Page 47 of The Exposed Heiress

Without turning, she asked, “What happened while I was sleeping?”

He took a swallow of whiskey. “I came to my senses. This can’t work. I owe my loyalty to my brother.”

Emma turned, and her stare gutted him. “Our relationship has nothing to do with your brother.”

Leo ran a hand through his hair. “It would crush him if he found out that I was involved with you.”

She snorted. “Your brother was never in love with me. Our engagement was a stupid, miscalculated mistake and he didn’t know how to tell me.”

He placed his glass down with a thud. “He was madly in love with you, Emma. You broke his heart. You and your manipulative parents. They couldn’t stand the idea of their daughter marrying a Bloom so they set him up.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t sleep with him and his payback was hiring a high-priced prostitute.”

Leo looked at her blankly. “You were engaged. There’s no way that you weren’t having sex.”

She crossed her arms. “Ask him. He’s been telling everyone that I was abnormal and he was driven to take certain actions. Our breakup had nothing to do with my parents.”

Leo thought back to the confrontation he had with Tyler. He had castigated him for paying for sex. For making a spectacle of himself and their family. He had never said that he and Emma hadn’t been sexually involved.

He squared his shoulders. “Your father told me a few months ago that your mother had decided to test his loyalty to you. She hired a prostitute and you had walked in on them having sex.”

Emma pulled her arms close to her chest. “Why would she have done such an awful thing? I confided in her that I was having doubts and she assured me that it was normal. She knew I wanted to end the engagement but worried about the negative press. She would never have hired a prostitute.”

He met her gaze. “Why were you having doubts?”

“I don’t want to relive any of this.” Her voice broke.

Leo touched her elbow. “We need to talk this through.”

Emma wiped away a few tears. “Do you want honesty? I was lonely and Tyler was charming. He’s a model and knows how to survive the media without taking it on. I thought we were a good match.”

He grasped her upper arms and asked her, “What made you change your mind?”

She looked at the floor. “We had fun going out to events and galas, but when we were alone, I didn’t feel anything. Everything became strained and we stopped spending time alone.”

He let go of her. “He wasn’t good enough for you?”

“It wasn’t that. It was all so superficial. We didn’t want to know things about each other. I didn’t want either one of us trapped in a loveless marriage.”

Leo ran a hand through his hair. “If you didn’t want to marry him, why were you so angry when he cheated on you?”

Emma held her stomach. “It was mortifying. He should have just told me that he was having second thoughts and not taken some prostitute to a club and had sex in the bathroom. You saw the photographs. It hit every tabloid.”

He shook his head. “It isn’t making sense. He wanted to marry you.”

She shook her head. “When I confronted him the next day, he told me that he didn’t find me sexy or attractive. He was marrying me for the name and connections in the fashion world.”

Leo thought back through his conversations with Tyler. His brother had seemed set on becoming more stable and interested in furthering his career. He had assumed it was because he had fallen in love, not that he felt compelled to make a good match. The pieces were beginning to line up. It didn’t excuse the fact that her family hired a woman to tempt him.

“I don’t think he meant to be unkind. We had a screwed- up childhood. I had been pushing him to think about his future. He must have been looking for stability.”

She moved away from him. “I have some responsibility to bear in how it all came down. I shouldn’t have accepted his proposal.”

He looked up at the sky full of stars. It was all such a mess. They hadn’t been right for each other.

Emma took a sip of her whiskey. “This isn’t how I wanted the evening to end. Full of recriminations and regret.”

He poured himself another shot. He raised his glass to her, “To leaving the past in the past.”

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