“I’ll give you what you want when I have my answers.” I grab my purse and jacket and palm the handle of the door. When I glance back at him, his eyes are predictably on me. “That’s my counter-offer. Take it or leave it. I guess the question is now, how bad do you still want it?”
Jerking the door open, I gesture to Ryan, and he joins me at my side, his eyes darting over my shoulder as I stride toward the lobby.
“What happened in there, Cee?” He helps me into my jacket, his gaze darting between the lobby and where we stand.
“Negotiations.” I’m still shaking as he ushers me into the parking lot toward my car.
Once I’m behind the wheel, my body goes slack as he looks over to me, his eyes wide. “Jesus,” he says, looking as bewildered as I feel. “Who the fuck is that guy?”
“Just a part of my history I need to put to bed.”
“I physically felt that, Cecelia. I felt the tension in that room.”
“Yeah, well, he thinks you’re in love with me.”
A long beat of silence has me turning his way.
He rakes his lower lip with his teeth before lifting deep blue eyes to mine.
“I am. And I’ve never been so jealous of another man in my life.”
I gape at him. “Ryan…you aren’t serious…”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. I gave up on you a long time ago.” He nods toward the building. “And no man alive can compete with that.”
“I never…” I search for the words as guilt gnaws at me. He’s always flirted, even in front of Collin, but he’s had a dozen or so more girlfriends since we broke up. He sees the guilt in my eyes and shakes his head.
“Want to feel better?”
I nod.
“I’ve fucked my way through half of Atlanta.”
“That’s more concerning than anything.”
“I’m also the reason there’s a high turnover of assistants.”
I glare at him. “Marcie?”
“Yep.”
“Damnit, Ryan! She was my favorite.”
“Mine too, which is why I bent her over your desk just for spite.”
“You’re a pig.”
“I know. My penis has not been faithful to you. When it gets hurt, it has a tendency to self-sabotage. Feel better?”
“Kind of.”
We share a smile.
“I do love you back, you know?”
“We’re good,” he assures as he pulls up his phone. “I want more background on this asshole.”
I cover his phone with my hand. “Don’t. Promise me you won’t. Promise me.”
“Why?”
“Because I know all I need to about him. And he’s not the enemy.”
“Fine. But I hate him.”
“I do too.”
He lifts a brow. “No, you don’t.”
I turn to him, my eyes stinging. “Ryan, he owes me, and I’m here to collect. And the only way I can do that is if this deal goes my way. This is really important to me.”
He grips my hand and kisses the back of it before letting go. “I’ve got you.”
“Thank you.” Turning the ignition, I freeze when I see Tobias standing in front of my hood on the sidewalk staring directly into the car, his lethal gaze on Ryan before drifting to me. In the next second, he disappears down the row of cars and out of sight.
“That wasn’t scary at all,” Ryan speaks up next to me. “Should I expect to see a bloody, decapitated horse head in my hotel bed in the morning?”
Still in my car, I sit out another bout of freezing rain in the front of the house as silence lingers on the other side of the line.
“Christy? You there?”
I glance down at the phone in my lap and see the call is connected, the seconds ticking by.
“Chris—”
“Let me get this straight,” I hear the swish of her bathwater. “Three days ago, you called me to help you with the seating chart for your posh, high society Atlanta wedding, and today you’re in Triple Falls because you had a dream, tore up your wedding dress, broke up with your fiancé, decided to sell your father’s business to a man who ripped you apart, and shortly after your college boyfriend confessed he was still in love with you?”
“Yes, I know it sounds crazy but—”
“Crazy? No, crazy would be a downgrade. This is a late-season Grey’s Anatomy episode. Everything but the kitchen sink.”
I’d dropped Ryan off at his hotel, and though he said we were okay, I knew he turned down dinner due to our awkward drive back to town. He’d all but ignored me by answering emails, but I felt the distance. Had I been so oblivious to his feelings?