Second Chance Rival

“Mr. Hawkins, I—”

“Here’s five hundred dollars. You never saw me here, understood?”

Her eyes beamed, grabbing the bills from his hands. “Yes. No problem. I won’t say a word.”

“Great.” He gazed at the rack of dresses. “She’s going to try these on, and she’ll call you when you’re needed.”

She eagerly nodded, glancing back and forth between us before leaving.

I smacked his chest. “Are you out of your mind?”

He laughed.

“Where did you get all that money?”

“I have a trust. It was in my parents’ will.”

“You just spent five hundred dollars to be alone with me in a dressing room.”

“And I would have paid more if I had to.”

“You’re insane.”

He smiled, tugging me toward him with his hand on the back of my neck. “Insanely in love with you.”

I wish I would have known then that this was the beginning of the end...

For us.

Chapter 23

—Tristian—

Now

“Do we have to leave?” she questioned, kissing my chest.

We’d just woken up, and it was the last day of our two-week honeymoon.

“Considering you didn’t want to come and now you’re begging me to stay, I could be persuaded to give you what you want.”

“You know what they say: happy wife, happy life.”

I chuckled. “I have a call I need to be on soon. We can discuss this after I’m finished.”

“I like the sound of that. What’s the call about?”

“It’s with an old friend, Adrian Drake. He needs help with his Fortune 500 company.”

She cheekily smiled. “Maybe I should be on the call. I could definitely give him my expert advice.”

“That you can, kitten, but I think he’s looking for a man chat.”

“Oh, no girls allowed?”

“If you must know, he’s struggling with his executive assistant, and he wanted to know if I knew anyone qualified that he could bring on. The position is for half a year.”

“Adrian Drake…” She thought about it for a second. “Why does that sound familiar?”