Ashton Scott

“Fuck, Lorelei, that doesn’t mean much. Politicians are as dishonest as criminals. Shandwick must be giving them a kickback of some sort to endorse it.”

She straightens, her body tense. “You don’t know that for sure. I’m telling you, I went over all the information with a fine toothcomb. I couldn’t find anything that concerned me.”

I rake my fingers through my hair. “Okay, leave it with me. I’ll look into it.”

Her eyes widen, and the angry expression on her face tells me I’ve said something wrong. Moving off me, she snaps, “I don’t need you to look into it. I’ve looked into it.”

I stand, too. “I know you have, but I’ve got a lot more experience with this than you, so I’ll look at it, too.”

She stares at me for a long few moments. Anger radiates off her, and I wonder why she’s so worked up about this. When she scoops her bag up and slings it over her shoulders, I’m even more confused.

Moving closer to her, I ask, “Where are you going?”

“I need a moment. Or fifty.”

“Where?” I’m hopeful she means somewhere else in this house.

“At my place.”

“So you’re going home? Because I offered to look into this for you? That makes no sense, Lorelei.”

Her eyes flash with wild energy, the kind that screams her fury. “Oh, it makes perfect sense to me. I’m so offended you would think I’m not capable of this. I need some space to calm down.”

“Calm down here.”

She madly shakes her head. “No, I don’t want you anywhere near me at the moment, Ashton.”

I attempt to hook my arm around her waist and force her to stay, but she’s running on anger and smacks my hand away.

Those wild eyes of hers meet mine. “This is not the night for you to do your usual bossy shit. I’m telling you that I need the night to calm down, and then we can discuss the way you take over without stopping to think about my feelings. I understand that you’ve got more experience, but you need to understand there are ways to say and do things.” She pauses to take a breath and then adds, “I can see myself out.”

With that, she stalks out of my house, and for the first time in my life, I resist the urge to go after what I want.

I want nothing more than to stop her, throw her over my shoulder and drag her back inside.

I do not want to let her walk out of here tonight. But I’m coming to understand that when Lorelei is angry, she needs a moment. And if I’ve got any shot at keeping her in my life, I need to step back and give her that. What she’ll need to understand very quickly, though, is that after she’s had that moment, I’ll be coming for her and no fucking way will I be leaving without what I came for.

41

Lorelei

Sienna whistles low when I walk into our shared office the next morning. “Babe, you look like you partied all night, got no sleep, and tried to cover your exhaustion

with concealer. Tell me you did party. With Ashton.”

I dump my bag on the table and slump into a chair. After taking a long gulp of the coffee I picked up on the way to work, I grumble, “There was absolutely no partying with Ashton last night. Instead, he upset me, and I left his place early so I could put some space between us. I spent the night thinking about what happened, and only got about an hour of sleep.”

Her eyes widen, and she sits next to me. “What did he do? It’s not like you to get upset for no reason.”

I rake my fingers through my hair, still feeling annoyed and unable to shake it. I fill her in on the conversation that took place between Ashton and me and then ask her, “Do you think I overreacted?”

“No, I don’t think so. Ashton can be super arrogant, and it sounds like you reacted to that more than anything else. You work hard on your business, and I’m sure you did your due diligence on this deal, so it would have been like a slap in the face for him to insinuate you didn’t.”

I sigh. “See, that’s where I did overreact. He didn’t really insinuate that. It was more like he said he’d look into it because he has more experience, and he’s right, he does. I got my back up at the way he just kinda took over and said he’d do it. It made me feel inadequate, which meant my ability to think logically flew out the window.” I take another gulp of coffee and then groan. “I hate overreacting like this. He probably thinks I’m an idi—”

Sienna cuts me off. “There is no way Ashton thinks anything bad about you. And while it would have been good to be logical, it’s not always possible when our emotions take over, so don’t beat yourself up. Just reach out to him today and talk it over.”

I’m more annoyed at myself now than Ashton. And it’s ten times worse being annoyed at yourself than someone else.