Chapter 10

Author's Notes: For time's sake, I needed to jump ahead a few months in this chapter, but that should not detract from the storyline. Also, I realize that this is a short chapter, but it is a pivotal one. I hope to post another one later this afternoon. For those of you who want to know how long the story continue, it is 14 chapters plus an Epilogue. Thanks to all of you who have left a review so far. Glad you're enjoying this story.

The women were not able to spend Christmas together as Piper had promised her brother that she'd spend a week with him and his girlfriend in a yurt in Vermont.

The months of January and February went by in a wintery flash, and by the time March rolled around, Alex and Piper were squarely in a relationship. The blonde spent at least three nights a week at her lover's apartment, but it wasn't enough. Keeping their relationship secret was proving to be quite difficult when they wanted to spend every waking minute together. The women rarely discussed work, and each company seemed to win accounts one after the other.

Alex had a plan that she was eager to talk to Gloria about that would take Belle in a slightly different direction, but she still had quite a bit of market research to do before presenting her findings to the CEO.

"Hey, babe," the brunette announced over her shoulder on a rainy late-March evening. Her feet were kicked up on the coffee table, laptop open on her thighs. "You're home late."

Piper closed the front door, dropped her tote bag on the ground and ambled over to the sofa while unzipping her boots. "Tell me about it."

Alex craned her neck, meeting Piper for a kiss. "Off-site meetings or just regular work stuff?"

"A little of both." The blonde removed her lover's computer from her lap and set it on the coffee table. She sat on Alex's lap, throwing her arms around the brunette's neck and burying her nose against her skin. "How do you always smell so good after a long day?"

She felt a chuckle roll in her throat, remembering Piper's response to that question in November. "Our products are designed to last all day."

"I know we don't talk about work." Piper kept her eyes closed and let out a long sigh against the dark haired woman's chest. "But I feel like Poppi is stuck in a rut. We land one new account every three months or so, and it comes with no commitment beyond whatever season we're pushing."

Alex rubbed her lover's back. She had to tread lightly, because this was definitely not something they discussed, and she knew it could lead to a volatile conversation. "It's hard being a small start-up."

The blonde used her hand against Alex's chest to push herself up. "I thought we'd be beyond beating the pavement by this point."

Alex noticed her lover's weary, almost bloodshot eyes. "I don't know if that part ever stops."

"I think I'm just going to go to bed." She kissed the brunette on the forehead. "I have a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting tomorrow."

"Ok." Alex planted a firm kiss on her mouth. "I've got a few things to wrap up here. Sleep well, babe."

They hadn't yet exchanged I-love-yous yet, but Alex was confident that she felt that way about the blonde. She wondered if those three little words would be expressed at some consequential moment or if they'd just tumble out on a random Wednesday night.

By the end of April, work was still breaking both women's backs and they found themselves neglecting other things in life such as working out and cleaning their homes. Alex vowed to turn that pattern around and actually left work at 5 o'clock one day to clean her flat from top to bottom. She and Piper had been sneezing, presumably due to the amount of dust in the air, and she hadn't swept the hard wood floors in months. She figured a little spring cleaning would go a long way, and that evening, she'd at least get the ball rolling, and Piper promised to pitch in over the weekend.

As she passed the vacuum over the Oriental rug under her four-poster bed, the machine hit Piper's stack of work files that had found a home to the left of 'her' bedside table. Alex turned the vacuum off to steady the pile, and she noticed a document had fallen out of a red folder. There were many times when the brunette could have looked at Piper's work files or spied on her open laptop, but the thought hadn't even crossed her mind.

She lifted the paper and read the title at the top of the page: Belle Fourth Quarter Report. There must've been some sort of mistake—maybe Piper had grabbed the document by mistake and shoved it into one of her Poppi folders. Alex leaned against her mattress and quickly scanned the report, noticing lots of numbers and a graph comparing Belle's sales to Poppi's.

She pulled the paper closer to her face and then backed it away as if she didn't trust her own eyes. I don't believe this.

Alex's phone rang, startling her and making her feel guilty for looking at her lover's file contents. She quickly shoved the paper back into its red folder and walked into the living room to answer her mobile phone.

"Hey, Al. Are you meeting me at the yoga studio?" Piper asked.

"You need to come home." She felt like she was in a drunken stupor.

"What do you mean? I thought you were on this big kick to start working out again?"

The brunette ran a hand through her hair. "Come home now, Piper."

"Is something wrong?" Piper sounded clearer—like she'd pulled the phone closer to her mouth.

Alex exhaled and shook her head. "Just come home."

"I'm on my way."

The dark haired woman was tempted to sort through her lover's other folders, but she refused to be a snoop. She took the red one into the living room and closed the bedroom door as if that would prevent her from seeking out more information in the pile next to the bed. Alex paced behind the sofa with the Belle report in her hands, going from angry to hurt and back to angry so many times she thought her brain might explode.

