Page 31 of Accidental Vegas Vows

I hated this. I barely knew the girl, and I’d flung her into chaos unknowingly — and I’d fucking doubled down after I’d found out. “I didn’t know,” I sighed. “I only found out about him a few days ago. His mother, my… ex, left him to me in her will.”

“Her will?” I could almost hear the cogs turning in her mind.

“It’s been a lot to take in. And in my desperation to make myself feel somewhat normal, I tried to forget about it for a few days, and that led to… well, you. Here.” Even with the light pollution from the city, I could just barely make out a passing satellite in the sky above me, blinking white as it traveled behind a cloud. “He arrives next week. And if I’m being honest with you, Olivia, I’m so fucking unprepared for it that I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

More sloshing of wine filled the line as she poured another glass. I couldn’t help but wonder where she was, if she could see the satellite I was watching, if it had come out the other side of the cloud from her perspective. “Will this affect the annulment?”

I let out a breath. No hope of finding comfort in her, then. “Ethan said it shouldn’t. It’s not a divorce, so it’s not like we’re splitting things down the middle here. But you deserve to know in case it comes up.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll have Ethan bring you the papers to sign when they come back,” I added.

“Okay.”

“And I’ll keep my distance from you at the office, but we’ll likely still be around each other.”

Again, an upsetting, disillusioned, “Okay.”

“You sound like you hate me,” I sighed.

A beat of silence passed before she exhaled. “I don’t hate you, Damien. I’m just upset with myself. Your reasons are valid and I understand, I just wish I hadn’t…”

I gave her the space she needed if she wanted to elaborate, but she didn’t.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway. Neither of us wanted to be where we are now to begin with, so this really shouldn’t have hit me out of left field. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” That’s all I can say?

“Good luck with Noah. And I’ll sign the papers when I get them.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but the three little beeps through the phone cut me off, and the line went quiet. She’d hung up.

Chapter 11

Olivia

Standing smack dap in the center of Damien’s office not twenty-four hours after that fucking phone call wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined when I’d hung up.

The midday sun invaded the space, pouring in through the massive windows and glinting off every reflective surface in sight. He watched me over the top of his computer screen with his eyes narrowed, his brows knitting together, as if I was somehow affronting him by just being in his damn office — but he knew I was coming. I’d scheduled this with him first thing in the morning.

“If this is about?—”

“It’s not.” I took a step toward his desk, the right side of my body warming immediately as it came into contact with the rays of the sun. “I read last night that you acquired the rights to the water filtration I did my presentation on.”

His mouth turned to a thin line as he lowered his laptop screen an inch. He leaned back in his chair, his black suit jacket tugging at the sides and opening up just a little further, showing more of his white button-up. “Before or after I called you?”

“After. I just… I know I outlined its usages in my proposal, but I wanted to bring something up that I hadn’t marked down.” Another step forward and I ended up just behind the wingback chairs opposite his desk. I leaned forward on the back of one, desperate to feel casual. Who’s the one tempting fate now, Olivia?

His eyes met mine, crystal clear blue nearly making me pause. But he said nothing, and I took that as my signal to keep going.

“You know just as well as I do that there are places here, in the US, that could use this technology to combat water problems,” I said, swallowing around the lump in my throat when his eyes flicked back to his screen for a fleeting second. “You also know that it could be useful around the world. And with it being able to generate electricity, I was thinking — if Blackwood could produce enough of it and absorb the cost, you could give it to those places for free as a means for filtration and purification, and sell the energy produced. That could be where you make money from it, instead of selling the product as a whole. They get the benefit of clean water at no cost to themselves, and you get the benefit of energy production that you can charge companies to use.”

The ray of sunlight reflecting off his Rolex nearly blinded me as he scrubbed his face.

He looked unimpressed.

Shit.

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