Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“I don’t remember,” I lied.
I remembered. I just didn’t think he needed to hear that I’d had a bad day because he’d done nothing but avoid me for five days.
“Bullshit.” He chuckled, dropping his hand to move even closer to me.
I opened my mouth to reply, to say I had no clue what, but that reply caught on the tip of my tongue when I heard a voice, a mocking one, break through the quiet air.
“Well lookie what the cat dragged in,” a sugary sweet southern voice cooed.
Jeremiah reacted like he’d jumped straight in a vat of boiling hot water.
“Rachel,” he replied in surprise.
That’s when he let me go and all but back-pedaled at the sight of his ex-wife.
Whatever ground he’d been able to gain while assuring me that he wasn’t a man whore slipped.
She stared between us as if she was trying to make a connection her brain just wouldn’t compute.
Worse, Erich was there, looking between us as well, making the connections his mother couldn’t.
“I thought y’all were boss and employee?” Erich drawled, sounding pissed. Hurt. “I thought that you left because you found a job that you ‘loved.’”
The fact that he used air quotes made me want to punch him in the throat.
The fact that he also didn’t realize how hostile his work environment happened to be was downright comical.
Erich took a threatening step forward, and I sighed as I backed away.
Jeremiah didn’t even try to stop me.
I was halfway to the car when the yelling started.
Yelling between Rachel and Jeremiah. Yelling between Erich and Jeremiah.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me with this,” Rachel screeched. “That was his girlfriend. Did you think to get back at him for choosing me in our divorce?”
I felt sick to my stomach.
Even though I knew Jeremiah didn’t give one rat’s ass for Erich, I knew that Rachel was spinning a web that others would believe.
And there were others in the parking lot listening to this nonsense.
A motorcycle driving up caught my eye, and the blonde Viking from the day that I’d seen Jeremiah coming out of a hotel room rolled into the parking lot looking angry.
He looked at Jeremiah and Rachel, then at Erich, before getting off of his bike.
I reached for the door handle of my truck, but dropped my keys onto the ground before I could get it open.
I was just squatting down to pick them up from where they had fallen slightly under the truck when the loudest boom I’d ever heard so close to my head sounded.
Frowning and half-covering my ears in surprise, I turned just in time to feel a body all but tackle me to the ground.
“Stay down,” Jeremiah hissed, rolling us until we were almost completely underneath my truck.
My knee smarted, and I knew that I’d just skinned it with Jeremiah’s enthusiastic takedown.
“Jeremiah, what the hell is going on?” I whispered, unable to pull myself away because of the tight hold that he had on my body.
He was all but pinning me to the asphalt with his big body, and I was so confused.
I started to push out, but he growled low and viciously. “Stay. Fucking. Down.”
I stayed down.
Not because he told me to or anything. I was a strong, independent woman, after all. One who did anything a man could do… to an extent.
But because I trusted him.
Fuck.
I trusted him.
I trusted him!
Oh my god.
How did that happen?
Another bang, followed by a curse, and then a motorcycle starting up and roaring off had the silence almost deafening.
“It’s clear,” I heard Jeremiah say.
I blinked, my eyes once again going to the underside of my truck.
“Man, this is dirty,” I found myself saying.
Not to him, necessarily, but to myself. Or maybe just to say it.
I didn’t know.
Anxiety and fear made me do weird things—like separate myself from what was actually happening.
Which had to be why I found myself in his office with very little fight on my part.
“I can’t believe you would save that girl over your own wife,” I heard said.
That’s when I realized that we were followed inside of Jeremiah’s office by none other than Erich and his mother.
I refused to call that woman Jeremiah’s wife, even if it didn’t have an ex in front of it.
The bitch.
“Ex-wife,” Jeremiah said. “And I would choose Satan himself if it came to a choice between him and you. Sorry.”
I would’ve laughed, had this situation been even remotely funny.
But it wasn’t.
In fact, it was so far from funny that I couldn’t breathe.
Worse, the moment he got me into his office, and his ex followed him inside, he’d all but moved away from me like he was afraid of catching some affliction only I could give him.
“Wife is a wife. I’ll always be your first, darling,” Rachel cooed. “And you should choose me. Because I’m the one that makes this business run.”