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“A bit of advice—think of this as your honeymoon stage. Right now, you’re with Vacation Flynn. I remember him from Tahiti and that month we spent in Italy.” Her gaze softened as if she was remembering the things they’d done together on those vacations.
Sabrina tried not to imagine the details, but her stomach tossed.
“Anyway.” Veronica snapped out of her reverie. “Vacation Flynn is very different from Workaholic Flynn. When your fun, albeit temporary, traipse down romance lane comes to an end, don’t be surprised if it coincides with the day he returns to the office. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. He can’t balance a relationship and a bottom line.”
Anger bubbled up from the depths. Sabrina hated being talked down to, or having her future predicted for her. Especially by this woman.
Plus, a part of her begrudgingly admitted, what Veronica was saying felt too close to the truth. Hadn’t Sabrina already witnessed Flynn’s inability to balance their friendship with the demands of Monarch? But a larger part of her didn’t want to believe Veronica was right, and that was the part of her that spoke next.
“Are you blaming your divorce on Flynn’s work ethic? He had a massive company to run, and his father was terminally ill.” And Veronica had been the one cracking the whip. She was more than happy to let him work his ass off so she could buy more, have more and look like she was more.
“The erosion of our marriage didn’t start with my affair with Julian,” Veronica said, surprising the hell out of Sabrina by using the word affair. “Our marriage has been falling apart for years.”
“Had,” Sabrina corrected. Veronica was getting to her. As much as she’d sworn to herself that she was Switzerland when she stepped through these doors, either the wine or Flynn’s ex-wife’s sour attitude was beginning to loosen her tongue.
“Had been falling apart,” Veronica amended. “A marriage can’t sustain cheating. But make no mistake, it was Flynn who cheated first. With Monarch.”
“Oh, give me a break! You can’t come at me with the ‘his job is his mistress’ argument.”
“Half the company is threatening to leave, and Legal begged you to remove him from the building.”
An exaggeration, but that wasn’t the point. “How do you know that?”
“I have friends there, too, Sabrina. I also know that he’s rapidly morphing into Emmons Parker. You knew that man. He was horrible. Death literally could not have come for a better candidate. And when Flynn is at work, mired in numbers and focused on success, he’s exactly like him.”
Sabrina paused, her brain stuck on how unflinchingly true that assessment was. And if Veronica was right about that, was she also right about Flynn being unable to maintain a relationship?
No.
Sabrina refused to believe it. She couldn’t refute the relationship part, but she could argue Veronica’s other point.
Sabrina pushed to standing. “Flynn is a caring, generous, amazing person. Whatever combination of Emmons and his mother he ended up being, he has the best of both of them.”
“Honey, you are in for a rude awakening.”
“No, honey—” the words dripped off Sabrina’s tongue “—I’m already awake.”
They stared each other down, Sabrina with her heart pounding so hard she was sure Veronica could hear it. Veronica’s smile was evil, as if she began each morning polishing the skulls of her enemies.
“All clear.” Flynn entered the kitchen, flipped the flashlight end over end and set it on the countertop. “How are things going in here?”
Sabrina tore her eyes off Flynn’s ex-wife and speared him with a glare.
“Everything’s peachy, dear,” Veronica cooed. “I was just warning Sabrina about what she can expect if you two attempt to stand the test of time.”
“So, that went well.”
It was a lame attempt to lighten the stifling air in the car. Flynn had been debating what to say and when to say it since they’d walked out of his mother’s home. He knew better than to let Sabrina drive, especially when he noticed her hands shaking as she pulled on her coat. He’d made the excuse that she’d had a glass of wine and shouldn’t drive, but that wasn’t the real reason he took her keys.
She’d been sitting in the passenger seat, her arms folded over her waist, watching out the window since he’d reversed out of the estate’s driveway.
“Sab...”
“I was trying not to hate her. But I do. I hate her.”
“You don’t hate anybody.” He leaned back in the seat, settling in for the easy drive home on a virtually traffic-free road. “Veronica is not worth hating. Trust me. I tried for months and my only reward was heartburn.”
Sabrina said nothing.
