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“I just don’t want to upset Corinne if I can avoid it. She was pissed at her brother on Saturday night…but they’re family.”
“You’re in a tough spot.”
“I’ll take her some lunch and we’ll talk it over, come up with a solution.” Besides, I’m itching to see her. After we figure out a strategy to deal with Parker, maybe we can get horizontal.
“I don’t think she’ll be there. She got a call as we were leaving. She didn’t say from who, but I got the impression she’s already got a lunch date. Does she know anyone on the island?”
Not that I know of. If it’s not Parker, who the fuck would be taking her out? “I better go.”
I call Corinne. No answer. The cycle repeats over the next hour and a half. I force myself to stay on task for an account review with some of Bethany’s clients on Oahu, but the second it’s over, I ring Corinne again.
She’s still not picking up. Who did she go to lunch with? Why isn’t she answering?
While worry creeps in, my phone suddenly blows up, buzzing like a never-ending chainsaw. Texts from unknown numbers, followed by phone call after phone call, all of which I decline because none of them are from Corinne. What the hell is going on? I didn’t think paparazzi were strictly Monday-through-Friday people. Why did they wait until today to bug the shit out of me? It’s just after noon, and I’m wishing this workday was over.
Because you’re fixated on Corinne.
“Mr. Costa?” Lisa calls, bursting into my office, worry stamped all over her face.
“What’s wrong?”
She opens her mouth, then frowns. “Maybe nothing.”
“Let me be the judge.”
Before she can elaborate, my phone rings again. It’s Maxon. Since he almost never calls me at work, something is definitely up.
I grab the device. “What the fuck is going on?”
“You tell me. Did you and Corinne fight? Break up?”
Why would he ask that? “No.”
At least not that I know of. She can’t possibly be mad at the note I penned her before I left, telling her to make herself at home and where to find the keys to the SUV if she really needed to go out, which I didn’t recommend her doing alone, given the ugly gossip and her brother lurking in the shadows.
“Well, all of social media is questioning whether you’re still engaged because she’s with her ex right now.”
I freeze. That’s who she’s having lunch with? “Riley Stephens is on the island? And they’re together?”
“So you didn’t know about this?”
“Nothing,” I bite out. If I had, I would have persuaded her to stay away from him or insisted she take me with her.
Corinne hasn’t seen this douchebag in how long and now that she’s “engaged,” he’s up in her business again?
“Get on that,” Maxon recommends. “Image-wise, it doesn’t look good. And I don’t want her to hurt you.”
That doesn’t exactly calm me. “They’re that cozy?”
“I’m not there, but the pictures suggest…”
Fuck. Why would she even see him, much less get romantic after the way he burned her? She just said last night that she didn’t want to get her heart broken again. Corinne having lunch with him now doesn’t make sense. I know social media can lie, so I won’t jump to conclusions or assume the worst. That woman feels something for me. I know it. I feel it in her touch. She’s not the kind of woman to give her virginity to me, then thirty-six hours later get frisky with the fucker who left her.
“Where are they?”
“If you go marching in there, that will look worse, like you didn’t know and that she’s cheating—”
I don’t care. “Where the fuck are they?”
He rattles off the name of a restaurant I know of vaguely but have never frequented. “But to be clear, the pictures I’ve seen…they’re talking. Just talking. So maybe their heads bent together looks more damning than it is.”
And maybe not.
“I’m on it,” I spit out and hang up.
When I look up, Lisa still stands in the doorway, lingering in a rare moment of uncertainty. “What would you like me to do?”
“Cancel my afternoon. Text me with emergencies only. Tell Clint I’ll be back when I can.”
“Of course.” She bustles back to her desk and picks up the phone.
Thank God I can count on her.
My only focus now is reaching Corinne. I’m not sure what the fuck is going on, but I’m going to find out.
As I reach my car, my phone buzzes. It’s a text from her.
Do you have a minute to talk?
Where are you? I type back, flinging myself into the front seat of my Audi.
At your place.
I tear out of the parking lot, stare locked on the road. But my thoughts are a million miles away.
This feels too much like Hadley. I was clocking out of my bartending job at three a.m. when I heard the rumors that Parker was still over at our place. By the time I reached our apartment, Hadley was on her knees, sucking his knob. The ensuing blowup was ugly, so while Parker zipped up his pants, Hadley packed her shit and gave me her goodbye speech. It was startlingly unemotional. But that was Hadley. She’d already done the practical calculations. Parker came from money. If she landed him, she’d never go without again.
