Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 95311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Annabelle was one lucky girl.
Hannah felt jealousy ebb and flow away. She was never going to be the kind of girl who got grand romantic gestures. She was the kind of girl who liked dark, mysterious, jerks and got stalkers. Yeah, that was her thing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Elliott felt an unusual frustration settle into every last nerve ending, into his very bones. She couldn't just run away. He needed to talk to her. He needed to settle her nerves about this whole affair. Affair. He felt a unusual, almost hysterical laugh rise up in his throat at that word. Affair. He was actually having an affair. He couldn't call this one of his one-night stands or a hookup. He was a married man and he had a woman in his life that he was planning to keep as a mistress.
It was all so horribly cliché. He was a textbook typical, successful, arrogant man. He felt like he should be embarrassed of himself. But the fact of the matter was he was never really supposed to marry Dan.
How the hell that had even happened was a weird blur.
She had blown into his life, a hurricane of impossible-to-ignore proportions. She had been a different woman then. Or, maybe it was more appropriate to say, she wore the mask of another woman then. Dan had been every man's ideal, gorgeous in an intimidating way with a brilliant smile and husky laugh. She had pushed herself into his social circle thanks to her father and made herself hard to ignore in her multitude of bright red dresses that screamed sex.
He had brushed her off, like a man accustomed to women who wanted to be near successful men. But she hadn't been like those other women. She had grown up wealthy, had been raised in high society. Even the way she enunciated her words screamed of private schools and her quick wit spoke of the kind of confidence only wealthy people can wear readily. She had been an equal. And she knew it. And she knew that men loved a good challenge.
She would appear, flirt, suggest things. Then she would rebuff you when you came onto her in return. She made herself approachable, but not touchable.
It was only when she knew, she was absolutely certain she had him by the short hairs, that she fell into bed with him. And she did so with such wickedly wild abandon, such complete lack of shyness, that he found himself agreeing to whatever she wanted.
It had been sad and pathetic of him. The sex was so great that he married her?
Elliott raked an angry hand down his face. He knew he shouldn't be bothered by the whole Dan situation. He was weeks from divorcing her, having agreed to give her way more money than he should just to shut her up and get her claws out of his life. He wasn't mad at her per say. She saw an opportunity. She took it. It was a smart move for her. But, unfortunately, her smart move made a fool out of him. And that was what kept him awake at night. That was the thing that had made him especially cruel and clipped toward her.
He didn't like to be the pawn.
But the point was, Dan was hardly a wife. But that was another thing that he never really got a chance to tell Hannah. She was probably furious with herself for being the other woman. No sane, self respecting woman was comfortable with that. He respected that. And he wanted to clear the air.
She wasn't a mistress.
Though, then, what was she? She wasn't his... girlfriend. Elliott felt a wave of embarrassment at that word. Teenagers had girlfriends. Grown men didn't. Elliott got up and paced his office floor. The last thing he had expected was to wake up in his office, cock out, and Hannah gone. Again. Thank God the phone had rang and woken him up. Then to come in a few scant, sleepless hours later, to find that note... he was not in a good mood.
Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe she wasn't running away from him. Maybe she wasn't trying to put distance between them to try to get her head straight. It could have been anything. There might have been some kind of family event or family emergency.
But she hadn't said anything about that to Tad.
She could have been sick. But why not say something to that effect in the note:
Hey, sorry. I have the plague. Don't want to infect the whole office. See you in two weeks.
It was the kind of silly but witty note he could see her leaving for someone who she was close to. But not to him. To him it was all Mr. Michaels and formality. She wouldn't let him see the person underneath the professional mask.