Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
It wasn’t going to be a given I’d drop everything and rush to school if one of our kids got sick. It wasn’t going to be expected that I’d make sure the fridge was full and food was on the table, or the clothes were clean and put away.
Still, to this day, these things were so embedded in our society, women unwittingly fell into patterns I had no interest in and had no intention of following.
So, yes. I was aware my search would be long and arduous and might come to nothing in the end.
But still, I wanted someone to share my life with.
It was just that now wasn’t the time to start that search.
Sure, if he crossed my path, I wasn’t going to waste an opportunity.
But Hale was not that man. Not only because he clearly played games, but because I was sitting across from him on the couch when he said he didn’t want the same thing.
He’d be a fantastic diversion in the meantime, for certain.
But I wasn’t going to be jerked around just because he could, all his attention devoted to me, a kiss that was a flagrant promise, and then nothing but necessary communication for days after.
Fuck that noise.
On that thought, I threw the covers aside, and the blast of cold that hit me was a better wakeup call than the alarm.
I made some coffee, hit the bathroom, did my getting-ready thing and headed out.
Zoey was already in her office when I arrived. Something else I liked about her. She was all over it all the time.
I called out a greeting and she was in the doorway to my office before I had my coat off.
“Need your approval to launch the Hale Wheeler blast,” she said, setting her laptop on my desk and turning it to face me. “Has he signed off?”
“Yep,” I confirmed as I sat and pulled her laptop close to me, seeing the preview of my homepage was up, as well as the tab for the Meta Business Suite.
“Geraldine sent in some pictures she took last night of Jamie Oakley and Nora Ellington. She’s offering us an exclusive. I recommend we buy them. They look gorgeous and there’s a lot of scuttlebutt around them. They’ve been seen together so much, it has to be getting serious.”
I noted Zoey had some pictures minimized just as she went on talking.
“And it fits, because Hale was with them last night.”
That felt like a punch landing, but I hid it as I casually asked, “What were they doing?”
I wanted it to be some kind of event, one where it wasn’t appropriate for us to be seen together since we’d had one date (and it was a date, even if it started out fake, it didn’t end that way). Obviously, we were nowhere near making it official by appearing together at an event.
“Out to dinner,” Zoey answered.
Just out to dinner with some friends, when he could have been out to dinner on his last night in the city with me.
Mm-hmm.
Fuck that noise.
“Website’s a go, publish,” I said, after scanning it. “But give me half an hour. I want to text Hale to confirm we’re on the schedule we gave him. If I don’t hear from him, I’ll assume he hasn’t changed his mind.”
“Gotcha,” she replied.
Then I went to Meta, checked the copy, the graphic, which was of the two of us on each side of his sofa, clipped so we looked like we were facing off, with my branded font across it saying, “Hale Wheeler: Elsa’s Exclusive Interview.”
I said, “Again, half an hour, then FB, IG are a go. You do a TikTok?”
“I emailed it to you.”
I nodded, taking in a breath before I maximized the photos.
They were of Jamie and Nora, standing on the sidewalk, looking glamorous, as usual. Even if the couple were the focus of the picture, Hale was with them, and it appeared they were chatting, ignoring the photographers that surrounded them, of which there were several.
I was about to look away when I saw it.
I peered closer.
Almost out of shot, you could see Hale was holding someone’s hand. That person was not in the photo, but she was reflected in the windows of the restaurant behind her.
She was blurry, but there was no denying it was Blake Sharp, socialite and sister to Alexandra Sharp, who was paired up with John Hendrix, Judge Oakley’s best friend.
I clicked to the other photo Geraldine was offering, and the side of Blake’s body and her hair were in it, but she was ducking her face like she didn’t want to be photographed (which was the new normal for Blake, and it was understandable, after the mayhem that happened at her defunct wedding).
And she and Hale were still holding hands.
This was a close bunch, all who were in the circle of Imogen Swan and Tom Pierce, regardless that those two were now very divorced and had moved on to new partners. That group spent a good deal of time together and rallied around each other often.