His nostrils flared. “Think of your job, Cora.”

Cora took a deep breath. She hated underlying threats, the subtlety of the word games Alec played. She always lost them, even as she loathed to play.

“I’ll be meeting a lawyer tomorrow, and I assume he will be in contact with yours.” She stepped forward, regretting the fact that she was standing in the kitchen. The only way out was past him.

He refused to move aside, so she turned sideways to slide past. As she walked down the hallway, he called after her, “You think you can do better than this?”

Cora opened the door and walked out, closing it gently behind her. When she pulled her keys out of her pocket, they jangled in her hand, and she ignored the fact that it was because her hands were shaking. It took her three attempts to get the key in the lock, but finally it slid home. She slid into the car and started it, pulling out onto the road.

Three streets away, she pulled over to the side and turned off the ignition. A gulping sob exploded from her chest.

It was wrenching, how much her chest hurt.

How much everything hurt.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Cora was ignoring her.

Which was fine with Frazer.

Except that it wasn’t fine; but it needed to be fine.

And what gives, anyway? Cora was so keen to be friends. She’d looked so shattered when Frazer had said “maybe” and walked out. Had asked for a beer on the Sunday.

If she was jealous about a stupid date, that wasn’t fair. Cora had set her ground rules. They were friends. The sex was just a…a bonus of that friendship. Now that the bonus was over, they were supposed to still be friends. And Frazer really wanted to be mad about that, about Cora calling all the shots and then walking away when she found out Frazer went on a date. But she couldn’t.

Cora was married and was probably a little messed up about all of it. Frazer certainly was. Even now, she never really looked Alec in the eye. Shame filled her stomach when she was near him, and it was too hard to not remember he was a human being she’d happily put in the firing line so she could get her rocks off.

And in the process of getting her rocks off, she had somehow started to toe the line of too attached.

Frazer had no idea how Cora went home to him and sat next to him on their couch or ate dinner with him or slept next to him at night.

Or made love to him. That thought, the one Frazer never let herself imagine, made her bite her lip.

But she didn’t care. She wasn’t allowed to. Instead, she would focus on work.