Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
I took my hand from his arm and withdrew into my chair.
“You wanna talk?” he asked, his Texas twang becoming more pronounced, “We’re talkin’.”
“You don’t have to go through that again.”
Evidently, he did, because he kept talking about it.
“In order to deal with her confidence issues in that kind of environment, oh…and the fact she was already well on her way to becoming a junkie, she snorted a good deal of coke, got so high, it freaked her, so she’d already downed a bottle of wine before we even left for the event.”
“Jamie—”
“The next morning, it took a fight the decibel level of which meant our neighbors called the police for her to admit that to me.”
Good God.
My poor Jamie.
I put my hand in my lap and decided just to listen to him.
It was a mistake.
“You don’t want to discuss this now?” he taunted.
“I’m giving you the chance to say what you need to say.”
“No, Nora. I’m saying what you need to hear. You were stunning that night.”
I sucked in an unladylike breath in an effort to cool the warmth that created in me.
“Belinda was covered in vomit, and you looked like Vogue styled the candid shot they took that evening that made it to the society pages.”
“All right,” I said hesitantly when he didn’t go on.
“And he cheated on you?” Jamie demanded. “Repeatedly?”
“I’m not going to defend Roland, but there’s more to a woman than being photogenic and having stylish taste in evening gowns.”
“I know, and I met that ‘more’ that night in all you did for Belinda and me.”
Lord.
“And again, when you got Dru her roses when she was forced to say goodbye to her mother.”
This had to end.
I was going to start weeping.
“And again, when you came to my house and got my head straight about the gifts my dead wife left me and how I needed to stop thinking like an ass and get on with it.”
I had to put a stop to this.
“I don’t—”
That was as far as I got.
“So no. Fuck no, baby,” he growled. “He doesn’t get to shit all over you and then take a goddamned second more of your time unless it has to do with your children.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Now, am I clear?” he asked.
“You’re clear, darling,” I whispered.
“Good,” he bit off. “So what movie are we watching?”
I had the insane desire to burst out laughing.
Mercifully, I did not.
“You pick today. I’ll pick tomorrow,” I proposed.
He turned back to his plate and muttered, “Barbie. I’ve been meaning to see it, but I haven’t had the opportunity yet. And I know you want to see it too.”
I’d been waiting for him, so, no. I hadn’t seen it yet either.
“Dru loves it,” he kept muttering before he put more eggs in his mouth.
I knew she did. She’d rhapsodized about it for half an hour the first time I saw her after she’d gone to a showing.
I knew from what I’d heard, I’d love it too.
And the killer of it all, one of the many things that destroyed me when it came to Jamie, was that I knew Jamie was the kind of man who was going to love it too.
CHAPTER 6
BADGLEY MISCHKA
Nora
Iwas fully dressed for the evening meal, it was time to leave my cabin to join Jamie for cocktails…
And I was pacing the floor, phone in hand, panicking.
It was our third night on board.
Jamie and I had breakfasted together the last two mornings.
Jamie and I had watched Barbie after our first breakfast (we’d both liked it, and after talking about it for some time, I could say that Jamie liked it even more than I did), and we’d returned to the screening room to watch Rear Window after dinner that evening.
Jamie and I had sat in the hot tub that first afternoon (yes, his chest was all it promised it would be in clothes…and then some—also yes, it was torture sitting in a hot tub with that man and his amazing body). And we lazed in the aft lounge the second afternoon, Jamie alternately reading and working, me catching up on the editions of Vanity Fair I’d brought along with me.
Jamie had teasingly accused me of being a witch after I made him a French martini during cocktail hour last night, something he’d liked so much, he requested I make him another one before we headed in to view Rear Window.
We did not talk about the kiss.
We did not talk about the limits of our relationship.
We did not talk about the words we’d hurled at each other.
We did not talk further about Roland.
We absolutely did not talk about his assertions during breakfast that first morning.
We relaxed. We chatted about my children. We made a bet on the gender of Judge and Chloe’s baby (they didn’t want to know, so no one knew—and by the way, I said boy, Jamie said girl). We shared our mutual frustration that Dru wanted to “go it alone” and therefore was refusing Jamie’s financial assistance, and as such, she had two roommates, and they were living in a small apartment in Queens. We discussed how we both knew the tea that Ned had a woman, but he hadn’t shared this information with either of his daughters. We then discussed the reasons we thought Ned had not disclosed this information. We got on Jamie’s laptop and ordered Alex and Rix’s wedding present together.