Graydon Meyer enjoyed seeing people's true colors—especially when they usually hid behind a façade. Watching a supposedly refined socialite like Lacy Knighton chuck her phone across the room in anger was a genuine pleasure.
"That's quite a temper you have there. Why do you seem angrier about this woman than his actual fiancée?" he asked curiously.
"She changed him," she hissed. "That woman ruined Aaron!"
Ruined? On the contrary. The old Aaron had been nothing but his father's puppet. This one was much more interesting. In a strange way, they were like allies.
He had no intention of helping this horribly spoiled woman get what she wanted. Aaron deserved far better than a wolf in designer sheep's clothing like Lacy. His true goal in approaching her was to see what she knew.
She had been disappointing. She knew almost nothing about the man she was supposedly madly in love with firsthand, relying on gossip and secondhand statements from Alistair Hale.
Although…this new development alone might have been worth bringing her onboard. Keeley Hall. Graydon hadn't known a thing about her before this and he thought he knew all of the major players in Aaron's life.
Alistair and Roslyn Hale. Cameron Singleton. Aiden Quinn. The other dummy shareholders. Bethany Carlisle. Lacy Knighton, the perpetual thorn in his side. He needed to add this new girl to the list.
Where did she fit in if Aaron had a fiancée? Lacy seemed to think those two were genuinely in love. Was Keeley Hall really just a friend?
As Lacy continued ranting about who knows what, he tuned out and decided to explore their relationship on Facebook a bit more. Since he wasn't friends with either of them, the information was limited. He could only see photos the two of them had been tagged in.
Another photo caught his eye. Aaron was standing among a group of people who were eating cake, including both Aiden and Keeley. Aiden had his arm around Aaron and Keeley was happily consuming her cake. They all seemed fairly chummy.
How did Keeley know Aiden? She appeared to be close friends with Cameron's bride so it made sense that she would know him.
Aaron only had a couple dozen Facebook friends total—the fact that they shared a handful of them had to mean something. Graydon was tempted to send a friend request himself if not for the fact that he knew it would be turned down. Aaron didn't know he existed, after all.
Lacy claimed that Keeley had ruined Aaron…wasn't the timing of distancing himself from his family and high society too much of a coincidence? What if—and it was a pretty big if—he left for her?
Her Facebook profile read about the same as every basic female in her twenties. She seemed average in every way possible although she looked quite pretty when she smiled.
Assuming Aaron began making his plans to kick Alistair Hale out of the company because of Keeley that left the question of where Bethany Carlisle fit into all of this. Was she a pawn like all of his other "friends"? Did they have an agreement to pretend to be engaged to appease Alistair?
According to his source on the board, Aaron was awarded an additional 10% of his father's shares for getting engaged to a socialite. If he had known what Alistair was planning to do beforehand, a fake engagement would be quite shrewd.
It would also potentially protect a woman he was interested in who wasn't a part of high society. A woman, for example, like Keeley Hall?
Everyone who spent time around Aaron regularly reported that he was a taciturn, expressionless ice cube. But the almost-smile in that photo with Keeley had been unmistakably soft. This was getting better and better.
That is, if his hypotheses were correct. All of this was conjecture based on word of mouth and a few Facebook photos. It was still worth looking into.
Graydon wanted more information about this woman. If she had truly captivated the great Aaron Hale, she just became the most interesting person in the world.
===
Keeley lay sprawled out on the giant couch/bed hybrid in her pajamas eating goldfish crackers at 6:27 PM because she was tired from inputting and quadruple checking data half the day. Her brain had gone numb.
Molly and Dinah had joined her and sniffed at the Goldfish curiously whenever she accidentally dropped one. She was too tired even to have her hand-eye coordination work properly.
She thought she heard her name being called in the distance and paused her movie to hear better. Aaron must have just gotten home.
"I'm in the TV room!" she hollered, too lazy to get up.
He showed up in the doorway a moment later and raised his eyebrow. "Someone looks comfortable. How long have you been there?"
"Only about ten minutes."
"You can turn anything into a nest surprisingly quickly."
She stuck her tongue out at him before dramatically laying her arm across her face. "I'm exhausted, okay? My brain is completely fried. You're on your own for dinner."
Aaron glanced at the frozen TV curiously. "What are you watching?"
"The first Harry Potter movie. I'm only ten minutes in; I could rewind it if you want to watch too," she offered. He had said he might be interested in watching them at some point.
He smiled as he loosened his tie. "Thanks, I'll take you up on that. Let me go change and get some food first. You want anything?"
She held up her snack bag to indicate she was good.
Five minutes later, he rejoined her in his own pajamas with some reheated leftovers. Seeing her questioning stare, he shrugged.
"You looked comfortable. I wanted to be comfortable too."
Keeley pressed play and heard the familiar opening music as she dug around in her bag for another handful of crackers. It was hard to believe that the Aaron she used to know was sitting here now, in his pajamas while the sun was still up, watching a popular movie with her. He really had changed.