Chapter 2

"You what?"

The words barely made it past my lips. My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles ached.

"You had it coming, Skylar." Ray's voice was cold — the kind of cold that had been building for months and I'd been too blind to notice. "I don't want a girlfriend who shows up when it's convenient. I don't want a girlfriend who crawls into bed smelling like deadlines and someone else's schedule. I needed you last night, and where were you?"

"So your answer was to cheat on me?" My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated myself for it. Tears burned the corners of my eyes before I could stop them, spilling over before I had a chance to blink them back. "How could you, Ray? How could you even—"

The soft click of a door cut me off.

My spine went rigid.

Slowly, I turned.

Zane Hills stood at the entrance of the bedroom, a white towel hanging dangerously low on his waist, droplets of water trailing down the hard planes of his chest like they had somewhere important to be. His dark hair was damp, disheveled, and he looked like he'd just stepped off the cover of a magazine that had no business being in a place like this.

Our eyes met.

The floor dissolved beneath me.

I spent the night with my boss.

The realization didn't creep in — it crashed, violent and merciless, knocking the air clean out of my lungs. My free hand flew to my mouth.

"Skylar?" Ray's voice buzzed through the phone. "Are you even listening to me?"

I forced myself to breathe. In. Out. Don't you dare fall apart right now.

"Please, Ray." I turned away from Zane, lowering my voice. "Let's just talk about this. Whatever happened, we can fix it—"

"There's nothing to fix." The finality in his tone was a blade slipped between ribs. Quiet. Precise. Devastating. "I don't want anything to do with you. And don't bother looking for me, because I have no interest in seeing your face."

The line went dead.

I stood there, phone pressed to my ear, listening to silence.

He actually hung up.

I couldn't move. I couldn't think. Three years — three years of anniversaries rescheduled, of dinner reservations cancelled, of Ray falling asleep on the couch waiting for me to come home — compressed itself into a single dial tone and disappeared.

And the worst part? The part that made my stomach turn?

I had no right to be angry. I had done the exact same thing last night, tangled in sheets that didn't belong to me, with a man who had never once asked for my heart but somehow kept ending up in the center of my chest anyway.

Why does it always have to be Zane?

"Rough morning?"

His voice. Low. Unbothered. Faintly amused.

I slowly turned to face him, and something dangerous sparked behind my eyes. He had pulled on a robe — barely — and was watching me the way he always watched everything: like the world was a mildly entertaining inconvenience arranged specifically for his observation.

"What am I doing here?" I asked, my voice deceptively steady.

He tilted his head, the ghost of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I've been asking myself the same thing." He moved toward the window, hands sliding into his robe pockets. "The way I see it — you failed to screen the wines at the event, I ended up drugged, and somehow you managed to end up in my bed. So really, Miss Miller, I should be the one asking the questions."

A laugh — sharp and humorless — escaped me before I could stop it. "You're unbelievable."

"So I've been told."

"Out of every person on this planet—" I pressed a hand to my chest, the blanket pooling around my waist as I sat up straighter, "—you are the absolute last person I would ever choose for something like this."

He turned then, and the smirk was gone, replaced by something slower. Something that made the air in the room feel different. He crossed toward me, each step deliberate, and stopped at the edge of the bed, looking down at me with those unreadable dark eyes.

"Is that so?" His voice dropped. "Because I remember it differently. I remember your nails in my back and my name on your lips — repeatedly — and none of it sounded like a woman who hated what was happening."

Heat flooded my face so fast it made me dizzy. I held his gaze anyway, jaw tight, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking away.

"I hate you," I said quietly. And I almost meant it.

Something flickered in his expression — brief, unidentifiable — before the mask slid back into place.

I reached down and grabbed my dress from the floor, done with this conversation, done with this room, done with the way he was looking at me like I was something he hadn't quite figured out yet but fully intended to.

I pulled the dress over my head.

It hadn't even settled around my shoulders before a hand pressed flat against my sternum and I was on my back again, the mattress rising up to meet me. He moved so fast I barely registered it — straddling me, pinning my wrists above my head, my dress half-on and bunched around my face, and I was glaring at him through the gap in the fabric like a woman two seconds from committing a crime.

"Get. Off. Me."

"Not yet." He wasn't even breathing hard. Infuriating. "You think you can walk out of here like last night didn't happen?"

"Zane—"

"Your boyfriend is gone." The playfulness in his tone softened — just slightly, just enough to be dangerous. "Which means I no longer have to pretend I wasn't losing my mind every time you walked into a room. Which means you no longer have an excuse."

I stared at him.

He stared back.

"You're insane," I whispered.

"Probably." He released my wrists, but didn't move off me, reaching up instead to brush a strand of hair from my face with a gentleness so out of character it made my breath catch. "But I'm not wrong, and you know it."

I shoved him — hard — and this time he let himself go, dropping onto the mattress beside me with a low exhale. I yanked my dress the rest of the way down, stood up, and smoothed it with hands that were only slightly trembling.

"I don't appreciate being toyed with, Mr. Hills," I said without looking at him, reaching for my shoes.

Silence.

Then — a sharp sound. His fist connecting with the surface of the coffee table.

I froze.

"Skylar."

Something in his voice made me turn. He was sitting up now, elbows on his knees, looking at me with an expression I had never once seen on Zane Hills' face in the two years I had worked for him.

He looked serious. Not boardroom serious. Not close-a-deal serious.

Serious serious.

"You will be marrying me."

The room went very, very quiet.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"I'm sorry — I will be what?"