“Why don’t you head out for the night?” Blake suggested to his chief of staff. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Of course.” Patricia tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. “Have a good night.”
“You too.”
Patricia shot one last quizzical look at Farrah, who remained unmoving in the doorway, before she brushed past her and swayed down the hall.
Patricia had been here all night, helping Blake sort through their shitshow of an opening. They’d settled on a new restaurant manager, but they still had issues with the plumbing and now their liquor distributor said their alcohol deliveries were going to be delayed. Something about the company consolidating two facilities into one and a backlog.
Blake would be more sympathetic if he weren’t so pissed off.
You couldn’t have a bar without alcohol. Period. That was the whole fucking point of a bar.
He and Patricia spent all afternoon scrambling to find another distributor who could deliver the quantities they needed on time for a reasonable price. They’d only stopped for a quick dinner break, during which he’d spilled wine all over her white shirt. He’d lent her the first top he could find—his favorite STU sweatshirt—to cover up the stain until she could change.
They’d been wrapping up when he heard a knock.
He didn’t know who he’d expected when he opened the door, but he most definitely hadn’t expected Farrah.
Blake leaned against the doorframe, drinking her in. She wore a little orange dress that bared her shapely legs and made her look tanner than usual. Her cheeks glowed pink, a sure sign she’d been drinking. Or maybe the pink had something to do with the anger flashing in her eyes.
“Sorry for showing up unannounced,” Farrah said stiffly. “I didn’t realize you had company.”
“She was leaving anyway. Come in.” Blake eyed the thin line of her lips and the tense set of her shoulders. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes.” Farrah surveyed his apartment. She paused on the two half-empty glasses of wine on his kitchen counter, and her scowl deepened.
“You look upset.”
“I’m not upset.”
“If you say so,” Blake drawled, not believing her for a second. “What brings you here tonight?”
By now, he knew better than to hope for a love confession. With his luck, Farrah was here to tell him something went wrong with the bank and that she hadn’t received the final payment for her design services.
Blake tensed his jaw and cleaned the wine glasses while he waited for Farrah to answer.
“I, uh, came by to see how you’re liking your new apartment.” Farrah twisted her necklace chain around her finger until the surrounding skin turned white.
He dried the glasses and placed them upside down on a towel before facing Farrah with raised eyebrows. “You came here on a Friday night to check on the apartment you designed?”
“Yes.” Defensiveness crept into her tone. “How do you like it?”
“The same as I did when I signed on off everything,” Blake said dryly. “I love it.”
Decorated in an elegant, masculine palette of navy blue, gray, and white with gold accents, the apartment looked like something out of a magazine spread. But thanks to personal touches such as the wall of photos from every one of his bar openings—custom framed to include an engraving of the host city’s name—and the shelf of knickknacks collected during his travels, it felt like home instead of a museum.
“Pat loves it too,” he added.
“Pat?”
“The woman who was just here.”
“Oh.” Farrah pursed her lips. “Pat, is it?”
“Short for Patricia.” Blake chuckled. “She hates it when I call her Pat, so I only do it when she’s not around.”
That was a fair compromise, in his opinion.
“I see.” Farrah’s voice could’ve frosted glass. “How do you know each other?”
He tilted his head. Was that…jealousy he detected?
Blake watched Farrah’s face closely as he responded, “We met at a bar and hit it off right away.”
Technically true. He met Patricia at his Austin bar when she showed up for her interview, and he knew within five minutes that she was the perfect person for the job.
Farrah crossed her arms over her chest. Her expression didn’t budge, but her eyes blazed.
Oh, yeah. She was definitely jealous.
Blake smothered a grin. A spark of hope rekindled in his chest.
“Great. I’m glad the other night worked for you too, considering how fast you moved on.” Farrah turned on her heels and walked away. “So much for that big speech you gave about wanting another chance.” She muttered the last part under her breath, but Blake heard her—and it pissed him the hell off.
All traces of amusement fled. He closed the distance between them with two long strides. He grabbed Farrah’s wrist and spun her around, pinning her against the wall and caging her in with his arms. His eyes blazed just as hers did.
Other than a sharp intake of breath, Farrah didn’t react, but defiance and resentment shimmered beneath those chocolate pools glaring up at him.
A volcano of pent-up emotion bubbled between them, waiting to erupt.
“You mean the speech where I offered you my heart and you turned me down?” Blake gritted out. “You rejected me. You said you couldn’t give me a second chance, only one night, and at the end of that one night, you walked away without so much as a goodbye. So, tell me, what goddamned right in this goddamned world do you have to be jealous?”
“I’m not jealous!”
“Dammit, Farrah!” Blake pounded the wall next to her, frustration leaking from every pore. Her eyes widened in shock. “Can you say what you really feel for once?”
“I did,” she shot back. “In Shanghai. Look where that got me! I loved you. I trusted you. I gave my virginity to you. And you threw it all away like it was nothing.” Tears hung on the ends of her lashes like tiny fallen stars. “Do you really expect me to give you a second chance just because you say you made a mistake? It doesn’t work like that. You broke my heart.”
The stars fell, dripping down Farrah’s cheeks in a molten river of grief. Each one shattered Blake a little more until the spiderweb of cracks exploded and destroyed him from the inside out.
He wiped away her tears with his thumb as pain ate away at his anger.
“Don’t you know?” Blake’s voice cracked with regret. “It broke my heart too. Because everything I said that night was a lie. I didn’t stop loving you. I never stopped loving you.”
