Page 31 of Yours to Keep

Unfortunately, I also couldn’t stop the mad desire when I imagined dragging her up here to my lonely, ivory tower and making her mine. The mere thought made my grip tighten on the glass.

Bree Bennett had officially declared war not only on my hospital, but on my sanity. The only thing that remained to be decided was what I was going to do about it.

13

BREE

Lunch rolled around and I sat in the hospital cafeteria, glaring at my Cobb salad. I’d eaten a heroic amount of cake last night, washed it down with two glasses of wine, and I’d had zero regrets at the time, but today, I was trying to balance it out with greens, protein, and a little bit of self-respect.

None of which were helping my mood.

I stabbed a cherry tomato with my fork and popped it into my mouth, chewing like it’d pissed me off. While I was aware that I was taking all my frustrations out on the innocent little tomato, the salad wasn’t really what had me all twisted up.

That honor belonged to the infuriating man I could not stop thinking about, which was entirely unacceptable. How can I hate him and want him so badly at the same time?

Something had to be wrong with me. A neurological issue. A tumor. Maybe psychosis.

As I swallowed the tomato and stabbed something else in my bowl—I didn’t even look at what it was—with the same amount of vigor, I ran through all the reasons he sucked like a mental PowerPoint presentation.

He has a giant ego. Pesky tyrant tendencies. He can’t admit when he makes mistakes and he thinks profits trump humanity.

He was a walking red flag factory and yet… Damn him. Damn him and his stupid bone structure.

He’d looked hot as hell at the bakery last night, and maybe I’d just been jazzed up on frosting and wine, but I’d been dying to get a slice of him instead. That thought alone made me press my fork to my lips and scowl at nothing.

God. Get it together, Bree.

Maybe if he just didn’t talk, we could have a fun night together, but the man really didn’t know when to shut up. That lecture he’d given us on his first day had been awful, like listening to the inauguration address of a dictator who’d installed himself into power and intended on staying there for the next fifty to eighty years.

But no matter how hard I shook my head to physically dislodge him from my brain, I still couldn’t stop thinking about him. From the very first time I’d laid eyes on Sullivan Crowne when Mercedes had shown me that picture of him, I’d known he was insanely good looking, but his looks alone hadn’t been enough to distract me from my mission—or from hating him.

I could see a beautiful man and acknowledge that he was beautiful without throwing my morals and values right out the window to lust after him. Genetics were one thing. What I’d seen last night, however, had been something else.

As I chewed a piece of lettuce, the mental image of him joking around with Liana while I’d been watching them through the window drifted to my mind, the way he’d laughed and indulged her. Then there was the fact that he’d shown up for his sister at all. The man I’d thought he was wouldn’t have dragged his ass halfway across town to taste wedding cakes after a full day at work.

And then there had been the look on his face when she’d said that her fiancé had canceled, the hardening of his jaw and the flash of worry in his eyes. All of those things had humanized him to me, unfortunately, and now, I found myself genuinely wondering what he was really like.

A shadow falling across my table made me snap back to reality, and when I looked up, there he was. Sullivan Crowne in his masculine, bespoke-suited glory—and he was holding out a clear dessert container with a cannoli inside like he was offering it to me.

My brain short-circuited, but I couldn’t let him know that he’d just interrupted a good thirty-minute mental rant about him. “If you’re going to throw it at me, that’s fair. Just please don’t get it in my hair.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “No. It’s for you. To eat. The regular way.”

I eyed the container suspiciously. “Is it poisoned? Filled with laxatives?”

“I think it’s filled with ricotta,” he said. “It’s a peace offering.”

Sullivan Crowne, tyrant billionaire overlord, was suddenly looking at me like we were friends—or worse, something flirt-adjacent.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

He glanced around, clearly aware of the attention we were garnering from literally every other person in the cafeteria. “I thought we could talk.”

My laugh came out flat. “You thought wrong. If you’re here to lecture me again⁠—”

“I’m not,” he said so quickly that he cut me off, but I had a feeling it hadn’t meant to be rude or dismissive. Eager, perhaps. “I’m here to call a ceasefire.”

“Wow.” I stared up at him, seeing nothing but sincerity in those clear, sapphire blue eyes. “Should I alert the UN?”