Chapter Three. Rowan #2
When the shoot is over, the staff cleans up while the models and myself remove our stage makeup and study sample shots that Lyle shows us on his camera. I continue to ask Lyle questions hoping to wait out Holden’s patience so I don’t have to confront him.
But he just stands there.
He waits while everyone scampers out of there.
It’s not until we’re the only people left in the studio that I acknowledge that my attempt to avoid him has failed.
Now it’s just me. Just him. And a whole chasm of unchecked emotions between us.
“We’re not going to talk?” he finally asks.
My window has closed. I have no chance to escape other than to walk past him.
With my chin held high, I take the steps toward the door, but his hand is on my arm in seconds.
I emit the tiniest of yelps as I’m yanked against him.
He smells of soap and cologne, and I hate that it’s familiar and desirable and everything in between.
My heart might be shattered, but my body clearly hasn’t gotten the memo.
“Rowan?” he murmurs. It’s the tone of his voice—hurt, desperate, confused—the only break in his stoic facade, that gets me.
We breathe in that small, charged space. We feel what I can assume is the same fucking heartache, but neither of us acquiesces a single inch.
Because isn’t that what hurts the most? That while Holden screwed me over, I do think he was falling for me just as hard as I was for him.
But apparently he was willing to suffer and fall on the sword for his cause while I had no choice in the matter.
I pull the robe I’ve put on over my suit a little tighter as his eyes flicker down to my hand and lack of a ring.
Shit. Little details I’ve forgotten in the fog of this heartbreak warfare.
All the bravado I had earlier, my attempt at showing him what he’s going to miss, has flown out the window. And while this robe might simply be cotton and thread, it’s the only form of protection I have against Holden Knight.
Isn’t that a fitting fucking metaphor? Fabric against steel.
Did I ever stand a chance?
“It’s time to change the dress?” he asks, repeating the last and only thing I said to him.
His own line was a reminder that sometimes you need to change the dress, shed what a person thinks of you, and do something completely unexpected.
Like wearing strong and regal sapphires over the soft and romantic rubies my mother wanted for me.
Like agreeing to work with Holden to further my own best interest over the collective interest of my family.
Like becoming engaged to Chad—a man he knows I’ve been pressured to marry my whole adult life—once I found out about Holden’s deceit, as another means to get what I need.
By the way he’s standing here and the confusion in his furrowed brow, he doesn’t have a clue as to the why behind the last one.
And here I assumed he had put two and two together. That I knew about the contract being signed and his machinations to completely shut me out of my family business. How could he not, though?
I struggle with the thought.
The contract was in his top drawer. I left the cuff links on the desk in my fervent need to escape. On the desk sitting right above the damn contract.
He’s a clever man. I know him well enough to know how his mind works and that he’s smart enough to deduce that I saw the contract and know the truth.
Why else would I have done what I did?
Christ. We spent the weekend together, we were … whatever we were, and then I up and get engaged to Chadwick? What is Holden thinking? What does he suppose happened? I couldn’t even make a guess because the man hasn’t asked me a single question in the last six days. Until now.
Either he has a ridiculous amount of restraint, or he simply doesn’t care.
For a man as meticulous with details as I’ve learned Holden to be? I opt for the latter.
And isn’t that the point to all this? That I’m so sick of men taking advantage of me in my life. Of using me for their own gains? If he can’t figure out why I’m pissed, why I agreed to marry Chad, then it’s not my fucking responsibility to spell it out for him.
So as hard as it is, I can’t confront him. I’ve shown all my cards before and look where that got me.
“Excuse me,” Lyle says when he walks back into the room. I startle, but one glance his way says he’s just as uncomfortable interrupting as I am figuring what to say. “I just need to gather a few more things. I won’t be but a minute.”
“No problem.” I offer him a sincere smile and wonder if I’m glad for his interruption or upset by it.
“These pictures were a waste of time,” Holden says quietly through gritted teeth. It seems he was more affected by them than he let on. Good. “We’re not using them.”
“Like hell we aren’t.”
Lyle nods to both of us but keeps his head ducked down as he exits, clearly sensing the tension.
“In case you forgot, I have the final say on everything and you being half naked on our ad campaign isn’t—”
“Isn’t what? To your liking? Do you think you have any right or ownership or any say at all when it comes to me?”
“My company. My say.”
“But it’s not your company yet,” I say. Refute me. Tell me it is. Tell me that the executed contract I saw signed in your drawer wasn’t real and that you’re still giving me the board seat and the 1 percent of your ownership that you promised.
Because that is what I saw.
Rhett’s signature on a contract that was way different from the one you gave me to approve. The one you used as a ruse to make me believe everything you said was true.
The one that gave me a leg to stand on in my family company when all anyone else has ever pegged me to be is a reluctant society lady.
Give me a truth here, Holden, so I know you are the man I thought you were.
Holden just stands there, holding his ground with a stoic expression that borders on fury, highlighted with a clenched jaw.
Nothing.
Fuck.
Rage and hurt and heartache fire anew.
My company. My say. My ass.
“Yeah, well, for a self-proclaimed mastermind, you sure are missing the mark, Knight.” With perfect timing, my robe accidentally slips, baring my shoulder and the red strap of my bikini top.
He growls, and that muscle in his jaw pulses. “Those photos will not be used,” he reasserts.
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t share.” I wave a hand absently at him and take a step back. “I think that no longer applies.”
“Rowan.” My name is a warning not to walk away from him.
I retreat a few more steps. His eyes reflexively glance over the length of my body. “I expect honesty at all times,” I say. “Weren’t those your words?”
“Meaning?”
“Weren’t they?”
“None of this makes sense,” he says, and it’s the closest he’s come to asking why I’m engaged to Chad. I can see the question in his eyes and I so desperately want him to ask.
But he doesn’t.
“And yet it makes perfect sense.” I give him the same cursory once-over.
“Life is black. It’s white. It’s gray,” I repeat his words back to him about the three ways you can live your life—bad, good, or with a little mystery thrown in for added measure.
He may live in the gray, but right now I prefer the stark white of the truth.
“You never know which thing will be which color, huh?”
And with that, I turn on my heel and walk away without saying another word.
I keep walking.
I want him to chase after me. I want him to explain why he screwed me over.
I want so many things, but when I turn the corner and look over my shoulder, the hallway is empty.
Just like my heart feels.
Nothing has changed and yet everything has.