Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(57)

This woman fed his need to be punished. This bitch used the one weakness Chris possesses, the heartache of loss, against him.

“I can handle Isabel,” I say, and somehow I keep my voice unaf-fected, though my fury is quickly eroding my calmness.

Chris doesn’t look convinced by my fa?ade, but he takes one glance at his watch and says, “We have to go in.” He pulls me close, caressing my hair in that familiar, wonderful way he does. “Just remember. We’re here for Ella. Isabel doesn’t matter.”

“I know.” And I do. “I can do this.”

And he’s right. Isabel doesn’t matter. Ella does, and he does.

The entryway to the dinner club is a small foyer with a coat closet and a big, burly doorman in a tuxedo.

He nods at Chris. “Mr. Merit.” Then he looks at me with a Stallone-esque, heavy-lidded expression. “And a guest, I see.”

He gives my jeans a once-over and eyes Chris. “I see she’s living by your dress code, not ours.”

Chris shrugs out of his coat and sets it by an unattended coat check area, then reaches for mine. “Neither myself nor Ms. McMillan will be staying for dinner. Isabel is expecting us.”

“Then by all means.” He steps aside and motions us up a long light of stairs too narrow for more than one person. Chris waves me forward irst. Terriic. Into the wild world of Isabel without my own whip.

I’m almost at the top of the steps when I spot a woman I am certain is Isabel. She is gorgeous, with long, silky, dark brown hair and pale skin, and a short, itted, silk emerald-green dress. There are no marks on her skin from a whip. No ink of a tattoo. There’s an unworldly quality about her, and I guess her to be at least in her midthirties. Amber never had a chance against this woman and I’m willing to bet that Isabel was who came next. I am surprised to ind I feel no inferiority to her, as I did Amber. Maybe it’s due to my improved state of mind, or the growth Chris and I have managed in these short few days. Or maybe it’s simply how much I instantly hate her for what she did to Chris.



I step onto the main dining room loor, directly in front of her.

“You must be Sara,” she purrs in English, and her accent is positively sexy.

I don’t ask how she knows who I am; I don’t really care.

“And you must be Isabel.”

“I am,” she conirms. “Welcome to my establishment.”

She owns this place? I already felt like I was on enemy territory; now I feel like I’m in a mineield.

Chris steps to my side, his hand settling on my back, his hip pressed intimately against mine. It’s a statement, and Isabel knows it. Her pale blue eyes sharpen, her red-painted lips purs-ing before her attention shifts to Chris.

Her irritation fades, replaced by unmistakable female admiration. She wants him, badly. “S’il vous pla?t, Chris.”

“Where is he?” Chris asks, seeming oblivious to her warm welcome. Chris is oblivious to nothing.

She purses her lips again. “Right to business. I see nothing has changed. This way.”

Chris’s ingers lex on my back, silently warning me to stay cool. I don’t look at him, for fear he’ll decide to usher me out of here. Which is probably smart, since I’m really pissed of.

We follow Isabel through an elegant dining room with white linen tablecloths, fancy red-cushioned chairs, and lots of art on the walls. I easily recognize several paintings as Chris’s.

The whip might have been what Chris had the afair with, but Isabel deinitely wanted one with Chris.

Isabel halts at a staircase that snakes up to another level.

“You’ll ind him in limited company.”

While I understand that a cramped city of nearly twelve million has to be built in levels, I’d be a whole lot happier if Neuville had been on this one. I’m not looking forward to being the irst to greet Neuville, especially considering my unfamiliar surroundings.

“Follow me,” Chris orders, starting up the stairs irst.

Isabel crosses her arms in front of her chest, her lips twitching like she knows something we don’t. I frown and quickly follow Chris, afraid of what might await him upstairs.

He’s already at the top and I hear him say, “Surprise—but then, imagine our surprise to be followed by someone who said they worked for you.”

“Our surprise?” a deep male voice queries. “You and who else?”

I step up beside Chris, bringing a formal dining room into view. Another painting by a famous artist is on the wall, and the walnut table in the center of the room is large enough to it a dozen people. There are only two. A twenty-something female with dirty blond hair, who would be quite beautiful if she weren’t sitting next to the devastatingly handsome Garner Neuville.

He licks me a look and then glances back at Chris, who says, “I’m sure you know Sara, since you had her followed.”

Holding Chris’s stare, Neuville doesn’t react. He just sits there in his well-pressed, pale blue dress shirt, not a strand of his thick, slicked-back raven hair out of place. “Leave us, Stepha-nie,” he inally says without looking at his companion.

She’s walking toward me in a few seconds lat, and I can’t help but wonder if Neuville is her Master. Are those the kinds of circles he and Chris run in together? They share a link to Isabel, after all.