Page 64 of The Price of Scandal

“We used to be best friends.” I was exhausted. That’s why the truth that I’d never spoken before escaped.

“People change, Emily.”

“I don’t need you coming in here and trying to cast doubt on one of the only people I know I can trust.” Exhaustion made my fuse microscopically short.

“I’m agreeing with you, and you’re getting defensive. I think you’re the one with the issue.”

I pushed my chair back from the desk, making him step out of the way in the process. Annoyed. Frustrated. Hungry. “Look. I need to get back to this,” I said, gesturing at the stack of folders on my desk. As if to emphasize my point, my email inbox autoloaded what looked like twenty new messages.

Damn it. I was never going to catch up. I was never going to win.

I stood quickly.

The spots were back. But they weren’t white twinkles now. They were big, black blobs that were bleeding together.

“Emily.”

Derek said my name, but he was so very far away.

21

Derek

“I’m fine.” Emily’s voice was weak but pissed off from my passenger seat.

Good. Fine. I was pissed off, too.

“When is the last time you ate a proper meal?” I asked, turning onto the causeway, leaving downtown Miami behind us. The back door to the white contractor van in front of us flew open, and a stack of empty paint-splattered cans fell out. I swerved around it and rolled the passenger window down.

“Back door,” I yelled to the other driver.

“Sorry, buddy. I’m not into that,” he shouted back.

“Freaking Miami.” Emily sighed, sitting up straighter. “Where are we going? Also, what exactly happened?”

“You fainted in your office because you’re a stubborn idiot,” I explained. “I’m taking you home.”

She’d gone ghostly pale and glassy-eyed before slumping gracefully into a dead faint. It had taken five years off my life.

“The reports,” she said, looking down in her lap and then craning her neck to see into the back seat. “The social media team needs my input tomorrow morning. I have to reschedule the new chemist’s onboarding tour. I didn’t call her back. And there should be an end-of-day report from legal.”

She was working herself into a righteous lather. HowdareI drag her away from her work.

“Everything that can be handed off has been. Anything left can wait until tomorrow,” I snapped.

“You don’t get to call the shots, Price. You have no idea what it takes to hold a corporation this size together,” she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest and scowling through the windshield.

“You don’t get to scare the life out of me by rolling your eyes back in your head and passing out on your feet because you’re too fucking stubborn to offload tasks you should have handed off years ago.”

There was probably a rule somewhere about shouting at a woman who had recently regained consciousness. But I was a rule-breaker at heart. “This is your fault entirely. You know that you can tell me when you need a break. When you need a moment. A fucking meal. Yet you martyr your way through a packed schedule because you can’t bear to be honest about your own limits.”

She opened her mouth on a righteous gasp of indignation.

“Everyone has limits, Emily. You don’t get bonus points for pretending you’re exempt.”

We rode in hard, angry silence for several minutes until my phone rang through the SUV’s speakers.

“Jane,” I said, by way of a greeting.