Page 75 of The Temporary Bride

I glance at him, giving him a playful smile. “Very hard. You certainly know how to pick them.”

He chuckles, clearly enjoying the compliment. “Well, I do my best. It helps when I have such great clients to work with.”

I laugh lightly. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tristan watching us, his expression darkening. Ignoring the simmering tension, I keep talking to Russell. “Have you always been in real estate, or did you start out in a different field?”

He begins to answer, but his words are cut short as Tristan steps close to us, his presence imposing and unmistakably dominant. He looms over the other man, his hard stare fixed on Russell with an intensity that sends a shiver up my spine.

“If you don’t mind,” he says, ice in his voice, “I’d like a moment alone with Chloe. To confer.”

I turn to look at him, my smile faltering. What the fuck is he doing?

“Tristan, we’re in the middle of⁠—”

“Now,” he interrupts.

Russell’s casual demeanor drops at his forceful tone. He looks caught off guard but quickly recovers, nodding politely. “Of course. I’ll be just outside if you need me.”

He slinks out of the room, his head low like a dog with its tail between its legs. As the door closes behind him, the room suddenly feels much smaller, the space between myself and Tristan that much narrower. Now that we’re alone, he turns his gaze on me, his jaw tight. He’s clearly pissed off.

Well, that makes two of us.

I lift my chin to meet his eyes, anger rising in my chest.

Chapter 25

Tristan

Chloe glares at me as if she’s daring me to say something, her arms crossed, her eyes slitted. The door has barely closed behind Russell and she’s already on the offensive, irritation clear in the press of her lips.

“You didn’t have to kick Russell out,” she says flatly.

She’s not wrong that I didn’t have to. But watching her laugh and lean toward that man, her whole demeanor shifting into something easy and warm that I rarely get from her even now, lit something up in me that I’m not particularly proud of and can’t seem to talk myself out of.

She either doesn’t realize that, or she does and she’s using it to make a point.

Either way, the irritation burning in my chest isn’t going anywhere.

I start toward her without saying anything. Her eyes stay on mine as I close the distance between us, and she doesn’t move at first, holding her ground the way she always does, as if backing down is physically impossible for her.

But when I keep coming, she takes a step back, then another, her heels clicking against the hardwood until the window stops her and she has nowhere left to go. I rest both hands on the glass on either side of her head and stop just inches away.

The city sprawls out behind her, five stories down, but neither of us is looking at that.

“Russell is lucky all I did was kick him out,” I say, my tone cool. “He was hitting on my wife.”

Her eyes flash. “You have absolutely no right to pull something like that. No right to act possessive of me when you’ve been out there cozying up to your ex.”

That stops me cold. I pull back slightly, thrown. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw the picture, Tristan.” Her jaw is tight, her eyes hard. “You and Iris outside that restaurant. Her hand on your arm, the way you were looking at her, standing that close.” She shakes her head. “Don’t try to talk your way out of it.”

I stare at her, floored.

The idea that she’d doubt me, that she’d take something she saw in a gossip column at face value over everything that’s been building between us, hits somewhere unexpected. And underneath the frustration there’s something that feels uncomfortably close to fear, a cold knot forming in my chest, because what the hell will I do if she won’t believe me?

“Whatever you saw, it was nothing.” I shake my head. “Less than nothing. I ran into her for half a second on my way out of a restaurant, she said something, I said maybe three words back, and I walked away. That’s the whole story.”

“It didn’t look like nothing.”