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“Somehow, I don’t think that would stop you.”
With you, it probably wouldn’t, I silently agreed before whirling on him and crossing my arms defensively over my chest.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He leaned closer and dropped his voice so we wouldn’t be overheard by the other members of our party. “You were fully prepared to fuck me that night five years ago, even after you found out I worked for your dad.”
“That night was an egregious lapse in judgement on my part,” I said. “Trust me, it’ll never happen again. And you weren’tmyemployee.”
“Your name is on the door, isn’t it?”
Funny how he only seemed to remember that when it suited his false narrative of me. “Fuck you.”
“You won’t,” he said with a smirk, mirroring my posture. “You’ll fuck everyone else, though.”
I narrowed my gaze, my heart racing so fast I thought it might beat out of my chest at any moment. The steady, pounding rhythm was surely tattooing a bruise on my sternum. I wanted to rage, to pound my fists against his chest and beg him to let go of the version of me he had in his head. To finally let free all of my accolades and make him look as stupid as he’s made me feel since the night I met him.
“You don’t think very much of me, do you?” I asked with a resigned sigh, turning away from him so I didn’t have to see the triumph I knew would flash across his face as my concession.
“I think of you plenty,” he said, tone indecipherable, and my gaze shot to him. It wasn’t victory I found in his eyes, but something else. Something unreadable. He cleared his throat and tacked on, “Just…nothing particularly flattering.”
With a disgusted noise from the back of my throat, I stomped away from him, joining Liam and the developers in the middle of a conversation about estimated rainfall for the coming summer.
Physically, I was on that hillside.
Mentally, I was a thousand miles away.
It shouldn’t sting so badly to hear so plainly how much he disliked me, but still. This was a man I had to work with day in and day out. A man, it seemed, who not only thought I would fail, but expected it.
How could I feel confident in myself, towantto continue coming to work each day when the team around me didn’t believe in me?
No. I mentally shook those thoughts off. I deserved to be here, had worked my ass off to prove I could do this. I knew I wasn’t the Delatou woman they had planned on captaining the ship, but I was here now.
Calvin had thrown me off my game by coming to me willing to compromise, solution in hand, instead of with his usual animosity and condescension.
And again when he’d shown up for this excursion.
And yet again when he blatantly told me he disliked me.
Not to mention the way he’d gotten in my space at the end of our earlier meeting. Those green eyes of his were mesmerizing, entrancing enough to make me forget my own name.
And what the fuck was with his parting words?
I look forward to finding out.
Then there was the palm on my thigh, that subtle flexing of his fingers against my flesh. That foreign flash in his eyes when he said he thought of me plenty.
Who the fuck was this guy? Did he get off on messing with my head? Was it his goal to get me so twisted up that I gave up and ran away?
Well, I hated to break it to him, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Amara?” Liam asked, his forehead lined with concern. “Are you okay?”
I blinked, clearly having missed an important question, if the expectant yet irritated looks on the developers’ faces were any indication. Calvin, meanwhile, was particularly smug, as though he knew he’d weaseled his way into my brain and was the reason for my distraction.
Not today, Satan. This ismyshow.
I heaved a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and said, “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
