AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It didn’t used to be this hard with me. What changed?”
He arched a brow. “You stopped talking to me.”
Oh. Right. So she had.
“I suppose I did.” She followed him down the hall, and she was assaulted by another punch of the familiar. How many times had they walked like this? And how had she missed that even though she was walking with him, she was walking alone.
He didn’t need her there. He didn’t want her there. He just...accepted her presence. It seemed like there had to be more. Like they needed to find more. But she was trapped between her desire to protect herself, and her need to make more from her marriage than just two people who could barely make eye contact.
That was why the candy she’d bought him was in her purse, and not already sitting on his desk. Because she hadn’t decided what she was going to do with it yet.
He pushed open the door to what had been her father’s office. The pictures on the wall were gone. His nameplate on his desk, gone. She swallowed, or at least she tried to. A lump stopped her accomplishing it.
“Wow. I guess it really is yours now.”
“He was prompt in removing his things,” Ajax said, looking around the space.
“Ajax...” She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to stop the question, the random, stupid, insistent question that wanted to come out at this, of all times, but she couldn’t stop it. “Did you sleep with my sister?”
His focus zeroed in on her, his expression one of shock. Well, shock for Ajax, which meant a raised brow and deeper frown than normal. “Why would you ask that?”
“Morbid, oh Lord is it ever morbid, curiosity. I know you told me never to compare myself to her, but in this instance...well, I need to know if you’ll be comparing us.” She flinched, because really, what were the odds that Ajax had never slept with Rachel? They’d been together for a long time, and Ajax was an incredibly sexy, virile man. Leah never, ever, ever in a million years would have been able to keep her hands off him for all that time.
Hell, she’d attacked him and pushed him against a wall after two days of close proximity.
“I told you that?” he asked, turning back to the desk, then back to her, as if he wasn’t sure where he was supposed to be looking.
“Not to compare myself? Yes. Don’t you...do you remember that?” She looked at his expression, his eyes blank. He didn’t remember. How stupid to think that he would. That one of the defining moments in her life, in deciding how to act in public, how to deal with the press, would even register on his radar. So very, very telling.
“Anyway... I just... I wanted to know,” she finished, her words hollow in the silence.
“We didn’t.”
“What?” The admission pushed the air from her lungs. “How is that even possible?”
“We were going to wait until we married,” he said, the words tugged from him, the topic clearly one he wasn’t interested in addressing.
“I...I didn’t expect that.”
“Why not?”
“Most men would pressure a girl to get sex as quickly as possible. Why should I believe you’re any different?”
“I am,” he said, his tone light, a dark glint in his eyes that told her his voice was fraudulent. “I am not like most men.” He moved toward her, his expression unchanging. Her heart stopped, her stomach folding in on itself. His eyes never wavered from hers, and she wondered, she hoped, that he would touch her. Kiss her. He dipped his head, traced her jaw with the tip of his finger. “I am much, much worse.”
He pulled away from her and her breath left her body in a rush. She blinked, feeling dizzy, feeling like she was coming out of some sort of trance.
He wasn’t going to answer her. She felt like there was a wall between them. Made of ice and his feelings for another woman. And she wanted to scream at him. For not being the man she’d wanted him to be. The man she’d thought he was.
And that wasn’t really fair, was it? To be angry at him for not being like she imagined. And it really didn’t make sense that it should hurt so much.
She reached into her purse, her fingers curling around the little box of truffles she’d put in there. Her olive branch. Her attempt to make things work better between them.
But not now.
She knew better than this. Knew that you had to protect yourself, or all of your insides would get pulled out and put on display for the public. Ridiculed. She wasn’t dropping her shields for him.
