MasukI SPENT YEARS LOVING MY STEPBROTHER IN SILENCE. Roman Grimwood was untouchable; the heir to an empire, cold, controlled, and engaged to a woman I hated. He is my stepbrother, but the distance between us felt like a wall I’d never scale. Until the night of my graduation masquerade. He was drugged. Delirious. Calling out a name that wasn’t mine. And I made the choice that would ruin me. I slipped into his bed. Let him mistake me for his fiancée. Let him take me with a desperation that shattered every rule we’d ever followed. For one night, in the dark, I wasn’t the poor stepsister. I was the woman he couldn’t get enough of. But secrets in the Grimwood house don’t stay buried. When Roman starts pulling threads, suspecting the woman in his bed wasn’t Vivian, I’m forced back into his orbit working at his family’s hotel. He looks at me differently now. Hungrier. Suspicious. And when he finally realizes the truth; that it was ME all along, he doesn’t let go. He’s bound to another woman to save his company. I’m broke, broken, and desperate to escape. But Roman Grimwood doesn’t share. And he certainly doesn’t forgive. ONE LIE STARTED IT ALL. ONE SCANDAL COULD DESTROY THEM BOTH.
Lihat lebih banyakRoman found me in the supply corridor before I had even finished saving Damian’s number in my phone, which tells you everything you need to know about how closely he had been watching.“We need more napkins in the east room,” he said, which was such an obvious, flimsy excuse for following me down an empty hallway that I almost laughed in his face.“The napkins are fine, Roman.”“The napkins,” he said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into the low, deliberate register he uses when he has already decided a conversation is not going to be about what it claims to be about, “are not actually why I’m back here.”“No kidding.”He stopped close enough that I had to tilt my head back slightly to keep looking at him, close enough that I could smell the same cologne from the engagement party, the one that had apparently taken up permanent residence somewhere in the back of my memory without my consent. His jaw was tight, and his eyes were doing that thing they do when he is working very hard
I did not know men could be uncomplicated until Damian Kimber asked me where the bar was and meant absolutely nothing else by it.The Aurelia was hosting a mixer that Friday, some joint affair between Grimwood Holdings and a handful of other firms I didn’t know, or maybe, just maybe, didn’t care about. If I did, I would probably know every single one of them, their headquarters, and every detail about the firms themselves. I was working the floor, refilling glasses, following the same invisible choreography I’d learned was the proper way to do things here, much like we had at the engagement party. Everything was almost the same, except this crowd was smaller and considerably less likely to contain anyone who had personally ruined my life.I thought that right up until a man peeled off from a cluster of suits near the window and fell into step beside me like we had already been introduced.“Please tell me you know where the bar actually is,” he said, “because I’ve been given three diff
Ivy has a particular silence she uses right before she says something the person she’s talking to is definitely not ready to hear, and she used it on me twice during our shift before she finally let it land.It was a slow afternoon, and being at the front desk made it even much slower; the kind of afternoon where there is nothing to do but refill the mint bowl and think about things you would very much prefer not to think about. It was just two days after the engagement party.I had gotten good, over the last week, at keeping my face arranged into pleasant nothing. I had apparently not gotten good enough, because Ivy kept looking at me like I was a puzzle missing exactly one piece and she already had her hand on it.“You’ve been doing the thing,” she said, not looking up from the reservation screen.“What thing?”“The thing where you answer every question I ask you in the most minimal number of words possible, and not one word more. Like you’ll be charged for extra words. It’s extreme
I was not supposed to be anywhere near the service corridor behind the Magnolia ballroom’s east exit, which is of course exactly where I ended up when my tray ran empty and the kitchen was faster to reach through the back route than the front.The corridor was narrower than the ones meant for guests, unlit except for a single fixture near the fire exit. I had taken this route twice already tonight without incident, moving fast with my head down, counting it as one small mercy in an evening that had not offered me many.Two voices stopped me before I rounded the corner. The voices were low and private, almost like they were both whispering words they shouldn’t be saying.“The press release goes out tomorrow regardless.” That was Dad, stripped of the warm toasting voice he had used on stage minutes earlier, replaced with something flatter and more exhausted. “We need the market seeing this as settled. Any hint of instability and the Cross board walks, and if they walk, we lose the Hartf
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