What. The. Ever-loving. Hell.
“Are you deranged? I talk to Web about working with the Holt Foundation because I’m damn good at my job. As far as the rest of that bullshit goes, I’m not even going to justify that kind of ridiculousness with a response, beyond that as far as climbing the ladder, I’d need a job for that. Remember, you kicked the good ol’ corporate ladder out from underneath me in that coat closet. Or wait! I suppose what happened at the fundraiser was part of my master plan?” If it were, she truly sucked at being a gold digger. Almost banging her target’s brother would be a seriously shitty ploy.
“How can I know what goes on in your mind?” Will shrugged. “Maybe you’ve decided to switch targets.”
“You seem to think you know a lot about my motives.” Of course he did. He’d always been like this with her—a judgmental asshat. She squeezed the steering wheel tighter as she punched back the urge to holler in frustration. “Knowing me, I probably finagled it so that the meanest woman on the charity circuit walked in on us at the very worst moment.”
She blushed at the memory of her hands reaching for his zipper. His hands going up underneath the hem of her dress. Everything hot and sudden and beyond want into gotta-have-you-or-I’ll-explode territory. Hot annoyance and slick desire mixed together in an instant, making it hard to figure out if she should pull over the car to yell at him or finish what they started in that closet.
“Maybe you were hedging your bets,” he said, no longer even looking her way but instead at the cornfields as they sped past.
“More like the three sips of champagne I’d had on an empty stomach—unless you counted a couple of canapés—had affected my usually very good judgment.” Her cheeks burned at the memory of the door opening, light flooding in, and the cruel disdain on Mia Cardin’s face. “Then, like a virgin in a slasher movie, I paid for my momentary lapse in judgment when we walked out with everyone watching, thanks to an early alert from Mia. Amazing forethought on my part to ensure you were still tucking in your shirt at that moment so no one would be left doubting what had happened in the coat closet and, thus, furthering my evil plan.”
“I tried to fix that,” he said, almost sounding like he meant it.
“Is that what you call it?” She let out a harsh chuckle to cover the hurt that cracked like a whip against her skin. “You told my boss that the whole situation was being blown out of proportion. Any fool, and I quote, would know that a guy like you with your social status would never actually be with some poor chick who’d moved to Harbor City with everything she owned packed into three suitcases. Then you laughed.” The memory of that humiliation burned like lava through her veins. “And everyone else laughed.”
“That’s not exactly what I said.”
“Close enough.”
She swerved with a hard jerk of the steering wheel to avoid a pothole, and Will let out something that sounded like a mix between a miserable groan and a curse before clenching his jaw tight enough that she was surprised it wasn’t followed by a tooth cracking. Despite knowing that he was the last person in the world who deserved any sympathy, it slid in between the cracks of her protective shielding anyway.
“Okay, cut the crap,” she said. “You’re carsick, aren’t you?”
“As long as I keep my eyes on the horizon, I’ll be fine,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Okay. Whatever.” If that’s how he wanted to handle motion sickness, he could. See if she cared.
That, of course, lasted all of about thirty seconds.
Way to go, Hadley. Do you really hate him enough to want to see him puke his guts up in the rental?
Because she was still pissed enough that she was doing what her mom called her “huffy breathing,” she had to stop to consider it as they barreled down the highway. After all, he was the reason for one of the more humiliating experiences of her life, and now she knew he thought she was friends with Web only for his money. Still, her mom had raised her better than to leave a person—even a total asshole—to suffer, so she started scanning the road up ahead for signs advertising a decent place to stop. Well, that and the fact that she didn’t feel like driving for three more hours in a car that smelled like upchuck.
“Sorry,” she said, not even close to meaning it. “I had no idea you got car sick.”
He closed his eyes tight. “Web did.”
“Oh!” She gasped. “He set you up.”
Her lips twitched, and she bit the inside of her cheek. She wouldn’t giggle. She wouldn’t chuckle or guffaw or snicker. She’d been raised better than to laugh at people who were obviously in misery. Clamping her jaw shut tight, she kept her eyes on the road and told herself to stuff a sock in it.
“Go ahead and laugh,” Will said. “I won’t hold it against you. Your perfect family probably never pulls this crap on one another.”
She snorted and took the next exit, heading straight toward the last big gas station before the miles grew longer between towns and then the towns totally disappeared. “One time my brother K
nox replaced my shampoo with Nair, not realizing that it was impossible to miss the very distinctive scent of the hair remover.”
“What did you do?” he asked.
The tension in the car lessened at his question, eased by the common ground of sibling pranks, and the tightness in her shoulders gave a bit. “Whatever makes you think I’d take my revenge?”
That got a chuckle out of him, if a weak one. “I’ve met you.”
“I Saran Wrapped the opening of his bedroom door and then woke him up in the middle of the night screaming there was a fire. He ran smack into it, and I got the entire thing on my phone.”
“Nice one,” he said.