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I blinked at her, snatched from the brutal cross examination in my mind. Forced to turn off cruise control.
I swapped the fly aways from my eyes and gave her my undivided attention. “I’m sorry?”
She licked her lips and leaned in, her smile turning mischievous. “How is he?” she repeated, her eyes sparkling with fascination.
I knew exactly who she was talking about and what she was asking. Every hackle in me was raised, but I played stupid. I wished I’d taken door duty and let Tamara work with clients, because she would have had a snappy comeback and all I wanted to do was scream and throw this woman, and the possibility of a new order, right out of my shop.
The answer to her question?
Amazing.
No one had ever touched me the way Jason had. No one moved the deep, dark, secret parts of me like Jason.
And no one had ever made me feel so incredibly stupid for letting them in because I knew better.
I knew his track record, had several opportunities to get out with my heart in tact, and I ignored all the signs.
A tight smile was permanently attached to my face, like some demented robot that was malfunctioning or missing the nuance. I was a record skipping over the scratch, replaying the line over and over.
How is he?
How is he?
How is he?
“Miss Bright? Why don’t I take over?” Tamara slid into the conversation. “Natalee has a crazy schedule this morning.”
I jumped when Tamara patted my shoulder, still smiling as I accepted the lifeline and hurried toward the back office. Away from the cameras. Away from the questions.
Away from him.
I knew better, but the first thing I reached for when I stepped in the office was my cell. The texts from Jason had stopped last night, but I had a new email from him.
The screen blurred as tears filled my eyes.
The subject line read, ‘I wouldn’t do that to you’.
But how did I know that?
What did I really know about him other than the fact that he made my body come alive with a single look? That he made me melt with a touch? That, like me, he knew the pain of longing for intimacy, for love, but was afraid the rug would be snatched away?
Even though my heart wanted to read the words, even if it was more of the same—that she was lying, that he’d never felt this way before—I tapped the box beside the message and sent it to trash.
What else did I know about him?
I knew that he was a jerk, and we’d been on a collision course with this moment when I let him back in my life.
I wouldn’t be made a fool of again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: JASON
Everything about my loft in the heart of downtown was meant to exude freedom. When I made the previous owners an offer with enough zeroes that they’d be foolish to refuse it, I’d stripped the top floor of the McMillan Building down to its bones.
Got rid of the floating staircase, and the walls that transformed the space into some sort of industrial mansion. Everything that screamed ‘I have money!’, that reeked of my childhood home, or was something that would make my mother swoon, was carted away.
I had no interest in the antique chandelier that the real estate agent had boasted was imported from a chateau in Paris. The kitchen, made for a gourmet chef, was wasted on me. I basically saw a kitchen as the place where milk and eggs spoiled before I had the opportunity to even crack the fridge.
I craved minimalism. White walls that were a far cry from the stark and palatial paint choices of my youth. I didn’t need an interior designer since the only furniture I required was a bad ass desk and a TV, with some flavor of a couch. That one was vital for the rare (but important) Netflix binges where I locked it in until my eyes bled. Plus, a TV made it look like someone lived here. That it wasn’t on the market, stripped down so prospective buyers could picture their own shit in it.
