The Rules Read online

  “Yeah.” I sure did want to kill him. But Brad didn’t know the half of it.

  “So, you still want to go out?”

  I weighed that possibility for a moment. I could. Would it be wrong of me to ignore my complete lack of sexual attraction for this guy and give it a shot?

  Another knock at the door sounded before I could open my mouth.

  Brad stepped back and pulled it open before I could stop him.

  Cade.

  Of course. I mean when would the universe not rain on my parade?

  Cade rolled his eyes and stomped into my apartment as if he owned the place. “Seriously?” he asked me. He wore the suit and tie he’d worn to the office, which meant he’d probably come straight to my apartment.

  “Cade. This isn’t a good time.”

  Brad stood at his full height and faced Cade also. “Dude. I really don’t think the lady is interested. Why don’t you give it up?”

  Cade laughed.

  I wanted to punch him. What a dick.

  “That’s rich.” Cade strolled into my apartment, glancing around. He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the couch. He then proceeded to loosen his tie.

  I cringed. Make yourself at home, why don’t you.

  Brad, I wasn’t embarrassed about. He’d seen my apartment a few times in the past. He knew I didn’t have the money for more furniture.

  And why the hell was I silently justifying myself to Cade?

  “Cade. Leave.” I grabbed the front door and held it open. “You’re not welcome here.”

  Cade ignored me and sat on my couch, stretching out both arms and getting as comfortable as a person could on my ratty, beaten-up, beige sofa.

  “You heard the lady. She asked you to leave, Mr. Alexander.” Brad stood firm. I admired him for his actions. I even appreciated the way he stood up for me. However, my heart wasn’t beating for him. It had started pumping the second Cade walked in.

  There was a moment of standoff. Or so it seemed. Though I was sure it wasn’t a standoff for Cade at all. He knew exactly who was going to win this battle, and it wasn’t going to be Brad. Or me for that matter.

  Finally, Cade spoke. “Amelia, unless you want me to air our dirty laundry in front of your friend here, I suggest you tell him good night.”

  I stopped breathing. He was being an ass, and I was losing my patience. I also knew he would absolutely follow through on that threat, giving me no choice but to dismiss Brad.

  I turned to find Brad’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Really? Lillie, you don’t have to put up with this. Let’s just go. If he won’t leave, call the cops.”

  I wished it were that simple.

  I touched Brad’s arm and peered into his eyes. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But I need to work out a few things with Cade. Can I have a rain check?”

  The hurt on Brad’s face made me want to hang my head in shame. But I held steady, trying to convey without words how sorry I was. And not just for breaking our date, but for breaking our future. I knew he was into me. This would burn a little, and I wouldn’t break things off with him, things that had never really started, right here in front of Cade. That would have to wait.

  Brad sighed and nodded. He walked to the door like the true gentleman he was. His fingers touched my cheek as he turned around. “Call me.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Even later tonight if you need.”

  I nodded.

  He dropped his hand and walked away while I watched.

  I swallowed what I knew to be true. That was the first time he’d touched my face. And nothing. No sparks. No fireworks. Nothing.

  Damn it. It would have been so much easier if Brad were the man of my dreams.

  I shut the door finally and turned to face the bane of my existence.

  “Have you slept with him?”

  I flinched. “None of your business.”

  Cade narrowed his gaze at me. He sighed and then spoke again. “Come here, Amelia.” His voice held less conviction than earlier. His words were still commanding, and I was drawn to him like a puppet, but he wasn’t as angry. He’d lost some of the initial edge.

  I ignored him and walked to my table to grab my wine.

  Cade glanced at the bottle on the counter and smiled. “Good vintage.”

  I rolled my eyes and then relented. “You want a glass?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  I grabbed another wineglass from the cabinet and poured some of my favorite Chardonnay in it. Of course this required me to stroll across the room and hand it to him, which meant I would need to get within arm’s reach, which would be dangerous.

  And I wasn’t mistaken. Cade took the glass with one hand, but he grabbed my forearm with the other and pulled me down next to him.

  Most of his anger had dissipated. I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing, but he reached for me tentatively and tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “You changed your hairstyle.”

  “I needed something new.” I shrugged. I’d added highlights and shortened it some. My belly tightened at his simple touch. It was impossible for me to ignore what he did to me just by entering a room. This was why I needed to get rid of him. And fast. Before I did something stupid.

  “I like it.”

  “I don’t care what you like.”

  Cade stopped moving, his mouth falling. He took a long drink and then leaned his head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. “Please, baby. Give me a bone here. If I had any idea what I did to deserve your wrath, I would sleep better at night.”

  “Really? You think so? So, if I tell you what I’m pissed off about, you’ll leave me alone and let me go?”

  He lifted his gaze and frowned. He blinked a few times. He had no idea what I could possibly say to make him let me be. “Amelia—”

  “No, I’m serious. If I agree to tell you what happened that day, I want you to agree to leave me alone.”

  “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  Cade took a deep breath and then relented. “Okay.”

