Chapter 496
Chapter 496:
But Lea, usually so sharp, so decisive, hesitated.
She still loved him, she said. And after every incident, he’d cry, beg, swear it would never happen again.
I’d wanted to shake her. How could someone so smart fall for that? Believe a man like that would change?
“No. No one hit on me,” I finally said.
Lea was a friend in need, not a woman trying to get in my bed.
“Oh,” Mira said, then turned back to her screen.
“How was your tour?” I asked.
“It was fine. We walked around the town, had dinner at a place with a live fish tank. I saw the biggest crab of my life. You p>
“Dinner with some old friends p>
“You inviting them to the wedding p>
“Who?” I was still stuck in my thoughts.
“Your old friends. I’d like to meet some of them p>
“You will.” At the wedding, probably. “They’ve got the invites p>
I stood behind her, watching her work. Still thinking about Lea.
Should I bring it up? Maybe Mira would understand Lea’s rationale better, being a woman. But… would it reopen old wounds? Even mentioning Rhys never sat right, even now.
“Need help with that?” I asked.
Mira hated numbers. Anything beyond a quadratic equation made her head…
“No, I’m fine. This is kind of confidential anyway,” she said, not looking up.
“Aren’t you coming to bed? It’s late p>
“I’ll work a bit more. You go ahead.” I waited. Stayed up.
Eventually, she shut down the computer and climbed into bed.
Every journey starts at gⱯlnσν𝓮𝓁s﹒𝒸о𝗺
I pulled her into my arms, kissed her forehead, then her cheek. When my hand slipped to her pajama buttons, she rolled away.
“I’m tired. Not tonight p>
I woke with a pounding headache, a heartbeat in my ears, and a general hatred for everything.
Valmont & Cie’s financial statements came in at over a thousand pages—five years’ worth of balance sheets, income reports, graphs, tables, the works. On my own, I’d have needed weeks to get through them. Even longer to make sense of it all. I should’ve asked Ashton for help.
I’d planned to.
But when he came back, something stopped me.
Okay, fine, I knew what stopped me. I just didn’t want to admit it.
I was angry with him.
I saw him getting out of a car that wasn’t his, watched a woman in a red dress approach him and wrap her arms around him.
They might have kissed. They might not have. The awning blocked my view.
Still, even if they didn’t—hell, even if it was one of those polite French kisses on the cheek—shouldn’t Ashton, as a married or nearly-married man, have known better?
I shook hands with Fabrizio, sure, but I wouldn’t have let him kiss me. Cultural norms or not.