The Dare Collection January 2019. JC Harroway

I growled. ‘Christ, I wish it was. But it’s not.’

      ‘Then what is the issue?’

      I shut my eyes. No one knew about what I’d done with Poppy’s father’s money, about my role in his downfall. That was the one thing Dad had done for me at least: he’d kept it secret.

      ‘I’m responsible for her father’s death,’ I said at last. ‘And she doesn’t know.’

       CHAPTER TEN

       Poppy

      IT WAS ELEVEN at night and I paced back and forth in my bedroom, as furious with Xander now as I had been two days earlier.

      At the way he’d dismissed me after basically taking me apart over his desk. Looking at me like I was nothing but dirt under his shoe after I’d confessed the most private, the most embarrassing thoughts I’d had about him. It still made me cringe, that I’d told him I wished he could have calmed and stroked me like that dog. That he’d made me beg him to fuck me and only then had he made me come.

      That I’d come so hard I’d cried.

      It had been the most amazing experience of my life and then he’d dismissed me as if I was nothing.

       Yeah. Nothing you didn’t deserve.

      The guilt I always carried with me whispered in my head, insidious and bitter, but I shoved it away. This had nothing to do with Dad’s death or my role in it.

      No, this was all to do with Xander and the past two days of him ignoring me, striding past me at work as if I didn’t exist. Emailing me lists of tasks and not even bothering to speak to me about them.

      And when I was the one who had to speak to him, he wouldn’t look at me. He kept his attention on his computer screen or out of the window or on his phone. Basically, he looked anywhere else but at me.

      It made my anger a hard, sharp, bright thing that I wanted to cut him with. I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me.

      He’d made me feel like nothing. Less than nothing. Like so many other people had in my life...

      You are nothing.

      ‘Bastard,’ I muttered to the walls of my bedroom, loud enough to drown out that horrible voice in my head. ‘Asshole.’

      I wasn’t going to be able to sleep and I couldn’t even draw in my book, because the prick had kept it. I’d asked him about it the day after he’d had me over his desk and he’d told me he’d give it back once I’d finished working for him. That I couldn’t be trusted not to sketch in it while I was supposed to be doing my job.

      I should have demanded it back, but I was determined to show him how little I cared about him and the way he was treating me, so I’d simply shrugged and hadn’t mentioned it again.

      But that hadn’t stopped the fury from filling my veins.

      I’d never been so angry in all my life.

      Of course pacing around my tiny, shitty bedroom wasn’t going to help, and neither was pretending this didn’t matter. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to let this go until I’d yelled at him face to face.

      Obviously the answer was to go to his house and yell at him in person.

      Yes, it was eleven p.m., but too bad. He was the one who’d seduced me and then ignored me. He could deal with me confronting him late at night and having it out with him.

       He’s not going to like it. And what about that reference?

      Ah yes, that.

      I stopped pacing, my hands curled into fists.

      If I wanted to get that reference I shouldn’t do it. I should suck it up and handle the fact that he’d only wanted from me what every other guy I’d ever met wanted from me: sex.

      Because, after all, why did it matter? So I’d confessed to some embarrassing stuff. So what? If I truly didn’t care what he thought, it wouldn’t bother me.

      Yet it did. It bothered me a lot.

      God, how stupid. I didn’t know why I cared about his good opinion. Sure, the sex had been mind-blowing and he’d been a prick afterwards, but lots of guys were pricks afterwards.

       You know why. You expected him to be different.

      My throat got tight. Maybe I had. He’d told me he’d wanted me for years and then he’d gone on to work me up like he already knew what I liked and didn’t have to ask.

      And that had mattered.

      As if he’d cared enough to study me and my reactions, gauging what I might like and what I didn’t. Jesus, even having a guy be interested enough to get me off instead of taking what he wanted was a change.

      Which made him dismissing me at the end of it feel like...a betrayal of some kind. Not to mention that it didn’t make any sense.

      He’d wanted me for years and one screw and that was it? Really?

      Determination settled down inside me.

      No, I couldn’t let this go, not this time. I had to know what was going on with him. I had to know where I stood. Because I sure as hell wasn’t going back to work with him ignoring me the way he was.

      Someone had to confront him and clearly that someone was going to have to be me.

      And if he threatened to hold that reference over my head instead of talking it through like a normal human being? Well. He wasn’t the man I thought he was.

      God, he wasn’t the man I thought he was already.

      What kind of man did you think he was?

      I ignored that question, too impatient now to have it out with him.

      Grabbing my battered denim jacket and my handbag, I headed out, deciding to taxi it into the city.

      Xander’s apartment was in some massive tower block near the Opera House, probably worth millions. Getting in there was going to be a problem since I was in a faded T-shirt and jeans, my holey sneakers on my feet. Not exactly high class.

      I was too angry to care though. If I couldn’t get in I’d stand in the foyer and dial his stupid phone every ten seconds until he let me up into his apartment.

      Taking no chances, I texted him just before the taxi driver dropped me off, telling him I was coming to see him and if he wanted me to keep working at his stupid company he was going to talk to me.

      Otherwise I’d quit.

      He didn’t respond.

      That might have been because he was sleeping, but when I got out of the car and looked up to the top floor where his apartment was, there were lights on. He was awake; I’d lay money on it.

      I stormed into the building’s foyer and approached the concierge desk, all ready to argue. But the man behind the desk simply gestured towards the lifts.

      ‘You can go on up, Ms Valentine.’

      It took the wind out of my sails a bit but, standing in the lift as it made its way up to Xander’s floor, I managed to muster up some more outrage. Enough that by the time the doors opened I was as furious as I had been back home.

      There was a small hallway outside the lift that led straight to the door of Xander’s apartment and I strode up to it, lifting my finger to press the buzzer.

      But, before I could, the door pulled open and there was Xander, standing on the threshold.

      And my heart stopped. Literally stopped.

      He filled the doorway, tall, broad, commanding.