How to Marry Your Frenemy - London Casey Page 0,93

bigger issue. Yeah, you need to put the fire out. But why not find a way to make the fire never happen at all?”

“Vince, I don’t know if I really want to hear about Jackson’s father right now,” I said. “It feels… wrong.”

“Why? Didn’t he tell you about him?”

“Not really. We aren’t…”

Vince moved off the desk and inched closer to me.

When his hand touched my shoulder, I froze.

“You’re the one, Callie,” Vince whispered. “You’re the one who deserves the promotion. You deserve to have the top spot around here. If I was going to drop dead right now, I’d want you to take my seat. Not Jackson.”

“Vince…”

“Then again, if I was going to drop dead, I would need to make my move fast, right?”

“What move?” I asked.

Vince moved again and hovered over me.

His hand touched my face.

I smelled his cologne and a hint of sweat.

I was in a bad position in my chair that I couldn’t really move.

Not to mention the shock that went through me.

I opened my mouth to tell him to back the fuck off…

And he kissed me.

His slimy mouth touching mine.

I threw my right hand up and smacked him in the chin.

He stepped back and smiled. “It’s okay, Callie. It can be just us now. Come on. Let’s do this together. Let’s ruin what’s left of Jackson.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked.

I had the space to stand up now, so I did.

“I had to keep Jackson around for the sake of my brother,” Vince said. “Jackson was never going to be anything. There’s some money put away for him that he doesn’t know about. It would pain me to part ways with it. But for you… I would. We destroy him, pay him off, and then it’s just us…”

Vince grabbed my hand and moved at me again.

His hands felt like they were everywhere on me.

I moved my hands to knock his hand away.

He kept smiling at me.

“Vince…”

“Callie, stop this,” he said. “You’ve always hated him. So have I. We have a chance to ruin him. It’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?”

I stood there frozen.

Of course I had wanted to ruin Jackson. I wanted the promotion. I wanted to watch him wither and suffer. That was the entire basis of our frenemy relationship.

Vince reached into his pocket for his checkbook.

“I’m writing the bonus to you,” he said. “Right now. And when I sign my name, that’s it. Then I get what I want. From you. Everything you ever did for my nephew, you’re going to do to me.”

He scribbled on a check and I swallowed hard.

Why the hell wasn’t I running out of the office?

Chapter Forty-One

Jackson

I couldn’t pace my own apartment anymore.

That meant I had to leave.

There were only two places I could go to clear my head.

The gym. Or the bar.

The gym was where I could punish myself. The bar was where I could torture myself.

Lift weights and get rid of my anger.

Or go to a bar and find a woman for a quick and cheap fuck to prove I didn’t want Callie in my life.

A third option came to me after I left my apartment.

I stopped at Callie’s to see if she was home.

She wasn’t.

I turned on the lights and took a deep breath.

The place smelled like her.

Callie had her own smell.

Not perfume or soap or anything like that.

It was just her smell.

The kind of smell that went up my nose and down to my heart.

It made my stomach bounce a little.

And, yeah, of course, it sent tingling pulses to my balls which made my dick throb, begging to fill up and find her body to enjoy.

Not even just to fuck her…

It was to love her.

To have her.

To feel her.

I looked at her couch and there was a bra draped over the back.

I hated that about her.

And then on the floor… right in the middle of the damn floor… a pair of black high heels.

I stepped over them and saw two cups on the coffee table, along with some kind of food wrapper.

Her bedroom door was open.

I went there next.

Of course her room was a mess.

The bed wasn’t made. The pillows were punched and twisted. The pillowcases themselves weren’t even centered.

“Oh, look, more clothes on the floor,” I said to myself as I shook my head.

There was no way this thing between Callie and I could have worked if we wanted it to.

In her bathroom, the toothpaste tube was on the edge of the sink, the cap completely missing, bright blue toothpaste