A flare of heat sparked in her gaze before she looked away. With a shake of her head and a laugh, she grabbed her bag, heading upstairs.
Leaving me alone to imagine her pert nipples peaking above the soapy water, her soft skin wet and begging to be touched, and me with an impossibly hard cock.
CHAPTER 2
ASPEN
“Listen, Jade. I understand that it’s super serious between you and…”
“Jace,” she supplied through the phone.
I balked at the similarity, but quickly refocused. “Yes. Jace. But you agreed to your donation for the auction months ago. You can’t back out now.” I strived for firm but knew my panic tinged the words with pleading. We were three days out from the event, and I didn’t have a chance in hell of finding a replacement for Jade’s offer to take the winner to the Oscars with her.
“I know,” she whined, before her tone turned whimsical. “But I didn’t see myself finding Jace last week. Our romance is such a whirlwind, and he’s…everything. The least I can do is respect his request to escort me. I mean, he brought up a good point about how it would basically be cheating if I went with someone else.”
I clutched the phone, slack-jawed, slowly blinking, and speechless. I didn’t know where to start combating her unhinged reasoning. Not that she gave me the chance.
“Hey, I have to go. Jace is here to take me to lunch.” She squealed, then quickly sobered. “I’m so sorry, Aspen, but when it’s love, you gotta hold on to it. You get it.”
“Actua—”
The line went dead. I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it, swallowing the speech about how love could suck a dick because responsibilities were more important. With a groan, I dropped my head to my desk with a thud.
“Having a bad day?”
For the third time in a week, I screamed around my heart lurching into my throat. Slapping a hand to my chest, I glared at my father. He winced with a sheepish smile as he let himself into my office, closing the door behind him.
“Sorry about that.”
“Seems to be the trend for the week,” I grumbled.
He huffed a laugh and dropped back in the seat across from my desk, unbuttoning his jacket. Meaning I needed to brace myself because he was getting comfortable. With a herculean effort, I bit back a pleading whine for no deep conversations today and willed passive features.
“Want to talk about it?” he offered.
No,I wanted to shout like a petulant child. Instead, I dug deep for the cool businesswoman I needed to be. After our first conversation this week, I didn’t want to leave any doubt in my father’s mind that I could—and would—handle anything thrown my way. I needed him to know that Quinn Music Group was in good, capable hands with me.
“This kind of response…it’s like a child lashing out because they didn’t get their way. It makes me wonder if you’re anywhere near being the CEO this company needs. It makes me wonder if you ever will be.”
He’d assumed I’d moved out of my apartment without telling him to spite him for selling off part of our family business without consulting me. In reality, I hadn’t told him because I was a coward unwilling to face the truth of my agreement with Lucian. But I didn’t have to admit my cowardice—I onlyended up having to admit my engagement to Lucian. Even that bombshell was better than leaving him to wonder if I could handle the company.
I internally cringed, remembering it.
“Of course I will be. Iamready,” I corrected quickly with fervor. “This…this whole thing is a misunderstanding. It’s not what you think.”
“Then what is it, Aspen?” my father asked. “Please explain it to me so I can understand what the hell is going on.”
With a deep breath, I held up my hand and smiled. Or tried to. “I’m engaged, and I moved in with him this weekend, which is why I wasn’t at my apartment when you stopped by.”
“Who?” he asked, despite his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
With that single word, he burst the bubble holding together the illusion that admitting I was engaged would be the hard part. That admitting I’d moved out of the apartment I’d lived in since my sophomore year of college without telling him would be the most challenging part of this conversation. Neither came close to what I had to say next.
Clinging to the smile that felt more manic than jovial, I laughed, attempting to hide my increasingly panicked breaths. “Umm, you actually know him already.”
“What? I didn’t even realize you were seeing anyone. The fact that it’s someone I know is preposterous,” he spluttered, shaking his head. “Who? Wh-who the hell is it?”
With clenched fists, I sucked in a deep breath and exhaled the lie. “Lucian.”
