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Up until he said, “That’s one of the toughest things about love. Your heart is in another person, and you really have no control over what they might do.”

“Love?” I stared. “Oh please. She’s my best friend, if that’s what you mean. I suppose I feel that kind of love. I want her, and I value her, I do. She does make me feel things I’ve never felt before. But romantic love, as in the falling kind? What a bunch of nonsense. That’s just a concept invented for marketing purposes. Stop looking at me like that. Just because you’ve lost your head over a woman doesn’t mean it could happen to someone like me. Please. I’m too pragmatic to give into such a notion. Stop smiling like that, as if you know something I don’t. You might be older than me, but I’m far more experienced with women. Oh shut up.”

“I didn’t say a thing,” Dair retorted, still with that blasted smile on his face.

I glared at him and we dropped it.

It was only as I was driving home that it hit me.

Holy shit.

I’d thought this way for so long, that unthinking it had never even occurred to me.

Iris was right, goddamn her. I’d needed to be reprogrammed.

Of course. It was so obvious, even to oblivious, self-loathing me.

Just because I’d declared something wasn’t real didn’t make it so.

I loved Ro. Of course I did.

I loved her so much.

Fuck.

I was in love with her.

As soon as I realized it was real I also recognized that it fucking sucked.

No one ever mentions how much it hurts to be in love. How all the numb parts of you are brought to life in an agony of feeling with every pump of your newly made heart. How every careless thing you’ve ever said suddenly has too much weight, and everything in your past has the sudden potential to end you.

I was in love, I just kept thinking, my mind reeling with the ramifications.

Now what the hell was I supposed to do?

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I CHANGED. MY priorities. My credo. My cynical heart.

My phone number.

It was necessary.

And I had a plan. A ruthless one. I might be dipping my toes into being romantic, but that didn’t mean I was going to be nice or gentle about it.

I planned to be an absolute nightmare, in fact, until I got my way.

Step one: Church.

I was wearing a perfectly tailored gray Armani suit as I waited by the front door. I’d already put Machiavelli away in her kennel.

I was ready early just to be sure she didn’t leave without me.

When she saw me, she stopped in her tracks.

The way she studied me was gratifying, the way she couldn’t completely hide her reaction was the best thing I’d felt since she’d ended us.

“You look nice,” she said evenly. “What are you all dressed up for?”