My Fake Christmas Fiance (Kane Christmas #1) - Julie Kriss Page 0,51

crossed his face, from humor to anger to lust. I’d looked into those blue eyes. I knew what his skin tasted like and what he looked like naked and how it felt to—

No, I wasn’t going to think about that. Because I wasn’t going to have that with Wes ever again. Some other woman would have it—or maybe a lineup of other women. Maybe he’d even fall in love someday and get married for real. But that woman wouldn’t be me.

How many minutes now? One hundred? Less?

The half-asleep security guard called up to Curtis’s office, then let us upstairs. By the time we got into the elevator, the silence was too painful.

“Wes,” I said.

He turned to look at me. Was that hurt in his expression? Hope? I couldn’t read it. I dropped my gaze from his and cleared my throat.

“We can be friends after this, right?” I asked into the silence of the elevator. “We have to run the company together.”

There was a pause while he still looked at me.

“Is that what you want?” His voice was rough.

To be friends? I couldn’t stand the idea of Wes hating me. I’d take anything I could get from him. There had to be something that would work. “We can be friends,” I managed, my voice tentative. “Right?”

His voice was flat. “Right.”

“And we shouldn’t tell everyone at work yet. They were so happy at the party last night. You know, morale.”

I sounded horrible. Completely horrible. I didn’t know this woman, and I didn’t like her. And I couldn’t figure out how to make her go away.

“We’ll wait until after the New Year,” Wes said, his cool tone matching mine. “To tell everyone about the divorce.”

Divorce. I hated that ugly word so much. It hung there between us and I didn’t know how to make it go away, either.

None of this was happening the way it was supposed to happen. How had everything gone so wrong?

The elevator doors opened and we walked into an office. There was a man at a desk. He was short, with thinning hair combed carefully back and an expensive suit on. He rose and shook our hands. “Curtis J. Curtis,” he said, introducing himself. “I have your paperwork ready. Let’s go to the meeting room.”

We followed him through the empty offices to a bland, impersonal meeting room with a square table and chairs. I had a sudden flash of memory from a year ago, when Wes and I had sat in a similar meeting room in San Diego and been presented with the marriage agreement. It felt like a million years ago and yesterday at the same time. I’d been so shocked that day, and then I’d looked at Wes and seen the handsome gleam of humor in his eyes. I’m in, he’d said. And my entire life had started to change.

We took our coats off and hung them, and I saw that Wes was wearing his Mountain Man look, blue-and-black flannel with jeans. Was he deliberately trying to torture me? I had no defenses against the Mountain Man look. It made me weak in the knees. I looked away from him and pulled out a chair quickly, sitting at the meeting table.

“As divorces go, this is very simple,” Curtis J. Curtis said, sitting at the head of the table as Wes took a seat across from me. “Since there are no children, and you haven’t had a chance to share any assets, it’s just a matter of paperwork.”

Right. No children. I wasn’t going to have children with Wes, see what kind of father he would be. I looked at him, but he was looking down at the table, a frown on his handsome face.

“The marriage itself is legitimate,” Curtis continued, “which satisfies the terms of the merger contract your fathers set up. So I don’t see a problem there. The divorce shouldn’t affect the merger at all.”

He shuffled papers and pens. How many minutes left now? I wondered. Thirty? Twenty? Panic started in my chest.

“Before we start, are there any pieces of property that need to be exchanged or agreed on?” the lawyer asked. “Rings, for example?”

Panic seized me harder. My ring? I had to give my ring back? I hadn’t thought about that until this minute. I’d been wearing that ring since the day I received it.

But it wasn’t mine.It was Wes’s. And we weren’t going to be married anymore in a matter of minutes.

“No,” Wes said to Curtis, his voice rough. “No property.”

I made myself say