Page 19 of How to Get Even

‘I’m due back in New York in a week or so. We’ll grab some drinks.’

‘It’s a plan,’ Chase said, leaning forward to disconnect the call, hoping that he could find a solution to the main featured artist just as easily.

* * *

Bella’s eyes hurt. She wasn’t exactly a stranger to staring at a computer, but at this hour the overhead light was off, leaving her at the mercy of the glare from her screen. Covertly she watched Chase shut down his computer and stand back from his desk.

She trained her eyes on the email she’d re-read a million times, not wanting to make eye contact with the arrogant, cheating, jerk as he left the building. She tried not to flinch when she heard his knuckles rap on the glass door to the office.

She peered around the screen and raised an eyebrow in question.

She thought for a second that he was repressing a smirk, but she couldn’t be sure as Chase was mostly in shadow.

‘Did Maurice show you how to lock up?’ Chase asked.

‘Reluctantly,’ she admitted.

‘Don’t mind him. He just wants to make sure that you’ll stick it out,’ Chase explained. ‘Call if you have any problems.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Fair enough,’ he replied, and this time she did see a smile, which just confused her even more.

She’d have thought that her clipped responses would have irritated him, or at least offended his clearly delicate sensibilities. But the about-turn from his behaviour left her reeling.

And then, he didn’t even say goodbye, he just left.

Damn the man!

Bella waited at least five minutes after he’d gone before making her move.

She had a two-pronged plan of attack. One would take almost the entire run-up to the gallery opening to achieve – that was the end of his professional career. She had to be meticulous. The second involved a series of short-term sneak attacks, intended to destabilise and disorientate.

She had chosen this two-faceted approach because to cheat on someone, to drag an innocent woman into the mess too, Chase Miller clearly didn’t value his personal life. His career on the other hand… a very different matter.

But to simply sabotage someone’s career wouldn’t work either, because then Chase could just blame it on someone else. No, Bella’s plan was much more complicated than that. She would have to undermine Chase’s belief inhimself. She would have to make him believe that there was something wrong withhim.

Because wasn’t that thetruejust desserts? Hadn’t he made Astrid question everything about their relationship and herself? Hadn’t he taken his marriage vows and betrayed them, leaving his poor wife to discover his infidelity for herself when she’d turned up at the hotel room to find Astrid and Chase together?

So that was whatshewas going to do. Slowly, bit by bit, step by step, she would make him question everything. And her first idea had come courtesy of her sister’s favourite childhood story:The Twits. Which only seemed fitting really. Given that Chase Miller was a twit of the highest degree.

Heart pounding in her chest, she crept into Chase’s office, remembering how she’d explained all this to the girls on the group call they’d had last night.

‘You,’ Sienna had said with a wariness in her gaze that hadn’t been there before, ‘are actually quite a scary lady.’

‘You know,’ Paige said, after some consideration, ‘after this, I really think you should consider government work.’

‘The federal civil service?’ Bella had asked.

‘No. The CIA.’

‘Private sector pays better though,’ Astrid added. ‘I’d imagine,’ she clarified a little too quickly.

Bella smiled as she pulled out the chair behind the desk. She got on her hands and knees, wanting to get in and get out in the quickest time possible. She lowered the chair by one centimetre and loosened one of the wheels.

She moved the desk light back just a few inches, but that was all she would allow herself to do today. Any more and he’d just think the cleaner had moved things and that wouldn’t do.

No, he needed to question ithimself. It needed to seem so minor he could be imagining it.

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