Page 40 of Irresistible

“Scarlet, I’m sorry. What happened.”

She had boiled down the events of Friday night and Saturday morning to a few sentences in preparation for this moment.

“We went to dinner on Friday. We had sex that night, and the next morning I saw that some other woman was sending him nudes. Nothing else has really happened since then and I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”

“I’m so sorry. I won’t take up any more of you time. Go ahead and get back to whatever it is you want to do. If you want to go home, that’s fine, too. Just take care of yourself, and just know that I’m here if you want to talk.”

Scarlet nodded, stood up, and left the room. She was surprised that Jim let things go so easily, especially when he cautioned her about the downsides of a potential relationship with Richard. Ordinarily, he would rub this in her face and never let her forget it. But she knew that she must have looked a wreck. She knew that Jim would have just felt mean if he had tried to discuss it further. He was right, she was an absolute mess. All she wanted to do was go home and crawl back into bed, hoping that the next day would bring something better. At the very least, she figured that that some sort of normalcy would return once Richard returned to headquarters. She just had to count down the days.

Before she knew it, five o’clock had arrived, and everyone left to go home for the day. Scarlet was cleaning up her desk and getting ready to head out after everyone else. Suddenly, she saw Richard appear in the hallway. There was no way around it. She was stuck, and she was going to have to have this conversation.

“Can we talk?” Richard asked calmly. He was clearly not interested in confrontation.

“I’m not sure we have anything to talk about.”

“I just want to set the record straight about what happened this weekend. Just give me a few minutes of your time. If you still hate me afterwards, I can accept that, and we can just move on from there. I leave in a few days, and then we can just get on with our lives.”

“Fair enough. Sure. Let’s have this conversation.”

She would have rather had a conversation with a hungry polar bear, but she figured that it would be over in a relatively short amount of time.

“But, you get no more than fifteen minutes. After that, I’m gone,” Scarlet added.

“Fine.”