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"I'll go with you." Ian stood up.
"No. No, you won't." Bree grabbed her skirt off the floor and stepped into it.
"Why not?" He gave her a wounded look.
"Because I just want to talk to my sister alone." She yanked off her T-shirt and pulled a turtleneck on. "Is there anything else about this Darius and his crappy offer that you need to tell me?"
"Just that he wants to close on January 1 and he wants you out by February 1."
Fresh tears filled her eyes, and these actually spilled up and over and slid down her cheeks. "Are you kidding me? What a total bastard."
"He's just a businessman, Bree. It's nothing personal."
She could not believe he was coldhearted enough to say something so callous. "Not personal? Not personal! This is my family home, Ian. I've been manipulated into a corner and I'm going to lose everything and you're acting like it's not a big deal. Oh my God. Just get out of my house. Now. Or I will scream, and I am seriously not playing this time." In fact, she felt like she might just start spontaneously screaming regardless of whether he left or not.
"Bree . . . calm down. We'll figure this out. I'll loan you the money."
He reached for her, but Bree dodged him. She couldn't stand the thought of him touching her, and she really, really wanted to be alone so she could break down in private. She hated feeling vulnerable, hated feeling like she was being patronized, hated worrying and wondering if he had manipulated her all along.
"I don't want your damn money. I want you out of my house." She was crying for real now, and it pissed her off.
Ian tried again to touch her, but she just threw his pants at him, hitting him in the face. "Get. Out."
Maybe she was being totally irrational, but she was overwhelmed and hurt and panicked. She wanted to be alone to think, and he was not listening to her or respecting that, which said volumes about him.
"You don't mean that," he said, pulling his pants off his head.
Hello. "Yes, I do. Leave."
He stood there for a minute, and Bree stared him down, her heart pounding and her palms sweaty. His jaw was locked, his shoulders tense.
Finally, he said, "Okay. If that's what you want." He tried to step into his jeans and tripped over Akasha. "Damn it, this fucking cat is always under my feet."
Bree gasped and bent over to grab her cat. "Do not swear at my cat."
Ian rolled his eyes. "I wasn't swearing at the cat. I was swearing about the cat."
She bit her tongue before she said something utterly childish. Instead, she just turned and walked out the door.
"Bree!" Ian called after her. "Please, don't do this. We need to talk. We can figure this out."
Except that at the moment she just didn't want to.
Chapter 7
Bree sat in her living room in front of the fireplace the next day, her Yule log resting on the grate, red candles all around it. She felt much calmer than she had the day before. Discussing the bleak situation with Charlotte and Will had helped. The tax bill was a huge problem, there was no doubt about it. Her sister and her brother-in-law had echoed Ian's suggestions for how to handle paying the tax bill, but somehow coming from them the logic was way less irritating.
She felt bad about the way she had handled the situation with him. She was fairly certain she had overreacted, but she had just been so blindsided by the horror of potentially losing her house that she had lashed out at Ian. He had been an easy target, and she wasn't necessarily proud of that. But she didn't really know him well at all, and she had been falling for him. Hard. And that had scared her. So maybe she had found a reason to pull the plug. Which made her seriously annoyed with herself.
She was the one who always professed to believe in signs, to believe in destiny, to believe in her own empathetic ability.
Yet she had ignored all of those and reacted with fear and mistrust.
There was, or had been, something special growing between her and Ian, regardless of how short a time they'd known each other. She had been dreaming of him for a year, and she truly, genuinely enjoyed his company. When she was with him, she felt an ease and a comfort that she had never had with any other man.
Yet she'd thrown his jeans at him and tossed him out. Granted, he still had a little explaining to do as to why he hadn't tried to talk his client out of stealing her house from under her, but Bree understood that to a certain extent, Ian's hands were tied. She had reacted with pure emotion and now Ian was probably back in Chicago and she would never know the fulfillment of what they might have been together.
It sucked, basically. So Bree wanted to burn her log in solitude and ask her grandmother for guidance. She wanted to bring peace and more logic to her life in the new year. She wanted to stop acting first and thinking only later, and she needed to accept whatever was going to happen with the house. She needed to make a decision and be comfortable with it.
