Beautiful Bastard (Beautiful Bastard, #1)(63)

Again, he knew I was lying, but this time he didn’t push it. He placed his hand on my lower back and led me out to the car.





Nineteen


I knew women could get moody out of the blue. I knew a few women who would get wrapped up in thoughts and scenarios and take a single what-if down the road thirty thousand years into the future, getting upset about something they assumed I’d do three days from now.

But that didn’t feel like what was going on with Chloe, and she’d never been that kind of woman anyway. I’d seen her mad before. Hell, I’d seen every flavor of mad from her: pissed, irate, hateful, borderline violent.

I’d never seen her hurt.

She buried herself in documents on the short drive to the airport. She excused herself to check in with her father when we were waiting at our gate. On the plane, she fell asleep almost as soon as we were in our seats, ignoring my very clever requests to join the mile-high club. She woke up only long enough to decline lunch, even though I knew she hadn’t eaten any breakfast. When she woke up as we began our descent, she stared out the window instead of looking at me.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer for what felt like forever, and my heart started to race. I tried to figure out all of the moments I could have f*cked up. Sex with Chloe in bed. More sex with Chloe. Orgasms for Chloe. She had a lot of orgasms, to be honest. I didn’t think it was that. Wake up, shower, basically profess my love. Hotel lobby, Gugliotti, airport.

I paused. The conversation with Gugliotti had left me feeling a little slimy. I’m not sure why I had acted like such a possessive jackass, but there wasn’t any denying that Chloe had that effect on me. She’d been amazing at the meeting, I knew she had, but I would be damned if she would take a step down and work for a man like Gugliotti when she finished her degree. He’d probably treat her like a piece of meat and stare at her ass all day.




“I heard what you said.” Her voice was so quiet it took me a moment to register that she’d said something, and then another beat to process it. My stomach dropped.

“What I said when?”

She smiled, turning to look at me finally, and f*ck me: she was crying. “To Gugliotti.”

“I sounded possessive. I’m sorry.”

“You sounded possessive . . .” she muttered, turning back to the window. “You sounded dismissive—you made me seem na?ve! You acted like the meeting was a training exercise. I feel ridiculous for how I described it to you yesterday, thinking it was something more.”

I put my hand on her arm, laughing a little. “Guys like Gugliotti have egos. He just needs to feel like the executives are listening to him. You did everything we needed. He just wants me to be the one to hand him the official contract.”

“But that’s absurd. And you perpetuated it, with me as the pawn.”

I blinked, confused. I did exactly what she said. But that’s how the game is played, isn’t it? “You’re my intern.”

A sharp laugh escaped her lips and she turned to me again. “Right. Because you’ve cared all this time how my career progresses.”

“Of course I do.”

“How would you know I need seasoning? You barely looked at my work before yesterday.”

“Patently false.” I shook my head, getting a little riled. “I know that because I’ve watched everything you do. I don’t want to put pressure on you to do more than you can right now, and that’s why I’m maintaining control of the Gugliotti account. But you did a great job in there, and I was very proud of you.”

She closed her eyes, and leaned her head back against her seat. “You called me ‘kid.’”

“I did?” I searched my memory and realized she was right. “I guess I just didn’t want him to see you as this bombshell businesswoman he could hire away and try to f*ck.”

“Jesus, Bennett. You are such an *! Maybe he wanted to hire me because I can do the job well!”

“I apologize. I’m acting like a possessive boyfriend.”

“The possessive boyfriend thing isn’t new to me. It’s that you’re acting like you did me a favor. It’s how condescending you’re being. I’m not sure now is the best time to engage in more typical boss-intern interactions.”

“I told you I think you did an amazing job with him.”

She glared at me, her face turning red. “You never would have said that before. You would have said, ‘Good. Back to work.’ That’s it. And to Gugliotti you acted like you have me under your thumb. Before you would have pretended you didn’t even know me.”

“Do we really need to discuss why I was an * before? You weren’t exactly Little Miss Sunshine yourself. And why is now the time to hash this out?”

“This isn’t about you being an * before. It’s about how you’re being now. You’re compensating. This is exactly why you don’t f*ck your boss. You were a fine boss before—you let me do my thing and you did yours. Now you’re the touchy-feely mentor who calls me ‘kid’ to the guy I saved your ass with? Unbelievable.”

“Chloe—”

“I can deal with you being a giant dick, Bennett. I’m used to it, I expect it. It’s how we work. Because beneath all the huffing and door slamming, I knew that you respected me. But how you were today—it puts a line there that wasn’t there before . . .” She shook her head, glanced back out the window.