Chapter Twenty-Five

“Charlie, are you okay?” asks Rachel anxiously. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Can I get you a glass of water?”

“I’m fine,” I croak, collapsing backward into my chair. “It’s just the heat.”

Or lack of it. Jake just chucked a bucket of cold water over ours.

I can’t fall apart. Not here. Not now. Somehow, I pack away all the pieces of my broken heart for painful dissection later.

“How can anyone find Cassie Lee attractive?” I explode suddenly, my inner monologue going on the rampage again. “She’s such a first class cow.”

“Only the entire male population,” says Rachel, raising her eyebrows at me. “But they’re mostly a bunch of morons, anyway.”

“But she’s so…vacant.”

“Jake likes his women that way. With so much going on in his life right now, he’s not craving intellectual conversation.”

That’s bullshit. Jake likes brains. He likes conflict. He likes really, really hot sex against the sideboard in his L.A. mansion.

“I need to grab some air,” I tell her, stumbling to my feet.

Outside, the stray dogs seem to sense my despair. They nudge me gently, circling and whining and begging for attention. I scratch their ears absentmindedly. I don’t care what Max requested—there’s no way I’m going down to set to see Jake and Cassie leave together.

Am I?

Temptation, I hate you. There’s a spare jeep in the car park and the driver is lounging against the side of the vehicle, smoking a cigarette and looking bored out of his mind.

My cell phone beeps.

Jake: We need to talk. I’ll call you.

Me: Will that be before or after you’ve screwed Cassie’s brains out all over some Marrakech shag palace?

Angrily, I chuck my phone into my bag. I hear it beeping again but I can’t be bothered to read his excuse.

Dammit.

“Can you take me to set?” I say, walking straight up to the driver before I have a chance to talk myself out it. He nods and chucks away his cigarette.

We arrive as Jake and Cassie are making their way across the unit base to his car. He’s changed into a fresh shirt—something dark, tight-fitted, and expensive-looking—and he’s holding his baseball cap lightly in one hand. His black hair is slick with sweat, but it suits him. He could shave it into a Mohawk and he’d still look incredible.

Cassie is wearing a strapless coral silk jumpsuit that highlights her slender frame. I watch from the window as he opens the door for her. She pauses to say something to him, her long blond hair swirling all around her face like she’s in some sappy shampoo advert, and he smirks to himself as she glides gracefully into the backseat.

“On second thought, I’ve changed my mind,” I mutter to the driver. “Can you take me back to the studio?”