Page 80 of You Know You Wanna

I couldn’t hold a candle to this woman. I wasn’t even going to try. Plus, she was married to him. He was her husband. Not her ex. Not estranged but her husband. All this time, I’d thought she was in his past, but here she was, not seeming like the past at all. I didn’t know what kind of weird modern arrangement they had for her to be so calm about knowing I’d been in his bed, but I wouldn’t have any part of it.

Of course, they’re still married, though. I mean, look at her. She’s the most gorgeous woman on earth. He’s never going to leave her and they have a daughter together. Whatever happened in their past, she’s still his future. God, how could I have been so stupid?

41

REMINGTON

There was a feeling a person got when something wasn’t right, a deep-seated discomfort in your gut that said, Something is wrong.

My eyes flew open and that feeling flooded my senses. I shot upright in bed, noticing immediately that Birdie was gone. Eyebrows mashing together, I threw back the covers and swung my legs off the bed, but before I could even get up, the reason for that awful, ominous feeling made itself known.

The door swung open without a knock, and the devil herself appeared in it. She wasn’t wearing Prada, but whichever designer had made that dress was close enough.

Grabbing the sheets, I balled them up in my lap to hide the goods and I narrowed my eyes at her. “Jacqueline? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Remington,” she purred, smiling. She strode into my bedroom like she belonged there. Her gaze flicked this way and that, the wrinkle of her nose suggesting that she was not impressed with what she saw. “Surprised? I thought you might be and you know how much I love surprises.”

“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”

She smiled and arched an eyebrow at me, gesturing toward the door. “I met your little girlfriend and I have to say, darling, you can do so much better.”

“I’m not your darling and I’m also not interested in your fucking opinion.” Keeping the sheets firmly in place, I got up and grabbed a clean pair of underwear from the dresser and pulling them on before I dropped the sheets. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re so adorable, trying to hide yourself from me,” she said in that annoying, singsong voice she used sometimes when she was trying to flirt. “I’ve seen it all, baby. Come sit with me. Tell me all about what you’ve been doing with the help.”

My heart gave an uncomfortable jerk as she moved to the bed, perching herself delicately on the edge. “How did you know that she works here?” I pulled on a shirt and added some shorts.

“She told me.” Jacqueline cocked her head at me slowly, her gaze drinking me in. “She also offered to help me find my room. Twice. I don’t imagine just any guest being quite so concerned about other people’s lodgings.”

Once I was dressed, I heaved out a heavy breath and backed away from her, leaning my ass on the windowsill on the opposite side of the room instead of going to sit with her. On my bed. The same bed I’d shared with Birdie last night that my ex was now sitting on, balanced precariously like she was afraid of catching some kind of disease from it.

Staring her down, I folded my arms in front of my chest. “Have you told me yet what you’re doing here?”

Mild surprise crossed her features. She shrugged one shoulder and gestured at the window behind me. “You don’t have to be so harsh about it. We could catch up first.”

“Let’s not.”

She sighed. “I decided to come see what all the fuss was about. My family has been here for weeks now and I thought I should come check it out for myself.”

“Why?” I stared right back at her, as unimpressed as she had been with the suite as I overcame my shock at seeing her here first thing in the morning. “You shouldn’t be here, Jacqs.”

Unsurprisingly, she ignored me. Her gaze flicked lazily back toward the door. “Have you really been sleeping with the help, darling? It’s just so tacky. If you were that⁠—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted her sharply. “Stop calling me darling and start explaining to me what the fuck you’re doing here.”

Those big green eyes moved back to mine, and she fluttered her long eyelashes, doing her best to appear hurt. “Do not speak to me that way, Remington Ford.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. We’ll see how you react when I show up in your bedroom unannounced and uninvited, saying nasty things about the people you’ve been spending time with. I’ll ask one more time, but after that, I’m just really not going to care anymore. There’s a woman out there I actually like that I want to catch up with so I can apologize for the rude intrusion. What are you doing here?”

“I told you.” She sniffed and dropped the act, studying her nails instead of pretending to be hurt. “I wanted to come see what all the fuss was about. You’ve been here for ages and there have been no pictures of you published anywhere. It was getting eerie.”

I gritted my teeth and rolled my eyes. “What you think is eerie, I see as a private and peaceful getaway. Right, so now that you’ve seen it. You’ve done what you needed to do. Will you please leave?”

She giggled like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard, shaking her head at me before she crinkled her nose. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’ve been up to with that girl. The poor thing looked like you wrecked her last night. Do you know she burst into the hallway in just a robe?” She let out a disbelieving, squeaky squeal kind of noise that grated everything in me. “She couldn’t keep up with you, huh? Not like I did, anyway.”

Biting my tongue, I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “I’m not talking to you about that. I notice you haven’t even asked where Laurene is. Did you really come all this way just to find out what I’ve been up to?”

“I got curious,” she said, disregarding the part of my statement about her own daughter. “It’s odd not to see you in the tabloids and it got me wondering just what you’ve been keeping yourself busy with. I guess now I know.”