Chapter Seventeen
I NEVER THOUGHT I'D be this...obsessed.
This...terrified.
And the part of me that has always been too arrogant for my own good—
That part of me is foolishly tempted to just walk out. On everything. I can tell myself that this is a good thing I'm doing, or that I've temporarily lost my mind.
Either way, I'm just going to help her be free of the douchebag she's been married to for two decades, and then just let go.
At least this way, I'd still be able to save my pride.
Because if I do end up asking her, and she says no—
Stop being a coward, Everford.
And so I force myself to concentrate on work. Every moment is a hard-fought battle, but I keep at it because this is the only thing I can do. It's only been four days, but it already feels like forever, and I have three more days to go.
Three more days, dammit.
I don't think I knew this then, but it's become obvious to me now that a part of me has been waiting for her all this time.
It's why I forced myself to hire Pettyfer years ago, and why he's been asked to sign NDAs for every salary increase he did nothing to deserve. It was all for her, not him. Because Sandy Pettyfer is a lazy, overbearing idiot, I knew there isn't a company in the world that would have paid him a tenth of what I have. If I let him go, I knew it would only be a matter of time before she’d suffer as his wife. And of course, there’s no way I would ever let that happen.
For as long as she’s married to him, I’d keep the douchebag on my payroll.
For as long as she’s married to him, I also swore never to cause trouble between them.
But now that there are just three more days...
Three more days, dammit!
I wake up early in the morning and make money until it's time to go back to the hotel, and I work out until my body has nothing left to give and sleep is the only option.
The hotel is the same one I've used in this city for nine years. The staff at the front desk no longer ask for my name, and the bellman knows the floor my suite is on without being told. I pay enough that it would be embarrassing if any of them did not.
This place is almost perfect, really. But since this is a hotel that doesn’t exclusively cater to my needs, that means being forced to deal with other guests, which can prove unnecessarily time-consuming when they’re of the opposite sex.
A blonde in a black dress detaches from a group near the bar as I cross the marble. She tries to catch my attention. “Excuse me?” I don’t look her way, but it’s still not enough to make her give up. She even goes as far as to try touching me—
“Excuse me?”
Try is the operative word here. But since my extremely well-trained bodyguards go wherever I go, she never makes it. Her fingers don’t even come within inches of me, and my security detail deals with her with such efficient speed that I wasn’t forced to slow down or break my stride for her.
Women like her just make me more impatient because they only remind me of how the only woman I want is still not mine.
One day at a time, Everford.
Just take this one fucking day at a time.
On the sixth day, Reynolds finally visits me at my office.
"It's done, sir."
He's been in contact with the lawyer we've hired to represent Nicole, but Reynolds has also made sure that no one will be able to trace anything back to me. It's better and cleaner that way.
However...
The tone Reynolds uses has my guard up.
“What’s the catch?” I ask curtly. “Does he think he can get money from her?”
“Our contact says he wants to speak to Ms. Nicole if she wants him to divorce her on the grounds she’s chosen.”