Bachelor Untamed - Brenda Jackson [66]
Suddenly, she thought she heard a noise outside, and glanced out the window but didn’t see anything. She then pulled in a deep breath and said, “That’s why I have to tell him the truth. I have to let him know that he wasn’t used. That I love him, and the time I spent with him was special.”
She took a deep breath, and was grateful that, for once, Darcy didn’t say anything.
“Look, Darcy, I have to go. I have a lot to do before Uriel comes over. And then I will tell him the truth. Everything. He deserves that.”
Somehow, Uriel made it back to his house and dropped down in his kitchen chair, while the words he had heard Ellie speak rang so clear in his mind.
He had been about to knock on her back door, when two names she’d spoken grabbed him. Darcy and Vandellas Publishing. Darcy was her best friend, the one who’d talked her into that dare ten years ago, and Vandellas Publishing was the company that he and Donovan now owned. What was Ellie talking about when she said she would finish a book for her aunt for his publishing company? And better yet, how had his lovemaking inspired her to finish the book?
A part of him knew he probably should have just hung around and asked her, demanded a few answers. But the part of him that had just admitted to being in love with her less than an hour ago felt raw and betrayed.
He breathed in deeply as he replayed her words that were still so clear in his mind.
He stood, and slowly walked up the stairs to his bedroom, where he pulled open his briefcase. It didn’t take him long to find the papers he was looking for. The first was a detailed listing of all the outstanding manuscripts. He quickly scanned the page and found the name “Flame Elbam,” and in parenthesis it showed “Mable Weston.”
Uriel blinked. Ms. Mable had been writing one of those romance novels? He pulled in a breath deeply. The woman was in her seventies, for crying out loud, so it had to be one of those sweet and innocent types where the man and woman did nothing more than hold hands, or kiss each other on the cheek.
He nearly swallowed his tongue when, moments later, he saw the category Ms. Mable’s book had been purchased for: erotica. The paper he was holding almost slipped out of his hand, and he couldn’t do anything but gape his mouth before dropping down on the side of his bed in shock. Sweet little old Ms. Mable had been writing erotica romances? He read farther and saw she’d been given an advance of over fifty thousand dollars.
Damn. First his mother and her boy-toy, and now Ms. Mable and her erotica romances…the female population never ceased to amaze him. His thoughts then shifted to Ellie. There was nothing on the paper he was holding in his hand to indicate that Mable Weston, aka Flame Elbam, would not be turning her manuscript in, which revealed Ellie’s devious plan to outwit the publisher and finish the book herself.
Using him for her research.
Anger consumed him at the thought that, once again, ten years later, she and her friend Darcy had played him for a fool. The years hadn’t matured them at all. Instead of getting wiser, they had gotten more conniving and deceitful. It would do Darcy justice to one day meet someone like York, who would see through her with the first blink, and then show her no mercy.
But for him, his bone of contention was with Ellie, the woman he had been foolish enough to fall in love with, the woman who had broken his heart before it had gotten a chance to accept that it could beat for one woman.
Deciding he no longer wanted to be within even fifty feet of Ellie, he went to the closet and threw his luggage out on the bed and moved around the room throwing things into it. There was nothing she could say. Nothing he wanted to hear.
She had