Page 15 of The Billionaire's Promise

"I do, why?" I asked.

"Because I want to hear about what happened with that rat bastard and why you didn't call me," she said.

"Oh, okay."

"Tell," Vance commanded. Charlotte looked at him.

"You don't know either?" she asked.

"I was waiting for you," he explained.

I let out a sigh. "He's been cheating on me for the last year." I drained the rest of my mimosa and pushed the glass to the edge of the table so the waitress knew to refill it when she came back. "With the daughter of the surgeon who owns the practice where he was interning and is now employed. Now that he's officially a junior member of the practice, he dumped me to move in with her."

"What a fucking asshole," Vance said.

"Are you serious?" Charlotte asked. Charlotte was a sweetheart, but she was tough as hell in her own way. She looked pissed. "Which practice is it?"

I shook my head. "No, Charlie, no. He's a huge jerk, but we’re not going to do anything."

"Why not?" Vance asked. "He deserves some retribution. He's been taking advantage of you, now you find out he's been cheating on you, and you're just going to let him walk away?"

I was. I tried to explain. "I'm not going to do anything because if I do something, he's going to think it's because I'm so brokenhearted I can't live without him. I'm not going to give him the satisfaction."

"I can see that," Charlie said. "Still, I don't like letting him get away with this."

"He left his golf clubs," I offered. "I'm pretty sure he hasn't figured that out yet, and he's going to come back for them."

"What did you do?" Vance asked.

"I thought about throwing them away, but they're worth a lot of money and it seems like a waste. Did you know it was garbage day this morning? It turns out my garbage man is a golfer. Now he has a really nice set of custom-made golf clubs. He was very appreciative."

"I bet he was," Vance said, laughing. "Did he leave anything else? Anything we can light on fire?"

"No." I hit him lightly on the shoulder with my menu. "No," I said more seriously. "He was very thorough. I think he'd been quietly moving his stuff out for a while because when he left, he only had a duffel bag, but there's nothing of his in the house, and we'd been living together for two years."

As I said the words, tears flooded my eyes again. Two years. We’d lived together for two years and had been dating for four. What had I been thinking? How could I have stuck with him for so long, this man who could just walk out on me, cheat on me? Why had I put up with him? And what did it say about me that I was so upset he'd left?

CHAPTER SIX

VANCE

I was going to kill that fucking twat. Fucking kill him. Don't get me wrong. I was thrilled he'd walked out on Magnolia. The woman had very few faults, but her refusal to throw in the towel on Brayden Michaels was one of them. He'd been freeloading off her for years, cutting her down and treating her like crap.

Loyalty was usually a good quality. God knows, I'd been the beneficiary of Magnolia's stubborn variety of loyalty when I hadn't deserved it either. The difference was, I'd realized I was an asshole. I'd changed. I deserved that loyalty now.

Brayden had broken her heart. She'd said she didn't want us to do anything to him. Watching her sip her third mimosa and pick at her French toast, it was all I could do not to track the fucking dickhead down and beat him to a pulp.

My Magnolia should be happy. I loved seeing her when she was happy, those blue eyes bright, her full pink lips curved into a smile. Brayden was a dickhead, but the worst of his crimes, in my opinion, was convincing Magnolia that she was unattractive.

There was only so much I could do to change her mind. I couldn't, for example, strip off her clothes, lay her out on my bed, and kiss every inch of her creamy skin until she was screaming in orgasm. I couldn't hold her, and touch her, and fuck her until she couldn't walk.

It wasn't just that I was her boss. I pulled the boss-card when I needed to, but we both knew she was more my partner than my employee. Once I'd realized how valuable she was, I'd even started cutting her in on some of the deals we worked together. So, it wasn't the job that was the problem.

But in the past two years, Magnolia had become my closest friend, the one person I relied on more than any other. If I'd made a move on her while she was engaged, Magnolia would've walked. It would have killed her to do it, but she never would have cheated on Brayden.

Now, I had to figure out how I was going to play this. Option number one—get her drunk on mimosas, bring her home, and fuck her silly—was appealing, but not smart. I knew my girl. Right now, she was second-guessing every choice she'd ever made, wondering how she could have been so stupid as to stay with Brayden for so long.

The last thing she needed was to be seduced into another decision she might end up regretting. That would send her running in the opposite direction.