She dropped her hands beneath the table once more, silently cursing her stupidity in wearing it. Hendrix had suggested it might help, but she had planned to remove it.
“What is that?” He asked, his temper back. His tone was ice cold, but that showed the depths of his rage to Chloe.
The moment. It was here.
Hendrix leaned back in his chair with all the appearance of indolent relaxation. “I’m going to marry your wife, Ansell-Johns.”
“You?” William threw the pen down on the table and shoved his hands onto his hips. He stared at Hendrix as though he could make him combust.
“Oh, yes,” he lifted a hand to Chloe’s cheek and stroked it gently. “Tell him, darling.”
Chloe jerked her blue gaze to Hendrix’s, and though he didn’t speak, she heard his words as clear as day. Trust me.
“It’s true,” she exhaled, shocked that she actually smiled when she said it. Even in those unpalatable circumstances, the idea was still pleasing enough to bring warmth to her core.
“Over my dead body,” he ground out.
The emotions groaning through William were everything Hendrix had wanted. Seeing the obvious distress on William’s face should have had Hendrix dancing in his chair. But he felt nothing. Empty.
His smile was a veneer. “So you see, William, you might have thought you could cower my fiancé. But do you really want to take me on?” He stood now, so that he could, across the table, tower over the shorter man. “Do you really want to fight with me?” He crossed his arms across his broad chest. “You know I’ll stop at nothing to hurt you. You know I’ll take huge pleasure from seeing you, and everyone in your family, suffer. No matter what you try to do, I have the resources to fight you on your terms. And I will fight you, William. I will fight you until you are bankrupt and broken. Is that what you want?”
The air throbbed with tension.
No one spoke. Chloe was splintering into a thousand pieces. What was going on? What had happened between these two men?
Finally, William’s lips curled into a tight grin of sarcastic amusement. “Fine.” He lifted then pen once more, and this time, dug his signature across the page.
He looked at Chloe, his smile horrible and cruel. “The divorce papers?” He queried, without taking his eyes off his wife.
Ian held them out. “There are still several issues we haven’t decided, sir,” he warned.
“I don’t care,” William signed his name and slid the papers across the table. Clint caught them.
“Are we finished?” William asked.
Chloe was numb. Was it really over? She looked at Clint, and his easy smile finally lodged something loose in her brain. It was over. There was nothing to fear any more. She could live her life. She could be happy. Clint held the pen out to her and she signed on the line, without another moment’s delay.
“I’ll go file these,” Clint nodded at Ian and slipped out of the room, barely able to believe this nightmare of a divorce had been resolved.
“Why?” She whispered to William, once Clint had left. “Why now?”
The look he sent her made daggers dance on her spine. “I want you to suffer for leaving me, Chloe, and you will.” His eyes drifted to Hendrix. “You’ve got mixed up with the wrong guy.”
Now it was Chloe’s turn to laugh. “Yes, I did. But we’re divorced now.”
“I take it she doesn’t know?” William asked silkily, his little eyes harsh with hatred.
Hendrix refused to let the man see his panic. After all, he’d known all along this would be the cost of doing business. There had been no way to throw his relationship in William’s face without Chloe finding out.
“She hasn’t needed to know,” Hendrix said with a shrug.
“So what? You expect me to believe you two just happened to fall in love?”
Chloe was about to explain that sometimes it just happened that way, when Hendrix spoke first. “Does it hurt to know I’ve made love to your wife?”
“Hen,” Chloe warned quietly, her blue eyes clouding with confusion.
William’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you want? To hurt me?”