Prove Me Wrong (10 page)

***

              After the awards ceremony, it was time to mingle and chat and celebrate the winners and console the losers.

              Jonah was constantly being bombarded by people wanting to talk to him. And with each new person, he never forgot to introduce me and my work. He made sure that I was included in the conversation, no matter the topic or the person.

              Wanting to prevent any traitorous feelings from getting out of hand, I made sure to always have a full glass of champagne in my hand. But towards the end of the evening, I was realizing that people
could
get drunk off of champagne.

              There was a dance floor for the afterparty. People were now moving towards it, dancing close to the slow jazzy songs.

              Jonah motioned me over to the dance floor.

              “Do you want to dance?” he asked.

              Feeling tired out from talking so much to people, I thought dancing would be a good way to avoid anymore introductions. I nodded.

              Immediately, Jonah swept his arms around me and pulled me smoothly onto the dance floor, guiding me around with ease.              

              I stared at the front of his shirt, realizing that even with heels, I barely reached his chin.

              “I think I’m drunk,” I said, before hiccupping.

              I felt a warm rumble move through his chest as he laughed, his arm tightening around me.

              “Sweetheart, you were drunk five glasses ago,” he said with amusement clear in his voice.

              “Don’t call me that,” I said immediately. “It’s inappropriate, Mr. Lowell.”

              I tried to pull away, to put some distance between us, but he kept his grip on me and there was no way I would get free.

              “I’m afraid you bring out the inappropriate in me, Miss Daniels,” Jonah said, looking down at me with a warmth that I couldn’t recognize.

              “Then let me help you by giving you a little space,” I said, pulling uselessly again against him.              

              Jonah continued talking as if he couldn’t feel me wriggling against him at all.

              “Distance really doesn’t do much,” he said, as if thinking aloud. “You seem to have a hold on me that defies space and time. You’re universal. You’re everywhere for me.”

              I stared up at him, feeling a little drowsy. I hiccupped again, making him smile.

              “Why are you saying all this?” I asked. We had literally just agreed to be professional to each other. What was he doing?

              “Because you’re drunk,” he said simply. “And I think that’s why you’re letting me hold you this closely and why you’re actually listening to what I have to say.”

              “You’re holding me this closely because you’ve got me in basically a choke hold,” I said, pulling once more.

              Jonah snorted. “A choke hold would be around the neck, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ve got you around the waist.” He gave a little squeeze to demonstrate.

              “Don’t call me that!” I said again. I gave up trying to pull away. I sighed.

              “I can’t do it again,” I said simply, the alcohol letting my tongue loosen up to be more truthful. “I can’t, Jonah. It hurt too much the first time. I won’t do it again for a second. Don’t make it happen again.”

              I looked up at him, honesty pouring out of me, unheeded. He was right. Alcohol had loosened up plenty of my inhibitions. I was now able to speak from the heart.

              Jonah looked down at me, his dark gaze warm but shot through with pain and regret.

              “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice harsh with emotion.

              I shook my head and then leaned it against his hard chest, feeling my head spin.

              “Don’t be sorry,” I said. “It’s over now. Let’s keep it that way.”

Chapter
Twelve
Clara

              I groaned.

              Somewhere near my head was the sound of a phone vibrating. My eyelids felt like they weighed twenty pounds. And my mouth tasted like an old wet sock. I reached out my arm and began groping around the sheets for my phone.

              But as my arm swept across the silky smooth cotton, I realized this wasn’t my bed.

              My arm froze.

              In my bed, I had fuzzy worn flannel sheets that had little lint balls attached from the last time I washed them. These sheets were icy smooth and felt like silk against my arms.

              Immediately, I flung my eyes open and groaned at the light that hit them. I whirled around in the bed and looked around. I was in a large paneled bad with a light gray bedding. The room was large and had a post modern feel to it. The designer in me couldn’t help but analyze and admire some of the pieces in the room.

              Looking down, I realized I was wearing a large man’s dress shirt. The sleeves extended several inches past my fingertips and the shoulders hit mid bicep for me.

             
Oh god.
I thought.
Please no.

              Scrunching my eyes closed, I tried to think back on the last thing I remembered. I was at the Devons Design Awards dinner and I was dancing with Jonah on the dance floor.

              We went back to the table where some more people came up to talk to him. I think I remembered falling asleep against his shoulder at the table.

