Page 25 of The Billionaire's Bargain
Eight
Darius poured himself another glass of bourbon. This would be his third. Or maybe fourth. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t drunk yet; he could still think. So whatever number he was on, it wouldn’t be his last. He’d keep tossing it back until the unease and anger no longer crawled inside him like ants in a colony.
Tonight had been a clusterfuck. Oh, it’d been frigidly polite, but still... Clusterfuck.
After crossing the study, he sank down onto the couch and took a sip of the bourbon. Clasping the squat glass, he slid down, resting his head on the couch’s back, his legs sprawled wide.
Jesus, when would the forgetful part of this begin?
He hated this sense of...betrayal that clung to him like a filthy film of dirt. And no matter how hard he tried to scrub it clean with excuses, it remained, stubborn and just as grimy.
When he’d asked Isobel to the Wellses’ house that night, he’d promised her they would be civil, and she would be in a safe space, be welcomed. Baron had, but Helena and Gabriella, they’d made a liar of him. He understood their resentment—even now, when he thought of Gage, that mixture of anger and grief still churned in his chest, his gut. But tonight had been about Aiden, about them connecting with the boy, and that meant forging a fragile truce with his mother. Showing her respect, at least.
Hours later, the disappointment, the disquiet continued to pulse within him like a wound, one that refused to heal.
Isobel had definitely been enemy number one when she’d been married to Gage. All of them believed Gage had moved too fast, married too young. Darius had been equally confused when he’d cut them all off for almost a year. None of them could understand why Gage hadn’t divorced her, especially when he started confiding in them about her infidelity. As far as Darius could tell, his friend had genuinely been in love with his wife, and her betrayals had destroyed him.
Still. Remembering the woman he’d shared a hallway with in the dark... The woman who loved her son so selflessly... The woman whose family rallied around her, supported her and her son unconditionally... That Isobel didn’t really coincide with the one the Wellses detested.
But if he were brutally honest—and alcohol had a way of dragging that kind of truth forth—it hadn’t only been this evening that had unnerved him.
She did.
Everything about her unsettled him.
From the thick dark hair with the hints of fire to the delectable, curvaceous body that tempted him like a red flag snapping in front of a bull.
Earlier, when she’d thrust her chin up in that defiant angle, he’d had to force himself to remain in his seat instead of marching around the table and shocking the hell out of everyone by tugging her head back and claiming that beautiful, created-for-sin mouth.
Another truth he could admit in the dark with only bourbon for company.
He wanted her.
Fuck, did he want her.
Maybe if the past had stayed in the past, he could have convinced himself their space of time in the hallway had been just that—a blip, an anomaly. But once he’d kissed her again, once he’d swallowed her moans, once he’d felt her slick, satiny flesh spasm around his fingers as she came... No, he craved this woman with a need that was usually reserved for oxygen and water.
Even knowing that she’d betrayed Gage just as Faith had cheated on Darius, he still couldn’t expunge this insane, insatiable desire.
So, what did that say about him? About his dignity? His fucking intelligence?
He snorted, raising his glass to his lips for a deep sip.
It said that, as much as he’d claimed to the contrary, his dick had equal partnership with his brain.
Yet...he frowned into the golden depths of the bourbon. The more time he spent with Isobel, the more doubt crept into his head, infiltrating his long-held ideas about her, about the woman he’d believed her to be. But for him to accept that she was not the woman who’d betrayed her husband in the past, it would mean that Gage had consciously—and maliciously—lied to Darius’s face. And to his family. And to all of their friends. It would mean Darius’s best friend, the man who’d been closer to him than a brother, had intentionally destroyed Isobel’s reputation.
And that he couldn’t believe.
Could Gage have somehow misinterpreted her actions? Or maybe there was more to the story that Gage hadn’t shared with his family before his death?
“Darius?”
He glanced in the direction of the study’s entrance, where the sound of his name inhervoice had originated.
And immediately wished he hadn’t.
Now the image of her standing in the doorway, barefoot, her long, toned legs exposed by some kind of T-shirt that hit her midthigh, and hair a sexy tumble around her beautiful face would be permanently branded onto his retinas.
