He sighed. “Don’t exaggerate, Cordelia.”
“Exaggerate!” she fumed. “Why didn’t you tell me about the debts, about the mob? We could have worked together to figure something out. We could have sold the business or the house, taken fewer trips, shopped and dined less. Instead you took off on a monthslong vacation inmyname with my assistant.”
“I needed a chance to think,” he stammered. “To regroup.Maybe I went about it the wrong way, but my heart was in the right place. I was trying to protect you by leaving.”
“You stole my identity,” she countered. She was ready to get on with this, put him behind her for good. “Why are you here, John?”
He looked around the room, eyes feasting on the burnished wood and ornate moldings, the prized portraits and candelabras. “I made a mistake,” he said ruefully. “Wemade a mistake.”
Cordelia resented his use of the first-person plural. She was fairly certain at this point that the only mistake she had made was marrying him in the first place. “You’re right,” she said after another sip of brandy. “You never should have fucked my assistant, racked up a small fortune of debt in my name, and run off leaving me holding the bag. And I never should have trusted you.”
With visible effort, he pushed past her accusation, taking both of her hands in his. “I want to make it up to you. Let me try.”
“You can start by moving your shit out of my house. And retracting your email to our clients. And calling Busy up to let him know where you are so he’ll leave me alone. I’ve got his number right here,” she said, pulling out her phone and setting it on the table before him.
John dropped her hands and fell back in his chair. “Ourhouse,” he huffed. “And I was angry. Can you blame me?”
“Yes, John,” she answered hotly. “I can and I do blame you. What did you have to be angry about? You cheated onme.You leftme.And you screwedmeout of everything. You don’t get to be angry in this scenario. The anger is all mine!”
“Okay,” he conceded. “You’re angry. I get it. But that’s why I’m here. So we can fix this.”
“I’m not a car!” she fumed. “You’re not a mechanic. We’re past that now.Longpast. The best you can hope for now is that I don’t press charges.”
He buried his face in his hands. When he looked at her again,his brows slanted upward like a puppy’s, but his eyes were unchanged as ever. “Tell me what I need to do. I can’t lose you, Cordelia. Not now.”
“Awww… what happened? Did Allison find someone her own age to give her multiple orgasms?” She glared at him, enjoying the dig. She knew it was unwise to poke the bear—he already had her over a legal barrel—but Cordelia couldn’t help herself. And for the life of her, she couldn’t understand what he was doing here at all.
He simpered. “I deserve that,” he said, putting on a noble face. “But I’ll have you know I haven’t been with Allison since you left.”
“Youleft!” she insisted, frustrated that he found it so easy to rewrite their history, to rob her of the suffering she’d endured at his hand.
“I did leave. The badgering and fighting drove me away. But I wasn’t leavingyou.I was leavingthe situation.Stepping back, like that therapist told you. Because things were getting too heated.”
Cordelia felt like she was going mad. He’d made it very clear they were over. He didn’t want to work it out. He didn’t want therapy. He wanted a divorce. So, what had changed? “Look, I don’t know what you’re on about. Can you just tell me what you’re doing in Connecticut?”
“I’m putting an end to the divorce,” he said. “You don’t want to do this, Cordelia. Neither do I. It’s time we come back together and work through this.” His eyes skirted the room in a quick sweep. “I have never wanted another woman like I want you right now.”
There was that word again—now.As if the Cordelia of today was somehow more appealing than the Cordelia of a month ago. She had seen the way he took in the room, how comfortably he seated himself at the head ofhertable, how his arm fell lightly along the carved arm of the chair, how he leaned against the regal backrest of it, at home.
It wasn’t her he’d come here for. It was the house. The inheritance. It wasn’t enough that he’d taken her business and home in Texas—he wanted this place, too. He would never have come back to all the debt he left behind unless he thought she was worth more than that. He’d take more if she let him, and he’d keep on taking. He wouldn’t stop until he’d run through her like a lamp burns through oil. She saw him so clearly all of a sudden. However broken her picker had been before, Bone Hill had mended it. She knew what John was. All he would ever do istake.
Cordelia burned with indignation. The word slammed into her hard, with all the force of a lead fist.REVENGE.It pulsed through her, white hot and defiant. The women of her family were burning for it. And so was she.
She downed her brandy and stared at him, eyes lit with cold fire. “I’m gonna need you to beg,” she said evenly.
“What?” John asked.
Cordelia sat on the edge of her chair and spread her legs, pulling the lengths of her skirt up over her knees. “You heard me, John. I want you to get on your knees, right here,” she said, indicating the space between her thighs. “And beg me to take you back.”
His face blanched, and she could see pride warring with greed. Which half won would tell her everything she needed to know.
“Come on,” she said gently, like she was coaxing a kitten. “Show me how badly you want this.”
He cast his eyes from one wall to another. “Are you serious?”
“As a tall man in a lightning storm.”
Slowly, taking one knee first and then the other, he lowered himself to the floor and scooted between her legs, a place she’d vowed he would never be again. He looked up at her pitifully and said, “Please, Cordelia. I love you. Take me back.”
