It's all about to come to an explosive conclusion. Get caught up now!
**If you're not a fan of cliffhangers, you might want to time finishing book two, MASTERS FOR LIFE, at exactly midnight, November 27, 2015!
I rolled my eyes. “I’m so sick of hearing all all-powerful she is. Did you see her in that meeting, Devlin? She was running scared. She knew I could blow over her house of cards like that,” I said as I snapped my fingers. “She’s all bluster and hot air now. Kind of like her husband.”
“You’d be a fool to underestimate her.”
“No, Dev. She’s a fool to underestimate me. You may be okay with her keeping you on her chain, but she has no power over me. I’m not some hot guy she can corral in her stable of studs. There’s nothing she can get from me.”
“Don’t you see? Your being a woman makes it that much worse. She’s always more sadistic to the women. Remember what Caz already told you about Lydia?”
“Excuse me but I’m a little bit more than some barmaid. My name has power. So does my reputation, especially now.”
“That’s why you have so much more to lose,” he said as he leaned forward. “This isn’t a game, Coralie.”
“Of course it is,” I snapped. “I just didn’t know I was playing it until one night in early October. Now I get to make some rules of my own. Suzanne Everhart is not going to threaten me, coerce me or intimidate me into doing what she thinks I need to do. She’s already taken everything away from me she can steal. There’s nothing left.”
He pondered that a bit before he placed his glass on the coffee table. He rose to his feet.
“Please. Join me for dinner.”
I stood too. “No.”
“Come on,” he cajoled. His voice dropped a notch and those eyes inhaled me as he gave me the once over. “You’re too skinny.”
I glared at him. “I thought you said I was perfect just the way I was.”
“You were,” he admitted before he turned towards the formal dining room. I fumed as I followed him.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I demanded as we reached the table.
“It means you used to be lovely. Sweet. Voluptuous,” he added as his gaze swept across my breasts. “You were soft, like sinking into a dream. Now you’re hard and rigid, just like every other rich bitch who thinks she runs the show.”
“Fuck you,” I gritted.
“Love to,” he said. “I’m free now. Are you?”
I knew that was his way of asking me if there was anything going on with Caz.
“You know what? I don’t need this,” I decided as I stalked back to the library where he had placed my purse. I had my own set of keys. He couldn’t keep me there against my will.
I quickly learned I was wrong. My purse was no longer in the spot where he left it. I turned to Dev, who leaned against the other wall. “So this is what we’ve reduced to? Kidnapping?”
He chuckled as he straightened. “How can it be kidnapping when you want to be here?” He turned back to the dining room, forcing me to follow.
Two plates were now set upon the table. A uniformed maid finished lighting the candles on the table before she gave me a polite smile and disappeared back into the kitchen.
“Sexy maid in her uniform?” I asked. “A little cliché, don’t you think?”
He sat at the head of the table, where he pulled one of the linen napkins into his lap. “What can I say? I’m living my fantasies these days.”
“You are such a bastard.”
“Right as always, Mrs. Masters,” he said before digging into a bite of his meal.
“I’m not your wife, Devlin. How many times do I have to make that clear?”
“Marry someone else and I might believe you,” he said as he drank some wine. “But face it, Coralie. You’ll never get me out from under your skin.” He looked back up at me. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have been ready to fuck two men just so you could be with me again.”
I hated how he could still read me like a book. “I hate you.”
“And yet if I touched you, we’d be in that bedroom within ten minutes and you know it. That’s what you hate most.” He pointed to the plate. “Now, please. Griselda has prepared a lovely meal. Let’s not let it go to waste.”
I held out for a moment more before I finally sat at the table. Maybe if I just indulged him, he’d get bored with me and let me go.
Long quiet minutes passed before he finally said, “So tell me what you think you know about overture.”
“How about you tell me what it is, and we’ll compare notes?”
“No,” he said.
“Then no,” I responded.