              I did have a faint memory of being in a car but I had just assumed it had been the car to take me to my place.

              But I didn’t remember much after that.

              Cautiously, I pulled the shirt and looked down. My underwear was still on. And it didn’t
feel
like anything had happened.

              Behind me, the phone vibrated again.

              I whirled around and then gave a little hiss as my head protested against this sudden movement.

              I found my phone under a pillow.

              On the bright screen, I saw that I had three missed calls from Brenda and five text messages from her.

             
How was it? Did you enjoy it? –
Brenda

              That was the oldest one, sent right around midnight last night.

             
OMG. Call me. This has been such a crazy morning! –
Brenda

              Crazy? Why?

             
Hey! I just called you. Are you still not up yet? You need to call me! –
Brenda

              I actually started to get a little worried. Had something bad happened to her? I hoped she wasn’t calling me right before going into the hospital or something.

              The next text was just links to articles. I clicked on the first one.

             
Clara Daniels—top New York designer and also…Jonah Lowell’s new girlfriend?

             
My stomach turned. Oh god. This was exactly the kind of press I was trying to avoid. The EXACT kind, dammit.

              The last thing I wanted was to be tied to that man. To be reminded constantly of what he could do to me—had done to me—and how much he still just didn’t care. My heart still shrank every time I thought about how cold he had looked that morning at Mackleson’s with Vanessa.

              He had left the store with my life in shatters behind him.

              With trepidation, I clicked on the second link.

             
Clara Daniels, Billionaire Jonah Lowell’s New Squeeze, Has Just Been Picked Up By Su Lo Designs—The Largest Design Firm In Asia. Pays To Be A Billionaire’s Girl!

              Su Lo Designs. That sounded familiar.

              Then it came to me. Last night, Jonah had introduced me to Peter Chu, the buyer from Singapore. He was the lead buyer for Su Lo.

              I remembered how much Jonah had praised me in front of Peter and how Peter had given me a speculative look as he left the conversation.

              Confusion, anger, nausea, desperation, and exhaustion all swirled within me. It was all so much at once. How could all of that happen in the span of just a few hours?

              With dread, I looked at the last text.

             
We got an order and contract from Losel this morning. Come to the office as soon as you can so we can sign.—
Brenda

              Trying not to tip over from my weighted head, I gingerly got out of the bed. Once on my feet, I groaned and tried not to trip over my own feet. Carefully, I walked towards the door.

              Coming out of the room, I saw the most impressive penthouse suite ever. Windows covered three of the walls, giving me an almost 360 degree of the city. I was actually able to look
over
the expanse of Central Park.

              This kind of penthouse had to be tens of millions of dollars. Minimum.

              And at the far end of the penthouse in a sleek open kitchen was Jonah, cooking.

              As he plated some scrambled eggs, I saw him look up, catching me in the bedroom doorway. Standing in a tight white shirt and some loose gray sweats, he looked so familiar. He looked just like he had back home. He looked like the man who would suddenly come up behind me and hold me, nuzzling into my neck till I giggled.

              I shook my head.

              But we weren’t home. We were in New York City. And he was Jonah Lowell, not Jonah Lawrence.

              Everything was different.

              “Good morning,” he said with a smile. “How’d you sleep?”

              I took a step forward. “I—How did I get here?” I asked, feeling a little foolish on top of everything else.

              Jonah smiled wryly. “Yeah I was wondering if you’d remember that or not,” he said, leaning on the kitchen counter. His biceps bulged and the defined muscles pressed against his shirtsleeve.

              “You fell asleep at the table,” he said, unable to stop his smile at the memory. “I tried to wake you up but basically, I ended up carrying you out to the car.”

             
Oh jeez. That’s classy, Daniels.

              “But why here?” I asked. “Why didn’t you take me back to my place?”

              Jonah quirked a brow. “You think I would leave you, drunk and passed out, alone in your apartment with no one to watch over you?”

              I bit my lip. Yes, I did. I expected him capable of doing a lot of things.

              I picked at my shirt. “And this?” I asked, hesitantly. “I got into this…?”

              “By yourself,” Jonah said firmly. “When we got up here, you had woken up enough to tell me that the champagne must’ve been switched out for something else because champagne can’t make you drunk and then you changed into that shirt. Your dress is in the bedroom, near the closet.”

              A short pause fell between us as we took in the evening’s events.

              Finally, I gave a short nod. “I need to get going.”

