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“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not one-sided, but there is a situation.”
“What’s the situation?” I asked and she sighed again.
“My friend's trying to see if she has a chance with you?”
At first, I was almost a hundred percent sure that I didn’t hear her clearly. However, as she kept staring at me, waiting for a response, I leaned against the counter in complete disbelief.
“You’re actually serious?” I asked, and she was reluctant to nod. But she didn’t need to. I could see her understanding of how insane the statement she had just made to me was in her eyes.
However, for some reason, I wasn’t offended. Instead, I was almost impressed by her audacity.
“You’re pimping me out?” I asked, and her eyes widened in shock.
“What?” I waited, and she shook her head. “No. I mean, what? How could I do that?”
“We had an agreement that you're now reneging on fulfilling because you want to pass me off to your friend?”
This was exactly what it was, and said out loud it sounded absolutely wild.
“You know what,” she said, “Please forget I said anything. I was kidding. I didn’t mean a single word of what I said.”
“And now you’re lying directly to my face?” I asked, and she froze once again.
I was taunting her now, I realized, and at the myriad of emotions fleeting across her face, I realized just how much I enjoyed it. She was so expressive, more than I had ever realized before, and as I watched her try to free herself from this predicament, I realized that I liked her. It didn’t come as any surprise to me, given that I had no complaints about her as a personal assistant for the past three years, but now, and especially after nearly losing ourselves in the swimming pool, I had no doubts in my mind that she was growing on me beyond our prior solely working relationship.
I, however, still had the gnawing suspicion that somewhere somehow she was different… something had changed, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. There was no explanation for this, so I decided in the meantime to brush this out of my mind.
What was important now was the current moment and what I was going to do about her and her friend.
“This is what you are going to do to atone for your misdemeanor,” I said. “Politely reject her on my behalf, and then you’re going to go through dinner quickly. I don’t intend to spend much further time in either of their company, so the moment you're done, feign some illness and I’ll excuse myself as well so that I can escort you back to the hotel."
Chapter 26
Scarlett
Iwas a bit out of it as I returned to the table.
The wolf had gotten a phone call suddenly and was now unavailable. I had to return to the table somewhat sheepishly. It was very obvious that we had been talking about them, or perhaps they would assume that our discussion was about our current company and was therefore simply work-related.
This concerned me because I didn’t want to come off as sneaky to Nancy so as I sat down, I focused on enjoying dinner and on thinking about how to use this to support my excuse of having to leave later on since I’d soon have to feign that I was sick and had to be immediately driven home.
I built up my courage and said what I was supposed to. “My apologies," I said to the others present at the table. "I haven't been feeling very well recently, so he was taking the chance to find out how I was."
This was an incredibly terrible lie as both people gave me peculiar glances, so I quickly added some more meat to it. "Amongst some other things," I added and they smiled in understanding.
After that, we all returned to our meal, but I couldn't help but notice that when Lucien was not around, it was a bit more difficult to hold a conversation between us three.
I was so done with this night or perhaps I was once again excited at the prospect of spending more time with him. He had said he would come back to the hotel with me, but whether it was simply to escape from this fiasco or because he had plans for us, I had absolutely no idea, and I had no intention of asking either.
Soon he returned to his seat as though absolutely nothing had happened.
In many ways, I felt slightly bullied by both of them and so even when Nancy leaned over to ask me what was wrong, I was almost reluctant to answer.
Eventually, I set down my fork and sent her a message so as not to seem ridiculous or manipulative with the men present.
Me: I'm not in trouble. He wants me to complete some work for him, so we're going to have to leave soon.
Her eyes popped wide open at my explanation.
