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‘Why is that significant?’ she said, her chest still imploding with mortification.
‘He hasn’t been seen dating anyone yet in public. But now those pictures are going viral, he’s going to have to stick with you. Unless I’m overreacting and hedidn’tintend for you to be the one woman.’
Adam’s reasoning didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, it made her feel much worse. Cade had slept with her and then decided,what? That she wasn’t someone he wanted to date for the whole summer? No wonder he’d offered to usher her out of the building incognito the next morning.
The absolute bastard.
And she’d now messed with his plan by publishing those photos.
Well, good.
Now he wouldn’t be able to date anyone else for the rest of the summer. She hoped he died of sexual frustration. She let the anger in to fill up the empty space inside her—the empty space she remembered only too well.
Because it had always been there. Every time her mother looked right through her as a little girl. Or every time her father refused to be moved by her grief, or her unhappiness, or the reckless bad behaviour she’d resorted to as a teenager to get his attention. Or every time Adam had been condescending or patronising as a way not to engage with who she was as a person.
What a fool she’d been to think for a moment the night she and Cade had shared, the connection they’d made, had been real.
‘Fine, well,’ she said, feeling broken again, in a way she hadn’t in four years. ‘That makes me feel so much better.Not.’
‘I’ll fix it,’ said Adam, as if this was somehow his problem, when she knew it was all hers.
‘No,I’llfix it,’ she replied.
‘I’m sorry. I did not mean for you to get caught in the middle of all this,’ Adam began.
‘I need you to release fifty thousand pounds from my trust fund.’ She sliced neatly into his mea culpa, desperate to change the subject before the last of her confidence got flushed down the toilet. ‘I can send you the contract for the space I’m planning to rent and the projections for the equipment and staff I need to hire to get my new commissions out...’
Perhaps there could be an upside to how devastated and humiliated she felt right now? The grinding pain in her stomach a reminder never to trust rich, entitled men who danced like gods and knew how to make you beg.
‘That’s why I wasactuallycalling you...’ she finished.
Not to have a debate about my recent dating history, which has made me feel like crap.
‘I’ll speak to the bank and have them release the funds,’ Adam said without an argument—which meant he had to be feeling really guilty.
Unfortunately, though, it wasn’t Adam she wanted to punch in the gut.
‘Send over your projections,’ he said, morphing into CEO mode, which was his default. ‘I’ll check them over and...’
‘Thanks Adam, will do,’ she said and disconnected the call. Before he could say more.
She needed to breathe, to ease the grinding pain in her stomach.
But as the pain twisted and tightened into hard, greasy knots, the idea of the new warehouse space she would now have the money to rent didn’t fill her with the joy it had twenty minutes ago.
Had Cade Landry soured that, too?
She hated that he’d got to her. That she had liked him. That it had been more to her than sex, even though she’d spent a week trying to convince herself otherwise.
She considered deleting the photos of them together on the internet, because they were horribly tarnished now, too. Not a bright, beautiful moment of romance and possibilities and raw vivid sexuality, but a testament to what a fool she’d been to believe, for even a second, he’d seen more in her than just an easy conquest.
But as the likes and reposts and notifications continued to mount during the day, she began to relish the opportunity to get the word out about her business. When she started getting calls from journalists, she fielded the ones about her ‘exciting new romance’ with Cade by neither confirming or denying they were an item, stoking the media storm deliberately.
Why should she have any qualms about using the so-called ‘Latest It Couple Romance’ between the One Date Wonder Billionaire and the Former British Wild Child Turned Fashion Sensation to publicise Trouble Maker—when he’d had no qualms about using her?
A text arrived a few hours later from a withheld number. It simply said,
Charlotte, we need to talk...
