Page 103 of Bad Luck Club

She saw the flash of surprise before it disappeared—he hadn’t expected her to defy him. He probably hadn’t thought she’d catch on until it was too late, until Lee had signed his life away. Because surely there would have been some clause holding him to the contract should he change his mind. And there wasn’t a doubt in her mind there would have been an NDA so ironclad not even Houdini could break his way out of it.

“We came for you,” Dottie said to Lee.

“Yes,” Blue agreed, “and we’re not leaving without you.”

At a nod from Remy, the other men slid out and walked away. No one was sitting beside Remy, which confirmed her theory that he’d forced Lee to sit in the chair just to embarrass and demean him.

Lee glanced at the departing men with a furrowed brow, slightly panicked now, before turning back to Blue and Dottie. The panic shifted to anger. To coldness.

“I told you I was busy,” he said gruffly. “This is unacceptable. You may not want me to take this position, but you had no right to show up here uninvited.”

“Agreed,” Remy said, his tone congenial. “You really have changed, Enid. You used to leave business to the professionals.”

From his little shrug, it was clear Remy knew he’d been caught. His eyes sparkled a little, the blues so dark they were nearly black. The jig was up, so he might as well sink Blue with him.

“Enid?” Lee said, glancing from Remy to Blue in disbelief. “You two know each other?”

No sooner had he finished the sentence than the color leached from his face. “You’re Remy,” he said flatly.

“Not in the business world, but women have been known to call me that.” He smirked, and this time Lee didn’t just look pissed. Pure rage rippled across his face.

“This was all a setup?” he asked, his lips tight over his teeth, every muscle in his body straining.

Remy shrugged again, as if the discussion were beneath him. “I would’ve given you the job. What can I say? I’d prefer to have you here, under my eye, than in Asheville screwing my wife.”

“Ex-wife,” Blue insisted, her tone hard.

“For now,” Remy said. “You’ll come back. You did before. It just takes the right incentive.”

Then Lee was moving, pushing forward. “You asshole,” he seethed, his hands balling.

He was going to punch Remy, and maybe more. And if he did, well, if hiring her boyfriend out from under her was Remy’s idea of a laugh, how much more would he savor the chance to get him thrown into jail for assault?

So she stepped between them, her gaze on Lee, whose momentum almost made him hurtle into her. “Go, Lee. Go to the gallery with Dottie.”

The look he gave her…

He thought she’d betrayed him.

Oh, he blamed her for everything. Hehatedher.

Her own heart was splitting in two, but she stood her ground. She didn’t look away from him. Because he might think missing out on this job, which had never really been a possibility, was the end of the world, but that wasn’t true. Not even a little. It would be if he stayed. It would be if he tried to fight Remy.

Because fists weren’t the weapon to use against a man like this.

Dottie was tugging on Lee’s arm now, and she stomped on his foot a little for good measure. “Come with me, Lee.”

“Yes, let a little old woman drag you away,” Remy said, his tone cutting.

Lee’s cheeks flushed, but this time it wasn’t sweet, it was terrifying. She feared he’d pull away from Dottie, that he’d push past her and hit Remy anyway. Distantly she noticed a large man had approached them, hanging back by the bar. Some sort of bouncer, maybe, although not uniformed because this wasn’t the kind of place that would want to admit to having one.

So she said it again, “Go. You have to go. Now.”

Her tone was firm, because it had to be. Because he was on the verge of doing the kind of thing that couldn’t be taken back or talked away.

Then Lee looked her in the eye and said, “When I get to the hotel, I want your things gone.”

Those bonds between them, that connection she’d always felt since that night on her couch, loosening and tightening, had slackened so much she couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t tell if they’d been severed forever.

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