Page 32 of Forbidden Mistress

She acknowledges that with a swirly gesture of her chopsticks and a vigorous nod. “Yeah. Listen, it’s weird all around. So is he going to continue to pay you?”

“Uh…” I scrunch my nose. “I actually don’t know. I did tell him we’d have to be exclusive, and he agreed. But we didn’t talk about money at all.”

Haley pushes out a breath. “Well, let’s hope he’s still willing to be your sugar daddy.”

I frown and pick at my kung pao chicken with my chopsticks. “Would that make it weird, though? Like, he’s paying to have sex with me?” And if that’s the case, then does that mean that I’m technically prostituting myself?

“Would you have sex with him regardless of the money?” she asks, shoving another clump of chow mein into her mouth.

I don’t even need a second to think about the answer to that one. “Yeah, of course. He’s hot as fuck.”

She lifts her hands. “Well, there’s your answer. Think of this as a sugar daddy situation. Or having a rich, temporary boyfriend. I’m damn jealous, by the way. I’ve been so busy with school that I haven’t had a good roll in the hay in way too long.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s a good way to look at it.” I sigh. “I’m not going to overthink it too much. But I do have another question—do I show up at Obscura tomorrow night, as scheduled?”

She takes a bite of her spring roll. “Has he contacted you, or told you not to go?”

I sip my root beer from the straw. Eating out is the only time I allow myself to have a bit of soda. Otherwise, it’s just too sweet. “Nope. No call, no texts, no emails…nothing.”

Haley shrugs again, in a there-you-go kind of way.

She’s right. Whatever happened earlier tonight was weird, for sure, but not a deal breaker. At some point, I’ll have to ask him what the fuck that was about. I really can’t pretend everything is okay—that’s just not my vibe. I’m a pretty direct person, usually.

Until I talk to him, though, I’m just going to play along. All this business with Hart is temporary anyway, right? In three months none of this will matter. I just need to keep telling myself that.

Haley glances at her phone. “Oh, shit. It’s two a.m. I have a class at nine-fifteen in the morning. I better grab some sleep.”

I sigh. “Yeah, same. I have a class at ten.”

I’m not even a little bit tired, but we head up to our bedroom where Avery has already been asleep for hours. She’s such a morning person.

I still have a pile of homework to do, but I need to try and get some sleep. I glance at my phone to see if there are any messages from my stepmom, but there’s nothing. Just that last message from Liam, asking me why I want to see my dad’s will. Fucking asshole. I literally can’t stand him. I’ll just have to go to my stepmom’s house and ask her for the paperwork in person. Liam was in town for the engagement party, but he has almost certainly left town by now.

When I wake up the next morning and head downstairs to start the coffee, there’s a knock at the door. I glance at my phone. It’s eight in the morning. Who could be knocking at this hour?

Barefoot, I walk through the living room to the front door and peer through the peephole. It’s a delivery person standing with a huge bouquet of flowers in one arm. I open the door with a smile. “Good morning.”

“I have a delivery for Cassandra Fitzgerald,” the young guy says.

Oh! I perk up. “That’s me.”

He shoves a clipboard at me, and I sign the delivery confirmation, then hand it back to him. I reach out to take the flowers, but he shakes his head. “There’s more. I’ll bring them in. Where would you like them?”

I direct him to the dining room table. He sets down the huge vase then spins and goes back out to the truck. It takes him twenty minutes to unload everything. Flowers upon flowers upon flowers fill our coffee table, dining room table, sideboards, kitchen table, counter…every available surface. Once everything is unloaded, the guy hands me a medium-sized square box and an envelope. I tear it open impatiently and read the contents.

Forgive me for last night.

No signature. But I know who it’s from, and I’m not going to lie, looking around at the hundreds of flowers filling my living room, my heart melts a little—okay, a lot. I’ve never had a guy do something like this for me. It’s unbearably sweet.

Setting the box down, I open it and dig through the layers of tissue paper, until I feel something. I pull it out and gasp. It’s a gold mask, beautifully detailed with two twisting horns, and flowers framing the eyes.

It’s a fawn. The female counterpart to Hart’s mask.

I smile. It looks insanely expensive. When I hear someone coming down the stairs, I shove it back into the box. I don’t really feel like explaining the significance of the mask. It’s the proverbial “long story.”

“Why does it smell like a flower shop in here?” Avery says, stomping down the stairs. When she reaches the living room, she gasps. “Oh, my God! Whose flowers are these?”

“They’re for me,” I say sheepishly. “They’re from a guy I’m kinda sorta seeing.”

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