Page 52 of Cruel Lies

I spent the hours between two and five in the morning bouncing back and forth between replays of that haunting prediction and replays of that spoon passing my lips as Ronan fed me sweetness with his eyes burning from across the table.

By 5:15 A.M., I decide that I should probably not keep doing that. So I bounce up, make an illegally strong pot of coffee, and start emailing divorce attorneys.

By 7:15, I have three meetings booked for the day.

By 8:00, I've dropped the kids at summer camp.

By 9:30, I'm sitting across from the first lawyer on my list. Kimber Hart charges seven hundred dollars an hour to nod sympathetically and tell me things I already know.

"These cases can get contentious," he says, steepling his fingers like a man auditioning for a role as a lawyer in a commercial about lawyers. "Especially when there's a business involved. We'll want to be very strategic."

"Strategic how?"

"Well." He smiles. Or at least, I think he does. But his walrus-esque mustache makes it hard to say for sure. "We'll cross that bridge."

I do not hire Kimber Hart.

The second one is a woman named Aurelia. She's got a razor-sharp bob and her power suit is even sharper, padded shoulders included. The view from her corner office screams,I bill more than God.I have higher hopes for her, which last all of eleven minutes before she informs me that, given Todd's "professional standing" and "the optics," I should be prepared to "manage my expectations" about whether or not I'll retain ownership of the company.

"It'smycompany," I say, outraged. "I built it."

"On paper," Aurelia demurs, "it's a little more complicated."

I wish I could go back in time and bitch-slap my old self. If I could just teleport to the moment when Todd slid those papers over to me and said,Just sign here, babe, it's a tax thing,I'drip that pen out of Old Me's hand and shove it right into Todd's earhole. I'd save us both a lot of trouble, I think.

But I'll be damned if I let that mistake—the simple sin of, oh, I dunno,trusting my motherfucking husband—be the thing that lets my lifelong dream get ripped away from me.

Aurelia can suck it. I'm not hiring her.

But my options dwindle even further when the third meeting doesn't even come to pass. Tobias Hogan's assistant calls at 11:40 to reschedule, citing "a calendar conflict." Her tone makes it very clear that the actual reason is,Someone with more money than you wanted Mr. Hogan's time.

That leaves me marooned on a FiDi sidewalk at noon in my good blazer and my serious-business shoes, holding a cold coffee I don't remember buying.

I. Am.Furious.

Not at the lawyers, exactly. Or, okay, sure somewhat at the lawyers.

But mostly, irrationally, atRonan.

He said this would happen, and it almost feels like he was cursing me with exactly this predicament. Why couldn't he have just said that everything would go well? That the divorce papers would be finalized any day now and I'd waltz off into the sunset with my kiddos, happy as a trio of clams?

It's his fault, I decide.

And as such, he deserves to be read the riot act.

While I'm on the subject of things that Ronan Akov has done to irritate me, I'm also still mad about him paying off mycompany's debts—which were gonna get paid as soon as my next client signed—and that whole bait-and-switch with the dinner bill.

Does he think I'm going to feel indebted to him, all the way into his bedroom? Does he truly believe that he can just whisk me off my feet with endless cash and seductively offered bites of delicious dessert? Does he actually, in his heart of hearts, feel that this is an okay way to conduct himself? Like I'm gonnathank himfor his role in ruining my life?

No.

Let me rephrase:Hell no.

I have a bone to pick with him. Several, actually.

As I turn on my heel and start the angry march to his office, I remind myself of the reasons I'm doing this. More than anything else, it's about the money. The dinner, the invoice, the principle of the thing. A woman who let a man pay for her whole life once and lost herself doing it has every right to storm into his office and demand he stop doing favors she didn't ask for.

It is, I assure myself, mostdefinitelyabout the money.