Authors: L.A. Rose

Icy Pretty Love (11 page)

I am always right.

This is good. She will help me get the company, and then she’ll leave. I won’t see her ever again. We won’t talk and I won’t have to deal with this strange interest I have in her.

No more of these journal entries.

They’re too depressing.

Golf.

Short for Ghastly Overdone unLikeable-person Fun. I bet golf has been the shitty rich-person sport since the beginning of time. The caveman with the most animal skins probably spent his days trying to knock pinecones into rabbit holes with the leg bone of a tiger.

Long story short: golfing is the worst.

But when there’s a hundred thousand dollars on the line, I could do a lot worse that hit little white balls with a stick. So that’s why I’m here, on a golf course three miles outside of Paris—I hadn’t even known golfing was a thing in France—trying to hit a ball into a hole while being aided by one Claude LeCrue.

“It’s all in the wrist,” he says, although my wrist is the one part of my body he doesn’t seem interested in, judging by the way he’s squeezed up against me like we’re stuck in a tiny elevator versus an enormous golf course. “Gentle flicks. Gentle flicks.”

I glance around. Annabelle is seated on a chair, pretty in a soft white dress, though her expression as she watches her husband basically dry-hump me isn’t pretty at all. When she catches me looking, though, she rearranges it quickly into one of sisterly apology.

Her face, however, can’t compete with Cohen’s.

I ignored him all morning, dousing him with the freezing water of silence. The only moment I thought I might break was when he looked at me after I told him the niceness lessons were off. For a half second, there was something bare and raw in his eyes. Then it was gone, and it was icy cold Cohen and proper, closed-off Georgette for the rest of the morning.

It was exhausting.

Then LeCrue called us and asked us to go golfing, and, well…now this.

“Don’t whack, tap,” Claude informs me, jamming his hips against mine. I’m about to hit some small white balls with this stick, but they have nothing to do with golf. Except Georgette Montgomery would never do something so unbecoming. All she does is smile uncomfortably while Mr. LeCrue sorts through his golf clubs at the top of the hill, oblivious.

I’m about to make a lame bathroom excuse when Cohen materializes by my side.

“I’ll show her,” he snaps. “You’re doing a terrible job.”

And that’s how I know he’s really mad: he resorts to plain language, instead of the elegant stuff he usually uses to make other people feel like crap.

I smile tightly. I’d rather have Claude’s bony hips invading my space than have to face the unwanted reactions that take place in my body whenever Cohen touches it. “I’m okay, really.”

“You haven’t made a single hole yet. At this rate, we’ll be waiting around for the rest of our lives, and I do not intend to spend the rest of my life in a golf course.” He moves in. Claude, grumbling, moves out. And then Cohen’s hands are clasped gently above mine, showing me the way. He’s not shoving himself against me the way Claude was, but his proximity is enough to electrify me.

What right does he have to electrify me?

Damn it.

“Thank you, dear,” I say through gritted teeth. “But I think I can take it from here.”

“Is that a fact?” His thumb repositions my grip on the club. “I reiterate. Three hours. No hole.”

“I’ll make a hole in you if you don’t get off me!” His hip tilts slightly against mine and I get dizzy.

“There she is. I was wondering if I’d see her again,” he says into my ear.

“Who?”

“Rae.”

Anger bubbles up in my stomach, but before it can overflow, Cohen takes the club from me, says “Watch,” and delivers a smooth, powerful strike to the golf ball. It sails approximately a million miles through the blue sky, disappearing in some far nook of the green hills.

I turn around. Mr. LeCrue, Claude, Annabelle, and the caddy are watching with their jaws on the ground.

“We’ll go get it,” Cohen tells them.

“There are other balls, my boy—”

Ignoring Mr. LeCrue’s protests, he takes my hand and pulls me after him across the grass.

Once we’re out of earshot, I ask him coolly, “What do you want?”

“I was going to leave it alone.” He drops my hand and walks with his arms at his sides, looking straight ahead. His eyes are more tired than ever. He didn’t get home until late this morning. “But curiosity won out. What happened?”

Uh-oh. I rub my clammy palms on my jeans. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” he says. “Suddenly you won’t even look at me. Yesterday, I thought…”

He trails off.

Now my curiosity is winning out. “You thought what?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I couldn’t care less if you like me or not.”

To have him drag me off like that, only to tell me that he doesn’t care about my opinion of him, is beyond infuriating. “Bullshit. You were going to say that yesterday you thought that we were getting along pretty well. That I liked you. And you know what? Maybe I did, a little bit. That was before I found out what a liar you are.”

He won’t hit me. Not when the others would see the mark the second we walked back. But I’m telling myself that more out of habit than necessity. I’m not getting the danger vibes, the familiar prickle in my skin telling me to run, at all. And that just makes me angrier.

Because I
should
be afraid of him.

“What lie? I haven’t lied to you.”

