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for Cal and Rory’s breakup scenes
and
the first chapter of
Cal and Fin’s story in
One Night Wife
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Cal and Rory’s breakup
from
One Night Wife
Cal Sherwood saw the slap coming. He could’ve ducked, stepped aside, grabbed Rory’s wrist, but he did nothing to defend himself because he deserved it.
Rory’s hand to his cheek stung, it jerked his head to the side, wrenched his neck and made his eyes water. The crack of it ringing out against the stark white marble of Sherwood Venture Capital’s fancy-pants showpiece reception area surprised Rory so much she staggered, her eyes going wide as she sucked in a shocked breath. But she shaped up again before Cal could muster words through a burning jaw.
This time he caught her wrist. “That’ll do, Aurora.” She tried to pull free but he didn’t trust her enough to let go, and if she hit him again, his sympathy would evaporate faster than a con after a mark was bankrupt. Rory had poured heat on him, ruined the setup, lost them money and then she’d disappeared.
“It’s not possible for me to hate you more,” Rory snarled.
That was because she still loved him. It was a curse he could see it clearly in the glittering wash over her cat green eyes and the stubborn jut of her chin. “You can hate me all you want, but it won’t change anything.”
He wasn’t in love with her. Never had been and she knew it. Didn’t mean she hadn’t fought to change that. Because that’s what Aurora Archer did, made the world bend around her. It would’ve been easy to lie to her, except Sherwoods and Archers were long term business partners. They were family, and they didn’t lie to each other, and eventually Rory would have wanted more, and Cal didn’t have more in him.
Eyes locked, they stared each other down. Cal was grateful to see Rory again even though right now, her breathing hard, her body on alert, her expression schooled to give him nothing, she wanted to hit him again, or shove him or jam a spiked heel in his foot.
He brought her palm to his chest. They might’ve been about to dance, except Rory was furious and humiliated and that was Cal’s fault too. “Not here.” This was best handled in private, which was why Rory had started it in reception.
In the reflection of the glass wall behind Rory, Cal saw Zeke step into the corridor and freeze and Camilla walk into him.
“I wish you were scorched earth, Cal Sherwood,” Rory snarled.
He wished Rory had taken the breakup better, but he’d always known her pride wouldn’t allow the wound to go unavenged and that was one of the reasons he’d let their relationship go on too long, four years too long. That and the fact they’d been a kind of wonderful together, able to read each other’s intentions so well they were an unbeatable team on the job. And then there was the sex. He missed the sex so much during the six months they’d been apart, he’d let it show when she walked in, and she knew that tell and punished him for it.
Rory’s fingers curled in his shirt. “We had everything going for us.” The shift from revenge to seduction was so swift it made his head spin more than the slap had, but that was Rory, that’s what made her both loveable and lethal.
“You deserve more.” Someone who would cherish and protect her as much as he would risk and satisfy her.
That was the moment she almost forgave him. He saw it in the micro-expression that twitched at her lip and the corners of her eyes, but then she palmed his chest and broke away, zipping herself into righteous anger again.
He should’ve let her hit him a second time.
There was something wrong with him, in the meat of his heart and the matter of his head that he hadn’t been able to love Rory enough to be in love with her and want to keep her. Too much time spent engineering the reactions of others had left him unable to feel or trust his own emotional responses.
Zeke chose that moment to step into the room, motioning for Camilla to wait. “Do I need to get between the two of you?” He raised a brow at Cal but then focused on Rory. “Much as it pains me to say this, Rory, you can’t kill my big brother. We need him.”
“You’re right, Zeke, where is the fun in killing him?” Rory walked into Zeke’s outstretched arms. All traces of her explosion
were frosted over. She was a dormant volcano again. “I’d rather torture him until he goes mad. But I won’t work with him again.” She could level a medium sized city in the glare she gave Cal. “Never again.”
In a warped way that was a relief, though Rory was an incredible asset for the company, she’d been dangerously not herself when Cal ended it with her. The whole company had been forced to tiptoe around the Cal and Rory are no longer together thing, half expecting them to get back together, half expecting Rory to unleash a violent storm and put them all in danger.