He leaned back in his chair and watched me. “Fine. I’ll make you a deal. We each get one question and one answer. You can ask any question you want, and the answer can be as simple as declining to answer. But for this one date, I will do my best to answer one of your questions.”
“This is a date?”
His eyebrow lifted. “Is that your question?”
“No,” I snapped. “I want to know what overture means to Suzanne.”
He chuckled softly. “You really want to waste a question on something I’ve already answered?”
“So what’s the point? No is going to be your answer for everything.”
“No is still an answer, Coralie,” he pointed out. “If I ask you to drive with me to Vegas, tonight, and get married, you’d say no.”
“You’re damned right I’d say no.”
“And that’s still an answer,” he said. “You’d expect me to respect it. And to accept it. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”
I took a deep breath. “So I’m supposed to just magically come up with the question you might answer?”
“Consider it a challenge.”
I glared at him for a long moment. “Do you love Suzanne?”
“No,” he said.
“Is that the answer? Or is that the refusal to answer?”
He smirked, and damned if it didn’t shoot fire to every single nerve ending. “One question. One answer. Any question. Any answer. But there’s only the one. This date anyway,” he added before letting that suggestion sit a bit. His eyes darkened. “My turn. Do you love Caz?”
I arched my eyebrow. “No,” I responded. Two could play his game.
He laughed. “You were always a quick study, Coralie. One of the things I always loved about you, from the first time you stripped for me.”
I shivered. “Why do you have to torment me, Dev?”
He wagged his finger. “One question. One answer.”
“Fine,” I relented at last. I was exhausted from playing these stupid games. I had too much to do to waste another minute. “Tell me what you want to tell me so I can get the hell out of here.”
“Now you’re getting it,” he murmured. “Tell. Don’t ask.” He drained his glass of wine. “You made an enemy of Suzanne today. She doesn’t like to lose, and your little power play in the conference room was a sure way to draw a bull’s eye on your back.”
“I’m not afraid of her.”
“You should be,” he said softly. “You’re in the big leagues now, Coralie. She has a network of very powerful friends, who have made sure that there is zero accountability or responsibility should the shit go down. And eventually it goes down. I just don’t want you to be buried with it.”
“Why do you care?” I said, before cursing myself for asking yet another question.
To my great surprise, he answered it. “Because I love you. I always did. And I've never stopped.”
“Then why–”
“One question…,” he started.
“One answer,” I answered with him. I heaved a frustrated sigh.
“I know you’re confused. But I really need you to trust me.” I scoffed, but he continued. “I’ll keep Suzanne distracted. It’s what I do best. In return there’s something I want from you.”
Knowing I couldn’t ask another question, I just arched my eyebrow.
“One date every week. You and me. Here at the house, very civilized and proper. And every week, I will answer any one question you might have. This way we rebuild what we lost when we came back to Los Angeles last year.”
“No, thanks,” I declined at once.
“You may want to reconsider, Coralie. Just think. You show the world, and Suzanne, you’re dating Caz, but really you’re here with me. I would be cheating on her with you. Sweet karma.”
My eyes narrowed into slits as I stared at him. “That maybe a fine deal where you come from Devlin, but nothing about that sounds appealing to me.”
His eyes swallowed me whole. “Bullshit.”
I sucked back my gasp. Why ask me anything? He knew it all.
Like magic.
“I’m not interested in your proposal, Devlin. You’ve wasted your time.”
He smiled softly as he rose from his chair. He walked over to where I sat, his crotch practically in my face as he reached into his pocket to withdraw his set of keys to my car. He laid them on the table in front of me before he caressed the curve of my face briefly with his hand, his thumb brushing ever so slightly against my bottom lip. “Time is never wasted with you, Coralie.”
He said nothing more as he walked away from the table and down the hall. When I walked back out to the foyer, I saw my purse returned to the spot I left it. I practically snarled in frustration as I snatched it from the table and marched out the door.
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