“Where are you going?” She gestures at the doorman behind her. “I’m sure Jacques can call and convince them to move us to a table for four.”
“Four?” Scott asks, and there’s an edge there that confirms I’m not going to like the rest of the conversation.
Madelyn smiles. “John is just parking the car.”
I dart my eyes back and forth between them. Who the hell is John?
“I see. Shame we’ll miss him.” Scott didn’t sound like that was a shame at all. Since when did he lie through his teeth like a socialite on the dating circuit? “But we really must be heading off.”
“No, no, it’s fine.” With a start, I realize that’s me. Scott stares at me and I colour. “If you want…”
“Yes,” Madelyn says, delighted. “Fine indeed!”
“It’s not fine, Madelyn.”
“Madelyn again?” She laughs. “Please, darling. Don’t be all formal. I’m so glad that you are back.” She moves in closer as she speaks, emphasizing glad as she presses her fingertips to the front of his shirt.
My head explodes. Or at least it feels like that, but since there isn’t brain all over the antique everything in Scott’s lobby, I guess that was just me not being able to cope with this porcelain doll come to life.
Touching my man like she knows him.
Because obviously, she knows him. And I don’t know her, but then she turns to me, flashing green eyes curiously blinking out of that peaches and cream complexion, and she tilts her head to the side. “And you must be Alison.”
My mouth drops open.
She knows me, too.
Well, fuck.
“Who are you?” I don’t care if I’m being rude as I take a step back.
Her eyebrows raise just enough to confirm that yeah, I am.
Still don’t care.
Scott crosses his arms and frowns at me as I move further away. It’s a small lobby, I can’t go that far, but he’s still scowling at me. “This is Madelyn Dunn. I wasn’t expecting to see her this trip. I apologize for not giving you a heads-up.”
“A heads-up about what?”
“Honestly, Scott, must you always be so locked-up tight?” She smirks at me, like we’re in on a joke together. But we’re not. Hot, achy panic is settling into my chest, because I don’t like that she knows all this stuff about Scott. I don’t like that she assumes we’re on the same level in that regard, and I’m pretty sure any second she’s going to realize that actually, I don’t know him nearly as well as she does.
And then I’m going to find out why that is.
I want to know, because fuck him for keeping secrets, but I don’t want to know, because fuck me…I’ve fallen into caring about us. Valuing what we have, and now I don’t know what that is.
What do we have?
Secrets, apparently.
And a beautiful British woman ready to spill them.
She smiles at me. “Scott and I were close once. We’re still close, really.”
I want to scream at her. Tell her to get her mitts off my man, but they are still close and we just have midnight hook-ups. And a single date with a tequila bottle. And this European adventure, although I’m starting to think that in the catalogue of our limited relationship, this might not fall into the relationship-building category.
I don’t know anything about Scott and she knows everything, including why he’s come back now and apparently what his business is.
My head hurts.
And she’s still touching him. Her hand is wrapped possessively around his biceps and a vein throbs in my head as I stare at that point of connection.
I edge backward, nodding inanely.
Scott says my name, but it’s like he’s talking at the far end of a tunnel. Everything is fuzzy and echoing inside my head. My pulse is pounding in my throat and my eyes are itchy.
I know this feeling.
It’s rare, because it’s practically been bred out of me, but I’m going to cry.
Oh, no.
No, no, no, not effing happening, no.
Not going to cry over the guy who took my virginity. Nuh-uh.
He doesn’t get that power.
I try to swallow. Oh, shit, that’s hard. I try again, forcing the lump in my throat to move out of the effing way, because I don’t have time to care.
I need to get my bag, find a cab, and get the hell out of this country.
“I forgot something upstairs,” I say inanely and punch the button for the elevator. Lift. What-fucking-ever. The doors open and I stumble inside. There’s no button to make it close faster, so I just stand there, face burning, as Scott glances back at me and talks faster at Madelyn.
