At his demand, she stopped resisting him, her eyes snapping to meet his with the sizzling impact of a lightning bolt hitting too close to the mark. Tess wanted to fight. Her reaction was visceral, a tremble of tension that ran up and down her body and hitched her breath with every inhale. Adam slid his hand around her wrist, letting his fingers soothe her with the gentlest touch against her rapidly fluttering pulse point. Franklin got him riled too, pushed buttons he didn’t even know he had, but her reaction was strange, more than just anger over his words, and prompted a million questions in his mind. Questions that would wait until later. Right now, he wanted to put as much distance between Franklin and Tess as he could manage.
“Tess, go make sure that Estelle is okay,” he asked. She hesitated, her refusal poised on the edge of the tensed hard line of her lips. “Please, baby, just do this.”
The unexpected endearment shocked him as it slid past his lips and she was now utterly focused on him. He would have bet money that the world had ground to a damn halt except for the electric current running between the two of them. Tess didn’t look angry, didn’t look like she objected, her expression was more shocked pleasure and sharp interest than anything else and he wondered what her reaction would be if he tugged her even closer and tasted her mouth. Only the knowledge that Franklin was watching, a viper in his house, kept him from acting on the impulse.
“Please.”
His one-word plea broke the spell and spurred her into action. He took in the stiffening of her muscles and the quizzical, lingering glance aimed at him. Then she was gone with a nod and a determined stride past Franklin and out the door. She didn’t even spare his adoptive father a glance, but she didn’t shrink away, either. Proud and defiant. The Tess he knew and wanted way too much.
“So, who is she, Adam? You’re not screwing your help now these days, are you?” Franklin tsked and shook his head. “That doesn’t seem like you at all.”
Adam took two long strides and then he was toe-to-toe with the man who’d given him a roof and an education but never any affection or acceptance. “Don’t ever talk about her like that again.”
“So, who is she? What is she doing for you? Why is she asking questions about me?”
“Are you worried about what she’ll find out?” Adam replied.
“That’s not an answer to my question,” Franklin insisted.
“That’s all you’re going to get so you can leave. I’ll have a member of my security staff walk you out,” Adam said, nodding toward the burly man in a dark suit now standing in his office doorway.
Franklin followed the path of his attention and glanced over his shoulder, the smirk on his mouth more amused than angry when he turned back.
“No need. I got the answers I wanted anyway.” Franklin swept his eyes over the rest of the office, his gaze taking in all of the papers and files. “This office is a mess. No wonder your company is in trouble.”
Adam didn’t flinch at the icy coldness in Franklin’s tone. He was used to him bashing his business, his skill, his ambition, and he was well versed in not giving him the satisfaction of knowing that it pissed him off.
And it infuriated him that the rejection by this man still hurt a little.
Not enough to get him to become the man Franklin wanted him to be but enough to keep him from giving up from his dreams. From giving up and letting down the people who believed in him. He had a lot of people depending on him and he wasn’t going to let them down.
Adam waited until Franklin had exited his office and Justin had secured the door behind him before grabbing the nearest object and hurling it across the room. The mug hit the wall, created a significant crater in the dry wall and shattered and scattered across his hardwood floors.
“Man, you just broke the wall,” Justin said, walking toward Adam with his hands raised in a placating gesture that made Adam roll his eyes.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry. I just...”
“You lost your shit.” Justin pointed at the mess. “I mean, you’re the CEO so you can break the wall if you want to break the wall...”
Adam ground his teeth and searched for words that could shatter the rage haze induced by Franklin.
All he could manage was another lame apology. “I think I threw your mug. I’m sorry.”
Justin waved him off, crossing the room while making a show of sidestepping the large shards of ceramic on the floor. “Adam, just shut up already. I’m glad to see you lose your cool for once.”
“Losing my cool is unproductive.”
“It’s also human and a relief to see that you’re not actually a robot. I just can’t believe that you haven’t punched Franklin by now.”
Adam knelt down, casting a glance up at his best friend as he picked up the larger pieces of ceramic. They’d known each for a long time and Justin was one of the few people who knew everything that Adam could remember about his life before coming to California and what he couldn’t forget about what had happened once he’d arrived.
“It’s not like I haven’t thought about it,” Adam admitted, rising up to toss the pieces into the trash. “Helene would lose her mind if we ended up in the ER and on the front page of the papers.”
“Or she could have told her husband not to be a dick,” Justin said, shrugging in an apology that didn’t look like he meant it at all. His best friend wasn’t a fan of anyone in the Franklin family.
If Adam’s adoptive mother, Helene, were a color, she’d be beige. All she really cared about anymore was her charity work, keeping her roots from showing, and not ending up in any of the tabloids. She hadn’t always been like that, or so Adam had been told. Years with Franklin had made her into the kind of woman who kept quiet and looked pretty and ignored every bad act by her husband.
She’d been distantly kind to Adam, never motherly, but she’d never tried to cause him harm. For that, he would try not to cause her pain if it could be avoided.
“Helene hasn’t had it easy either,” Adam said, not wanting to cover this old ground again.
Justin shrugged, his expression morphing into the closest thing Justin ever got to serious and Adam braced for what he knew was coming. It was a well-worn topic between them—as familiar as the focus on women, sex, money and poker was in their frequent late-night cigar-smoking sessions after long days making a company run. “It’s not your job to take care of everyone, Adam. Redhawk/Ling isn’t going to rise and fall on you alone.”
“Justin, I know that but this is important. If we don’t figure this out, I’m going to let a lot of people down. People who have banked their futures on Redhawk/Ling surviving.”
“You mean ‘we,’ not ‘I.’” Justin moved even closer to shove against his chest, his glare echoing the anger and frustration in his voice.