Page 64 of Dirty Rich Cinderella Story

CHAPTER THIRTY

Cole

Lori and I stand across from each other at my desk with no more than five minutes to spare before the line on my desk phone rings with a client update. I spent thirty seconds of that time staring at her, unfamiliar, barely contained anger, pulsing through me that may or may not have everything to do with her walking away from me at the party. Apparently, being called my wife after seeing her ex was disturbing enough that she forgot she was actually at the party to do a job. Or maybe it was the fucking orgasm I gave her right before she saw her ex.

“Do you love him?” I ask, because her answer defines how I move forward, how we move forward.

She blanches. “What?”

“Do you love him?”

“God no.” She steps forward and presses her hands on the desk, leaning in closer to me. “No, Cole. I do not, nor have I ever, loved Lance.”

“Then why do you hate him so much?”

“You just asked if I love him,” she counters.

“As the saying goes, there’s a fine line.”

“I never loved him. I was—”

“Infatuated,” I supply again.

“With his talent, which is far different from loving him. And it wore off even before I left him.”

“And yet you walked away from me in that room, and attempted to refuse to leave with me,” I counter.

“Not because of him. A man had just suggested I was your wife, which as your intern is a problem.”

“One in two hundred people we met together tonight suggested such a thing,” I say. “You overreacted.”

“You’re right,” she says. “I did. Had that man mistaken me for your wife any other time, I probably wouldn’t have reacted like I did, but Lance rattled me.”

“That pretty much tells me what I need to know.”

She pushes off the desk. “What does it tell you?”

“If you didn’t care about him, he couldn’t rattle you.”

“Then I guess I’m not as strong as you, Cole. Lance is a part of all the bad I left behind. When that man called me your wife, it scared me. I don’t want to end up working four jobs to survive the rest of my life.”

I straighten and fold my arms in front of me. I get why she’s afraid of losing her second chance, but I don’t like how much power Lance has over her.

“He is nothing to me,” she says, as if reading the questions in my mind, “and maybe I shouldn’t care this much that you believe me—I mean, we’re just having sex, right?—but I do.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because like everything else with you, I can’t seem to not do it. You’re like a drug, and it’s making me crazy.”

“Not crazy enough, apparently,” I say.

“No one has ever made me crazy like this, Cole. No one.”

My phone rings and I pick up the line. “This is Cole.”

“Did you miss me?” Ashley asks.

“Yes,” I say simply. “Why are you still taking my client calls from Paris?”

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