After My Fiancé Humiliated Me, I Ruined Him novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Meeting

For a second I couldn't hear anything but the coffee machine.

He had told her about the baby.

He had taken the worst night of my life and handed it to her as a warning label.

"I didn't blame him," I said. "I was alone in an emergency room for nine hours. He was at dinner. I didn't blame him for anything. I just asked him to come home."

Solène's face flickered.

Then it closed again.

"Get out of our shop."

I stood up from the velvet stool.

Julien was watching me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Your coffee," he said.

"Keep it."

I walked out into the rain.

I didn't let my hands shake until the car door shut.

On Thursday at ten in the morning, Ashton Trask sat at a glass table on the sixth floor of Crestline's Paris office on the avenue Montaigne.

I watched him on the security monitor in the office next door.

He'd worn the navy blazer. No socks with his loafers. He'd gotten a haircut for this.

He checked his reflection in the dark window and practiced his smile at the glass.

The head of our luxury division sat across from him, a gray-haired man who'd been told nothing except to stall.

"She's running a little late," he said.

"I've waited three months," Ashton said. "I can wait ten minutes."

My COO was on the phone in my ear from New York. It was four in the morning there.

"Don't let him see you rattled," she said.

"I'm not rattled."

"You haven't slept since Tuesday."

I hung up on her.

I took off my coat. Under it was the black suit I wear to board meetings.

I opened the door and walked in.

Ashton was turned toward the window, still smiling at himself.

"Good morning," I said.

He turned around.

I watched it go across his face in stages.

Recognition. Confusion. Then something close to panic, and then the smile again, too fast.

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