Page 55 of Keep Me Safe
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
“All right. Are you still naked under that skirt?”
I paused. Once again, he’d put me off-balance. The air in the room was thin and made me swallow thickly. “Maybe.”
“Show me.” It wasn’t a request. He wore the same expression he had in the back of the limo, the one filled with hunger and power.
I set my beer down on the counter lazily. “You don’t have any furniture in here.”
A wicked smile tugged at his lips. “But I do in the bedroom.”
Jason had given me the ‘all clear’ to turn my phone back on, and it was late when it buzzed on the nightstand. Shawn stirred beside me on the bed but didn’t wake. I blinked my bleary eyes at the screen and had to read it again.
Really?
The carpet was plush under my bare feet as I hurried out of the bedroom, far enough out into the living area not to disturb Shawn.
“What do you want, Paul?” I whispered it, but it echoed in the empty space.
“I’ve been calling you for days. Where have you been?”
“None of your damn business,” my temper said. “What do you need?”
“I’ve been worried about you. You seemed okay after the incident in New York, but then you disappeared. No one could reach you, and you weren’t in the office all week. You never take time off?—”
“I’m fine.”
He wasn’t listening. “Not even when you’re sick. I know you. Something’s going on.”
Paul thought he knew me? No, not anymore. “What do you want?”
“I have to tell you something about Scott.” His superior attitude, the one he’d kept hidden from me until we were married, seeped into his voice. Almost like he was looking forward to revealing this shocking information.
“I’ve already heard.”
It made me sad. I had liked Scott right up until the gun, and even after, he still didn’t deserve what happened to him.
“So where are you?” he asked, forcing casualness. “With him, Shawn Dunn?”
Thatwas what this phone call was about. His curiosity, his jealousy.
“Why do you care?”
“Have you looked at this guy? He’s got a reputation for sleeping with anything that moves. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
He’d probably gone running to Google the moment Shawn had left the office with me. But his last statement was so absurd I couldn’t process it right away.
“You don’t want to see me get hurt?” I laughed, although it contained no warmth. “Why? You think you’re the only one allowed to do that to me?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“And why do you assume I’d get hurt? Maybe I’m just interested in fucking him.”
I shocked my ex-husband into sweet silence with my flat-out lie, but only for a few seconds.
“Nice. Are you? ‘Fucking’ him, as you so elegantly put it?”
I could see his face. The sneer covering the insane desire to know, eating him from the inside. When I’d asked for the divorce, he’d told me I was making a mistake. He was sure I wouldn’t find someone else, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t trade up.
