Hush (Just This Once 1)

He looks at my face for a few seconds before he responds. “Do you consider us a couple, Chloe?”

I can’t tell if it’s a legitimate question or not. We’ve never talked about what’s developing between us. I know he feels something. I see it when we’re together in the way he looks at me and in the tenderness of his touch.

I’m uncomfortable answering so I take the tried-and-true approach that any good attorney would. I toss the question right back at him. “Do you?”

I wait fo

r him to press for me to answer first, but that’s not what happens.

“I do,” he says as his eyes search mine. “I consider us a couple.”

My heart flutters and even though the baby is tiny, I’m sure it can feel my joy. “I do too.”

He kisses me with his incredible mouth. His lips are soft, his breath sweet and when he breaks the kiss and looks into my eyes, I see the future that I’ve always wanted reflecting back at me.

***

I round the corner to my office after having lunch with Evan and stop dead in my tracks.

Christopher Newell is not supposed to be standing on the sidewalk in front of my office building. We agreed that I’d stay the hell away from him if he would do the same. Apparently, the man hasn’t changed at all. He couldn’t keep up his end of the bargain when he promised to love me forever either.

Physically, he looks just as he did the day he kicked me out of our apartment. He’s tall and thin. His dark hair is still peppered with just the right amount of gray thanks to his stylist’s expert touch.

He’s clean-shaven and dressed in a suit that costs more than some people’s yearly salary. Smugness surrounds him like a cloud of dust.

I draw in a deep breath and stalk toward him. I won’t back down. Whatever it is that he wants, I’ll deal with it now.

“What do you want?” I ask as I near him.

He spins on his heel to face me. “Chloe, dear, there you are.”

Dear? It was one of the many endearments he used when we were together. I used to covet those pet names until I realized that they were tools in his emotional arsenal. He knew how to control me with romance and the promise of a future.

“What do you want?” I repeat, not giving him the satisfaction of a response to his words.

He eyes me from head-to-toe. I’m grateful that I’m wearing a long coat. I can’t stand the thought of any part of him touching me, not even his gaze. “You’ll be sad to know that Bertram passed last week.”

That does sadden me. Bertram Phillips was Christopher’s driver for years, which meant he was mine as well. He was older, kind and impossibly hard not to love. He was one of the shining lights in my life after my mother passed. “How?”

“Heart attack.” Chris rests his palm against his chest. “In his sleep. God rest his soul.”

I push past him to get to the door. “You didn’t have to come all this way to tell me. A call to my attorney would have sufficed.”

His hand leaps to my shoulder to stop me. “I needed to tell you in person. Bertram left you something. A bequest in his will.”

I look up and into his face. I feel nothing. The butterflies that were there when he first locked eyes with me at his office more than a decade ago have long flown away. I don’t have the yearning desire to kiss him anymore. All I see when I look up at him is an insecure man who valued the future much more than the present.

“Bertram left me something?” I shake off his hand as I step back. “What is it?”

His hand dips into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He pulls out a silver fountain pen and hands it to me. “He put a note in his will that you’d understand.”

Tears sting my eyes as I reach for it. “I do understand. I do.”

Chapter 42

Evan

For someone who is pregnant and wearing heels, Chloe can walk faster than most people in sneakers.