Page 49 of One Weekend in London

“Now, is that any way to talk to your first and only love?” His smarmy drawl drips with manufactured contrition, raising my hackles and making my belly roil. “I know I did you wrong, Sadiebug. But you and me, we’re destiny.” He’s lost his absolute mind! “This Richie Rich you’re slutting it up around London with isn’t anything but—”

To my disdain, tears sting my eyes.

The downright audacity of him.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I deserve some kind of award for keeping my voice steady and dripping with saccharine sweetness. “I must’ve heard you wrong. Did you just call me a slut? Because I could’ve sworn you were the one who got caught screwing my best friend on our wedding day. If you want to call anyone such a derogatory name, why don’t you take a long hard look in the nearest mirror?”

Pure silence.

Then, “Cute. Real cute.” His sneer is audible. “You’ve had your little revenge fuck, shown the town you’ve still got it. Now come back home where you belong so I can put my ring back on your finger.” Absolutely not. “Besides, we both know the truth, Sadie.”

I shouldn’t ask, I truly shouldn’t.

But I stupidly do.

“Yeah? And what truth is that?”

Again, he chuckles darkly.

“The one where guys like that don’t fall for small-town hicks like you.”

Hick? I think not.

Besides, has Maxwell forgotten he’s from the same town as me? If I’m a hick, then what’s that make him? He’s such a frickin’ fool!

“You’re just a curiosity to him, a backwoods belle he can screw for sport before he goes back to his real life, fucking supermodels and centerfolds.” Again, he chuckles. “You really think he’d pick you over them? I loved you and still chose to fuck Vanessa when you fell short. Let that sink in.”

His cruel words hit their mark, burrowing deep into my insecurities and reawakening demons Rhys’s sweet words and hunger for me had put to sleep.

“You don’t know the first thing about Rhys. Or me, for that matter. Not anymore.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, princess.” I can practically see his smug, crap-eating grin. “I know every sordid inch of you, inside and out. And deep down, you’re still that little girl who’s terrified of being abandoned. Again.”

How is it possible to hate someone you once loved?

I don’t know the answer, but right now, at this very moment, I hate Maxwell Beaumont with every ounce of my being and every shard of my heart.

“Hate to break it to you, but Prince Charming isn’t your happily ever after. He’s just another deadbeat who’ll toss you aside like yesterday’s trash. Just like your mama and daddy did when they left—”

I’m saved from his poisonous diatribe by a large hand plucking the phone from my white-knuckled grip. I whirl around, my chin wobbling and chest aching from holding back sobs, to find Rhys, his handsome face hard enough to cut diamonds, his eyes glittering with unmissable malice.

Clearly, he heard everything.

And if I thought he looked angry before...

“Listen closely, you sniveling sack of shite,” he growls into the phone, his deep voice dripping with barely leashed rage. “Sadie is so bloody far out of your league, you’re not even worthy to breathe the same air as her, let alone speak her goddamn name.”

His grip on my phone tightens, the plastic creaking under the force of his anger. He clenches his teeth as the tendons in his neck strain and a muscle tics in his jaw.

“She’s a goddess among women, and you?” His laugh is mirthless. “You’re nothing but a pissant worm beneath her feet. You had the chance to worship her like the queen she is, and you blew it. Now she’s mine, and I protect what’s mine with ruthless fucking efficiency.”

There’s no mistaking the lethal intent in his tone, the icy calm that vows untold destruction. It sends a shiver down my spine, a primal reminder this man is as dangerous as he is beautiful.

“If you ever dare to contact her again, if you so much as whisper her beautiful name in your sleep, I will end you. I will raze your miserable fucking life to the ground and salt the earth with the ashes of your ruin. I will bury you in so much litigation and financial devastation that your daddy’s law firm won’t be able to save you, making chucking yourself off the nearest bridge seem like a mercy.”

He pauses, letting the brutal promise sink in, each word blazing with a ferocious protectiveness that steals my breath from my lungs, yet also heals more of my broken pieces.

Take that, Maxwell!

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