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“No, apparently the joke is on me,” I snapped. “Because to my surprise, I got to come listen to a million socialites scheme about how best to get you down the aisle and leave me in the dirt. Super fun!Soglad I made time to watch my boyfriend flirt with his neighbor and listen to rich people shit talk me and my kid for the millionth time. It’s beengreat.”
I shook my head, willing away the tears that were rising to the surface. I didn’t want to be this girl. I didn’t want to be so clingy my partner couldn’t do things for himself or spend time away from me, so jealous I couldn’t even handle other women speaking to him. Xavier couldn’t help what other people were saying any more than he could help the fact that his neighbor had a crush on him.
I took a deep breath. I needed to calm the hell down.
“Xavi, for the record, Adam kissedme,” I tried again. “And I didnotkiss him back. I believe my response was to push him off and demand to know what he was doing.”
Wrong move. Xavier’s eyes flamed all over again, and he turned around, like he was looking for Adam.
“Hey!” I cried out. “I’m right here. It’s me you want right now, isn’t it? Or is that just not the case anymore?”
That got his attention.
Slowly, he turned back around, chest heaving under his attempts to control himself. “How could you even say that?”
My lower lip trembled. I would not cry. I would not cry. I would. Not. Cry.
“Have you been listening to me at all?” I choked, pulling at my neckline. “This place. These people. These stupid dresses—”
“No one is forcing you to change,” Xavier put in.
“Oh, really? That wasn’t your stepmother you agreed with when she said basically everything about me was unacceptable for the Season. Forthesepeople, whom you’ve had more to say to over the past few weeks than your own daughter and me!”
“That was all foryou!” Xavier shouted. “All the clothes, it was all to help you! If you didn’t want any of it, you could have just said! And I hated that pink dress. I practically tore the fucking thing off, didn’t I?”
“I think we both know what you wanted there,” I retorted. “And if it had more to do with what was under the dress than in it. And look at me now! I look like I’m cosplaying Julia Roberts inPretty Woman, Xavi. I look like a freaking cartoon! But what did you say when you saw this dress in my closet? That I would finally ‘fit right in.’ Isn’t that right?”
“Apparently more than fit in,” Xavier returned through his teeth. “Half the bloody field was interested in what was up your skirt, and your ‘friend’ was about two steps from finding out!”
“Oh my God, he wasnot!” I shouted. “But honestly, if he was, it would serve you right.”
“What isthatsupposed to mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess that’s what happens when you dress a girl up like a doll and then treat her like one, left at a table while you play with your other toys!”
I gestured toward the stables and the horses, toward the clubhouse where the mallets and other polo equipment were kept, and toward the tent on the other side of the stables.
“I didn’t come all the way across the big blue ocean to be abandoned, Xavi. But since you decided to do just that, maybe I should make the best of it.”
“By kissing the first idiot who pays you any attention?” he seethed.
“If that’s what it takes.”
My words dropped like bombs between us. But Xavier seemed to be done yelling too. He just stared at me, blue eyes flashing, the muscle in his jaw ticking like a bomb itself, waiting to detonate.
“You want a kiss?” he asked in a dangerously low voice as he took one step toward me, then another. “I’ll give you a fucking kiss.”
Then his mouth was on mine. And once again, there was no love in that touch, just straight-up lust and power. It was a direct attack. Well, that was fine. As it happened, I was in the mood to fight.
“Asshole,” I snarled between desperate, biting kisses, full of teeth and tongue, and bruising takes.
A second later, I was shoved against the barn’s wall.
“Trollop.”
“Fuckingbastard.”
“Whore.”
