Chapter 252

I woke with a pounding headache, a heartbeat in my ears, and a general hatred for everything. Valmont & Cie’s financial statements came in at over a thousand pages—five years’ worth of balance sheets, income reports, graphs, tables, the works. On my own, I’d need weeks to get through them. Even longer to make sense of it all. I should’ve asked Ashton for help. I’d planned to. But when he came back, something stopped me. Okay, fine, I knew what stopped me. I just didn’t want to admit it. I was angry with him. I saw him getting out of a car that wasn’t his, watched a woman in a red dress approach him and wrap her arms around him. They might have kissed. They might not have. The awning blocked my view. Still, even if they didn’t—hell, even if it was one of those polite French kisses on the cheek—shouldn’t Ashton, as a married or nearly-married man, know better? I shake hands with Fabrizio, sure, but I wouldn’t let him kiss me. Cultural norms or not. So why didn’t Ashton keep his distance?