Page 35 of Cinderella Is Faking It

“He accused me of cheating on him. He thinks I’m sleeping with you in exchange for business favors.” I managed to slip in thebusinessat the last second when I meant to sayfinancial. But Cordelia Montgomery didn’t need financial favors.

“Leave him.”

“Beck!”

“This is me being objective. I’m well aware of the role our meeting in the park must have played in this, however, I can take myself out of the equation and still see the issue.”

“Enlighten me because I don’t know what to think anymore. Obviously, I didn’t tell him about the party thing, but I guess that does border on cheating.” I sighed and put my fork down, rubbing the bridge of my nose as the whole stupid discussion replayed in my head. “But I don’t even know where that accusation came from.”

“Whatever you’ve recently achieved - don’t tell me or we’ll go to jail for insider trading - he doesn’t think you’re smart enough or skilled enough to have achieved it on your own. Which is the first strike. He should be supportive of you.” Well, that wasn’t too far off from what I’d pieced together. Parker didn’t think I was financially responsible. “That leads us to me, or any other businessman you could have come into contact with. If we ignore Parker’s inferiority complex, because many people deal with that, he still assumed that our business arrangement could only work if you jumped into bed with me. Which tells me exactly what value he sees in you. Second strike. And then you said heaccusedyou, which leads me to believe this wasn’t a healthy conversation. Third strike.” He leaned back.

“When you say it like that, it sounds so simple. Ugh.” I grabbed one of the two fresh smoothies he’d set out, needing something to soothe the sharp sting that had welled up in my throat.

“Wait, this one.” He snatched the Nutribullet from my hand and replaced it with the other - almost identical one, minus some dark flecks. “Yours is without flaxseed.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be good for you?”

“Are you on the pill?”

“Yeah?” I furrowed my brows at him.

“Flaxseed can mess with that, so unless you’re trying to trap your catch of a boyfriend with a baby…”

“Good to know,” I mumbled, even though Parker always insisted on a condom anyway. We both had clean bills of health, but he’d insisted. I knew it was responsible, and it only made things a little more uncomfortable for me, but on the back of this conversation his reasoning left a bitter taste in my mouth. He wanted to wait until I had a proper job with proper health insurance again. At the time, it had sounded like the right call, the responsible call. But shouldn’t his reason at least have included my health instead of my health insurance? Or maybe that was just his way of expressing his concern for my health? Why couldn’t people just say what they mean?

“Hey,” Beck pulled me out of my thought spiral. “Now, if you asked me to be smug about the situation, I’d say Parker knows his beautiful girlfriend is way out of his league and seeing her with a handsome man who’s clearly a better match for her, pushed all his buttons.”

A small laugh bubbled from my throat. “Good thing you’re not smug, Casanova.”

“Me?” He grinned. “Never.”

FIFTEEN

“That means red is Gavin?”

“Blue is Gavin,” I groaned, retracing the big fat blue G at the top of the page, only to look up and see Tabitha grinning at me.

“You make it so easy.” She poked her tongue out and snatched the legal pad out from under my pen. “Thank you. Love you.”

“Have we settled it yet?” Defne asked as she carried a tray with three champagne flutes into the TV room - two filled with bubbly, one with apple juice. “Who gets Sundays?”

“Charlie,” Tab and I answered in unison. She turned the legal pad around for Defne to admire my color-coded schedule. She tapped her pen at the paper, explaining: “Charlie gets Sundays because he never works Mondays, so that leaves room for wakeup sex. We put Gavin on Tuesdays. Wednesdays are for admin stuff.” She shot me a sharp glance, because I’d made her schedule one sexless day. “Thursday nights are still reserved for Aiden, and then Friday and Saturday are all you guys or going out or spontaneous Tinder hookups.”

“I’m so flattered that you made time for us.” Defne laughed and let herself fall into the fluffy pink sofa. The thing basically filled Cordelia’s entire TV room. Four people could probably stretch out on it without ever touching.

“What can I say? Men want me.” Tab wiggled her brows at Defne. She wasn’t lying, as proven by the fact that I had taken her to a party thrown by Gavin Decker, a notoriously single millionaire, and she walked out of there adding him to her roster of men. At least focusing on her guy problems let me ignore mine for a while.

“Are you guys ready?” Defne grabbed the remote and queued up her big debut on Netflix, but before she could click play, she was interrupted by the doorbell. We all looked at each other, then at the empty hallway.

Cordelia had agreed to my friends coming over as long as she could stay upstairs with Fitzwilliam, and I’d text her when they were gone. And Victor had the night off and had headed out an hour ago. I shuffled off the sofa because that only left me to open the door.

“What are you doing here?” I asked at the sight of Beck and his dark sunglasses, dipped in the warm glow of the setting sun, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder.

“You invited me to a party,” he replied, cocking one brow, “hello, by the way.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, not budging from my spot in the door. “I didn’t invite you. It’s not a party. It’s a TV night. With my girlfriends.”

“I guess I’m going back home. Too bad about the honey-lemon blondies.” He held up a large takeaway box with Bumble by the Sea’s logo on its side.

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