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I ran the tip of my tongue along my lower lip. “Camila was parked outside my house when I came home from the store earlier.”
His fingers ceased their drumming, and there was a flash of agitation in his eyes.
“I was going to ignore her, but I wasn’t keen on the idea that she might come back and maybe bump into my grandmother while Judy was on her way home from a walk or something.”
“What did Camila want?”
“To inform me that she means to win you back. She’s confident that she’ll be successful at it.Seriouslyconfident. She apparently thought it was fair to warn me that not only will I be trampled over in the process but that you’re merely using me to hurt her.”
Nothing in his expression gave me an inkling of what he was thinking or feeling. “And you believe her?” It was an idle question.
“I don’t know what to believe, because I don’t have the facts surrounding this situation. I don’t know what she did to hurt you so badly, or just how much she meant to you. Or even if she still does mean anything to you.”
“You don’t need to know any of that,” he said, not cold or nasty … but dismissive and patronizing.
Feeling my lips pinch together, I lifted a brow. “And if this was the other way around? If an ex of mine went to your home, fed you some big spiel, and insinuated that I still cared about him, what would you do? Can you honestly say that you wouldn’t have asked me about it?”
He shrugged. “It would have been your business.”
Pain stabbed my chest, and I swallowed hard. I’d already known that he didn’t care about me, but for him to really be so indifferent to the idea that another man might poke his oar in or … Wait, that didn’t ring true. Not after the things he’d said last night.
I leaned forward, rested my elbows on the table, and loosely interlinked my fingers. “You know what? I don’t believe you.”
His brows inched up. “Is that so?”
“If you were really so apathetic toward me then you wouldn’t have asked for an arrangement; the idea of me being with other men wouldn’t bother you. You simply don’t want totalk about what happened with Camila, and you’re doing what you always do to shut someone up—you’re being an ass. Fine. Be bitchy, be aloof, be rude. Knock yourself out with that shit. But don’t expect me to take it.”
Seconds ticked by as he stared at me, looking … well, impressed. “I wasn’t bitchy.”
“You verbally gave me a condescending pat on the head with the whole ‘You don’t need to know any of that.’ Like I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about it. It was totally bitchy, and you did it to shut my ass down.”
“It’s so wrong that I don’t want to sit here and talk about a woman from my past?”
“No, but it’s not as simple as that. Look, I don’t need to know the ins and outs of all parts of your life. That’s the beauty of arrangements, we get to keep our personal lives separate. But yours earlier tossed a bag of dogshit on my doorstep. It’s not your fault, no, but she threatened to retaliate if I don’t walk.”
His face changed. Tightened. Darkened. “She threatened you?” It was a dangerous rumble.
“She’s prepared to go public with an exceptionally sad story. One that she believes would stain my career. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. But, for the sake of the people it would hurt to have it all dredged up, I’d prefer that she didn’t expose it to the tabloids.”
“What story?”
I hesitated, hating to speak of it. But he wouldn’t be open with me unless I was prepared to return that courtesy. Still,I’dasked first. Childish, yeah, but whatever.
“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine,” I told him. “To be specific, I need to know two things. Firstly, are you using me to back at her for hurting you? And secondly, are you going to drop me for her at some point? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, I must respectfully exit this arrangement.I won’t be used as a weapon to hurt someone else, and I have no interest in spending sexual time with a guy whose mind is on another woman.”
The waitress materialized and set down our drinks. With a quick, shy smile at an oblivious Kaiser, she hurried off.
He picked up his bottle of beer. “The answer to both your questions is no,” he stated so simply yet so firmly I couldn’t doubt him. “She told you that she hurt me?”
I dipped my chin.
“She lied.” He took a swig of his beer. “We weren’t at all serious, but the tabloids painted a different picture.” He let out a frustrated sigh. “You know yourself that you can’t be photographed with someone in public these days without a whole story getting built around the pictures.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been there.”
“I ignore that shit. Camila loved it, though. Played up to it, even.” He knocked back more beer. “Most people don’t notice, but she’s extremely manipulative. Tries to top from the bottom. When she wants something, she does whatever it takes to get it. And what she wanted from me was a ring.”
I blinked. “A ring?”
