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“Can you hang on for the day?”
“I can hang on till next year,” she replied with a smile.
“’Atta girl.”
She left the office with a smile on her face, but there was a part of her that wanted to scream. A part of her that wanted to run up to Justin and slap him until he came to his senses. She wanted to shout at him, tell him she wasn’t difficult to love, that she already liked him too much to back out. She told herself she wasn’t in love yet, or maybe she was in love, and the length of time she had known him made her conscious about it.
There were many factors she shouldn’t like him. He was arrogant, conceited, and though he treated women like royalty, there was just no warmth there, he almost had no sense of kindness. Money and power, and maybe his inflated ego ruled his world. There was no room in that kind of world for her. Yet, here she was, pining over someone who would never look at her the way she looked at him.
How could he ignore her for five days? As soon as she got home, she texted him, asking how he was. It was past seven when she got home, and she thought he would be home by then. The minutes seemed like hours as she waited for a reply. He didn’t reply again. It was getting embarrassing for her, but she swallowed her pride.
If you want something, you have to work for it, she thought. She was no man-eater, but she told herself she wasn’t ugly enough to keep guys away. She had thought she had used her smile to her advantage, but he was cold and heartless. It was the first time her smile hadn’t worked on someone. It stung her pride a little, actually.
She had finished showering when she saw her phone blink. She quickly grabbed it, almost losing grip of her phone. It was Justin. She smiled.
I’m fine.
That was all he said. He didn’t even bother to ask how she was doing. She suddenly wanted revenge again. He was doing this on purpose. He was a frickin’ sadist. Did she just think about the word frickin’, instead of a curse word? What was happening to her? She wasn’t cursing when an opportune time to curse was now.
And he wasn’t even in the same room with her. She couldn’t bring herself to say one curse word anymore. He had changed that part of her, and she didn’t know if she was happy about it or not. Cursing was part of her spontaneity, something she picked up after her parents died, a coping mechanism.
That’s great. What are you up to tonight? she asked him.
Sleep, probably.
She stopped herself from replying. It was clear he wasn’t in a conversational mood. She carelessly tossed her phone away. Tomorrow, she would teach the kids at the center. That could take her mind off things. She still hung onto some strange notion that he would really end up liking her.
She hated the feeling.
Chapter13
Strangely enough, the day after she stopped texting him, he called her, while she was on lunch break.
“What do you want?” she asked curtly.
“Did you enroll at nursing school already?”
“No,” she said, surprised he asked.
“Great, I saw a scholarship you might like.”
“Scholarship?” she repeated. “I’m twenty-four years old, way past a scholarship.”
“It’s a medical scholarship. Until twenty-five years of age,” he said. “You’ll have to move out of Malibu, though.”
“Where?” she asked, forgetting about the whole plan to get annoyed at him.
“Santa Barbara.”
“I can’t,” she quickly said. “Living there is too expensive.”
“The scholarship is a good one, though. And if you have a great scholastic record, you could apply.” He knew she had a good scholastic record, which was part of his private investigator’s report.
She felt he was pushing her away though, but she didn’t comment on that. “I’ll think about it,” she said, wanting to end the call all of a sudden. He didn’t ask her how she was, but he thought about her the moment he heard about the scholarship through one of his acquaintances, who was chairman of the board for that certain prestigious school.
He heard the tiredness in her voice. She sounded disinterested. Was she giving up on her nursing dreams? He disliked the idea that she would be that weak, that undetermined to give up on continuin
g her education.
