Page 51 of Cruel Lies

I don't know which of those facts I'm more stunned by—that one was my whole life for years, or that the other is happening right now.

This is all too much and it's happening too fast. I take the spoon from Ronan before he can do it a third time, because if he does, I'm going to have to throw the dataset out of the window and do something highly illogical.

He lets me. He just watches, that almost-smile sitting easy on his face, and doesn't say a single word about it.

Not until the check comes, at least.

It arrives in a leather fold, set discreetly at the edge of the table. That's when I decide that this all could use a firm clamp of the brakes.

I spent ten years learning the true costs of letting a man pay for the life around me. I am never, ever doing that again.

So I reach for the folder. "I've got this."

Ronan doesn't move to stop me. He just watches, faintly amused, as I flip it open.

It's empty. Weirdly, there's no bill. Instead, I find a handwritten thank you note, signed by the chef.

"What the hell?" I ask.

"It was settled before we sat down," he explains.

I look up. "That's not—I want to pay my half. Actually, I insist on paying my half."

"I'm sure you do." He's standing now, sliding into his jacket, unhurried. "And I respect it. Which is why I made sure there was nothing for you to fight me over. You can't pay a bill that doesn't exist."

"That's—" I'm sputtering uselessly. "That's cheating!"

"If that's what you think, then you're really not going to like what I tell you next."

I freeze up, blood draining from my face. "What did you do?"

"Your company had an outstanding invoice. Forty-one thousand and change to a SaaS vendor. It was ninety days past due, with a service-suspension notice scheduled for Monday," he says. "It was holding up your data infrastructure. I had it cleared this morning."

I suddenly feel woozy and wobbly.

"You—what?You can't—! How do you even—? That'smycompany, that's— You don't justpaya?—"

"Goodnight, Ms. Meadows," Ronan says.

And before I can find a single one of the four hundred thousand things rising up the back of my throat, before I can demand an explanation or refuse the gift or throw the empty leather folder at his beautiful, infuriating face, he turns and walks out of the restaurant, hands in his pockets, leaving me alone at a candlelittable with a single chocolate-streaked spoon and the sweetest taste still lingering on my mouth.

Son of a bitch.

I think I'm being manipulated again.

And, God help me…

I think, this time, I like it.

14

CALI

I don't sleep well.

This is not a new development. I haven't slept well since the night a smart scale told me I'd lost forty pounds I was definitely still carrying around. But last night's restlessness had a specific flavor to it, a particular brand of insomnia that I'm choosing to blame entirely on Ronan Akov and the thing he said over the molten chocolate seduction-slash-disaster, in that even, unbothered voice that makes everything sound like an inevitability.

Men like your husband don't quit.