  “It’s simple. I can sum it up for you in one word. And you can walk out that door right now.”

  “Baby…”

  “Olivia.”

  Cade’s stance changed in less than a heartbeat. He bolted to an upright position from his slouch and almost dropped his wine. He managed to set the glass precariously on the floor near the couch before he lost it. But he’d also gone noticeably mute.

  “Now you know. Please leave me alone.”

  “What?” His word was nearly screeched. “Are you telling me Olivia came to my house and spoke to you while I was at work that day?”

  I narrowed my gaze. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  He jumped up from the couch and began to pace. “I haven’t seen or heard from her in years. That bitch. What the fuck did she say to make you run?” He ran his hands through his hair.

  “Oh, you know. Just little details.” I raised my voice for the next part. “Like how you’re married to her and have a little girl.” I was shouting by the end. I stood and stomped from the room to get more wine. I might as well drink it from the bottle at that point.

  “What?” Cade screamed even louder than me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I had the bottle of wine hovering over my glass when he asked that question. My blood froze. I stopped breathing.

  I set the bottle back on the counter and lifted my face.

  Never. Not once in five months had I considered any part of Olivia’s tirade to be lies. Hell, the woman had the paperwork to back up her story. I felt a chill as I calmly uttered the damning parts. “She showed me your marriage certificate and Libby’s birth certificate.” I held on to the counter with both hands.

  Cade’s chest rose and fell. His eyes grew huge. His nostrils flared. He clearly wanted to murder Olivia. When he finally moved, it was to spin around in a circle as though looking for something to take his anger out
on. I owned nothing worth throwing. I didn’t move a muscle. Had I been wrong?

  Cade’s shoulders slumped finally, and he headed back to the couch. He picked up his glass and downed the rest of the wine in one gulp. He stomped over to where I stood and grabbed the bottle next. After filling both our glasses, he took another long drink.

  I took a few steps away.

  He ignored me and headed back for the couch where he slumped back and put his head in his hands.

  I picked up my wineglass and padded his way. I wasn’t scared for my own safety. My furniture maybe, but nothing I had was worth worrying about. The most expensive item in the room had just been swallowed. I didn’t think the empty bottle alone was worth much.

  Several long, uncomfortable minutes went by.

  I waited.

  Finally Cade lifted his head and looked at me. For the first time ever, I saw pain in his eyes.

  I had been hurting for months. It hadn’t occurred to me he’d been hurting also. Perhaps worse.

  He leaned back and started talking. “I met Olivia in college. She was a friend of Christine.”

  “Who’s Christine?” I interrupted.

  “Riley’s ex-fiancée.”

  “Oh right.” I wondered what had happened between those two.

  “Olivia was made of sugar for the first few years. She came from more money than me. I was hesitant at first. But she was persistent. I was afraid, for good reason, I wouldn’t be able to live up to her expectations. She had expensive tastes.

  “She worked hard to get me. I thought she loved me. I never realized the only thing she loved was money, and she’d seen in me the potential to earn more of it. She’d judged me right in that area at least. She’d even submitted for me. When I started dabbling in BDSM and later knew it was a path I wanted to follow, she readily agreed.”

  I didn’t move a muscle.

  “After two years, she wore me down. By then I was working my way up the corporate ladder. I was twenty-four. I had a master’s degree. I had a fantastic job. And I had big ideas. I was also an idiot. I never saw her for what she truly was—a greedy, conniving bitch.”

  I flinched. Cade ignored me or didn’t notice. He was in his world now. He needed to tell this story in his way, and I needed to hear it.

  “I married her. And then she went psycho on me. I tried. I really tried. I gave her four years of dating and four years of marriage before I couldn’t take it another minute. I filed for divorce. I thought she would go ballistic when I told her, but she surprised me. She moved out without putting up a fight. I knew she was cheating on me. She probably didn’t want to risk that tidbit coming up in mediation.

  “Of course she cleaned house in court. Not surprising. It was fast. Really fast. Too fast.”

  “She was pregnant,” I commented.

  Cade turned to me. “Baby, I swear to you, if that woman was pregnant, I had no knowledge of it. And there’s no way the kid’s mine.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  I swallowed. “How do you know for sure?”

  He shrugged. “We hadn’t had sex in months when I kicked her to the curb, and the divorce was fast, but not that fast. The last time I saw Olivia, it had been months since I’d slept with her. Can’t say I looked at her closely, but she never said she was pregnant. Why the hell wouldn’t she have told me? She could have milked me for way more money at the time, or even used the baby as leverage to try and blackmail me into staying with her. The father must be whoever the fuck she was sleeping with when I divorced her ass.”

  I nodded.

  Cade gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “Fuck.” He set his head in his hands again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He turned toward me again. His face was hard. “So you just left? Some bitch came to the door claiming to be my wife, and you fucking left?”

  “Well, yeah. She had a certificate.”

  “Of course she had a certificate. They don’t fucking disintegrate into thin air when someone gets divorced.”

  He had a point there.

