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“Want you beyond the sex? Even after I’ve said I do?”
She nods. “I was afraid to cling or make you regret helping me. But I have feelings for you I told myself I shouldn’t. I’ve worried I would drive you away by being the silly little virgin who can’t distinguish a good time from something more. Besides, for us to have any kind of future…I would have to be more important to you than revenge. After what my brother has done, I can’t ask that of you.”
Is she serious? If I had to choose between Corinne and stabbing Parker in the back? No contest.
But none of that matters unless her feelings are anywhere close to love.
“Since I also have to figure out how to save my business, we need to continue with our scheme until my brother hands over my money. So I’m afraid of blurring the line between fantasy and reality.” She presses her lips together. “I’m not ready to get my heart crushed again.”
With a sigh, I sit on the edge of the bed. Do I tell her what I know? “I’m not sure what changed, but Riley was going to propose to you. Financial records indicate he bought you an engagement ring. A week later, he returned it. The next day, he called you and broke things off.”
Corinne gapes at me. “How do you know that?”
“After you first came to my office, I hired a PI to look into you. I needed to know how much of your story was true so I could tell if your proposal was serious or if your brother had sent you to take me down.”
“And what did you find?” She’s clearly pissed.
“That you were being honest. Look, the day I hired Owen, it was nothing personal. But I thought that knowing Riley had been serious about you might help.”
She shakes her head. “It just leaves me with more questions. We didn’t fight. He said he just didn’t want to do the long-distance thing anymore. And that I wasn’t what he wanted after all.”
“And you took that to mean you weren’t good enough?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
She’s got a point. “It reinforced your belief that everyone leaves you.”
Biting her lip, Corinne looks away. “Yes.”
I would tell her that I’ll continue being here for her, but is she ready to hear it? Instinct tells me she’ll only believe me when she sees it. So I have to prove I’ve got her back. I’ll have to find the right opportunity. And if I can’t…I’m ruthless enough to make my own.
Until then, I know one way to keep her dialed into me.
“Come here.” I reach for a condom and lift her onto me until she’s straddling my lap.
Automatically, she grabs my shoulders. “What are you doing?”
“Like you mentioned, we didn’t negotiate cuddling; we negotiated sex.” I rip into the packet, then roll it on before lifting her onto my stiff cock and easing her down, reveling in her hiss and her wet pussy closing around me. I position my lips against hers. “I’m just living up to my end of the bargain.”
After more sex Sunday morning, followed by a relaxing brunch with the Reed clan, where Corinne fit in perfectly, we took Echo and Hayes to the airport that evening with promises to visit before wedding prep gets too crazy.
It’s a promise I don’t know how to keep, and I hate lying to my best friends.
On our way back to my place, Harlow called to say that she, Masey, and Britta had freed up a few hours in the morning to help my “fiancée” clear up her clerical backlog. Corinne seemed genuinely touched and thanked the trio profusely. Her gorgeous smile—and every other sexy part of her—made me want to seduce my way into her panties again. And bless my family for accepting her the way they embraced me when I was a stranger who happened to share their blood.
But in the back of my mind, worry keeps brewing like a coffeepot with no off switch. How will I explain our breakup to everyone if I can’t persuade Corinne to stay? Sure, I’m determined to do whatever I can to make this work. Failure isn’t an option and all that…but I’m a realist. I have maybe a fifty-fifty shot.
Coupled with another shitty-market Monday, I’ve got a lot on my mind. Worse, my phone, which was fairly quiet yesterday, started blowing up this morning, in the middle of a call with a jittery client. If the fucking paparazzi is back on my case, I’m going to be hard-pressed not to throttle Parker.
Speaking of which, where is the bastard hiding? He’s been too quiet since Saturday night. I know better than to think he flew to the island in the middle of his big movie-premier weekend to berate me, then shrugged off failure when he couldn’t compel his sister to leave with him and return to LA. He’s somewhere, plotting something devious.
