Hard Sell (21 Wall Street #2)(66)

“And how will you feel about that?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

I take a deep breath and consider.

Honestly? I’m tired of feeling. I wouldn’t mind being numb, just for a little while. I meant what I said to Ian about wanting to hold out for the fairy-tale ending, but . . . not just yet. I need time to come to grips with my feelings for Matt and embrace them, agony and all.

But . . . I’d be lying if I said Jarod’s interest hasn’t been a balm to my ego. It gives me hope to know that just because I’m alone now, just because my heart hurts now, it doesn’t mean I’ll have to be alone forever.

I’ll go to the gala with Matt if that’s what he wants, but I can’t say that I’d look forward to it. Not with this weird unrequited-love thing I have going on now. I don’t know that I’d particularly enjoy going with Jarod, either, but it would hurt less.

“I just want Matt to be happy,” I say quietly. “His career’s everything to him, and landing a client like Jarod would go a long way to restoring other clients’ faith in him.”

“Have you talked to him about it yet?”

I shake my head. “I was going to swing by the Wolfe offices later this afternoon. Kate says he’s got some free time.”

“Let me do it,” Ian says.

I blink in surprise. “Why?”

“It’s a guy thing.”

“Well, for me it’s a professional thing,” I counter. “I can’t let my client’s coworker deliver this kind of news.”

“You’re not. You’re letting your best friend talk to his best friend about a sticky situation.”

“But—”

“Sabrina.” He touches my arm again. “Trust me on this.”

I open my mouth to tell him no—to tell him that best friend or not, I handle my own problems. Always have, always will.

But then . . . have I handled my own problems? Because over the past month I seem to have gotten myself into trouble, not out of it.

Surely Ian can’t do any worse than I’ve done for myself.

“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “Talk to him.”





31

MATT

Tuesday Morning, October 17

“What the fuck? Tell me you’re joking.”

Ian takes a sip of his coffee. “Nope.”

“Sabrina wants to go to the gala with Lanham?”

“Not what I said. I said he wants to go with her.”

I suddenly have a whole new respect for the simplicity of cavemen’s thoughts, because right now, I’d love nothing better than a big stick and a cliff, just Lanham and me fighting to the death, with him going over the edge.

“This is bullshit,” I mutter.

“Did you miss the part where you get to manage all of Lanham’s money?” Kennedy says from where he leans against the wall on the far side of my office.

“Yeah, but the asshole is using Sabrina as leverage. How am I the only one outraged by this?”

“Because,” Kate says, coming through my open office door and unabashedly entering the conversation, “what he’s doing is not that different from what you did to her.”

I glare at her. “It’s entirely different. And how do you know about this?”

Kate shuts the door and shakes her head, coming to sit across from me, beside Ian. “Sabrina told me. And it isn’t different. You used her to get him. He used you to get her. You and Jarod want different things, but you still used someone else to get it.”

“The parallels really are remarkable,” Kennedy muses.

“Shut up,” I growl at him. “How are all three of you sitting there like this is fine? Like it’s no big deal that the woman I . . .”

“Yes?” Kate asks, sitting back and crossing her legs. “I’m dying to know how you’re going to finish that sentence.”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing the answer to that one myself,” Ian says. His tone is mild, but there’s a note of warning there.

I lock eyes with him. “You’ve talked to her.”

“Yes. We had lunch yesterday. That’s when she told me about the Lanham deal.”

“Fuck Lanham,” I say, leaning forward. “How is she?”

There’s a moment of silence in my office. Finally, Kennedy breaks it. “Did you just say, ‘Fuck Lanham’? As in, the unicorn you’ve been chasing your entire career?”

I ignore this, never looking away from Ian. “How is she?”

“She’s like you’d expect,” Ian says.

“What the hell does that mean?” My desperation is coming out in my voice, but I don’t care.

I am desperate.

It’s been more than a week since I’ve seen her. Talked to her. Held her. And the absence of her feels like a gaping hole in my chest.

Her email that she was still available “per our contract” had only made matters worse, shining light on the fact that I don’t want her that way. I don’t want her to spend time with me because it’s in the contract, because I’m paying her. I don’t want her to pretend to be in love with me for the sake of my bosses and my damn reputation.