They were still standing close, even with the step back she took. Trey felt drunk on her, drunk on the sensation of kissing her, of the sweet vanilla taste of her still in his mouth, of the lingering warmth of her body that had just been pressed against his. He wanted to keep drinking. To keep drinking her in until he blacked out from her beauty.
She could lie to him. She could lie to him with her words, but her body gave her away. Her lips were swollen, her hands were shaking at her sides. Her entire body was vibrating, and her pupils were blown so wide there were almost no iris left.
Ambi’s shoulders heaved. He thought for a second that she was going to say something. To tell him off. That she’d do something. Anything. Instead, she whirled and ran out the door. Ran. She wasn’t someone who fled from her problems. She wasn’t someone who ran away from anything. She stood and faced it. Not without fear, but with bravery. She didn’t run.
Yet there she was, racing through the parking lot, her braid streaming out behind her. Trey stood rooted next to the window by the door, breathing so hard and sharp that it felt like glass going in and out of his lungs. He watched Ambi get in her car and peel away. He kept watching, long after she was gone. He stood in the same spot for so long that it felt like he wasn’t human any longer, like he’d been turned into some version of a statue, as ultra-modern as the rest of the building.
When he finally forced himself to walk out to his own car, his heart was still racing. Everything felt wild and wrong and torn up inside. He was bleeding out. Not slowly, but violently. He waited another half hour, sitting in the cold of his car without it running. He waited until it started to pour. Raining. Freezing raining. It barely even registered with him.
He waited until he was sure Ambi was back at the office, or at least safely pulled over somewhere else, then he texted her private number. The one she hadn’t ever given out. The one the PI he’d hired to look into her handed him as a little extra gift.
Ambi was Ambi and she wasn’t going to give in without a fight.
Which was why he’d take her off guard with a truce.
CHAPTER 8
Amberina
Somehow a storm snuck up on Ambi and took her by surprise. A vile storm. A genuine storm. A storm raged, brutal and as ugly as the one going on in her heart.
First, the city was blanketed with freezing rain that fell for hours, turning the streets and sidewalks alike into skating rinks. For the grand finale, the wind kicked up and the temperature dropped, and the rain turned to snow. The wind furiously swirled and tossed the fat flakes about until it was nothing more than a good old-fashioned blizzard with whiteout conditions.
Travel wasn’t advised. People were being warned to stay off the streets when and if at all possible. The whole thing had come up in a few hours and by the time evening rolled around, the snow was so mounded up that most people probably couldn’t get around anyway.
The storm wasn’t forecasted, but right after her meeting with Trey at the hall, the weather warnings started dinging away on the weather app. Ambi canceled her plans for the afternoon, which included grocery shopping and a few other personal errands and went straight back to the office. Sometimes it was lucky that she lived where she worked. She parked her car in her spot in the back and hunkered down to work on some unplanned accounting for the afternoon.
She tried not to think about the text Trey sent her earlier.
He was sorry. Bullshit he was sorry. He wasn’t freaking sorry. Sorry that she’d run out on him, maybe. Sorry that she had more than a couple thousand dollars of his money in her pocket and she could choose to just call the whole thing off and slap him with a sexual assault charge. Yeah. He was freaking sorry all right.
He’d texted her personal number, which meant that somehow, he had it. He said he wanted to apologize in person and that he’d come by her office after work. Around six.
Trey was never late. It was six-thirty and when he still hadn’t showed up, Ambi leaned back in her office chair, propped her feet up on the desk and stared at her pink socks with the flamingos. She’d locked the door at four when she normally closed. No one could get around the city in the terrible weather anyway. She’d still sat down at her office, forcing herself to do catch up work and paperwork that she hated.