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I slammed my palms onto his desk and hovered menacingly, cutting him off. I hadn’t even combed my hair or bothered to confirm if my shoes matched. Thankfully, they did.
“Did you come up with this last-minute business trip to get Daniel out of the way?”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t play games with me, Cole.”
He pressed a button on his desk and the glass doors frosted, giving us privacy. “Let me get this straight. You think I scheduled a meeting with a Fortune 500 company twenty states away, paid for travel arrangements for my entire senior staff—not to mention inconvenience them and their families, just so I could have you to myself?”
Well, when he put it that way…
“I’m not above sending Daniel away, but this secret operation you’re accusing me of is on a whole other scale, Jasper. At the end of the day, I’m running a business. I can’t not send your husband on a work trip in order to appease your suspicions. And your lack of self-control.”
He’s right.I pushed myself away and tried to pull it together. I was on edge ever since last night, ever since last week, last year. For more than half a damn decade! I scrubbed a palm over my face. “You’re right.” It pained me to say it.
“And you could’ve simply called,” Cole said with a roguish grin.
I hit him with the full weight of my stare. “You find this funny?”
“Your expression right now? Yeah, I do.” His eyes narrowed with cruelty that only I knew was actually jealousy. Hard and uncompromising. “What I don’t find funny is you saturating my office with his scent. You might want to shower before you go charging through the city on a tear next time. Just a little friendly advice.”
“Yeah, friendly.Sure.” My neck and ears heated from leftover rage and fresh embarrassment. “He said he’ll be back Friday. Make sure nothing comes up to delay him. He promised to make it to the fundraiser.” I gained less satisfaction than I thought I would when his self-righteousness took a nosedive. Cole hadn’t outright said he wanted to attend with me, but I knew how to take a hint.
“I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.” I hurried for the door before I did or said something else foolish, like confess I was terrified of being in a city with him and no Daniel as a buffer or human shield. Without the constant reminder that what I deserved, not what I wanted, waited for me at home.
So I left without a backward glance. I would make my relationship with Daniel work, I swore. Because the alternative was to piss all over my mother’s grave, and Franklin’s broken heart by going back to the thing that had destroyed everything, even if going back meant a return to life for me. And I couldn’t justify making Daniel or Franklin suffer simply so I could live.
Jasper
SOFIA AND HERboys came flying around the bend of the ice-skating rink, and I perked up and waved from where I leaned on the opposite side of it, counting the seconds until I would gain a reprieve from faking my joy, if only to do it all over again on their next lap.
Afraid that with Daniel gone there’d be nothing holding me back from running headfirst into Cole, I took her up on the offer to play assistant chaperone. There was only her, her two boys, and Camille—who was old enough to babysit herself and had been doing so from the warmth of the café overlooking the rink.
The invite was a desperate attempt at getting me out of the house, and I’d clung to it like the lifeline I needed.
I couldn’t face him yet. Not after I’d embarrassed myself and given so much away when I’d stormed his headquarters days ago.
My warm breaths were working to heat my cupped, bare hands when a set of leather gloves suddenly hung limp in front of my face, dangling from dexterous fingers I’d recognize anywhere. They haunted my dreams, brought me solace during my worst nightmares, and crawled down my spine like tickling spider legs during my every waking hour.
I straightened and turned to Cole, ignoring the olive branch he still held out to me. My need for warmth had miraculously been replaced with a dire need to shed my body of its layers in order to douse the fire now burning in me. “How’d you know I was here?”
Beside him, an older man and woman alternated between huddling tight and cheering as they hurried to snap pictures of their grandchildren circling the ice.
“Sofia invited me.”
I searched through the crowd of skaters for the pink pom-pom atop her hat. “I didn’t realize you two had gotten so close.” Seemed my own invitation from her might have been more of a calculated move than the pity I’d thought it sprang from.
“Don’t be jealous,” he said. “I’m not trying to steal your best friend.”
“I’m not jealous.” Even I heard the petulance in my tone.
“Liar,” he teased. “You never liked anyone else playing with your things.”
Thingssounded pretty filthy coming from his mouth. His full, deceptively sweet mouth. The things it could do, the tortures it could inflict, and the person those pillows of hell could make me become was anything but sweet. I averted my gaze, but not quickly enough. Damn him and his maddeningly knowing grin.
My tight stare collided with Sofia’s guilty one, and I took an immature pleasure in her crash-landing on the ice.
Cole studied me, studied the wayward curl swaying across my forehead like a carrot on a string. The fine leather gloves he’d held out for me now creaked between one white-knuckled fist. I knew my rabbit. Knew his need to comb the curl away if only so he could touch some part of me.
