“Please accept my apology, and let’s move on.”
Fuck you. I folded my arms across my chest, my bag dangling down to my thighs. “And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll keep on trying to apologize until you do, Professor Ferro.” He gestured at the hallway. “Shall we?”
Fuck you one more time. How could I retort after this? The son of a bitch won with his eighteenth-century gentleman’s talk, and all I was fighting now was a smile.
Professor Pattison emerged. “What’s it going to be, Professor Ferro? As much as I’d love for the two of you to work together, the decision remains yours.”
CHAPTER 8
JOSHUA
It had never failed to amaze me how she looked exactly the same, moved the same, spoke the same.
Every time.
The spitting image of my beloved Rena. My destiny. My eternal dream.
Even her smell, the one that haunted me and made my mouth water with her every move, and the rhythm of her pulse that echoed through my dead chest.
The heart that soon would stop beating like mine.
I walked by her side down the hallway, holding my fake breath. No more risks. I’d done enough damage for one day.
Despite her approval of Pattison’s arrangement, she must be wondering why I acted the way I did in his office. With that glimpse of fire in her spirit she showed me, I had no doubt she would demand an explanation. I would have to come up with a convincing lie for now. She wouldn’t be able to swallow the truth without a slow introduction.
“Are you being forced into this?” Her elegant neck stretched as she threw me a look from the corner of her eye.
I couldn’t keep my stare away from the two veins bulging next to her throat, summoning all my willpower not to remind myself of her sweet taste.
She suddenly stopped and twisted at me. “Why do you keep staring at me like that? I don’t like it.”
I blinked, dragging my gaze away from her. “I’m not being forced.”
She shook her head and resumed walking. “Then why did you change your mind all of a sudden? You don’t expect me to believe you spent two minutes with Pattison and came out a changed man for no good reason.”
“Damien Pattison is a very persuasive man. He put everything into perspective for me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “And why did you say you didn’t want to work with me in the first place? You don’t even know me.”
“I do,” I murmured.
She stopped again. “What did you just say?”
“I do know you,” I said firmly. “You’re Belle…from the Beauty and the Beast case?”
Her face blanched, her long, black lashes fluttering. “How did you know about that?”
“The news.”
Her chest rose with a deep breath, and flashes of all the things I’d once done with those breasts raced in my mind. “I didn’t think my life had been a gossip material in Oregon, too.”
“It must have been so hard for you that you had to move.”
“You have no idea.” She sighed. “Could you please not…share this piece of information?”
“Of course.”
