Piper didn’t dare consider that possibility. How much worse would it be to foolishly give flight to hope, only to have everything dashed yet again when it turned out everything was exactly as she thought? But he was right. She did need to talk to Myles.
“Fine. But tomorrow. Right now, I just want to try to sleep. I’m exhausted, and I feel like absolute crap.”
“I’ll make up the guest bed for you.”
Chapter 16
“Mr. Bondurant is here.”
Myles looked up at Patty, not really seeing her. “Okay.”
She stepped into his office. “Jesus Christ, Myles, are you really meeting with the man like that?”
Wearing the same rumpled clothes from yesterday because he’d been up here all night replaying every moment of his relationship with Piper, trying to sort out where he’d gone wrong? Unshowered, unshaved? “Yep.”
Bondurant ought to consider himself lucky Myles wasn’t drunker than Cooter Brown. The urge to drown his sorrows in the scotch hanging out in his bottom desk drawer had been strong. But on the off chance that Piper decided she was ready to talk, he needed to be capable of driving.
Patty shut the door and crossed over, laying a hand on his brow in a universal maternal thermometer. “What’s wrong?”
The woman I love has left me, and I don’t know why. I find I don’t really give a rat’s ass about anything else.
“Did you and Piper have a fight?”
“No.” He’d never even been given the chance to fight. Or maybe he’d been too wrapped up in the paper for her to even bother.
Not wanting to answer any more questions, he shoved back from his desk.
“Hold it.” Patty opened a file cabinet drawer and pulled out an emergency shirt. “At least put this on so you look a little less like a vagrant.”
“I have the check. I don’t give a damn if I look homeless when I give it to him. I just want this over with.”
Leaving her gaping, Myles strode down the hall to the conference room.
Bondurant stood at the window, his briefcase at one end of the table, neatly squared with the edges. The other man turned as Myles came in. “Good Lord.”
“Mr. Bondurant.”
“Are you...all right?”
“Most assuredly not. I would appreciate it if we could get this show on the road. I have more important things to deal with.”
“I’m afraid there’s a slight delay.”
“Delay?” Myles growled.
“Your investor has decided to meet with you in person to conclude the trans
action.”
That caught his wandering attention. All their dealings had been done through Bondurant’s firm as a proxy. At no point had Myles even met his investor. The name on all the contracts was the business manager of the corporation. The rigid confidentiality surrounding the deal had bothered him, but none of his digging had uncovered anything unscrupulous, so he’d let it go.
“Why now?”
“I’m afraid that’s not for me to say.”
Impatience snapped through him like a dog on a chain. “This better not be some attempt to renegotiate terms. I have the full amount for the payoff. I want to be free of this debt.”
“And you will be once we’re finished here.”