              “Have some breakfast first,” he said, gesturing towards the plates he had put out.

              I shook my head. “No, I need to go. I have work,” I said.

              “You should eat before a busy day,” he said, in a teasing tone. “That hangover won’t get better on it’s own.”

              “I’m fine,” I said, turning around, unsure how I felt.

              “Big day, huh?” he asked.

              I turned around again, staring at him. He looked at me with a look of genuine sympathy, as if he felt sorry that I had a lot on my plate while hungover. And yet everything on my plate was all due to him!

              “Do you remember what I said last night?” I asked. “About keeping things professional between us?”

              Jonah nodded. “Said somewhere between the fourth and fifth glass of champagne, if I recall correctly,” he said in a teasing manner.

              It was more than I could take.

              “Am I a joke to you?” I cried out. Jonah’s face immediately took on a look of surprise and concern. “Am I just some kind of small town, hick joke to you?”

              “What are you talking about?” Jonah asked, cautiously.

              I tried my best to keep my tears at bay. I would
not
cry in front of him, dammit.

              “Do you know what happened for about two months after your left Irvington?” I asked quietly.

              Jonah raised a brow, clearly surprised at this new track of conversation. But he looked at me, ready to listen.

              “For about two months, nobody made eye contact with me,” I said simply. “Irvington is a town I spent my whole life in. There are people there who babysat me, bought me pads for my period, and watched me throw up after my first beer. There are no secrets in that town for me.”

              I took in a slow ragged breath. “Then you came in. And everyone saw us together. When you weren’t around, people came up to me and whispered how happy they were to see me with you. They thought that their hometown girl was in a happy relationship and they were all thrilled to see it. It’s a small town. Within the first week you were there, everyone knew you by name.

              “Then you left,” I said breathlessly, my heart clenching again at the memory. “And for two months no one would make eye contact with me. They all felt too sorry for me. They couldn’t bear to look at me. And when they did, it was only with pity. They felt sorry for me—the absolute cliché of clichés. Small town girl gets left by big city boy. It was pathetic and I felt pathetic. For two months, everyone knew how pathetic I was.”

              I looked up and saw Jonah’s face harsh and dark with emotion as he listened to me.

              I gave him a humorless smile. “Then after about two months, people started to come around again. By then, I had been able to stop crying and moping. I smiled more and everyone felt less sorry. They saw that I was moving on and they were glad to see it.”

              I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. “But for weeks on end, because of you, I was some kind of pitiful joke in my town. While you and Vanessa were off in New York doing who knows what fancy events, I was in Irvington dodging lifetime friends because I didn’t want to see the pity in their eyes.”

              Jonah’s dark eyes looked at me with a longing and a regret that seemed just as pained as my own heart. But I hardly felt anything seeing it. I was reliving those long ago months.

              “When I came to New York, I worked my ass off to build myself a new life—a life that focused on my career. A life that proved to me that I wasn’t some stupid country girl who really was the butt of some cruel joke.” I felt my voice break. “And now there are headlines on every paper around the city saying that all my accomplishments, all m-my successes, is only due to the fact that I am Jonah Lowell’s girlfriend.”

              I looked up at him, tears clinging to my lashes. “We both know both counts are false. I’m not your girlfriend and my successes are my own. But you’ve come into my life again, just like you did before. And you’re putting yourself into every aspect of my life that matters again, just like before. And then what? Are you going to pull the rug out from me again? Make me a humiliating joke again?”

              Jonah straightened up and made a motion to walk towards me but I jerked back. Even with several feet between us, I felt too close to him.

              He stopped himself but not without some effort. “Clara,” he said, his voice thick and tight with emotion, “I never once saw you in anyway as a joke. Ever. And—”

              “Whether you saw me as one or not, you did your absolute best to make sure I was one,” I said, cutting him off. I wanted to get out of here.
Now.
I couldn’t take anymore of this. It was too much to bring up these old pains in front of the man who had caused them.

              I shook my head. “But you won’t do that to me again,” I said, keeping my tears at bay by sheer willpower. “I won’t let you. So I’m telling you this in no uncertain terms: stay away from me, Jonah Lowell. I don’t want Losel and I don’t want you.”

              Before he could reply, I turned around to the bedroom and slammed the door, quickly running towards my discarded gown, tears blurring my vision.

             
No more, Jonah Lowell. No more. These are the last tears I shed for you.