Page 36 of Threaded Lies

To try to figure out what he has to offer her that I don’t.

Because unless I can figure that out, I don’t buy this is real for a second.

And it very well could be because I don’t want it to be.

It doesn’t help one bit that I can’t fucking stay away from her no matter how goddamn much I tell myself to burn everything associated with the name Rothschild to the ground.

“No Mallory today, dear?” Florence asks in regards to the date I brought with me to the Rothschild barbecue. The one Audrey pushed on me and who was dropped off at her place more than disappointed with my hasty retreat.

She thought she’d been handed a gift—to be on my arm for the afternoon and hopefully twisted in my sheets soon thereafter. The first happened. The second? Not so much as, simply put, she wasn’t Rowan.

But that was before all of this happened—Manhattan, it’s time to change the dress, the engagement to Chad.

I grit my teeth and glance back over to where Rowan stands. She’s in some summery sundress that accents her curves and strappy sandals with lacelike straps that wind their way up her tanned calves. The same calves my tongue has licked their way up. “No, no Mallory,” I finally answer.

“Shame, dear. Love really is the fruit of life.”

“Yes, well, I’m not one for believing in love.” I offer a stiff smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I was on my way out.”

“So soon?” She hooks her arm through mine. I tense immediately but force myself not to follow my innate instinct to shrug her off. “We Williamses know how to throw one hell of a party. We’re just getting started. Besides, I invite you to stay awhile longer and watch those two right there.” She points to where Chad has his hand resting dangerously low on the curve of Rowan’s ass. “They’ll make you believe wholeheartedly in the L word.”

“I’m sure they would.” Or Chad might end up dead somehow. Thrown overboard. Hands wrapped around his throat. Fist plowing into the perfectly chiseled jaw. “But I have meetings to attend.”

“On a Saturday evening?”

“Every evening.”

“No rest for the weary?”

No, more like no rest for the vengeful. “Something like that,” I murmur.

“What would be more pressing than two of your friends celebrating their commitment to each other?”

Destroying your son’s and his best friend’s lives.

Fucking the oblivion out of some expendable woman simply because she’s not Rowan.

Figuring ways to painfully castrate your son.

“There are a few I can think of.”

She pats my hand and pulls her arm out of where it’s looped through mine. “Then you should focus passionately on those things until you find that love you don’t believe in.”

“Mmm,” I say and take a drink of the champagne she handed me. It tastes like acid.

Or maybe that’s the gut punch of meeting Rowan’s eyes from across the room.

I’m going to need something a hell of a lot stronger than champagne to weather this fucking party.

She still wants me.

I can see it in her eyes. Can feel it in the sweep of her gaze. But there’s something else there. Hurt? How can she look at me like I’m the one who hurt her when she’s the one who ruined whatever this was and chose Chad?

I toy with my cuff links—the ones she had to have left on my desk—and wonder why I wore them here. Why I wore a reminder of a woman I don’t want to want when I already can’t get her out of my head.

Across the room, she parts her lips, almost as if she’s going to mouth something to me, but then closes them just as promptly.

What in the fuck happened?