She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 135

(Mason)

I get the alert about Bauer's press conference at twelve thirty-one.

I’m at my desk. The salad I ordered an hour ago has gone soggy in its container and I have eaten exactly none of it.

The Henderson filing is open on one screen.

The Warren Global stock chart, currently doing something horrifying, is open on the other.

My company isn’t listed on the stock exchange, but my reputation is irrevocably tied to Warren Global’s on this deal.

If they tank, so do I.

Nobody will ever trust us to act as their intermediaries again if this goes south.

My phone is buzzing approximately every ninety seconds with calls I’m not answering.

I tune in to watch Jeffrey Bauer, live, from the steps of his Century City building.

I watch the whole nine minutes without moving.

I don’t even blink.

I watch him do the wounded face, and the deep regretful breath.

I watch him mouth platitudes about how his lawyers acted without his permission.

As if a bloody law firm ever does anything they’re not billing for by the minute.

When it’s over I close the laptop very gently, because if I don’t close it gently I’m going to throw it through the window.

The man is good. I will give him that.

He’s so good it’s almost believable.

If you’ve never met him, you’d fall for it hook, line and sinker.

With one press conference he’s transformed himself from the architect of Natasha's professional ruin into the only man in California who publicly believes in her.

The press will gobble it up.

The financial wires are probably already humming with it.

Natasha, exhausted, hounded, holding herself together with caffeine and stubbornness, may also believe it.

I know how intelligent she is, but she’s running on fumes.

Any show of solidarity at this point could be seen as friendship.

That’s the part that has me out of my chair.

I will not allow Jeffrey Bauer to take advantage of her.

Chase was a mistake I couldn’t stop. Jeffrey won’t be a repeat of that.

I pace once around my office and stop at the window.

The view is the same view it always is.

Traffic on Wilshire moving slowly, palm trees doing nothing.

None of it improves my mood.

I love that woman.

I’ve made my peace with the fact that she does not love me back the same way.

Mostly.

I’ve made my peace with it the way a man makes his peace with a knee injury.

Gradually, with bad days.

What I’ve not made my peace with, and never will, is watching three different men in expensive suits take their turns pushing her to the edge, while she pretends she isn’t already over it.

Bauer wants her.

Julian wants her.

Chase wants her back the second she’s no longer his.

The three of them have arranged themselves around her exhaustion like vultures politely waiting to see who gets to pick the bones.

It’s too much to see all three of them properly at all times.

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