Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 122382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 612(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 612(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
“Food poisoning?” Martine offers. “Maybe a bug?”
I press my lips together because I just don’t know.
“Try not to die, anyway.” She opens the door wider.
“Can I choose to?” I lean back against the sleek stall wall.
“I can think of better places to haunt.”
I try to smile, at least until she reaches for my wrist.
“Come on, out you get,” she says as though talking to a little kid.
“I don’t want to,” I answer, sounding like one.
“No need to be embarrassed. Unless your reluctance is something to do with a certain dark-haired stud.”
Deny, deny, deny.
“He shot out of the meeting room hot on your heels, sweets.”
I huff out an unhappy-sounding laugh as I pull my wrist from hers. Stud, she called him. She doesn’t know how close she is to the truth. To my truth. To his lie?
Motherfucker. I tip back my head and stare at the marbled ceiling as my anger flares. Anger I can deal with. Anger is better than shock. Better than feeling sorry for myself.
“Did you say he had a wife?” I demand, my gaze slicing her way.
“No wife.”
My stomach swoops at the sound of Matt’s voice. That melodic accent. He comes to a stop behind Martine, his smile tentative and sort of beautiful. But they say even the devil was an angel once. Not that he’s the devil. He’s just another man. Another man who’s no good.
“Though you did meet my niece on Saturday.”
“What?” My frown is reflected back at me in the mirror above the washbasins.
“Blond hair. Yellow dress. We were at the Palladium? Never mind.” His shoulders move with a deep inhale.
“I’ll just . . .” Martine begins to move toward the door.
“Don’t,” I say quickly. She stills, and gives a quick nod that feels like relief. “I can’t do this,” I say, still looking at her. I can’t look at him. I can’t be here. I can barely think. Martine nods and turns her body sideways as though to shield me from Matt. Head down, I move toward the door.
“Ryan.” My name seems to bleed with regrets as his fingers settle around my upper arm.
I glance pointedly down at the same knotted cuff links peeking out from under his jacket sleeve. “Let go.” If my voice sounds calm, it’s because I’m now icy cold inside. He lied to me—about everything. He isn’t who he said he was, what he said he was.
Oh, my God. My entire skin suddenly prickles as I realize exactly what—exactly who he is. He’s fucking Midas! There was no sugar mama paying for the suite in the Pier because he’s absolutely loaded. How mortifying. The things I said, talking up my job, my personal wealth, when my salary, my net worth, is probably his spare change.
“Were you laughing at me the whole time?”
“What?” His brow furrows like he can’t make sense of what I’m saying. “No. Ryan. I never . . . I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. For everything. But most of all, I’m sorry you weren’t there in the morning.”
“You think that would’ve made things okay?” I demand, incredulous.
“I was gonna tell you.”
“Nice. Tell me after the fact but before now, right?” My voice increases in volume with each word spoken. At least, until I come back to my senses. “Let go of me.”
“You told me you didn’t want to know.” But at least his fingers loosen.
And there’s that unhappy laugh bubbling up inside me again. “I can’t do this,” I mutter, breaking for the door. I didn’t want to know this—any of this.
Like a good soldier, Martine falls in behind me. She murmurs that I should leave, that she’ll tell management I’m ill. I turn right out of the bathroom, so grateful for her help when she even shoves my purse at me, pulled from under my desk as we pass.
“Ryan, please,” Matt calls.
“Not now,” I hear Martine say, her voice calm.
“But I need to speak to her.”
“She doesn’t want to speak to you.” There’s no malice in her reply, only an evenness.
“You don’t understand,” he retorts stridently.
I pull on the stairwell door.
“If you make a scene, she’ll never forgive . . .”
I don’t hear the rest as the door creaks closed behind me.
But she’s right, I won’t forgive him. Ever.
“Starbucks is all that’s wrong in the world.”
Why would he think that? Because it’s readily available? Made for the masses?
Asshole, I think as I stir my second coffee of the day, this one in the ’Bucks in the Westfield shopping mall. A coffee I can’t seem to stomach.
Maybe Starbucks is beneath him. Maybe a wealthy man like him refuses to drink out of anything but a gold-plated Hermès espresso cup. Maybe there’s nothing but Black Ivory beans in his office—the stuff that’s fermented in an elephant’s stomach before it’s shit out at a thousand dollars a pound. Or something like that. It strikes me that it’s a pretty apt analogy for how I feel right now. Shit out, though without the gold dust price tag.