She scowled at him, not liking his tone. “My partners don’t have to address my issues. I’m not flighty, Mark. I’m trying to find the right path for me. Being a marketing exec isn’t my be all and end all. It isn’t what I want to do.”
“No? So why go freelance? You told me that’s the business you’re starting.”
“Yeah, it is, but I intend to have completely different clients to the ones I was dealing with in the past.” Hayward & White had been directed at the sports and leisure industry. That wasn’t where her heart was, even if her brain was damn good at picking up clients from that particular sector.
“What do you want to deal with?” Mark asked, then scoffed, “Are you going to let nepotism get in your way and ask your brother for help?”
She shrugged. “Yes.” She’d realized that first day back home that they needed someone like her. What they were doing at Arias was incredible. Equal rights should have been a basic part of company infrastructure, yet it wasn’t. She wanted to publicize that fact that if a massive conglomerate like Arias could do it, then so could everyone else. She was only waiting on her business being properly set up before she approached Aidan about it.
Mark gawked at her like he didn’t recognize her, though. Like she was admitting to stealing babies or something. “What the hell? Hailey, it’s like you’ve changed overnight.”
Her phone buzzed. Mark’s eyes darkened and she didn’t dare answer the cell. It was either Adian or James, maybe telling her they were outside and waiting or that they couldn’t make it. She’d been pretty shitty by dumping them in this at the last minute. But she guessed, inadvertently, it was a way of measuring how much she meant to James. Not that she’d set this craziness up for that, but hell, a woman had to use every situation to her advantage when it came to men like James Arias.
“I didn’t change quickly enough for you, Mark, that’s all this is,” she retorted, finding strength in the fact she could and had butted heads with James many times. If she could do that, then she could do anything. “You wanted me to be a certain way, and I can never conform to that.” She shrugged, then felt relief flood her when her cell stopped ringing. “That’s on you, not on me.”
Mark stalked toward her, his eyes flashing. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be, Hailey.”
“No? How was it supposed to be, Mark? Me, your perfect kind of Stepford wife?” She shook her head. “That was never me. If you couldn’t see that, or read it in me, then you don’t know me. You never did. And you never had me if you failed to see how I really am.”
James had managed to. He’d seen the real her. Had known it, probably better than she had herself.
James jolted her from her thoughts because, out of nowhere, his pace sped up. Before she knew what was happening, Mark was there, in front of her. She didn’t have time to even gasp when he’d pinned her to the wall, his hands settling at her hips, so he could rock his groin against hers. Bewildered anger flushed her as she started to hit him in the chest, demanding he let her loose.
“What the hell are you d—” She couldn’t get the words out because suddenly, his mouth was on hers, and he was thrusting his tongue between her lips.
“You’re mine,” he whispered, and she felt like puking as she recognized his ‘let’s get it on’ voice. “Not James Arias’. Nobody’s but mine,” he said, his tone attempting to be seductive, but, if anything, unappealing, because she’d never been his, she realized.
She’d always been James'. Even if she’d never admitted it to herself before now. Always without James having a clue.
That was the last straw.
“Mark!” she demanded. “Get the hell off me!”
He ignored her, instead, bowed his head and began nipping and
suckling at her neck. He knew that was her go-to happy spot, and irritation rather than need flushed through her.
Why was he trying to turn her on?
Why the hell wasn’t he listening to her?
She stopped struggling, stopped writhing against the wall because it wasn’t getting anywhere, and if she wasn’t mistaken, the motion was exciting him because he thought she was into this.
Hell, if he didn’t stop soon, she’d puke over him.
That was one way to let him know she was pregnant, she guessed.
At her stillness, he moaned against her throat, “I knew you liked it like this. I knew it. I should never have held back.” His words were feverishly spoken into her throat, and they made her upper lip snarl with rage.
And that was when two things happened.
One, she kneed him in the balls. His words demanded no less than she take that final step.
Two, the door to the room caved in.
When her eyes clashed with James and Aidan’s, relief flooded her. It took her a second to realize that Mark was clutching his groin and writhing on the floor, which meant his hands were busy elsewhere and not on her.
“I’m nobody’s, certainly not yours. I’m not a possession!” she yelled at Mark. “Why do you never listen? No means no!”