Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
He’d probably gone running to Google the moment Shawn had left the office with me. But his last statement was so absurd I couldn’t process it right away.
“You don’t want to see me get hurt?” I laughed, although it contained no warmth. “Why? You think you’re the only one allowed to do that to me?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“And why do you assume I’d get hurt? Maybe I’m just interested in fucking him.”
I shocked my ex-husband into sweet silence with my flat-out lie, but only for a few seconds.
“Nice. Are you? ‘Fucking’ him, as you so elegantly put it?”
I could see his face. The sneer covering the insane desire to know, eating him from the inside. When I’d asked for the divorce, he’d told me I was making a mistake. He was sure I wouldn’t find someone else, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t trade up.
Dear God, I had. Paul had almost nothing in common with Shawn after all.
“I’ve gotta go.” I hung up while he was in the middle of some sort of protest and tiptoed back into the bedroom.
Soft moonlight lit the space that was mostly empty other than the large bed and the man asleep on it, the covers pushed down to expose his bare, toned chest.
I slipped under the sheets, grateful to be back with him.
Oh, I was in trouble. How the hell had this happened? Six months ago, he’d sat beside me at a restaurant, and it had taken a single conversation for me to instantly dislike him. A week ago, he was the most annoying man I’d ever encountered. Now, my unexplainable feelings for him had grown into something I hadn’t wanted, but . . . I was tired of fighting.
I’d stolen the Forbes from the hotel and stuffed it in my suitcase, not sure how long this thing between us was going to last. Unsure how long it would be before Shawn got bored and lost interest, and I wanted something of him to keep.
His heavy arm looped over me and pulled me close, molding my body to his.
This was wild. Terrifying. But also kind of wonderful.
One night became two, stretching through the weekend.
My days became Laurel’s, helping her put the finishing touches on the nursery, but the nights were always his.
Those two nights weren’t enough, and I found myself back at his place on Sunday evening. As soon as I was through the front door, he grabbed my hand and led me to one of the spare bedrooms of his penthouse. This morning it had been a storage space of half-unpacked boxes.
Now it was a beautifully decorated home office.
“What happened here?” I asked, my gaze drifting over the sophisticated lighting and sound equipment on the desk, before drifting on to the perfectly styled bookshelves behind it.
“You mentioned you wanted to sit in on some calls this week.”
My breath caught. Incentive had told me to take all the time I needed after what had happened with Scott, but missing work was difficult for me, and hard on my team. I’d let it slip to Shawn that I’d planned to join a few meetings.
He didn’t need to tell me that he’d had this office set up for me. It was part of his plan to seduce me into staying . . . and it totally worked.
It was stunning how quickly we fell into a rhythm, how comfortable it became. Warnings chimed in my head that this was happening too fast. That we were in a fog of lust, or the honeymoon period, even though we hadn’t even put a label on our whatever we were to each other. If I wasn’t cautious, I’d lose myself to him.
But I ignored them all.
On Thursday morning, I remained in his bed naked, my cheek pressed against the pillow that smelled like him while he staggered the ends of his necktie to begin knotting it.
“Stop looking at me like that.” A teasing smile darted across his lips.
I pretended to be clueless. “Like what?”
“Like you want me. You’re going to make me late. Again.” He looped the ends together. “What are your plans today?”
I tried to avoid talking about work with him, worried that another job offer or interview request loomed on the horizon. Jason felt confident I could return to Maastricht this weekend if I wanted and was finalizing the plans with my security team.
Every day that passed was another day with no new information about Scott Rhodes’ death. He’d been fine in his holding cell the night before, and dead in the morning from asphyxiation. There were defensive wounds, so it wasn’t self-inflicted, but no other evidence of what had happened.
I pushed the thoughts away and focused on the breathtaking German man before me.
“I have a kickoff meeting at nine.” I also had plans with Laurel but kept that bit to myself. “Why?”