Page 38 of Brassy Bigwig

“I told him I’ve never been so insulted before. And then I told him to fuck off.”

“Good for you!”

“I told him I’d thought my mistake was leaving without saying goodbye, when in actuality it was crawling into bed with him in the first place. Then I stormed out.”

“Fuck yeah! I’m so proud of you. Man, I would have loved to see the look on his face when you walked out.”

I try to avoid her eyes as I take another sip of wine.

“What else happened?” She narrows her eyes at me.

Taking my wine glass with me, I sit with my legs folded underneath me on the sofa again.

“When I walked out, he followed me. He wrapped me in his arms and told me he was sorry. He said that’s not how he meant for the meeting to go, and he asked me not to leave.”

“But then you left anyway, right?”

“Not right away. I sat and listened to his sob story about why he’s been acting like a fucking asshole.”

“Oh, right. And you actually believe him?”

“Yeah, I kind of do. It’s really messed up, Shel. He slept with his former assistant—something he said he greatly regrets—and she turned around and blackmailed him for a lot of money. She had pictures of them, and apparently, an audio recording with some pretty incriminating stuff on it.”

“Okay, yeah, I get that’s messed up. But that’s no reason to treat you the way he did.”

“I know, and I told him so. He asked me if we could start over, but I told him I wasn’t sure it would be possible. I made it clear that I would not be sleeping with him if he was my boss. He agreed, obviously.”

“So… where does that leave things?”

“I told him I needed to think about it. He agreed, but as I started walking away…”

I take another sip of wine because I’m about to get mad all over again.

“He told me I have the weekend to decide, but then he said ‘I’ll see you Monday’ as though he knows I’m going to come crawling back to him.”

I’m fuming.

“How dare he drop this bomb on me? Telling me I have such a limited time to think about it and then basically making my decision for me as though I don’t know what’s best for myself.”

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”

Oh, I don’t like the sound of that.

“We’re going to call in an emergency to Stella at La Beauté Naturelle, and have her come here. You’re going to have your hair and nails done, then we’re going out for a night on the town.”

“I really don’t—”

“No!” Shelby yells at me. “You don’t get to decide. You need to just let loose, Chloe. Forget about that asshole.”

If one more person tells me what I need today… I take another large sip of wine.

“Let me work some magic. I might even be able to grab a table at Vine.”

She squeals and jumps off the sofa, leaving me alone with my wine and my thoughts.

Let’s take away the fact that Dimitrios basically told me what I was going to do, completely disregarding my own feelings. That leaves me with his proposal of working for him while we get to know one another.

It’s not the most conventional courtship I’ve ever had, but our relationship didn’t start down a conventional path anyway. On the plus side, he still wants to be with me. I could see it in his eyes when he first got off of the elevator. I could feel it in his touch when he wrapped his arms around me. And I could hear it in his voice when he told me he was ‘so fucking sorry.’

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