Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
I’d told her to pick up a client, one client, to avoid further punishment. Instead she’d tapped into half the world’s fashion market by charming an old man at the Louvre. In the Modern Impressionists wing, damn her. Vinod believed she was sensitive and artistic because he’d found her in tears, but I was pretty sure I knew the real reason she’d been in tears.
And yes, I felt sorry for her. She’d survived a hell of a depressing relationship with Simon, a ten-year slide into codependence and self-loathing. But if that was the case, why had she gone to see his painting? Why had she gotten emotional over it? Did she still feel something for Simon? Had she forgotten how terrible things had been while they were together?
I watched her during dinner, trying to gauge her thoughts. My own thoughts cycled between disappointment, suspicion, and unbridled fury. Simon Baldwin was an asshole, and I...
Well, I was better than him. I knew I was better than him, that I treated her with more kindness and respect. Didn’t I?
Maybe she didn’t see it that way. Maybe my level of control was too much. But I’d warned her. Maybe she was tired of the sex. We had so much sex, until I thought I probably exhausted her. She and Simon never had sex at the end. Maybe she’d prefer that.
Ugh, I had to get out of my head. I took another sip of wine and tried to follow Chere and Vinod’s animated conversation. Jino sat to Vinod’s side, a stone-faced gargoyle whose partnership with his employer was a much-discussed controversy. The two of them denied their relationship was anything but professional, but there was something in the way Jino watched over him that went beyond dutiful vigilance.
That’s how I felt toward Chere. It went beyond dutiful vigilance to possession and proprietary demands. I reluctantly agreed that Chere could spend more time with Vinod while we were in Paris, to talk about design and collaboration. I’d had other plans for her time here, carefully considered plans that she would now have to break. It felt like a loss of control.
But you can’t harm her. You can’t suffocate her. You have to let her grow.
I feared that she’d grow so much she’d drift away from me. I had so many fears. I was a ridiculous, fear-riddled man, and dinner was hard as fuck for me to cope with, and Vinod’s effusive estimation of her talent was hard for me to cope with, and her smiles for him were hard to cope with even if he was seventy fucking years old and reputed to be gay, and why the hell had she cried over Simon’s painting? Why had she visited it at all?
By the time we parted with Vinod and Jino and returned to our hotel room, everything seemed alarmingly unstable and fucked up. I felt confused about what to do, and Chere was nervous and overexcited, and we had to have a discussion that was going to get pretty brutal by the end, because it was about Simon and her, and her checkered past, and our past, which wasn’t exactly a fairy tale either. Fuck.
“Take off your clothes and sit on the bed,” I said, pointing to the spot where I wanted her to plant her ass.
She murmured something. Maybe Yes, Sir. She was immediately on guard, which only underlined the fact that we had tough shit to talk about. I watched her undress and fold her clothes with shaking fingers. When she was done, and sitting where I’d told her, I stood in front of her and buckled her collar around her neck.
“How was the Louvre today?” I asked. “Aside from meeting Vinod Sushil?”
“It was good. Nice.”
“Nice?” I grimaced and stepped back from her, crossing my arms over my chest. “What did you see while you were there?”
She let out a soft, slow breath and looked up at me. “I saw a lot of things. I did what you asked. I spent the day there looking for inspiration.”
“Did you find it?”
“I found a customer. Vinod’s interested in producing some of my designs for his spring lines.” Her chin lifted a little. Her fingers glanced over her collar before returning to her lap. “That’s what you told me to do. I did everything you told me to do.”
“And something you knew you weren’t allowed to do.” She paled at my sharp voice. Her lips tightened. If I’d had any lingering doubt of what she’d done, or why Vinod found her in tears in the Modern Impressionist area, her guilty expression washed those doubts away. “Confess it,” I said. “Don’t play games with me.”
Tears rose in her eyes. “Today of all days, I thought you’d be happy.”
“I’m happy about some things. Not so happy about others. Say it. Tell me what you did.”