One Night: Sensual Bargains: Nine Months to Redeem Him / A Deal with Benefits / After Hours with Her Ex. Jennie Lucas
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to face me after what you did.”
I would have staggered back, except Edward was behind me, his hand supportively on my lower back. I felt his strength and somehow my knees steadied themselves.
“What I did?” I queried dangerously.
“You left me when I needed you most!”
I gaped at her. “I went to California to give the reporter a tour of your house—as you asked me to!”
She waved her hand dismissively. “That? All that happened ages ago. I’m talking about my movie premiere last night. You should have been there for me!”
“Are you kidding?” I breathed.
“You know how nervous I get, being at public events. You promised you’d always be there....”
“Yeah, when I was your assistant.” I swallowed looking between her and Jason. “Before I was completely humiliated in front of the whole world—”
“Are you still trying to punish me for that?” she demanded. “We didn’t mean to fall in love. It was an accident. When it’s right, you just know.” She looked lovingly at Jason, then glared at me. “It’s petty of you, Diana, it really is, and I’m disappointed. You and Jason didn’t even sleep together.”
“You told her that?” I breathed, staring down at him.
Rubbing the back of his blond head, Jason gave me the rueful smile I used to find so irresistible. “You and I were friends, Diana. We dated and yeah, there was a little flirting going on, but hell,” he shook his head, “you never let me touch you. Said you wanted to wait for true love or some such...but this is the twenty-first century. I don’t know what century you’re living in, but as far as I’m concerned, if there’s no sex, there’s no relationship.”
For a second I couldn’t breathe. No relationship? As if I’d imagined it all in my mind? “You—”
And it was then I saw the sparkle on Madison’s left hand.
A huge canary-yellow diamond ring.
On that finger.
With an intake of breath, I covered my mouth with my hand. For a moment, the only sound in the library was the crackle of the fire in counterpoint to the miserable drip-drip-drip of water from my hair as I stood like a mud-splattered, drowned rat in front of my beautiful stepsister, who had a ten-carat engagement ring on one hand, and the man I’d loved holding the other.
“You’re—” I was horrified to feel tears burning the backs of my eyelids as I looked between them. “You’re engaged?”
Madison put her hand over the ring. “Yes...” A smile softened the sharp lines of her face as she looked at Jason. “He asked me last night, after the premiere.”
Jason smiled back. Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it. “Best night of my life.”
Their eyes glowed as they looked at each other. They were in love. Really, deeply in love. It was one thing to know it in my mind, and something else entirely to see it right in front of me. I not only felt sick, I felt invisible. An echo went through my mind.
I feel sorry for you. How it must hurt to know they’ll never be punished for hurting you. That while you suffer, they’re making love in oblivious joy. You’re so meaningless, they’ve forgotten you even exist.
“Stop pouting and be happy for us.” Madison turned back to me. “Come back and work for me. I need you. Someone will have to coordinate with the wedding planner...”
Wedding planner!
“And don’t worry,” Jason said to me kindly. “You’ll find a real boyfriend someday, Di. Great girl like you. It’s bound to happen, even if it takes a while...”
Violently, I held up a trembling hand, unable to bear another patronizing word. My heart was collapsing in my chest, squeezing into hard little pieces, about to fly out of my ribs like bullets. In another moment, I’d weep in front of them, and then I really would have to die.
“Darling.” Edward purred behind me, suddenly wrapping his arms around me. Pulling me back protectively against his body, he murmured, “Didn’t you tell them?”
I looked back at him blankly. “Tell them?”
He smiled down at me, his expression tender, his dark blue gaze caressing mine. “About us.”
“Us?” I said.
“Us.” Edward looked at me as if it were all he could do right now not to lift me up in his arms and carry me upstairs to bed. No man had looked at me like that before. Not ever. The full seductive force of his gaze was a blast of heat, an intoxicating drug that made every part of me yearn to tremble and unfold like a flower. “Diana, why didn’t you tell them...” he stroked back a tendril of my hair, “that we’re lovers?”
What? My heart stopped beating.
“What?” Madison said.
“What?” Jason said.
Edward looked down at me with concern. “But darling, you’re chilled to the bone. Your clothes are wet. Were you taking the dog on a walk?”
Teeth chattering—and not just from cold—I nodded like a fool.
He gave me a slow, sensual smile. “Why don’t you go upstairs to our room—” our room? I thought dumbly “—and change. We’ll wait.”
“I will not wait,” Madison snapped. “Not until you agree to come back and plan our wedding.” Looking between Edward and me, no doubt comparing his perfect gorgeousness to my slovenly mess, she added suspiciously, “And I don’t believe for a second that the two of you...”
Edward didn’t even look her way. “Actually, Diana,” he whispered, twining a long muddy, tangled tendril of my hair as if it were silken perfection, “I think I’ll come upstairs. Help you out of these cold, wet clothes.”
Any woman could get warm instantly, just by looking up into Edward’s hot dark gaze. Had I wandered into some strange parallel universe, where I was the beautiful movie star, instead of Madison? Had I fallen on my walk and hit my head on a rock?
I felt my stepsister’s gaze travel over us both, from the way I was standing to the way that Edward supported my arm. There was new doubt in her melodious voice as she said, “You’re really—together?”
“Only recently,” Edward said, smiling down at me hungrily, cupping my cheek with his hand. As if he were already thinking about what he intended to do to me in bed. “I wanted Diana from the moment we met. But she tortured me,” his eyes traced mine, “making me wait. And wait. The sexiest, most desirable woman in the world.”
“She’s just a physical therapist.” Madison sounded grumpy.
Edward finally looked at her. “Yes. A healer. And what Diana knows about the human body—” He exhaled, looking at me in wonder. “No wonder she’s the most amazing lover I’ve ever had.”
My body flashed hot, then cold.
“The two of you are in love?” Jason said, dumbfounded.
“Love?” Edward snorted. “No.” He looked down at me, stroking my cheek, and I felt his fingertips against my skin. “What we have is purely physical. Sex. And fire.”
A little sound came from the back of Jason’s throat as he stared between us, his eyes comically huge.
“I don’t understand.” Madison’s beautiful face was bewildered, as if she was confused how any other woman could be the center of a man’s attention when she herself was in the room. “It’s only been a couple months.”
“When it’s right, you just know.” He smiled as he echoed her earlier words. Wrapping both his strong arms