Second Chance Mess (Bad News Billionaires #1) - Lucia Jordan Page 0,14

crotch, wouldn’t be a big deal?”

The waitress came back to deliver our drinks before I could answer Brooke’s question. “Here you go,” she said as she set down two glowing blue drinks with dry ice steam wafting off the top of them. “This ought to make your evening more exciting!”

Ugh, I didn’t need any more excitement. I just needed my girlfriend to come back to me and to come back to be my assistant at work again.

Brooke picked up her cocktail and sipped it as she waited for me to respond. “Oh my gosh, this is delicious,” she said under her breath.

That made me happy, at least, before getting back to the difficult conversation at hand.

“The reason I didn’t think it was a big deal is that nothing happened,” I said to her. “Brooke, honestly, nothing at all happened that night. I had too much to drink that I’ll admit. The cocktails there were probably about as potent as this blue thing here is. There were several of us in the limo, and to be honest, everything was kind of swimming and fuzzy in my head. The woman in the picture put her hand on my lap just before that picture was snapped. I pushed her off immediately, but it was too late because the camera had already gotten a shot of it.”

“Why would she do that?” Brooke asked.

“Because she has been trying to get with me for years, and she’s annoyingly persistent.”

“I saw you leaving the office with that same woman the other night.”

I had to stop and think to remember that, and then I knew what Brooke was referring to.

“Her name is Chelsea, and she had stopped by the office simply to be a pain in my ass again. As I said, she’s really damn persistent. I walked her out and called her a cab as soon as she got there. She was trying to get me to go out for drinks with her, and I declined. If I hadn’t had walked her out, she wouldn’t have left. I ended up sticking her in a cab and going right back inside the building because I had more work to finish that night.”

I could see on Brooke’s face that she wanted to believe me but wasn’t quite sure if she did or not yet.

“Why didn’t you just talk to me and tell me that before you left for Spokane then?” she asked.

This cocktail was going down way too easily.

“I don’t know,” I answered. That was a weak reply, but I really didn’t know. “I guess I just figured that if it bothered you that much, you’d ask me about it. And since you didn’t, I figured it would all just blow over. I was planning to talk to you about it when I got back. I just got so consumed in making sure that the project contract was a success that I focused on the Spokane trip and took for granted that you would be here when I returned. I was wrong to have assumed that.”

The servers at Plethora had eagle eyes, and as soon as the waitress noticed that Brooke’s glass was empty, she came to ask if she wanted another cocktail, to which Brooke eagerly said yes.

“This time,” Brooke said to her with a smile. “Make it another surprise, but something of a different color, please.”

“You got it!”

“Feeling adventurous tonight?” I asked, pleased that she was at least enjoying the bar, if not my conversation.

“A little.”

“Okay, it’s my turn for a question now,” I said. “Why did you break up with me over a text? And then, even worse, why did you block my number so that I couldn’t even reach you?”

Brooke looked like she had just taken a blow to the gut. I wasn’t trying to jab back at her; I just really wanted to know what was going through her mind when she and if she really hadn’t ever wanted to see or hear from me again.

“I admit, that was a really shitty way for me to handle things, and I’m sorry,” she said.

I instinctively reached my hand out to touch hers resting on top of her lap. I think it surprised her a little, and to be honest, it surprised me too. But once it was there, I didn’t pull it back.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” I said. “I’m the one who caused this whole problem to begin with.”

“I still shouldn’t have broken up with you over text,” she continued. “That