It was minutes for my phone or food. Crazy gal that I am, I opted for food.
Wilder takes a step closer to me and away from the brunette he was just pressed up against. “So, what was so important that you had to miss our meeting then? Wait, let me guess.” He clicks his fingers and then points at me. “I know. You were with Professor Weller, getting your nose surgically removed from her ass because it’d been stuck up there so long that hemorrhoids started to grow out your nostrils.”
The girl bursts out laughing. And I can feel my face heating with embarrassment.
“Surely, you couldn’t have been doing something fun, like getting laid, because you don’t know how to have fun, Stickford.”
“You’re an ass. And I’m done here.”
I push past him, ignoring the laughing brunette, and I all but run down the steps off the back porch. I’m speed walking down the side of the house when a hand catches my arm.
I whirl around to see Wilder.
His eyes are lit in a way I’ve never seen before. It makes both my legs tremble and my heart beat faster.
“You could have called to let me know you’d be late, Morgan.”
He rarely calls me Morgan. It throws me off balance for a moment.
I pull my arm from his hand, needing him to stop touching me because I can feel my mask starting to fade.
I hate that he has this effect on me.
How can I want such a mean, jumped-up asshole, whose sole aim in life is to screw as many girls as possible? It makes no sense to me. He makes no sense to me.
“I couldn’t call you,” I tell him through thin lips. “I was at work. My boss offered me extra hours, as one of the other girls had called in sick, and I couldn’t not take them because I need the money. We’re not all born with a rich mommy and daddy who can pay our bills for us.”
His eyes narrow on me, but he doesn’t say anything for a long moment.
Then, he just turns and starts to head back to the party.
“We need to rearrange our study session,” I call to his back. “I’m not failing this class because of you.”
He stops and turns back to me. His eyes look dark. “I did the work. Well, my half of it. Because you didn’t turn up, I made the decision of who should do what. I’ll email my part to you tomorrow, so there’s no need for us to meet again.”
I should be relieved. But I’m not.
“What if I don’t want to do the part that you’re giving me?”
He laughs, but it’s a hollow sound. “Then, complain to Professor Weller. I know you have no problem doing that because she pulled me aside the other day to ask me what the issue was between you and me. Said that you’d been to see her and asked to be reassigned to a different partner. And you know what I told her?” He takes long strides back toward me until he’s so close that I have to tip my head back to look into his face, which looks clouded with anger. “I told her that I don’t have a fucking clue what I ever did to make you dislike me.” His voice is a harsh sound in my ear.
I swallow roughly, and he takes a step back and runs his hand through his hair.
“But you know what else I told her?”
Dumbly, I shake my head.
“I told her that I don’t care. Whatever your problem with me is, well, it’s your problem and not mine.” And then he’s gone, striding off back to the party. Back to his brunette.
“But that’s the problem,” I whisper to his back. “You didn’t care. You hurt my feelings, and you just didn’t care.”
I don’t bother to knock on Morgan’s office door. I just walk straight in.
Her head comes up from her computer, her eyes narrowing with anger on me.
I have flashbacks to college and her looking at me that exact same way on many occasions.
Dislike and disdain.
And, just like it bothered me then—not that I ever let her know that—it bothers me now. Even more so.
“I’m busy,” she says.
“This won’t take a minute. What you just saw in my office wasn’t what you thought it was.”
She barks out a laugh. “So, you weren’t just about to fuck my assistant.”
“No.” I grit my teeth. “I’d just come out of my bathroom after showering and—”
“Often take showers during the day, do you?”
“When I’ve just done a workout in the gym on my lunch hour, yes, I do.” I pause, gritting my teeth. I take a deep breath in through my nose and then exhale it out. “Look, Sierra and I have…a past. A short past. We slept together once before she started working here.”
“And you just didn’t bother to tell me?”
“I didn’t think it was any of your business.”
She laughs. “Typical, Wilder.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, you never think further than the end of your cock.”
I grind my teeth. “Honestly, I didn’t want to cause a problem, and I knew, if I told you that I’d slept with her the night before you came in for that first meeting—”
“Hang on.” She holds up a hand. “Sierra was the reason you were late for our meeting? She’s the one who left that note on your shirt?”
I realize what I just let slip, and my balls shrivel up into my body. “Yes.”
She lets out a sound of disbelief, shaking her head.
“I would never have touched her if I had known she was going to start working here.”
“Yet you were just naked in your office with her pressed up against you.”
“That was all her. She was waiting for me. I hadn’t invited her, and I sure as hell didn’t want her there. But she wasn’t taking no for an answer.”
“So, she overpowered you and pressed you up against the wall?”
“I wouldn’t say overpowered—”
She laughs derisively, cutting me off. “You can go now. I have work to do.”
“Don’t fucking do that. Don’t dismiss me like I’m your assistant.”
“Well, don’t screw my actual assistant in your office in the middle of the day, and maybe I won’t!” she yells, rising to her feet, hands pressed to the desk, her face red, eyes bright with anger.
“I didn’t screw her!”
“Only because I interrupted you!”
“I wasn’t going to do a goddamn thing with her! Aside from the fact that she works here and I never touch employees, I never ride the same roller coaster twice.”
“God, you’re disgusting. Same game, different place. You’re working your way through the female population of Chicago just like you worked your way through Northwestern.”
“Except for you, Morgan. I never worked my way through you.”
Her jaw clenches, working angrily. “Only because I saw right through you. God.” She laughs. “Same old Wilder Cross. And here I was, thinking you’d changed. You sure had me fooled.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, you’re still the same shallow, self-centered, womanizing asshole that you were in college!”
“Yeah, and you’re the same stuck-up, judgmental bitch that you always were!”
“Fuck you,” she spits.
“Original.” I laugh. “But maybe that’s the problem, Morgan. Maybe you want to fuck me, and you can’t. Maybe that’s been the problem all along. You wanted to screw me in college, too, and that was why you were so bent out of shape all the time.”
Her eyes narrow like lasers. I know I’m being a dick, overstepping the mark, but she pushes my buttons like no one. She’s always been able to push my buttons.
“God, I hate you,” she bites.
I narrow my gaze on her. “The feeling is one hundred percent mutual, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your sweetheart.”
“Thank God because, if you were, my balls would have frozen off by now.”
Her eyes close, and I hate that I can’t see what she’s thinking. She exhales slowly through her nose and then opens her eyes.