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All that was left to her now was to run away and own the fact that she’d fallen far too easily.
She dropped the torn dress and tugged on other clothing, her silent sobs making her fingers clumsy, her body convulse.
After throwing everything she could reach into her case, she forced herself to open the bedroom door—and found the room empty.
She knew she couldn’t survive another confrontation with him, that he’d done her a favour, but the relief she wanted to feel refused to come.
She scribbled a note, to apologise one last time. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. But it would be just one more thing to regret of so many.
She managed to hold herself together until she was sitting in a cab on her way to the airport. But as she booked a flight, and sent a message to Temple to say that she was on her way home, the tears fell unbidden to splash onto the phone. Because London didn’t feel like home any more.
The urge to call Ash, to draw her friend into this titanic mess, to lean on her unqualified compassion and solidarity was immense. But she tucked her phone back into her bag as the cab took the exit onto I-80 and the Golden Gate Bridge disappeared in the rear window, her throat still raw from the look on Luke’s face the last time she’d seen it.
She didn’t deserve Ash’s support now...didn’t deserve her comfort.
She’d made this mess all by herself... And now she would have to live with it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘I NEED TO know where Cassandra James is.’ Luke stared down the man standing behind the mahogany desk. He’d had to barge past two security guards and an assistant he didn’t recognise to get to him.
‘Who the hell are you and how the hell did you get into my office?’ Zachary Temple glared back at him.
Dressed in a three-piece suit, his height an inch above Luke’s own six-foot-three, Cassandra’s boss looked as stuck up as Luke had expected. The furious expression on the guy’s face would have intimidated Luke once upon a time, when he was a green kid from the wrong side of the tracks, but it didn’t bother him now. Not after an eleven-hour flight, a mad dash from the airport and enough fury and frustration and hurt to keep his temper at fever-pitch for the foreseeable future—especially where this arrogant bastard was concerned.
He never should have let Cassandra leave. But he’d needed time and distance to control all the feelings roiling in his gut at what she’d blurted out.
‘You’re the only man I’ve ever slept with.’
How much that admission had disturbed him. And the same confusing emotions continued to churn now. Panic, regret, but most of all...terror. Terror that he’d already lost something he hadn’t even known he had.
How ironic was it that those same dumb emotions had got him into a load of pointless fights as a kid?
He wanted a chance to explain. To apologise...to see if her admission meant what he thought it meant. But he had to find her first. And the only person standing in his way was this guy.
‘Gwen, get in here,’ Temple shouted at the woman he’d barged past five seconds ago.
The middle-aged assistant appeared at the door, looking just as concerned as she had a few moments before. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Temple. He said he had an appointment.’
‘Like hell he—’
‘I’m Luke Broussard of Broussard Tech.’ Luke interrupted the man’s diatribe as it occurred to him that Temple—despite his three-piece suit and his carefully manicured appearance—looked almost as harassed as Luke felt.
‘Terrific,’ the guy announced with biting sarcasm as he thrust his fingers through his hair. ‘The man who managed to lose me the best executive assistant I’ve ever had. What are you doing here? Have you come to gloat?’
‘What do you mean, “lose you”? Where is Cassandra?’ Luke asked, feeling anxiety tightening around his throat. The anxiety which he’d been busy trying to control for over fifteen hours—ever since he’d returned from a walk around the block to cool off and found an empty apartment and Cassandra’s note.
I can’t stay, Luke. And it has nothing to do with Temple. Or my job.
I lost perspective on what this is...or rather what it was. I let myself believe that it could be more. And that’s on me, not you.
In answer to your question, you were my first lover. I shouldn’t have lied about that because it gave it much more significance than it deserves.
Please don’t feel you owe me anything. You don’t.
The note had damned him—because he’d been able to read the pain and humiliation he’d caused in every scrawled word. But at least it had finally forced him to stop and think long enough to figure out a lot of stuff he should have figured out days ago.
The truth of her virginity had shocked him, but more than that it had humbled him. But what had humbled and shocked him more was the fact that she had lied about it. And what had bothered him was why.
