Page 76 of Not Mine to Keep

Find an asshole or two that needed to be taught a lesson? We wouldn’t have to go far in the city to stumble upon one lately. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Calliope

“Friday’s tomorrow, and you’re still not here,” were Braden’s first words when I finally answered his call instead of only swapping texts like we’d been doing. “Also, about damn time you picked up,” he laid into me before I could speak. “I assume it’s your husband’s doing as to why we haven’t talked on the phone before now.”

My husband?The words came out bitter from him. Resentful and maybe jealous, too. He had as much right to be jealous of Alessandro as Alessandro did him.

“Can’t believe you married a stranger. And the fact you haven’t told your aunt is suspect. If I had her number, I’d call her. And believe me, I tried looking her up.”

Thank God she was paranoid enough to keep her digits safely hidden from the world.

“This isn’t like you.” He wasn’t going to let up, was he?

“If you wanted to have a one-way conversation we could’ve stuck to text.” I dropped down at my desk in the music room and flicked one of the balled-up pieces of paper there.Writer’s block be damned.If a view of the Manhattan skyline couldn’t cure me, nothing would.

Well, maybe not until I was freed from the shackles of a marriage my husband didn’t want, and I shouldn’t have wanted.And I don’t. Not now.Maybe one day with a man who didn’t marry me because of a favor and revenge. Also, with someone who saw more than a body to bang and a woman with the potential to be loved.

“Calliope.” His tone softened this time, but my name from his lips felt traitorous. Like I was cheating even talking to him, especially at ten o’clock on a Thursday night while my husband had been mostly MIA every day the past week.

He’d done his best to keep away, aside from two run-ins the last week. Once on Monday while reading the newspaper at the ass crack of dawn and sipping his coffee, dressed like a million bucks (well, billion) in his suit at the kitchen table.

He’d spilled his coffee on the paper. I’d teased him about reading the actual paper like an old man, instead of the news online, then he’d lectured me on walking around in my pajamas with so many other men in the house—including him.

I’d upgraded from the dancing PJs to singing cherries that’d been an impulse buy on Amazon over the weekend. He hadn’t been a fan of those, either, so it seemed. Or my eye roll from his reaction.

“Calliope.” There was my name again, a reminder I was now letting Braden have that one-way conversation because I was jogging through the two encounters with the only man I wanted to actually call me by that.

Yesterday had nearly done me in when seeing him.Alsoat the ass crack of dawn, but in the gym. I’d been unable to sleep, so I thought I’d run on the treadmill to stop the thoughts running on repeat through my mind. Worries about what to do about my job since I’d yet to resign. Then there were my friends badgering me for answers. Stress about my aunt and what if she found out.

So walking into the gym to see Alessandro sweaty and shirtless and jumping rope had only added to my plate of why I needed to run after that.

Of course, he’d stopped jumping the second he set eyes on me and nodded a curt hello as he studied my gym clothes, as if finding them more problematic than my singing-cherries PJs, then he wordlessly tossed the rope and left. Talk about a cold shoulder.

“Don’t call me that anymore,” I finally said, remembering Braden was waiting for me to participate in the call and I’d let my mind wander too long into dangerous territory by thinking about my husband, a man I couldn’t help but think about nearly every hour of every day since he’d come into my life.

The fact I’d gotten myself off in the shower, feeling too dirty to do it in his bed, even if it was a new mattress, had me all kinds of messed up. I’d had the weird sensation of being watched all week, and even that and knowing there were cameras in the penthouse didn’t prevent me from touching myself. Not that I’d seen any in the bathroom or bedroom, but still.

What made it worse waswhoI’d thought about while touching myself. Not a celebrity or favorite fictional character. Nope, a real man.My husband.

I’d been unable to write music, but my creativity had shifted to conjuring up the kind of fantasies that even made me blush. The idea of him spanking me had sent me over the orgasm cliff twice in the last twenty hours alone. (I’d taken more than one shower a day.)

“What do you mean?” Either he’d had a delayed reaction, or I was still stuck on thoughts of the sexy man who’d shared a bedroom with me for the last seven-plus days but hadn’t touched me and just now heard Braden talk. “I always call you Calliope.”

“Callie. I prefer that now.”

“This is his doing, isn’t it? He’s controlling you. You’re letting a man you don’t know tell you what to do, and that’s not even remotely like you.”

He wasn’t telling me what to do. Not really. Just to keep his distance so he didn’t bang me and break my heart. I’d yet to broach the subject of Broadway again, even though we needed to leave in the morning,and I had every intention of having athirdass-crack-of-dawn moment with him to let him know I’d be flying there to perform.

“You’re coming, right? Just tell me you’re coming. This is your dream. Do you know how hard it was for me to land this gig forus?”

“Pretty sure you told me a half dozen times over text in the last week. The guilt you laid on was thicker than molasses.”

“You roll your eyes any harder they’ll get stuck.”

“You can’t see me.” But I did roll them. Again for good measure.

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