Page 18 of Reckless
“It solved the problem.”
“I know your mother.”
“So do I, and that is exactly why I know you made this worse.”
“You somehow saw my pain and took pity on me which means you knew I was vulnerable tonight.”
The wind pushed her hair back from her face.She shoved it away impatiently and glared at me like she was imagining multiple possible murder weapons and ranking them.
I should have been trying to calm her down.
Instead I found myself studying her mouth.
“You’re never vulnerable.”I dragged my eyes back up.“Would you have preferred I let her parade some poor woman from London in front of me while the whole table looked at you like-”
“Like what?”she snapped.
I stopped.
She folded her arms.Waited.
The ocean broke below us again.
I exhaled slowly.“Like you were someone that had to be explained.”
Her expression changed.Not softly.Not enough to make anything easier.
Enough that I knew I’d hit the right thing.
“That,” she said, “does not mean you get to use me.”
“It wasn’t using you.”
“It was exactly using me.”
“It stopped them.”
“It humiliated me.”
The words came out hard and honest.
The flush in her skin.The anger holding her up.The humiliation under it.that she’d saved both of us in there without ever once making this easier on me.
Then I saw another truth.If she’d contradicted me at the table, the whole thing would’ve become a spectacle.A joke.A public correction.Kelly laughing it off while the room realized she was not, in fact, with me.That I had either lied or presumed or wanted something not returned.
She would have taken the larger hit.I lowered my voice.“You could have denied it.”
Her stare turned lethal.“And what?Become the woman a billionaire publicly didn’t want after all?That would’ve gone beautifully.”
The practical stake.
The thing she’d understood the second I said it and I had too, even while saying it.
I’d trapped her.
“I see that now,” I said.
She blinked once, as if I’d slightly surprised her by admitting it.
