LEAD ME ON by Julie Ortolon (find a book to read TXT) 📕

mother cried so much. He’d been cheating on her. Repeatedly. For years.” Scott looked at Keshia with incredulous eyes. “She wasn’t being whiny. She was betrayed. Here was this man I thought was perfect, and he was a lying cheating bastard.”

He rubbed his temple as if to forestall a headache. “I left the house while they were in the middle of a screaming fight, and started walking through the neighborhood, wandering down the streets until I wound up at a house that was under construction. It happened to be the home of a senator, but I didn’t know or care at the time. I was in a rage. And I...”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I trashed the place. Someone called the cops, and I was arrested. I remember thinking, ‘Oh man, my dad is going to be so pissed.’ But he wasn’t mad. He was embarrassed. He made a sizable contribution to the senator’s campaign to get the whole thing swept under the rug, but never said a word to me.

“I don’t know why, but his lack of reaction ticked me off.” Scott frowned as if thinking it through for the first time. “I guess because I realized he didn’t really give a flip about me. I worshiped him, but to him, I was just an object to show off, proof that he was man enough to produce a son. He didn’t, and still doesn’t, care about anyone but himself.

“When I realized that, I wanted to get back at him for... I don’t know, everything. Neglecting my sister, cheating on my mother, but mostly for not being the man I thought he was. I had counted on him, and he let me down. So I... very stupidly started getting into trouble on a regular basis.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“God, you name it.” He laughed. “Car theft, possession of marijuana, skipping school, going to bars when I was underage. The thing is, I kept wanting him to do something about it. At that point, he wasn’t even living with us. He and Mom were getting a divorce, and the only time I saw him was when he had to bail me out of trouble. I just wanted ... I don’t know, for him to get mad, try to stop me, something. Instead, he paid people off and pretended the problem didn’t exist.

“By the time I graduated high school, I had no respect left for him. He, however, was so delusional, he actually expected me to go to college and follow in his footsteps as CEO of LeRoche Enterprises. When he came by the house for one of his rare visits, I told him I wanted to be a writer, which is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be. And that was what finally pissed him off. We had a huge scene with Mom bawling in the background where he threatened to disown me, clearly thinking it would bring me to heel.

“Instead, it freed me in a way I can’t explain.” He looked amazed. “I quit living my life just to tick him off, and started living for myself. I even changed my name as a way of beating him to the punch of who was disowning who—and because I wanted to leave all that mess behind. Scott LeRoche was an angry, screwed-up kid, and I’m not proud of that. In fact, the only thing in my life I am proud of is my writing. Which is why I don’t generally talk about anything else in interviews.” He looked at Keshia. “Surely you can understand that.”

“Actually,” Keshia said out of camera range, “I think a lot of people would find it admirable that you walked away from that much wealth and became your own person.”

“My own person?” He raised a brow. “Or an imaginary person. Allison fell for Scott Lawrence. Not Scott LeRoche. I’m not sure she’d care much for the person I used to be.”

“If she’s watching the show, is there anything you’d like to say to her?”

“No.” He laughed, sitting back. “I think I’ve had all the sharing I can handle for one day.”

Allison sat stunned as the interview turned back to writing and his books, then wrapped up and cut to commercial. When she turned to Adrian and Vivian, she found them both staring at her.

“You dumped that man?” Aunt Viv demanded. “Are you crazy!”

“It wasn’t quite that cut-and-dried.” Her heart pounding, she glanced down at the scrap of paper in her hand, on which she’d written his phone number. “I need to call him.”

“Not so fast.” Adrian stood and blocked her path when she started for the phone. “What are you going to say?”

“I don’t know.” Her mind whirled with too many thoughts. “That I’d like to meet with him, see if we can work things out.” Tell him that I love him, and his past doesn’t matter.

“Then you’ll go running over to see him on his turf where he has all the advantages.” Adrian shook his head. “No way am I going to let him off the hook that easy after what he’s put you through. If he wants to work things out, he can damn well come here.”

“Adrian ...” She gaped at him, then gestured toward the TV. “You call that easy?”

“Like he said, practice run. He didn’t have to face you while he said any of that, and he didn’t have to face your family.”

“What are you talking about?” Fear crept inside her chest.

“You two don’t have a chance in hell of making things work long term until he realizes that in this family you’re accountable for your actions. If you make some jackass mistake, we don’t act like nothing happened. His family might not work that way, but this one does.” He grabbed the piece of paper from her hand and headed for the phone.

“Adrian, no.” She ran after him. “Please don’t interfere. Let me handle this.”

“Like I let you handle things when he first checked in? I’ve been kicking myself ever