Chapter 14

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A

ll she could do was stare at him. This man sitting beside her, holding one of her hands between both of his own, was a complete stranger to her.

"Wha... how...." She slowly shook her head. "This... is a joke? You think you can make things better with a sick joke?"

"No, babe." He inched closer to her. "Not a joke. You've just heard the beginning of a truth you should have been told years ago."

"Beginning?" she asked, her voice shaking. He nodded solemnly.

"Oh god... you're serious..."

Derek looked down and stroked her hand as he spoke. "From what I remember your dad saying, the affair was brief and had happened a couple of years before. Somehow, your mom found out and confronted him. He owned up to it and begged her forgiveness, but she said she needed to think and drove off. He didn't know anything else until he got the call from the police."

Caroline scrunched her face, trying her best to make sense of what she was hearing. "When did he tell you all this?"

"The first time I learned about it was when he told my mother. He said that despite the fact that his wife was driving the car, he believed himself to be responsible for our loss. He wanted to make what reparations he could, but in return he asked that we work with him to keep the events as quiet as possible. He said he had a daughter that he wanted to protect from the ugliness for as long as he could. The police report came out, of course, but your dad and my mom managed to keep any sensationalism to a minimum."

"You said reparations. What reparations?" The words were out of her mouth, but her heart was sinking. Did she really want to know?

"In return for our silence, Mark promised to pay my way through UNC."

She looked at their joined hands for a long moment, then back to his face. "So... that night at the party... you knew who I was the whole time...?"

He nodded hesitantly, then took her free hand to join the other.

"I told you before that I was there in Chapel Hill, working on a contract. That was true. It was also true that one of the brothers called me from the party to invite me to join them. What I never told you before was that I'd had no intention of going, until he started describing a list of girls who were there as 'enticement '. It wasn't until he said your name and described you, that I changed my mind."

He lowered his head. "See, I knew what Mark had told us, but I didn't buy it. He had to be like every other rich guy, right? He just didn't want any scandal cluttering up his life or his business, so he decided to play the 'precious daughter' card to appeal to my mom. I had no problem with letting him pay for school, so I kept my mouth shut. The night of the party, I thought I was finally going to meet the spoiled, rich, princess. Instead," he looked back into her eyes, "I met you."

A puzzle piece clicked into place in her mind. "Treacy called me yesterday. She thought I had been paying you off to keep you around. I thought she'd lost it. But she was right, wasn't she? I just didn't know I was doing it... that Daddy was doing it..."

Derek released her hands and grasped her by the shoulders. "No, baby, no! Treacy is a cold-hearted, vindictive bitch. You've always known that."

"But...?"

Again, he inched a bit closer to her. "Mark did help me to start the business and take it to the next level, but I couldn't tell you because I couldn't tell you why."

Caroline knew that her father had invested in Derek's business. It was one of the details of her financial holdings she had learned over the past few months. But she'd had no idea how soon those investments had started, and had assumed them to be as recent as her engagement.

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