It wasn’t said as a question. It didn’t have to be. And I didn’t dignify it with a response.
“Nick, just...just please help me find some clothes.” I twisted around again and started searching for a likely-looking closet. “I don’t want to just sit here naked—”
“How the hell do you get to be mad at me for that?”
I glanced back around to see a very different man sitting in front of me. This man wasn’t confused, or tired, or
even cautious. He was livid.
“I’m not mad,” I said coolly. “I’m not even surprised. I just want to get dressed.”
I wrapped the sheets tightly around me and tried to swing my feet to the floor, but a hand shot out and grabbed me—pulling me back.
“Well you’re going to have to wait for a minute, because we need to fix this,” Nick exclaimed. “I can’t believe you would be angry with me for saying we’re not in a relationship.”
“I told you, I’m not—”
“Tell me this, Abby: how the hell could we be in a real relationship, when we’re already in a fake relationship? Hmm? When my father has already forced us, under threat of blackmail, to pretend for all the world to see that we’re engaged?”
His words rang out through the room, loud and clear.
“How the hell could we be in a real relationship, when you’re still technically on my family’s payroll? When you’re a paid employee following the orders of her boss? The same boss who just single-handedly ruined her entire career—and let’s not pretend for even a moment, Abby, that I don’t know exactly how much your career means to you.”
He was panting now, glaring at me just as hard as I was glaring at him.
“First you find me a fake girlfriend, then you admit she’s terrible and we break up, then you agree to take her place—only until the merger. Then the boxing ring debacle happens, and the next thing I know—I’m presenting you with a damn five hundred thousand dollar ring in the middle of Barneys!”
His blue eyes glowed hot with rage.
“And you expected me to tell James—what? That we were in a real relationship?”
But his temper was matched hand in hand by my own. Those debate skills couldn’t save him now. That was technically our story, yes, except that he had left out a couple crucial parts.
My voice rang out just as loud as his, and just as angry.
“Well something real has been happening all these nights—”
“And I don’t know what that is, Abby!” he shouted, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “I have no idea what the hell we’re doing right now! I have no idea how you really feel about me, or whether or not you would possibly still be in this bed if there weren’t naked photos of you on a flash drive somewhere!”
A good point, but he didn’t get to play the victim. Not here. Not with this.
“And how do you think your father got those naked photos in the first place?!” I demanded. “Tell me, Nick—what the hell was going on in that coatroom? And later in the boxing ring? Those times when no one was holding a gun over our heads. There was no threat of blackmail then. So what was that?!”
“I DON’T—”
Then he took one look at my face and deflated. All the pent-up energy, and tension, and anger rushed out of his body with a defeated sigh. He ran his hands over his face, and slumped back against the headboard, suddenly looking very tired.
“I don’t know.”
If only all those cameras could see us now. Cue up the body-language experts—it would be the story of a century. One of us, leaning miserably against the back of the bed. Hands balled into loose fists on the blanket, blue eyes staring blankly at the wall. The other, wrapped as tightly as possible in a bedsheet. Sitting rigid as a board. Unwilling to look at the man behind her.
I could hear muted movement coming from the rest of the house. I wasn’t sure whether or not we’d woken them ourselves—loud voices tended to carry down empty halls—or if Ferdie and his band of merry men got up at the crack of dawn every day. All I knew was that I was absolutely mortified to be sitting here, in this gorgeous house in the middle of the woods. And I was absolutely heartbroken by the gorgeous man sitting behind me on the bed.
On multiple occasions, one or both of us tried to break the silence. Tried to come up with dismissive or funny ways to get out of the tense situation. Tried to find a way to diffuse the forbidden conversation—to get things back onto steadier, more familiar ground.
But each time, we came up short.
As the sun peeked up over the lake, the sounds in the rest of the house became louder and easier to identify. Greta was making breakfast in the kitchen. The smell of sausage and waffles drifted up the stairs, along with the rich aroma of bubbling coffee. Ferdie’s staff was pulling back the heavy curtains that hung from the floor to ceiling windows—shaking out the dust before securing them tightly back with their winded, satin cord.