Page 23 of The Charmer's Gambit
Those hopes died as a tall man in a suit with too-dark hair and icy eyes stepped into my office without permission and closed the door behind him.
My heart sunk to my stomach. “Ryan . . .”
“I see you have time for a coffee break, but not to call me back. And here I was worried.” He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the door before walking around to sit on my desk with his legs right beside me. “You know I don’t like being forced to come over here, Rachel.”
“I . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
“You mean you didn’t think.” He gripped my chin when I dropped my gaze, and forced me to look at him. “You owe me a dinner date, baby. We need to be seen in public together.”
“Why?” I whispered. Why after all these months of silence was he insistent on harassing me again now? I called off our engagement three years ago. It’d taken every ounce of willpower I owned to ask Mark for help, and then to leave that day, and there’d been a thousand times in the months following that I considered going back, if only to make life easier. Those were my darkest days, the ones where I forced a smile at work and curled into a ball each night, terrified of doing it all over again the next day.
The threats nearly killed me, and then he’d stopped. I naively thought he was moving on, but no. Photos started arriving of him out with other women—his way of “playing the field to secure more political connections,” as he’d so eloquently put it. The entire charade was all a game to him. He never considered me a person, but his property. And he did not like it when hisbaby girlstepped out of line.
“Do I need a reason to take my fiancée on a date?” He sounded deceptively sweet as he traced his thumb over my lips.
“We’re not engaged, Ryan.” It came out hoarse rather than strong, and it caused him to grin.
“I love when you tease me, baby girl,” he murmured. “You may have taken off your ring, but that’s just symbolism. I know what we are, and soon the public will as well.”
My throat closed off any opportunity for a response. Not that I had one. He hadn’t acted like this for so long that I didn’t know how to interpret his change. It reeked of desperation, and that scared me more than anything else.
“Oh, before I forget, I spoke to the wedding coordinator.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and started typing a message. “She wants to meet with you on Saturday to look at venues.I told her we prefer a summer wedding, and she’s looking at July of next year. Apparently, thirteen months doesn’t leave us a lot of time for wedding planning, so we need to decide on a location and a date immediately. I realize this isn’t great timing with your big work project, but our nuptials are more important. Especially since you won’t be working afterward anyway.”
My lips parted, but nothing came out.
He was delusional.
Completely insane.
And if I protested right now, he’d create a huge scene, thus guaranteeing I wouldn’t have a place to work by this time next week. Which explained why he decided to drop all this on me at the office.
Hewantedme to react. To scream, to rant, to make a general scene, just so he could play the wounded hero and gain sympathy from my coworkers. The man knew how to play this game far better than I did, but I’d memorized his manipulative ways. It was the only way to survive our volatile relationship.
My phone dinged as he finished typing his message, and I found the wedding planners’ name staring back at me.Becky McGraw. Lovely.
“She wants to have brunch Saturday,” he continued. “I suggested Francine’s for memory’s sake.”
Right. The place he proposed.
I was going to be sick. “Ryan, this is all rather sudden . . .”
The hand on my chin tightened to a painful degree. “Sudden? I’ve given you three fucking years, Rachel. Most would say I’ve been more than patient with your antics.”
Tears sprung to my eyes, not from his words but from the grip on my jaw. He knew exactly where to press to evoke the most pain. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “You’re right.” I had to say the words I hated most to appease him, or I’d end up with bruises I couldn’t explain. And screaming in the middle of myoffice would get me nowhere. Sure, he’d let me go, but his reaction would worsen once we had an audience, and somehow I’d be the guilty party. It’d happened before outside of work. I had no reason to believe my coworkers would react differently.
“Of course I am, baby girl.” He finally loosened his grip and bent to place a kiss against my jaw, then my lips. It took everything in me to respond just enough to make it believable, and then he brushed the tear from beneath my eye. “I’m willing to take a rain check on dinner, but you will be at brunch on Saturday.”
This was the Ryan I knew, the one who pretended to negotiate, when in reality, nothing he said qualified as a concession.I’ll let you skip the date, because I love you, but you’ll be at the wedding planning session.
I couldn’t respond to that.
My livelihood relied on my ability to argue, and yet no words presented themselves in my thoughts.
I sat mute in my chair, staring up at him with resignation. The wordokayhung unspoken between us because I refused to let it slip. It was my only defiance and one he allowed as he swept his lips over my forehead.
“Francine’s at ten thirty sharp, Rachel.”
Another tear fell as he sauntered out of my office without another word.
