Dangerous Exes (Page 47)

Maybe he liked kissing it.

Maybe I needed to stop analyzing every moment and get my head on straight.

Blaire’s car was already at the house. Jessie pulled into the garage and killed the engine, then stared straight ahead.

“You coming?” I reached for my door.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Coming.”

I found Blaire pacing in the living room. “Everything okay?”

Her blonde head whipped around so fast I’m surprised she didn’t pull a muscle. “Yeah, totally fine, actually. I know we’re on a tight timeline, so I was thinking we should go wedding-dress shopping tomorrow?”

I tried to tamp down the giddiness in my stomach but it was near impossible. Jessie came around the corner and kissed me on the cheek. “Just make sure she gets whatever she wants.” He pulled out a credit card that looked dangerously like the kind that has no limits and pressed it into my palm. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

“Wait.” Blaire had a panicked look about her—then again, it was Blaire, she was high-strung, it was her nature. “Can I talk to you about wedding surprise stuff really quick?”

Jessie paled. “Yeah, um, we can go into my office.”

He kissed me one last time. “It’s been a long day. Why don’t you go take a bath?”

“Don’t order me around,” I pouted, even though that was already my plan.

He slapped me on the ass. “Go.”

He gave me one last look—it felt like goodbye, it felt like my heart was getting ripped from my chest, and I had no idea why. Why he was giving me that look, why I felt like he was trying to say something.

Hours later I’d realize what it was.

Guilt.

Sadness.

Betrayal.

It was the end.

Chapter Fifty-One

JESSIE

No sooner had I clicked the door shut behind me than tiny fists were beating into my back over and over again. I leaned my arm against the door and grumbled, “Are you done yet?”

“No!” Blaire punched me in the kidney. It hurt like a bitch. I winced and turned around to face her, to face what I’d done, what she knew. “I was rooting for you! Both of us were! You’ve changed, I know you have, so why the hell am I finding out that you’ve paid someone to spy on us and try to take us down!”

“It’s not like that.” It was exactly like that. Shit.

“Don’t lie to me, Jessie, I’m already pissed enough to pull out my Taser. You can thank your best friend for searching my purse before I got in the car.”

Thank God.

“Look, Danica isn’t exactly reliable,” I said. “She hasn’t returned any texts or calls, I’m threatening to sue, so pull whatever crawled up your ass out of the scary, dark place and stop hitting me!”

Blaire smacked me in the chest again, then shoved me. “No! You don’t go behind Isla’s back, you’re not that guy. Did you think she wouldn’t find out?”

I sighed and hung my head. “I was desperate.”

“No. Shit.” Blaire said through clenched teeth. “Danica has everything, Jessie. And when I say everything I mean her little hacker abilities are even better than Abby’s.” She paced in front of me. “She has our confidential files, our records, she has social security numbers, bank account numbers, she has our entire corporation on a flash drive. She showed it to me!”

“Fuck.” It was time to panic. “She signed an NDA, so she can’t go public with any of the information.”

Blaire actually laughed. “You think she just wants to go public? Are you insane? She doesn’t want to go public, she wants to sell all our clients’ dirty little secrets to the highest-paying reporters in the country. She’s already gotten an offer for fifty grand from US Weekly.”

Realization dawned. “How much did she ask for?”

“You really don’t want to know.” Blaire sighed. “I didn’t tell Colin that part, because that would be like Colin to bail your ass out. This is on you, all of this. You set out to destroy Dirty Exes, well, congratulations, as of tomorrow at noon you just did. We may as well pack our boxes now, because our company is about to get sued by every high-profile client we’ve ever dealt with, including your ex-wife.”

I hung my head.

“You know why she started it, right?” Blaire whispered. “The company?”

“Her ex,” I answered.

Blaire shrugged. “After they broke up, he blacklisted her . . . she wasn’t invited to any more Hollywood parties, he stripped their joint bank accounts of anything and everything, locked her out of their house so she had to get a police escort to get her clothes packed, and even stopped making lease payments without telling her, so it would ruin her credit. He destroyed her, and she made something of herself. I never expected the same from you . . . it seems all men do in her life is make sure that she has nothing—while they have it all.”

Blaire shoved past me and slammed the door after her.

With shaking hands I grabbed my cell and dialed Danica’s number.

“Please answer, please answer, please answer,” I mumbled.

It went to voice mail.

When it beeped, I made sure to speak slowly when I said, “Name. Your. Price.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

ISLA

I got worried when Jessie didn’t come to bed. Even after such a short time, I was so used to him being next to me that when he wasn’t filling that spot, I automatically knew something was wrong.

When I walked into the living room he was sitting there with an open bottle of wine, holding his phone in his hands like he’d just received devastating news. “You’re still up?” I made my way to the couch and sat.

He didn’t look away from his phone. “Yeah, just . . . thinking.”

“About the wedding?”

His lips twitched. “Question . . .”

“Oooh, are the two hours starting again?”

“Smart-ass.”

I stole his wine and took a sip. “What’s your question?”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat then tossed his phone on the table and looked across at me. “When we were in Cambodia, did you think about it?”

Not what I expected.

I’d actually felt something for him a year ago. He’d opened up just enough for me to see the man that everyone else saw. There was a frisson of awareness between us I ignored, and we were friends, up until he started blaming my company for everything. For weeks we’d all hung out together, and then the explosion that was Vanessa occurred—she fell out of the limelight then stepped right back into it by blaming Jessie.

I glanced away then back at him as he took the glass from my hand and put it on the table next to his phone. “There were a few times I felt something between us. I ignored it, but it was there, and one night, after drinking way too much”—he smirked—“I thought about it. I thought about touching you, kissing you, and then I felt so damn guilty because there I was, still married, still trying to use Blaire as a way out, as my fallback, and there you were . . . you.”

My throat went dry. “I thought about it.”

His eyes flashed. “And?”

“And the real thing is way better than the fantasy of these hands on my body.” I gripped his hands and then put them on my breasts and closed my eyes. “This feels like everything.”