Page 68 of The Rebel

It didn’t matter if I wanted that hand to lower until she was cupping my dick.

The truth was that what I wanted, what I hoped for, couldn’t happen.

My teeth bared as I growled, “Thisdoesn’t exist, Rowan.”

“Maybe.” She held me tighter. “But let’s talk about what happened and why it happened.”

I said nothing.

I just stared into her emerald eyes and remembered those nights we had spent in Lake Louise.

And while I did that, I felt the anger bubble inside me as her last name echoed in my ears.

Out of all the fucking names, why did hers have to be Cole?

“I’m going to text you my address,” she said. “I’d like you to come over tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. Even if you only stay for a couple of minutes, I just want you to give me a chance to explain myself.”

I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, biting the inside with my teeth.

Why was it so hard to keep my hands off her?

To not walk her into one of the stalls and lift her into my arms and fuck her against the side wall?

Why was there an ache inside me that went beyond a physical sensation?

You have to be fucking kidding me.

“What do you say?” she whispered. “Can I expect to see you tomorrow night?”

I pulled my arm from her grip and kicked open the restroom door, and I walked my ass out.

FOURTEEN

Rowan

One glass of wine. That was all I was allowing myself while I waited for Cooper to arrive at my house. Just enough sauvignon blanc to melt away the edge I was feeling and hopefully calm the nerves in my chest.

Of course, I had no idea if he was actually going to show. When I’d invited him, he’d stormed out of the restroom without confirming, and hadn’t replied to my text when I sent him my address.

Maybe, during the short amount of time we’d spoken in the restroom, I’d handled things all wrong.

Maybe he’d wanted me to grovel a bit more.

Maybe he truly wanted nothing to do with me.

I wasn’t sure what the case was.

But what I was sure about was the competition between the Spades and the Coles. I’d always heard my father and brothers groaning about them. And since I’d joined the family business, it had only gotten worse.

The thing was, as someone who had owned four boutiques in an extremely competitive industry, where there were stores just like mine on the same block, I couldn’t understand why there was so much hate between the families.

Was that what happened when a group of confident, cocky, ego-fueled alphas all wanted to be the best and most profitable in the business?

Because, on paper, according to my father’s attorney, the two companies were about equal when it came to the number of hotels they owned and yearly revenue. And for the most part, there wasn’t an overlap in locations, aside from a few large markets, so it wasn’t that we were fighting for their guests and they were after ours.

Something must have happened between my father and Walter years ago that had caused this much hate.

I had no idea what it was.

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