Unbreak My Hart (The Notorious Harts 4)

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

He’s still so close, his hands on my shirt. I shove at his chest and it feels good, great in fact. I am enraged.

To have slept with a guy who had sought me out...to have slept with him twice!

‘Do you have time to do this now?’

‘Make it quick.’

‘It’s not a quick kind of conversation. Cancel your meeting.’

My heart rate accelerates. I should cancel it. I should pick up the phone and get my assistant to cancel it then I should lock my door and keep this son-of-a-bitch here until I understand everything he’s trying to tell me.

But this business is everything to me. It’s only with the business and its success that I’m able to fund my charity, and there’s no way I’m going to let anything derail that.

Ever.

‘No.’ I reach for a pen on my desk and grab his hand—his warm hand, a hand that has pleasured me and somehow lied to me, all at once. I scribble an address on the back of it. ‘Meet me there at six o’clock.’

I could invite him back to my place, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want him in my house. How dare he lie to me? How dare he have known this right from the start—but that first night...he wanted to talk. He kept trying to chat and all I could think about was getting him into bed.

That doesn’t matter! He should have tried harder.

‘Avery—’

I shake my head, knowing there’s nothing he can say that will make me less angry. Inexplicably, I feel a welling in the back of my throat, as though I’m going to cry.

‘Just go, Barrett.’

‘It’s not—’

‘Get out.’ I snap the words

at him, fury and hurt and confusion all mingling together. ‘Please go.’ Damn it, those words sounded wet with tears. Great.

Mortification comes to my rescue. I storm towards the door. ‘Six o’clock.’ He regards me for a moment and then nods.

As he passes me he pauses for a moment, his eyes boring into mine in a way I resent. ‘I’m sorry.’

I jerk my gaze away from his in response, staring out of my window. I don’t breathe again until I hear the elevator doors whoosh closed and know that he’s gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

HE’S WAITING WHEN I arrive, a minute after six. My heart slams into my ribs, surprising me with its response. So too does the flush of desire that assails my central nervous system, as if my damn body didn’t get the memo that Barrett Byron-Moore is a huge fat mistake I’m never going to make again.

I’m here for one reason and one reason only—to find out what the heck he knows about my mom. Then I’m going to tell him to get the hell out of my life.

‘Miss Maxwell,’ Erin, the manager, greets me. ‘Some nice guy’s waiting for you over there.’

‘He’s not that nice,’ I mutter out of the side of my mouth, moving through the restaurant. He looks up as I approach, standing and gesturing to the chair opposite.

‘Did you think I was going to sit in your lap?’ I snap tartly, then regret it because, while I’m angry, there’s no need for straight out incivility. I hold back an apology though, taking the seat instead, dipping my head forward a little.

The familiar sound of wine being poured into a glass catches my attention. I watch as he finishes, then reach for the stem, moving it towards me.

‘How are you?’

‘How do you think, Barrett?’ I sip the wine. ‘Just tell me whatever it is you came here to say. What is it you know about me? About my...parents.’ The word is discordant because I’ve never thought of them in that way before. I had a mother and, yes, biologically, a father, but I never knew who he was, and he was certainly never a part of my life, except a gaping black hole.