Page 130 of Arrogant Bastard
If Cat wants me gone, I’ll leave. But I hope I’ll get a chance to fix everything.
If she’ll give me a chance to talk to her, maybe I can explain. I’ve called her about a million times this morning, but each time it’s gone straight to voicemail. I don’t know if she blocked me or has her phone off, but either way, she doesn’t want to talk to me.
There’s a soft knock, and I look up in time to see my office door swing open.
Like I conjured her, Cat’s standing in the doorway. She looks tired and pale, but she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
A rush of relief—so great it would knock me over if I wasn’t sitting—washes over me.
“Cat.” I breathe out her name like she’s a salve on my skin.
“Can I come in?” Her voice is soft.
“Yes, Jesus, come in, please.” I usher her in with a gesture of my hand and stand. “We need to talk.”
“We do.” There’s a steeliness in her tone that matches her eyes, wiping out most of my relief and filling me with dread.
“I know you’re upset, but let me explain,” I tell her.
“I’m not sure that’s necessary.” She closes the door and sits down on the chair across from my desk, crossing her arms and legs. Needless to say, it’s a lot of closed off body language.
I sink back down and rush to fill in the silence. “Since you left, all I’ve been thinking about is where to start, and now you’re here, and all I can think about is how much I need to see you on a daily basis.”
She doesn’t look swayed, instead her chin tilts. “I went to see Meredith.”
My heart beats double time. “Oh.”
Cat raises a brow. “That’s all you have to say?”
“I know it looks bad. It’s hard to explain.” All this time to think about my plan, and I sit here unable to form coherent speech.
She shrugs. “It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”
“Meredith…she, well…” I shake my head. “Let me start at the beginning.”
Cat holds up a hand. “Not necessary. Let’s see if I have it straight. You worked for them. She took an interest and charmed her way into your heart. But then she started to show you who she really was—and you realized it wasn’t you she loved, but how you fit into her plans to steal control of the company from her brother. When you figured that out, you tried to break things off, but she threatened you in an escalating manner and you caved.” She looks me up and down. “Knowing you as I do, I assume you thought you’d figure out a new plan and try again. This pattern repeated for some indeterminate amount of time until you finally took off in the middle of the night instead of facing it again.” Her crossed leg swings. “How am I doing so far?”
I swallow. I guess it’s not that complicated after all. “I’m not saying it’s pretty, but it’s accurate.”
“Here’s what I want to know.” She takes a deep breath and blows it out. “Am I a habit? Because I’m having a hard time believing you didn’t see the parallels.”
I want more than anything to insist she’s not, but it’s not the truth. Only the truth doesn’t tell the whole story, and I feel trapped by the confines of it. Uncertain. But all I can do is give Cat what she asked for, as unvarnished as I can make it. I pick up my pen and toy with the clicker on the end. “In a way, yes. But how I feel about you is not habit. That’s brand new.”
She swipes a hand through her hair. “I don’t know about that. It’s not like you asked me to marry you or anything.”
The hurt I see in her silver eyes kills me. “I didn’t ask Meredith to marry me. I’m not even sure what happened qualifies as an engagement.”
“Would you care to explain?”
I rub my eye sockets, which are like sandpaper, I’m so tired. “She kept telling me it made sense to get married, that it would be perfect, and I didn’t agree, but I didn’t exactly put the matter to bed either.”
“Funny, you never struck me as a going-along type of guy.”
I glance away, thinking about my long-sorted past. I see now, there’s no escaping it. No running. If I want to be free of it, the only way out is in—to lay myself bare and see what Cat does with it.
I drop the pen I’ve been toying with and look at her, this woman who’s become everything to me. “I told you my dad died when I was eighteen.”
“You did, but I’m not sure what that has to do with your engagement.”