  “She had the kid too.”

  “With her? She brought a kid to the house?”

  I nodded. “She looked just like Olivia. And that woman isn’t a fit mother. She was a bitch. I felt horrible for that child. And it made me even angrier with you for abandoning your own daughter.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “I should have had more faith in you.”

  “You ripped off my necklace and left it lying on the front steps.”

  “No. In my defense, Olivia did that.”

  “That skank touched you?”

  “Yes.”

  Cade picked up his glass from the floor again and drank the last of the wine. “You have more of this?” He lifted the glass into the air.

  I nodded.

  He stood, mumbling to himself on the way to the kitchen. “My woman has furniture from the dime store and hundred-dollar bottles of wine in her fridge.”

  I smiled. I especially liked the way he said “my woman.”

  Was there a chance in hell we could reconcile?

  I wrapped my mind around the idea.

  Cade returned with the second bottle open, topped off my glass, and sat. I thought perhaps he had my idea from earlier and had decided to just drink from the bottle.

  He didn’t appear to notice he held it.

  “Did she come inside?”

  “Yes.”

  He was piecing together what had happened. His free hand went to his disheveled hair, and he made it sexier. “And the kid?”

  “Olivia commanded her to stand near the front door while she pranced to the kitchen like she owned the place.”

  “That woman touched my stuff?”

  “Well, not really. She just set her purse down on the counter and showed me the paperwork.”

  “Wait. She happened to be carrying an old marriage certificate and a birth certificate in her purse?”

  I nodded. That probably was a bit weird.

  “And the birth certificate listed me as the father?”

  I nodded again.

  Cade leaned back and pulled his cell from his pocket. He handed me the bottle of wine while he pressed buttons. Almost immediately he started speaking. “Hey�� Yeah, I’m with her now… Yes, she let me in… Okay, right, well that’s true. I didn’t give her much of a choice… So, get this, Olivia paid her a visit… No, I’m not fucking kidding. If I were, I’d be remarried right now, and the woman of my dreams wouldn’t be sitting next to me on a ratty couch nibbling her bottom lip in uncertainty…”

  I almost fell off the couch. My belly did a flip flop. He’d be married right now? I was the woman of his dreams? I couldn’t move or breathe. My heart pounded.

  Cade continued. “Could you? Have Martin handle it, yeah? I don’t care what it costs. Find that bitch. I want to know what the fuck she’s up to… And, Riley… She has a kid. She told Amelia it was mine.” Now his gaze went to me. He took my hand and squeezed it while he finished and hung up.

  “That was Riley?”

  “Yes.”

  “You two are in business together?”

  “Only from the standpoint that I’m a silent partner of his business. I don’t interfere otherwise.”

  “But both companies are developing the same sort of software for cell phone apps?”

  He smiled. “Yep.”

  I finally caught on. “Is that legal?”

  He laughed. “Of course it is.”

  “But you’re creating a competition within the industry.”

  “Yep.”

  I rolled my eyes. “No wonder you make the big bucks.”

  He reached tentatively for a lock of my hair and twirled it around his fingers.

  “Did you mean it?” My voice was rough.

  “Mean what?”

  “What you said to Riley.”

  His mouth lifted on the corners the slightest amount. “Ev
ery word.”

  My hands started shaking. “I really fucked this up.”

  He wrapped a hand behind my head and pulled me close to his face. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I judged you very fast.”

  “You’d known me ten days.”

  “True.”

  He pulled me closer.

  “Can we survive this?” I asked.

  “Can we not?”

  I took a deep breath and lowered my gaze to his lips. God, I’d missed his lips.

  Cade released me and reached down for his wineglass on the floor. He poured another glass from the bottle still in his hand. He held the bottle up for inspection. “When did you become such a wine snob?”

  I grinned. “About six months ago.”

  “I approve. This is one of my favorites.” He swirled it around and took another sip. He stood then and wandered around my apartment. There wasn’t much to see. But I figured he was antsy. I only had the one bedroom, a bathroom, and the room we stood in. Cade stepped to the entrance to my bedroom and chuckled. “Still a mess, I see.”

  “Not gonna change,” I responded.

  He turned to me and leaned on the doorframe. “Is that so?”

  “Let’s be clear.” I took another drink of wine. “I’m not the same woman you met six months ago.”

  “Really?” He didn’t seem to believe me.

  “Really.” I stood also, strolling in his direction.

  “How do you figure?”

  “I’m not going to clean my mess no matter what you say.” I shrugged. “Tried it for a while. Didn’t work. It’s not my style. Can’t find anything when it’s all tucked away somewhere.”

  “Bet I could change your mind.” His smirk wreaked of cockiness.

  “And I’m telling you, you can’t.” I stood firm, a few feet separating us, meeting his gaze.

  “I can still picture your pink ass under my palm. You just need a bit of discipline.” He took another drink and then let the glass dangle slightly tipped at his side while he held it by the stem.

  “If you recall correctly, that only worked once. Then I was immune to that type of corrective action.”