Fifteen minutes went by, and Piper finally arrived, dressed in her yoga gear and a little out of breath. "Hey, what's going on?"

"What the fuck is this?" Alex tried keeping her voice measured as she held up the piece of paper, now wrinkled on the edges from her tight grasp.

The blonde took a step forward and glanced at the document, her expression suddenly shifting. "I don't know."

"The hell you don't!" She shouted. "Have you been spying on me? On my work?"

Piper snatched the paper from her lover's hands and examined it more closely. "Where did you find this?"

"Does it matter?" The brunette put her hands on her hips. "Answer my question."

"I have not been spying on you." She gently laid the document on the table and looked Alex in the eye. "Now answer my question: where did you get this?"

She nudged her glasses higher. "I was cleaning, and the vacuum hit the stack of files by your bedside table, and it fell out."

Piper narrowed her eyes. "It didn't occur to you to put it back where you found it?"

"That is not the point! You have data about my company that is not public knowledge!" She turned around and ran a hand down her face, and then quickly spun back around. "Where did you get these figures?"

"We had an agreement, Alex, that work was off limits," Piper responded in a shaky voice. "I have honored that promise and would never go behind your back."

The blonde dashed into the bedroom, and Alex followed. "Then answer my fucking question—where did you get this?"

"Automatically, you point the finger at me?" Piper gathered the thick stack of folders, plopping them onto the bed, and then reached under the bed for a suitcase.

Alex threw her hands in the air. "Who else has access to Belle's records?"

The blonde shoved all of her work files into the suitcase, and then zipped it. She turned to her lover and took a step closer, chin held high. "Fuck you, Alex, for accusing me of stealing information. And fuck you for going through my stuff."

The women stared into each other's eyes for a moment, and then Piper hoisted the suitcase onto the floor, dragging it behind her. She grabbed her purse and strapped her gym bag across her chest without looking back.

"So you're going to leave?" Alex was hot on her trail. "That's how you solve problems?"

The blonde stopped at the door, hand on the knob, and twisted her neck around. "I thought we were better than this." With that, she walked out.

"Fuck!" Alex kicked the wall several times until she left an indent just above the baseboard. She put her hands on her hips and could feel her chest pounding even more than when Piper was in the room.

She opened her computer and sat at the table, waiting for what felt like hours for her laptop to power on. Alex opened several Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, examining each one, and then looked at the Poppi document that Piper had left on the table. Nothing matched. The numbers were close, but they weren't exact.

Fuck.

The brunette walked into the kitchen in search of Advil to stop her pounding headache but reached for the tequila instead. She poured a shot, tossed it back and then poured another. The numbers were off,so if Piper really had snooped in the Belle files, she copied every single number wrong.

Alex took her third tequila shot, immediately feeling sick as it dawned on her.

She walked over to the kitchen sink and retched. Piper hadn't put those statistics together, or if she did, they were estimates—it was simple market research. She hurled again, wishing it was her accusations going down the drain rather than her own vomit.

Once she'd emptied the contents of her stomach, Alex sat up and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. She'd fucked up big time.

Tears stung her eyes the entire walk to the Subway, but she didn't let any fall until she was seated in a row all to herself. Piper was pissed at herself for letting her emotions show and for letting Alex get the best of her.

They'd finally established a routine, and other than neglecting their bodies (except for copious amounts of sex) and their apartments, everything was going exceedingly well. In fact, the blonde was ready to voice her love for Alex, and those words felt like they could erupt out of her mouth at any moment. Now they felt lodged in her throat like a bone.

Piper wiped her tears angrily off her cheeks. Fuck her.

She transferred to a different train and glanced at her phone, noticing two missed calls from Alex and a text message that read, "Please come back." This warranted a new set of tears. Her lover sounded desperate even in a text.

The blonde got off the train and walked back to her apartment without replying to Alex. She needed to think before she acted, something she had never been really good in the past. She took a shower, where a few more tears fell, and then dried herself off as she thought about her next move.

Before she put on more than her underwear, she picked up her phone and hit the green button to make a call.

"Hey, what's up?"

"I need to ask you something."

"Ok?"

"How did you get those fourth quarter numbers for Belle?"

"That's an interesting question at 9:30 at night," Polly replied.

"Please, just tell me." Piper's voice quivered, and she hoped her friend couldn't detect her urgency.

"I looked at Belle's department store accounts—the ones we lost—used the data from each store about how many cases they would've ordered from us, assumed they would have bought the same amount from Belle, and went from there, taking into consideration restocks and surplus." Polly paused, and the blonde pictured her shrugging. "It's just your basic market research."

Piper sighed. "Thanks. I have to go."

"What's going on with you?"

"Nothing!" She insisted vehemently. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She hung up, wondering if Alex had enough time to figure out that it wasn't, in fact, her who had put the data together. Her lover was not the type to grovel, but she had some serious making up to do if they had any chance of continuing their relationship.