Page 107 of All Right No
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It took Ginny nearly twenty-four hours to hatch her plan and pull on her big girl pants. While she didn’t know how she was going to win Ash back, she did know the first step was freeing herself from the marriage she remained trapped in, and that meant ditching the lawyers and confronting Miles face to face.
Her limbs trembled as she exited the private elevator into the penthouse apartment that had once been home. Gaining access to said lift had been ridiculously easy. She’d only had to smile at the new security guard, introduce herself as Mrs. Winters and he’d been happy to assist. Okay, so there’d been a couple of security questions to answer, but they’d been easy for someone who’d lived with Miles for several years. The man was as predictable as he was soulless.
Of course, now that she was up here, her plan to force a confrontation by walking into the lion’s den didn’t seem all that clever.
He’s just a man.
And she wasn’t a frightened girl anymore.
One bag. One pair of shoes, and cash enough to get her to the other end of the country, that’s what she’d left with. Left, intending never to return or see Miles Winters again.
Her fists clenched as she tightened her resolve to see this through. Miles might be a suave, sophisticated bastard when he turned the charm on, but they had history enough that no amount of charisma could wash away.
The apartment hadn’t changed. Literally, not a thing had swapped places in all this time. The décor was the same. The abundance of green and glass still reminded her of an algae-riddled fish tank, making her nose wrinkle.
In the early days after her departure, she’d sometimes wondered how long it took Miles to realise she’d gone, given there was so little of her present in their home. She hadn’t bothered to leave him an explanatory note. He hadn’t deserved one.
As her departure had been unannounced, it seemed fitting that her return should be the same.
Miles was sitting upon the L-shaped sofa with his back to her. That gave her a second to compose herself…and another to realise he wasn’t alone. He was entertaining.
“Hello, Miles. Well, this is awkward.”
The woman down on her knees screeched, and pulled her silk blouse closed across her breasts. “Who the hell are you?”
Ginny couldn’t help it. She laughed. She couldn’t have planned such a perfect moment to make an entrance. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who’d moved on. Her husband had a lover of his own.
“What are you doing here? Who are you?” The woman flapped about, while incorrectly fastening her buttons.
Ginny ignored her and walked over until she was facing Miles, who was puce with rage and desperately attending to his fly. “Why don’t you tell your friend here who I am, Miles, honey.”
“Miles?”
“Nobody,” he huffed.
Red in the face really wasn’t a good look on him.
“She’s nobody.”
“Just his wife,” Ginny said, as if it were no big deal.
The woman’s eyes—bless her—nearly popped out of their sockets. She stared at Ginny, mouth open, then at Miles, then back and forth between them twice over, before blurting, “You’re married! Oh. My. God. You’re married. I had no idea. None.” She started fishing around for her possessions. She reclaimed an earring from the arm of the sofa, her stilettos from the rug, and a sheaf of business papers from the floor, that she couldn’t stuff into her vintage Chanel briefcase quickly enough.
“I see you’re still mixing business and pleasure,” Ginny said to Miles. It wouldn’t surprise her to learn he’d only invited ‘his guest’ here in order to butter her up to secure a better deal on some transaction or other.
Miles had always been perfectly willing to screw whomever he needed to in order to secure the deal he wanted. It didn’t matter if that person had been his friend for years, his godmother, or the doctor who cured his mother’s cancer. The man lacked basic humanity.
Now finally on his feet, he made an awkward step towards Ginny. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
As if he couldn’t work it out.
“I know you hate to dispose of assets, but you could have made this painless, Miles. All you had to do was sign on the dotted line and you would never have had to see or hear from me again. I didn’t ask for anything but my freedom. I wasn’t interested in anything else…like your money, or your portfolio of investments. Just how much is your company worth these days?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m just laying it all out, because the way I see it, if you’re going to be a bastard about it, I may as well demand everything the law says I’m entitled to, which I believe is about half.”
