Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
“His wife.”
“But Anna doesn’t hate you like Grant does,” I say, a bad feeling burning like acid in my belly. “Who is Anna to you?”
“My ex-fiancée.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
My heart leaps into a tap dance against my chest, but my mind is absolute mush, unable to process what I’ve just been told. “Your fiancée?”
“Ex-fiancée,” he corrects.
“But she’s married to your brother,” I say, and it’s not a question. Impossibly, I know this statement to be true.
“Half-brother,” he amends.
“She’s in love with you,” I say, a wall crawling up between us. What is this? What am I in the middle of right now?
“She’s in love with the family money, and she means nothing to me.”
“You were going to marry her.”
“And I was saved from that bullet, Sofia. The only reason I’m telling you any of this before your meeting is I know you read the room. I do not want her between us, and I do not want that encounter to impact your decision when you attend this meeting.”
“Understood,” I say, and I try to duck under his arm.
His hands capture my waist, the heat of his touch and the intimacy of the small alcove are as alluring as they are intimidating at present, and my hand flies up in stop sign fashion. “I don’t know why this bothers me as much as it does, but it does, Ethan. It does. I’m probably what you would call vanilla and basic—a good girl from Colorado who loves her father and is loyal to her dreams. I don’t know how to do this.”
“This?” he challenges. “What is ‘this,’ Sofia?”
“I don’t know, and that’s the point.”
“Good,” he replies. “That’s what it is. We feel good, Sofia.”
There’s a tight ball in my chest of emotions I cannot explain, a wall climbing between us, that sense that I’m going to end up crushed and emotionally bleeding over this man expanding inside me. “I know,” I whisper. “I don’t know why I’m reacting to this the way I am. I just—am.”
“She means nothing to me.”
“You were going to marry her,” I repeat. I can’t beat back the accusation in my voice that I don’t want to exist, nor does he deserve. I’m confused. I am not in touch with my own emotions.
“And I ask myself every time I’m forced to cross paths with her, how that is even possible,” he assures me. “She was the past. You are the present.”
I am the present. The implication of that statement is that we are together, and I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, where I expect more than this man has to offer me, a thought that makes my reaction to Anna illogical. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Neither do I,” he says. His fingers slide into my hair, and he tilts my gaze to his. “But I want to find out. Do you?”
When he touches me like this and speaks to me so intimately, I’m lost in him, and nothing else matters. It’s terrifying. He’s terrifyingly addictive, and I know I’m going nowhere but somewhere else with him. “I don’t want to want to find out.”
His thumb strokes my cheek, a gentle caress I feel in every part of me. “But you do?”
“You terrify me, Ethan. You’re a part of my career and my personal life. I’m all in with you, and you could so easily destroy me.”
“That’s not how this ends,” he promises me. “And, baby, you clearly just can’t see how all in I am, or you wouldn’t believe that.” His lips brush mine, and the touch is tender, sexy, and pure fire.
His tongue dips past my lips, and I moan, my hands finding his jacket, and unbidden, I moan with the taste of him that he denies me far too soon. “Let’s get you to this meeting. Afterward, we’ll go to the passport office.”
“You assume I’m signing the contract?”
“No.” A smile tugs at his gorgeous mouth. “I simply plan to convince you to come to Paris with me.” He captures my hand and guides me out of the alcove and onto the busy New York City street, bodies bustling about, hurrying here and there.
We step left and right around people and find a clear path. “How far is the office?”
“Two blocks,” he says, and I’m hyperaware of my hand in his bigger one, of the eyes that could be upon us.
“Do you really think your brother is following you?”
“He’s got someone following me.” He glances down at me. “Yes.”
“Why would he do that?”
“It’s the game he plays. He’s not good enough on his own. He’s always looking for a way to manipulate me and everyone else. And make no mistake, baby, so is she. That’s why they make a great pair.”
“Which is why he married her.”
He halts in the middle of the crowd and turns me to him, his hands on my shoulders. “He wanted what was mine. That’s how he operates. Which means he’ll come for you. And we have to talk about that. Just not now.”