It seemed I was wrong.
I scrolled through the messages. They alternated between pleading with me that I was the love of her life, berating me that it was actually my fault she had cheated, giving excuses that she had thought my father was me, and then threatening that if I didn’t get back together with her, she was going to have her father ruin me.
The phone rang again, and the screen displayed her name. I shoved the phone into the drawer.
“He lives!” my best friend, Sebastian, announced, poking his head around the glass office door. He should have been best man in my wedding, but instead Camilla had insisted that it be her maid of honor’s boyfriend. It was another bright-red waving flag that I should have cut her loose when she refused to allow my best friend since childhood in the wedding party.
“Dude,” Sebastian said, coming into the office, “we thought you’d drowned in a canal. Where were you?”
My thoughts went to Ivy’s apartment. I wished I were back there.
“Nowhere, just out.” I stared out the window that overlooked the Manhattan skyline.
Sebastian patted me on the shoulder. “You’re a free man now. We should go celebrate!”
“I can’t,” I said. “I have that land deal with the Svenssons to finalize.”
“Surely they’ll cut you a break because of the circumstances.”
“The Svenssons?” I scoffed. “Hardly. They’re all crazy, and Greg is the worst. I have to make this deal go through, or I can forget about partnering with them in the future.”
Sebastian looked worried. “Do you think Camilla’s father will sell you the land now that you’re not marrying his daughter?”
“I have no idea. We shook hands, but there’s no contract or anything, and Camilla is probably over there now putting poison in his ear.”
The phone rang. I wrenched the drawer open, ended the call, and slammed it shut.
“Is that her?” Sebastian asked.
“Of course. Because it’s not enough for her to cheat on me; now she’s going to continue to harass me. And of course she can’t just ruin my future. She’s going to screw over my business deals too.”
“Hang in there,” Sebastian ordered, giving me a one-armed hug before he left.
The cold hand of grief gripped my chest as I was left in my empty office. I jumped up to pace. I wasn’t going to let the situation affect me.
Concentrate on the deal; concentrate on your business.
Usually thinking about business deals helped me center myself, but not today. Unbidden, I thought about Ivy’s apartment—the lights, the cat, her soft and warm next to me. I blinked.
I can handle this. I am Evan Harrington.
I put on my headset, picked up the phone, ignoring another call from Camilla, and rang my ex-future father-in-law.
“Evan, my boy!” he boomed into the phone. “We were all so concerned about you. I’m glad you got in touch. Camilla has been trying to reach you.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’ll tell her you’ll call her back.”
“I won’t.”
Camilla’s father sighed into the receiver. “Now Evan, Camilla made a mistake—”
“She cheated on me,” I said flatly. “Multiple times.”
“Weddings are stressful for women.”
“Yes, but none of them use it as an excuse to cheat.”
“Evan, you were raised in this world. You know how it is.”
“I do, but I don’t agree with it.”
“But you still want to benefit from it. After all, our deal is still on the table.”
“Yes, I was wondering if you had also decided to break your promise,” I said coldly. I didn’t even care if I was pushing too much.
“Of course not,” Camilla’s father insisted. “Come see me; we’ll talk man-to-man.”
The phone rang again after I hung up. It was Camilla. I sent it to voicemail, but it immediately rang again. Furious, I answered it, pressing the button on my Bluetooth headset without looking at the screen.
“What is wrong with you? You’ve been calling me nonstop. Can you not take a hint? Stop asking for an apology. I will never forgive you, and I never want to see you again in my life.”
“Trust me, the feeling is mutual.”
Crap. It wasn’t Camilla.
“I was a wonderful houseguest,” I growled into the phone.
Ivy made a disgusted noise on the other end. “You left your clothes strewn around, there was water all over the bathroom, and you ate all of my lasagna.”
“Seriously, are you still harping on the lasagna? I will buy you more lasagna.”
Ivy was quiet. I probably shouldn’t have yelled at her, but honestly, had she just called to harass me?
“Actually, I need you to do something else for me,” she said. “Could you talk to Camilla?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I hissed into the phone. “So she has you doing her bidding now, huh? Fucking figures. I knew you were no good. Well, guess what. I will never talk to her, and you can go tell her to go back to one of the other men she was fucking, because I don’t give a shit!”
The phone was silent. Then Ivy said coldly, “I don’t know who the hell you think you’re talking to. I hate cheaters, and I would never stoop so low as to tell someone to forgive a lying cheater. All I want is my money. You still owe me twenty thousand dollars.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” I told her. “I never wanted that wedding. I didn’t want the flowers, the gift bags, the reception—I never wanted any of it. If you want money, you can go talk to Camilla or her father, because I am done with her and done with weddings.”
For a half second after I hung up on Ivy, I thought about throwing the phone across the room. But then I calmed myself down and instead stood out on the balcony. Though it was early spring, it still was chilly outside. As the air cooled my anger, I started to regret how I had talked to Ivy. She hadn’t deserved it. But there was no way I was paying for that wedding. It would be the ultimate insult to pay for Camilla’s dream wedding while she had been cheating on me the whole time.
It wasn’t even lunchtime, and I hadn’t accomplished anything that day. I also wanted to leave. I peered out through the glass walls of my office to survey my employees. They were probably gossiping about what had happened at the wedding that weekend. Several of the higher-ups had been invited, and I was sure they had given their subordinates all the gory details.
I just wanted to go back to Ivy’s apartment. She was kind of a shrew, but I did like her cat.
She never wants to see you again. You yelled at her and ate her food.
I sat down at my computer. There was one thing I was going to accomplish today, and that would be to alleviate the small shred of guilt I felt about Ivy.
7
Ivy
“What an entitled piece of walking, talking male ego,” I fumed as I stared down at the phone after Evan hung up on me.
I started to compose a hate-filled text message then caught myself. I still needed that money. I had hoped maybe Evan could grease the wheels. He had, after all, hidden in my apartment. But of course Evan was too selfish and self-absorbed to help me.