“Incidental. You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to believe whatever you want.” His voice was calm—infuriatingly calm. “You always have.”
I felt something hot and dangerous building in my chest—fury and disbelief and a kind of wild, hysterical urge to scream at the sheer audacity of the man sitting in front of me.
“I already paid you back,” I said. “The car. Every cent. You got your money.”
“I did. Thank you for that.” He leaned back in his chair, and his eyes never left mine. “Though I have to say, draining your savings account over a scratch seemed excessive. I would’ve accepted a payment plan.”
My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached. “I don’t want your charity.”
“It wouldn’t have been charity. It would have been basic financial sense.”
“I don’t want your financial advice either.”
“What do you want, Pauline?”
“I want to do my job,” I said. “Without games or whatever this is.”
“I wasn’t aware you doing your job precluded me from making business investments.”
“Business investments.” I laughed, bitter. “This is harassment. Stalking. An extremely expensive way to make my life miserable.”
“You think I bought an entire media company to torment you?”
“Did you?”
“That’s quite an ego, Wells.”
“That’s not an answer, Specter.”
I gritted my teeth at the absolute cocky look in his eyes.
“True, I bought this place.” He stood, and suddenly the room felt smaller. He was taking up more space than seemed fair. “But I'm not going to apologize for a business decision that had nothing to do with you.”
He walked toward me. I took a step back without meaning to—and he noticed.
Something flickered in his eyes—amusement, maybe, “This place was undervalued and had potential. The fact that you work here was a bonus.”
“A bonus.”
“An unexpected one.”
“Unexpected? You didn’t know I worked here?”
“I found out after the deal was already in motion.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it? To warn me? To do anything other than summon me to your office like I’m some kind of?—”
“What would you have preferred?” He cut me off, moving closer. “A phone call? A text? You’ve made it abundantly clear you don’t want to hear from me. What exactly was I supposed to do?”
“Stay away from me. That’s what you were supposed to do.”
“Hard to do when you work for me now. And now you can’t escape.”
I felt the words land somewhere beneath my ribs, my body tensing into that fight or flight mode.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
