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Jane shook her head slowly. “What? What is it?”
He swore and turned away from her. “What must your parents think? Running around like that, on a night heavy with rain?”
Invoking her parents was the last straw. A tear slowly rolled down her cheek. She didn’t bother to check it. He wasn’t looking at her anyway.
“You took on a job that was as potentially danger
ous as it was demeaning. You got drunk the first night you were out with me – a man who had propositioned you in the most inappropriate of ways. How did you know I wouldn’t take advantage of you? How did you know I wouldn’t force myself on you?” She couldn’t see his face, but his words were laced with derision. “You didn’t. Because you take risks with yourself that are completely unnecessary.”
Jane’s cheeks were drained of colour. Seeing herself as he did, she felt an odd lurching of self-disgust. She didn’t think that highly of herself anyway, but having it mirrored back to her by Carter was a disturbing experience.
“You are beautiful, Jane. And you fascinate me. But sometimes, you are just stupid.”
He could have had no idea how his words would hurt her. How he’d found the one fear she held and pushed it back at her. It was like someone sticking their finger into an old wound.
Jane had been gifted extraordinary looks, but only passably average intelligence. Her grades in school had been acceptable, but only just. She’d been head of the cheerleading team, she’d dated a track star, and she’d been the girl everyone wanted to be friends with. What she had lacked in brainpower, she more than made up for with her ability to command a crowd. Her social skills had made her escort work easy. But she’d never let her likability make up for the big secret shame she lugged around everywhere.
She was dumb.
Dumb, not just compared to her genius sister. Dumb, not just in comparison to Jenna, her teacher best friend, or Thomas, who was helping to make her feel ‘less dumb’. She was slow on the uptake, when it came to academia. And once the sex haze Carter was in dissipated, he would see that too. He would realise she had very little of true value to offer him, and he would wonder how he’d ever let a nice body and pretty face con him into this arrangement.
Well, she wasn’t clever, but she had pride. She reached down for her handbag, shoes and coat, and stepped out of his apartment without a word.
He caught her at the lift. “Where are you going?” He demanded, his voice laced with impatience rather than the apology she’d hoped for.
“I don’t need to be insulted by you.”
“Why not by me?”
“Because,” she hissed at him. “You’re the one who got me drunk on my birthday. You’re the one who propositioned me on my birthday. I might not be as smart as you, Carter, but that doesn’t give you the right to be mean.”
She’d surprised him. She could see it in his face, for the briefest of moments. But he was also furious. With her? With him? With the situation? She didn’t know. But the lift doors opened and she stepped into it with a sense of gratitude and pain.
“What? Are you quitting?”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. Was she?
“We have a deal, Jane. Money, in exchange for you.”
She had thought she couldn’t feel worse, but in that moment, her stomach ached and she had to fight not to grab it and double over.
“It was also part of our deal that you wouldn’t speak to me as though I were scum,” she reminded him, stepping further into the elevator and pressing her back to the wall.
Again, her gently delivered recrimination caught him off guard. He frowned, staring at her beautiful, wounded face, as the elevator doors slammed shut. But even after the lift had shuttled to the ground, her face stayed with him. Those beautiful eyes of hers, wideset and dark, had shimmered with tears. Her lip had quivered, and her expression had been haunted.
He had hurt her. He had done that to her. And he couldn’t fathom exactly why.
Jane struggled with her coat, but it was wet, and she couldn’t get her arms back through the sleeves. The best she could do was to wrap it around her shoulders and clutch it across her breasts, which were embarrassingly visible through the material of her blouse. Her shoes squelched as she poked her feet back into them.
But as soon as the elevator doors opened, she stormed across the lobby. She needed to put some distance between herself and Carter. It was a case of self-preservation.
She heard the lift doors ping open again as she stepped out of the lobby. It wasn’t necessary for her to turn around. She knew it would be Carter. Leaving as she had, with unfinished business between them, would be impossible for him to accept.
Jane didn’t stop. As she emerged onto the busy footpath, the rain was still falling. Umbrellas bubbled around her, and she cut through them, moving with determined purpose towards the subway.
“Jane!” His voice, commanding and firm, made her feet stumble a little, but she pushed onwards.
“Jane!”