I’m not listening. If I listen, I’ll cry. If I cry, I’ll lose my mind. So I think of Research Methods and try to guess where in the fourth floor stacks I’d find a book on quantitative data gathering, and do not think about the man I just realized I thought of as my man, and how fucked up that is.
How immature and pathetic I am.
Definitely not thinking about that.
Nope.
Quantitative data gathering. That’s all that’s on my mind.
And the doors close, just as Madelyn lifts her voice in my direction. “Really, genuinely lovely to meet you.”
Nothing has sounded less genuine or lovely ever in the history of polite conversation.
—twenty-four—
Scott
I’m going to kill Madelyn.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demand, shoving her away from me. I need to go after Ali, but I need to know that Maddie won’t follow, either. For all I know, she’s got a key to my flat, and that’s not on.
“Getting to know your…friend,” she says.
“She’s not just my friend and you know it. You’re causing trouble. We are not close,” I hiss under my breath. I don’t need to make a scene in front of the porter, Jacques. “We weren’t close when we were engaged, and we haven’t spoken in more than a year.”
She blanches. “I don’t want someone taking advantage of you,” she says stiffly. “That’s all.”
“If you know her name, then you know her family. Ali’s the last person to take—you know what? It’s none of your fucking business. Why are you really here?”
She frowns at me. “I live here.”
What the fuck?
“John and I bought the flat on the second floor a few months ago. Evelyn didn’t tell you?”
Evelyn is my cousin. Soon to be my dead cousin, if my rage has anything to say about it. She might be Maddie’s best friend, but she’s my fucking blood relation. “No.”
“Oh, Scott.” She sighs. “Go and smooth things over with your friend, and then come ring our bell. We’d love to catch up.”
“Not happening. Change of plans, we’re leaving tonight.”
Her brow wrinkles. “I thought you were here to untangle your bank accounts? Such an unseemly mess, that.”
“My cousin has a big mouth, and perhaps so does my brother. What I’m here to do is none of your business.”
“It used to be my business.”
“That was when you were going to be my wife,” I growl at her. Behind me, I hear a gasp, and I turn around. Ali is standing there. I didn’t hear the elevator.
She gives me a cold, level stare. “Change of plans, Mr. Mayfair. I’m heading straight to the airport. The full charge for our session can be paid directly to my pimp. An extra thousand for giving it to you up the ass.”
Madelyn gapes at Ali as she sweeps past, and I’m tempted to laugh before I realize I need to stop her. I reach the street as Jacques, ever the efficient porter, already has a taxicab waiting for her.
I wave him off and grab the door. “Wait, babe…”
She swats at my arm. “Fuck you, Scott. You think I’m overreacting? I was fucking falling for you. You know that? That’s what I realized in the elevator as we came down to the lobby. I was thinking, holy fuck, this is something special. And then I find out…nope, you’re nothing special. You’re a giant dick, full of secrets and lies. Which is fine and dandy if we’re just fucking, which is what I wanted in the first place, but you had to go and worm your way into my heart. That’s off-limits. I’m going home, and you can’t stop me. I don’t want you to try. I don’t want you to do anything, you get me?”
“No.” I ignore the driver, who’s shooting daggers at me, either for holding up his fare or more likely for taking advantage of a young woman, and I lean into the cab. “I didn’t tell you about Madelyn because it’s embarrassing, nothing more. And the rest of it is just nothing. It’s the boring shit. You’re right, we’ve got something between us—”
“No we don’t. That was a lie. A fantasy like everything else.” She turns to the driver. “Can you call the police? The bobbies? Whatever you call them. I want this man away from me.”
“Whoa, stop.” I shake my head. “You are way overreacting here.”
She glares at me. “Get out of my fucking cab. Is that woman your ex-fiancée? Did you forget to tell me that you’d been engaged? Does she know more about you than I ever will? Get. Out. Of. My—”
I back up. “Okay.” I pull out my wallet and hand over a hundred pounds to the driver. “Take her—”