Chapter One

I stood there as he crossed to the couch and dropped down, picking up the folder. My jaw dropped as I followed and sat beside him.

“You … you’re not going to fire me?” I was still processing the fact that he didn’t want my two weeks’ notice.

“Of course I’m not going to fire you. If I find out all of this is made up, I’ll fire you and Melina.” I opened my mouth to tell him that she had nothing to do with it, but he cut me off. “Oh, don’t even—I know you weren’t doing this on your own, and a private investigator is just the type of thing Melina would do.”

I swallowed dryly, unable to tell him that it wasn’t true. So I just gave him a soft smile. “Well, if it’s wrong, then you can fire us both.”

“Oh, I plan to.” He blew out a deep breath. “How could you go and do this behind my back?”

“What did you expect?” I snapped. “You weren’t listening to us, and we both had a bad feeling.” I pointed to the papers. “Our bad feeling was right.”

If anything, I at least knew she’d tried to sleep with him. I knew that for sure because of how he’d reacted when I brought it up.

Of course, it didn’t take the smartest person to know that something was going on with her; I mean, come on, she just popped up out of nowhere and wanted to work late nights and spend all her time with him? I mean, come on.

I sat silently as he looked through the papers.

“Do you want to contact some of the men she’s already scammed?” I raised an eyebrow. “Or do you think I’m making that up or something?”

“I don’t think that, no.” He eyed me as he lifted some of the papers. “These bank statements would be hard to forge. Anyways, I think it would cost you way too much to make this all up.”

Oh, thank God, he thought I was too cheap to make it up. You know, it wasn’t like he actually believed me or anything.

I sat there waiting. It was the longest fucking hour of my life, but I didn’t annoy him, I just sat there quietly. About half an hour into it, Melina texted me to let me know that she made it home and see how it was going. I told her the truth—that I had no fucking clue, but he was, at least, looking at the papers we had in the folder.

Finally, he put the folder down and looked at me.

My heart did a backflip. Was he about to break up with me? I swallowed dryly.

“So …?” I asked after thirty seconds of silence.

“So … it looks like there is a lot of evidence in here. I’d like to look it over some more before I confront her about everything in this folder.”

“Don’t tell me you still don’t believe me?” I groaned. Anger boiled inside me, but honestly, I was too tired and felt way too defeated to get mad. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach as disappointment settled in instead of anger. I didn’t want to be disappointed—I wanted to be mad. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, and that if he didn’t fire her, he should fire me.

“I didn’t say that.” He reached out and touched my thigh. It took everything I had not to push him away. “I just need to process everything before I confront her about it. I don’t want to go in angry and let her get the upper hand.”

“Oh.”

Okay, I guess that was rational. That made sense, and I couldn’t dispute it. I stood. “Alright, so do you want to … stay here tonight?”

“No.”

I thought my heart couldn’t sink any lower. I was wrong.

“Okay.” I swallowed, trying to ignore the fact that I could feel the tears coming on.

“I—I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Yup.”

“Good; I’d like it if you were at work early so we can discuss what to do about … this situation.”

Oh, that was a nice way of putting it. It was just a ‘situation’ now? Cute, but I didn’t say anything. I just nodded and crossed my arms over my chest as Dean stepped towards me. I stared at him and wanted to ask if he’d been tempted to sleep with her, but I didn’t dare. It wasn’t that I was being nice to him, it was a case of being too scared to know the answer for myself.

He stepped towards me then paused, a smile spread over his face, but it looked forced. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.” He grabbed the folder. “Do you mind if I take this?” I shook my head.

What was he going to do, shred it? I didn’t care what he wanted to do with it, all that mattered to me was that he knew what kind of woman he was letting into his world. I watched him as he headed for the door and left without another word. It was the first time in a week that we left each other without saying ‘I love you,’ but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Not because I didn’t love him, but because I wanted to know if he would say it first.

I swallowed dryly as a tear slid down my cheek. Fuck it. I could have stayed up a little longer and cleaned, or even gotten some side project work done, but what was the point?

Right now, I couldn’t answer that, so I just headed for the bedroom and dropped into bed doing a face plant. A deep breath passed through my lips as I pulled the blanket over myself and closed my eyes. It wasn’t the most productive way to spend the night, but every now and then, a girl just had to wallow in self-pity—right?