Page 21 of How to Get Even

No.

Instead, she picked up her phone and checked it for emails and sat up, seeing the one from Chase.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Website copy

You were right. It’ll need reworking.

C

Oh, that man!

She bit back a curse and just about managed to stop herself from hurling the phone across the room in the same path as the pillow. Throwing back the covers, she stalked to the shower and hoped she could wash him out of her hair as easily as Doris Day.

By the time she was out and dry, her parents had messaged, asking how she was getting on. Bella knew that they felt bad that she’d not been able to start her job at the family’s foundation because of the negative press attention following the wedding. Olly probably wasn’t even aware that it had cost her that too. The best thing she could have done – anddiddo – was leave. So, she’d spent the last six months of the previous year in France with her cousin. And she told herself that it didn’t hurt that her parents had been forced to send her away. Again. And she reminded herself that it wasn’t their fault. Again.

Snap out of it, she commanded herself. She picked her phone back up and wavered. Astrid wasn’t far away…

Bella

Fancy brunch?

It was something she’d done every weekend with her friends in Boston, after graduating. But it was strange to think of them as friends now because with Paige, Astrid and Sienna in her life,theyfelt like friends in a way the people she’d spent a significant part of the last five years of her life with didn’t. But she’d realised, in the weeks and months following the wedding debacle and her time in France, that out of sight clearly had meant out of mind for the ‘ladies that brunched’.

And if Bella was being brutally honest with herself, she could understand why. Because she’d kept herself removed from them in a way that she hadn’t with Paige, Sienna and Astrid. In just little over four hours, she’d been more honest and truthful with them than she had ever been in her life. And that thought made her feel both deeply uncomfortable and deeply thankful.

Astrid

Brunch IS fancy.

Bella

I know a place.

Astrid

And I would LOVE a place but my uncle’s pad looks like a clothes shop exploded in it and I’m still no closer to choosing what to wear for Operation Heartbreak.

Bella

Want a hand?

Astrid

Please! Though give me a few hours, no one needs to see this…

Bella put her phone down feeling better… for a moment. Yes, it was great to be meeting up with Astrid – brilliant even – but it didn’t quite fix the squirminess she was feeling. And she knew why. She’d thought that she’d feel just a little more satisfied by her act of revenge last night than she presently did. And, yes, she knew it was part of a longer game, and yes, the effects of it were supposed to be cumulative. But why was she so unsatisfied? Shouldn’t she have feltsomethingabout it? Success? Satisfaction? Where was the sense of accomplishment she’d thought she’d feel?

In some distant part of her mind she thought about Paige and Olly in Cornwall together. The pictures Paige had shared of the apocalyptic-level chaos she’d wreaked upon Olly’s pristine kitchen had been incredible. Bella could just imagine his eye twitching and his barely suppressed wince, even now. And Bella couldn’t help but wonder whether Paige might be feeling a little less lonely than she was.

One thing she could categorically say about Olly Prendergast was that he was no holds barred, good company. Even for people who were determined to see him at his worst. And a part of Bella missed that. The way that Olly would make her feel a little less… serious. Which was why it had hurt so much that it was exactly that seriousness he’d relied on when he’d unceremoniously dumped her in the proverbial and high-tailed it out of America.

And perhaps she was a little uncomfortable with just how much shedidactually want Olly to get his comeuppance. Even if it was at the hands of someone else. She wandered to the kitchen and made herself a coffee.

Her phone beeped. And then beeped again. And again. And she couldn’t help it, but her lip curved into a side-smile and she reached for her phone knowing that it was from the girls.

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