Page 87 of Keep Your Friends Close and Your… Work Enemy Closer?

"Yes. Can you find out for sure if Max Sterling and Jared Jensen are the same person?"

He looked relieved. "That I can do."

Getting out his phone, he wandered away while my sisters gawked at me, Aria recovering first to grab a nearby chair and bring it over. "I need to sit too. This is just..."

"Insane? Wild? A fucking circus?" I filled in. "A betrayal of the utmost degree. A twisted power play. A total mind fuck. A... a..." I couldn't think of anything else to say, sheer shock twisting through me that Jared could do this to me. "I mean, what a fucking coward. How dare he let it get this far and not tell me. When this turned sexual, he should have fucking told me."

"When on earth did it turn sexual?" Aria asked beside me. "And why the hell didn't you tell us? I had no idea things had changed between the two of you." Aria turned to Astrid. "Didyouknow?"

"No. I'm just as clueless."

Two pairs of eyes watched me, and I knew I had to confess, so I told them all about the retreat, how close we'd become, how things had taken a turn in the hot tub, and even what had happened in the storage room today.

And when I was done, they both stared at me, mouths agape until Aria finally spoke. "Well, they do say that there's a thin line between love and hate."

"It's not love," I argued. "It never was, and it's certainly not now. It's all hate. One-thousand percent hate."

"I'm so sorry," Astrid said. "We don't know for sure yet if they're the same person, though. Jared really could just share an uncanny resemblance with Max Sterling."

"Then why did he look at me like that then? He stared at me, like he knew who I was too."

"Maybe he recognizedyouright at the same exact moment," Aria said. "I mean, if Jared is really Max, and you're mad at himfor not telling you the truth, you did the exact same thing to him too."

I glared at her, and she at least had the common sense to look sheepish.

"Maybe we can talk about that later. Once the shock has worn off," Astrid said, doing her best to smooth things over.

"Yes. Maybe later," I agreed. Because I had a perfectly good reason to be doing what I was doing, unlike fucking Max. "Why the hell would he do this anyway?"

Aria shrugged. "Could be that he just wanted to do the whole undercover billionaire boss thing. You know? See how everything really is in all of his holdings."

"That has to be it. And then he fell in love," Astrid chimed in, a dreamy look splashed across her face. "With you. And couldn't bear to leave and go back to his real life."

"Oh, and I'm sure you never hesitated to tell him how much you hate billionaires," Aria said with a laugh that she quickly smothered. "Poor man was scared shitless to tell you."

"Fuck."

Every single damn thing I'd ever said to the man came rushing into the forefront of my brain. Every negative thing about extreme wealth.Every complaint about Max Sterling. And the absolute worst, every vulnerable word I'd confessed to him about myself.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was anyone other than Max Sterling. But something about him had always set me off, the way he was so blasé around me and looked at my sisters and me like he was superior.

"Well, he should be scared shitless. I hate that man. And I hate him even more now."

"But hear me out," Astrid said. "What if the man you got to know as Jared is really what he's like? What if his billionaire persona isn't the real him?"

"I highly doubt that. A tiger doesn't change its stripes."

Ethan appeared, a strange look on his face that made my heart sink even further.

"It's him, isn't it?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yes. Jared and Max are one and the same."

I let my head fall back against the chair and released a sigh of epic proportions.

This. This was why I didn't do relationships or love or even fun in general. Because it always led to disaster. And this was potentially the biggest disaster I'd ever experienced in my life.

Twenty-Two

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