Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
He’d failed me, yes. But I’d also failed him. In that, we were perfectly matched. My phone rang, and I ripped it from my back pocket.
Naomi. I hit decline and put it on the coffee table. I wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened. I wasn’t sure I ever would be. There simply weren’t words for this kind of pain. No way to explain the complete and total devastation that came with giving every part of yourself to someone who took that gift and twisted it.
Twenty minutes. That was all it would take for me to get to Nixon’s penthouse. I even had a key. Twenty minutes, and I could fight. I could make him listen. I could use the explosive chemistry between us to solder us together, broken pieces and all. I could break down those walls of his, just like I had so many times before.
But I was just so damned tired—too tired to keep chasing a man who didn’t want to be caught. Didn’t want to be open. Didn’t want to love me.
I fell asleep there on the couch.
I woke the next morning and declined every call that came in. None of them were from him anyway. Jeremiah. Naomi. Mom. Even Ben. I declined them all, wishing I could find a way to do the same to a world that waited outside my door. The world where Nixon wasn’t mine anymore…if he ever had been.
Two days later, someone pounded on my door.
I tried to ignore it, but after ten straight minutes, I hauled myself from the couch and walked to the front door, passing the bags I had yet to unpack.
“I’m not leaving until I see you, Shannon.” Ben’s voice came through the wood.
Shannon.
My heart clenched, but I yanked open the door to see my boss standing there in jeans and a sweater.
“Damn,” he muttered, giving me a quick once-over. “Okay. Get in the shower.” He walked into my apartment and shut the door himself.
“I’m sorry?” I folded my arms across my chest.
“We have an appointment in a little over an hour, so get in the shower.” He lifted his brows.
“No, we don’t.” I shook my head.
“Look.” He hauled out his cell phone and opened it to the office calendar. Sure enough, we had an appointment.
“I’m not even supposed to be here,” I groaned. “I’m still on vacation time.”
“Get. In. The. Shower.” He crossed his arms and stared me down.
“Fine,” I answered, just because it was easier than fighting with Ben. I didn’t have the energy for it.
“And put on something that doesn’t smell like you’ve been wearing it for a week!” he called after me.
“Picky, picky,” I mumbled.
Forty-five minutes later, I emerged from my bedroom, showered, with dried hair, minimal makeup, and dressed in jeans and a silk blouse.
“Feel better?” Ben asked from the kitchen, where he’d loaded the dishwasher.
“Sure. Like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.” I flashed the fakest smile in the history of fake smiles.
“Uh-huh.” He shook his head. “Let’s go.”
Thirty minutes later, we sat in a private booth in the balcony of a downtown club, both nursing sodas as a crowd milled beneath us, waiting for a show to begin.
“I can’t believe you hauled me out to listen to a band.” I trailed my finger through the condensation on the outside of my glass.
“I can’t believe I had to.” He sipped his drink and looked out over the crowd.
“You know what happened?” Here it came—my downfall.
“Given that stunt Nixon pulled in Houston with that guitar strap, the fact that he’s locked himself inside his penthouse, and your general state of devastation, it’s not too hard to put together.”
“Are you firing me?”
His gaze swung back to mine. “Why would I fire you?”
“For sleeping with a client. Not exactly professional of me, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t, and no, I’m not going to fire you. Remember, as of last week, I’m no longer your boss. You’re a manager in your own right.” His mouth tightened. “Do I think your choice was reckless, foolish, and stupid? Yes.”
“I know,” I said softly.
“I know you do, which is why I didn’t bring it up.” He shrugged.
“Everyone knows.” I rolled the glass between my palms.
“Yep. Nixon Winters wore your name across his chest. You weren’t exactly discreet there, Zoe.”
Zoe. Not Shannon. My gaze rose to meet his.
“You made a choice, and like it or not, you have to deal with the consequences, which, in this case, appear to be a broken heart and some office gossip.” He nodded once. “But I’ll be damned if I watch the young woman I just spent four years training waste her potential because she fell for a guy too damaged to hold on to her.”
I swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump growing in my throat.
“Kelly Rowland, Mary J. Blige, Celine Dion, and Usher,” he said, as the lights flashed and a cheer went up from the crowd.