“
I promise I’ll never hit you,”
I mimic. “Pretty words, those. Too bad you didn’t mean them for a second.”

“Stop talking in circles.” His shoulders stiffen. “I haven’t hit you, so I have no idea what you could be talking about.”

“Not me. But Annabelle. Back when you were with her.” I want to add
you left out that convenient detail too,
but it sounds too much like something an actual fiancé would say. I don’t care if he’s dated Annabelle before. Obviously.

He stops short and turns to face me. He’s so visibly stunned that it tears down my defenses, but only for a second. Anyone can fake an expression. I’m proof of that.

“Where did you hear that?” he says quietly.

Great. I promised Annabelle I wouldn’t say anything, but it’s too late now. “Annabelle.”

Suddenly he grabs me by both shoulders. The shock reverberates down my spine. I’m almost happy, because now I can fear him like I should, but…the fear doesn’t come. He’s not grabbing me to hurt me, he’s…

“I don’t know why she would tell you that, but it’s not true,” he says, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say that’s a note of desperation in his voice. “Annabelle…wanted to be with me, it’s true. But we were never involved. She pursued me and I turned her down.”

“Was it an uppercut or a straight shot?” I sneer at him.

“I never touched her! Violently or otherwise.” His face darkens. “I can’t believe you think I’d do something like that.”

I shake him off me. “Every man I’ve met is capable of doing something like that, and has. There’s absolutely no reason for you to be any different. And absolutely no reason for me to believe you over her.”

He stares at me. Then his face slides shut. “Fine. Believe what you want. Like I said, it doesn’t matter to me.”

He turns away.

“God!” I burst out. “You are so aggravating!”

He bends down and picks the golf ball up out of the grass. Despite everything, a certain part of me enjoys the view. I want to douse that part in kerosene and throw it into an active volcano. “It does matter to you,” I say. “Why tell me it doesn’t?”

“If it matters to me or not, would that make a difference to you?” he asks with his back turned.

“Yes! I mean, no. I mean…”

“People believe what they want. I learned that long ago. If you’ve made up your mind about me, there’s nothing I’m capable of doing that will change it.” He tosses the ball up and catches it. “But you might want to consider this. If LeCrue doesn’t sell his company to me, Claude and Annabelle will inherit it. Considering the fact that my engagement is tipping him toward selling, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that the two of them might have a vested interested in driving us apart.”

I’m speechless.

He slips the ball into his pocket and smiles sardonically. “But it doesn’t make any difference, does it? You’re not going to throw a hundred thousand dollars in the trash, so whether you hate me or not, it doesn’t affect your usefulness. A chess player doesn’t worry if his key piece dislikes him or not, as long as it does what it’s supposed to.”

What. A.
Jerk.
I wish I’d been the one to pick up the golf ball, so I could peg him in the brain with it. “You’re right,” I spit. “All I have to do is burn a month here with you, and I’ll take my money and never think about you again. And I’ll start my life and find people to love me and I’ll get my happiness, and I still have a heart, so it’s possible for me. But you? You have every reason to be happy and you threw your heart on the fire anyway. I’ll never understand you. No one ever will.”

I turn and storm back toward the others, leaving him alone under the wide sky.

He’s having another nightmare.

I can hear him, crying out hoarsely on the other side of the apartment. I’m in bed, the covers wrapped tight around me. The first time I hear him scream, I decide I imagined it. I’m sure even millionaire apartment buildings have creaky pipes. But the second time, it’s unmistakably him.

I’m not going to go wake him up, not after everything.

Maybe…maybe he deserves it.

But by the sound of it, nobody deserves to have dreams that bad.

I clamp my pillow around my head, but I can still hear him. It’s like he’s being torn apart. No matter how I feel about him, it still makes my heart twist savagely.

There’s no rule about getting up and making a cup of tea, is there?

And there’s no rule about knocking the kettle over so it clatters noisily to the ground, making such a racket that if there are any dead people nearby, they’re definitely turning in their graves.

I make it back to my room just in time, because right when I’m about to shut my door, I hear his open. I hastily switch off the light and watch his figure through the crack. He crosses to the kitchen and picks up the kettle. In the moonlight from the enormous window, I see him glance at my door, but only for a moment. He sets the kettle on the kitchen counter. Then he collapses into a chair and puts his head in his hands.

I feel like I’m watching something intimate, something painful. I want to go back to bed but can’t. Eventually he gets up and goes back to his room, switching on the light. Minutes later, he comes out fully dressed and leaves the apartment, shutting the door softly behind him.

When he sleeps, he has nightmares.

So, instead of sleeping, he goes out.

But where does he go?

Well, I’m not going to find out tonight. I shut the door and carry my tea to my bed. My phone’s on the bedside table. I haven’t texted Sam in a couple days. I reach for it.

Now that I don’t have Cohen, he’s the only person I can be myself around.

RG: HELLOOOOOOOOO

Sam: Hell-no.