bored being alone, and he’d get divorced again. He was married five times by the time he was fifty. He died alone of a heart attack at fifty-nine while I was serving my last month in prison.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Gray gave me a sad smile. “Thank you. Those years in Otisville made me realize I don’t want to wind up like him. The market burns people out anyway—I was halfway there. My father left me enough money to pay restitution and still start my own company. I have a chance to start over. I’m going to take it.”

  “Wow. It sounds like you’ve really done a lot of soul searching.”

  “It’s amazing what years of having nothing to do but replay your life over and over in your head will do—makes you realize what’s important.”

  My chest ached for him. If everything he said was true, which my gut thought it was, then he’d lost three years of his life, his business, his father, and had suffered the ultimate betrayal by the woman he’d married and obviously trusted. Yet he didn’t sound bitter. While the saying is when life hands you lemons…make lemonade, I’m pretty sure I’d be using the lemons to peg people in the head if I were in his shoes.

  I’d leaned on the armrest between us. Gray reached over and gently stroked my arm.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you, Layla. I know it will take time for you to trust me. But I’m going to earn that back.”

  I didn’t know how to respond, so I chose not to. Although removing my arm from the armrest probably said more than any words would have.

  Regret clouded his eyes. “Do you love this Oliver guy?”

  “He’s a good guy. We’re good together.”

  He searched my face. “Didn’t hear the word love.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I waved my hand back and forth between the two of us. “We’re not going to happen, Gray.”

  A slow smile stretched across his handsome face. “Yes, we are. You can fight it all you want.” He leaned his face to mine.

  Our noses were practically touching. My body tingled feeling his hot breath on my skin.

  “In fact, I want you to fight it. Fight it tooth and nail. It will make it that much better for both of us when you finally give in.”

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  Gray

  It was impossible to concentrate all day.

  Half the time, I stared across the table at Layla while she spoke, not hearing a goddamn word but knowing that each time she made the th sound, I’d get a glimpse of her wet, pink tongue as it peeked out between her bright red, painted lips and pearly white teeth. When she half smiled, it was always on the left, and the slightest little crow’s feet dented her porcelain skin.

  Luckily, one of my two partners had the ability to focus. Franklin Marks had been a lifelong associate of my father’s and was in his mid-sixties. Joining with me to start this venture capitalist firm was a hobby for him. He already had more money than the next two generations of Marks’ kids could burn through. Franklin brought years of experience in finance to the table—the kind that didn’t get taught in Ivy League MBA programs. He was on the conservative side, but that was okay because he’d help balance out Jason, my other partner.

  Jason and I had been friends since we were kids. I trusted him with my life. Over the years, we’d invested together in some small projects for fun. But he had a tendency to take risks, in business and his personal life. He worked hard and played even harder. Which was why I pulled him aside after our meeting to tell him the attorney he’d been salivating over all day was off limits.

  I’d mostly planned the meeting today as an excuse to travel with Layla—get her alone for a while. I’d even blown off dinner with my partners tonight, just to have a few more hours on a flight home together. But the trip had turned out to be productive. Layla now had everything she needed to finalize the agreements we needed drawn up, and Franklin was so impressed with how she managed the three of us all day, he told her he’d be giving her a call for some other work.

  In the car on the way back to the airport, my phone buzzed. I lifted it to find the best fucking text I’d ever received. Unable to contain my smile, I showed Layla the message from American Airlines.

  “Flight got canceled.”

  “What? No!” She grabbed the phone from my hand to verify the authenticity of my news. “They rebooked us on a flight tomorrow? We need to call. There must be a flight tonight we can catch.”

  I shook my head. “When I pushed back our plans because of the accident this morning, my assistant said it was the last flight of the day.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “We’re flying from Greensboro, not Atlanta. There aren’t flights in and out every three minutes all day and night.”

  She got out her own cell and went online to double check. While she made her futile attempt to escape my company, I took the opportunity to look for a nearby hotel with a good restaurant—preferably something romantic.

  I’d stayed at the O. Henry Hotel before. It was pretty nice, and I remembered passing an adjoining restaurant. Calling it up on my phone, I checked out the photos. The hotel looked as nice as I remembered, and better yet, the restaurant looked quiet, with a nice ambiance. Layla was still searching when I booked us two suites.

  She huffed. “I can’t believe there really isn’t another flight out tonight.”

  “I booked us rooms at a hotel I’ve stayed at before.” I left off that I’d requested they be next to each other.

  “I don’t even have a change of clothes or a toothbrush.”

  “There’s a shopping village across the street, an outdoor mall with chain stores, and a restaurant at the hotel.”

  She scowled at me. “Can you at least pretend you’re not happy about this? Your smile is really pissing me off.”

  “Promised myself if I got you to speak to me again, there’d never be another lie. So I’m not even hiding that I’m fucking thrilled we’re stuck here.”

  I told the driver to take us to the O. Henry Hotel, and Layla called her office to let them know about the change of plans. When we pulled up out front, it was already pre
tty late, and the shops were going to be closing soon.

  “We should run over to the stores before they close.”

  “Okay.”

  The first store we stumbled upon happened to be a Victoria’s Secret. It felt like I’d dated this woman for over a year, yet I had no idea what type of lingerie she favored. If I’d held out hope that I would get to find out soon, that thought was quickly squashed.

  She stopped in front of the store. “Why don’t you go get whatever you need? I don’t need help in here.”

  “Are you sure? You might need a second opinion when you’re in the fitting room.”

  She pointed toward a Gap. “Go.”

  I smiled. “I’ll check us in after I grab a few things and meet you over at the hotel.”

  She opened the door to the store. “I can check myself in.”

  I spoke to her back as she walked away. “My favorite color is red…”

  At least she didn’t give me the finger. Progress.

  ***

  I knew she was named Layla because her mother had been a huge Clapton fan. I knew that in the third grade she’d gotten into a fight with a boy, punched him, and broken his nose. Yet I’d never seen her in a pair of jeans or shared a decent meal with her. I sat at the restaurant bar, enjoying the view of her shapely hips gliding back and forth, clad in tight denim as she walked toward me.

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  I sipped the scotch and soda I’d ordered. Another thing I’d missed. “Look at you like what?”

  “You know.”