I realized that somewhere between him putting a deposit down on a house he knew I didn’t want, telling me about his “guys’ Vegas weekend” trip while he was already on the way to the airport, and strongly suggesting that our marriage would fare better with only one of us working at CG.

So I set the engagement ring on the dining room table and moved out. It was an easy decision but a tough life lesson, compounded by the fact that I have to see him almost every day. Literally. His office is directly across from mine. I look up from my desk and there he is.

He devours half my apple before I finally snap with irritation. “Seriously, what do you want, David?” His name is a curse upon my lips.

“Any highlights from the meeting?”

“You’ll get the meeting notes by end of day. And why weren’t you there, by the way?”

“I had a call with Drummond.”

“Right.” Our potential anchor tenant for the Waterway project, the draw for other retail space leasing. We need them to commit before our project unveiling next month. “How’d it go?”

“Ninety percent there.” He pauses. “I heard Tripp’s still being a dick.” At least his voice has lost its obnoxious edge.

Maybe it’s because I miss sounding off about work to David, or maybe it’s because I have no one else to talk to about it—venting to Mark wouldn’t be appropriate—but I abandon my computer screen and lean back in my chair. “It’s like he wants the Marquee to tank out of sheer bitterness.”

“More like he wants you to tank.” There’s no love lost between David and Tripp. It was Tripp who objected vehemently to my father going external to hire a then thirty-two-year-old David from a New York firm, pushing for Dad to instead bring in one of his cronies to fill the role.

David frowns in thought. “He’s been here for, what is it, twenty-eight years now?”

“I don’t care if he laid the first brick to the very first building we ever developed, there’s no excuse for the way he’s been acting.”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “All I’m saying is that he’s finally seeing the writing on the wall. He’ll never run this company and he’s not liking it.”

I can’t help the snort. “He’s getting paid enough to fake liking it.” The old toad has a new luxury sedan every year and lives in the swanky estate community of Ferndale with his third wife. He’s far from hard up.

David smooths his index fingers over his eyebrows. It’s a small tell of his, something he does when he’s thinking, without realizing it. I used to always tease him about it. “Have you said anything to Kieran yet?”

“I’m not running to my daddy about issues with Tripp.” What would that do, besides prove that I’m not ready to be in this position, let alone take over when he retires? “It’s on me to handle, and I’m handling it.”

He aims and tosses the apple core across the room, into my trash can. “Where is the silver fox today, anyway? I thought he was back from Tokyo already.”

I smirk, my gaze drifting to the closed office door at the end of the hall. My father, an arresting presence in any room, is more attractive and fit at sixty-six years than a lot of men two decades younger. Which is why he has no problem finding women three decades younger to date. “Industry meeting.”

“Oh, right. He’s shooting eighteen at Bryant Springs. He told me about that.”

I roll my eyes. Of course he told David. My father tells David everything. They text like schoolgirls. David is the son Kieran Calloway never had, despite the fact that he has a son. Rhett, my older brother, a guy who wants nothing to do with the corporate world. Or my father.

My father was joyous when David and I announced our engagement and furious with me when I ended it. There was a point, right after the breakup, when the very air circulating around David and me was toxic, when I asked him to fire David. He told me he’d do no such thing because his quasi son is too good for the business. Then he kicked me out of his office for even coming to him to suggest it.

I considered quitting out of spite, but decided I’d already given David enough of my past; I wasn’t going to lose my future because of him, too.

Silence lingers in my office.

And then David sighs wistfully and waves a hand between us. “This is nice, isn’t it? Us, talking like this again?”

“Yeah. It is,” I concede.

“Let’s do it again sometime. Like over dinner tomorrow—”

“No.” I stand and round my desk, heading for the door. It’s the only way I’ll get rid of him. “It’s over and you know it.”

“It wasn’t all bad times, Piper. I seem to remember you enjoying some of it a lot.”

I turn to find his heated gaze drifting over my legs, my hips, my chest, before settling on my face. His lewd thoughts are practically scrawled across his forehead.

My cheeks flush. “That part was never our problem.” It’s one instance where David has never been selfish, though I think it may have more to do with him wanting glowing reviews when his conquests kiss and tell. And it was easy to ignore our deeper issues when the wild chemistry between us drowned everything else out.

That last time we were together, after I called off the engagement, when I came to collect my last few things and he begged me to “talk” . . . well, that was a moment of sheer stupidity on my part. One I’ll never repeat.

David finally heaves himself out of the chair. “You just have to stop being so uptight about everything.”

I take a deep, calming breath. Four months post-breakup and he has yet to accept an ounce of responsibility for our demise. “Who you are and who I am are not compatible. You’ll do best with a spineless trophy, someone who’ll let you walk all over her whenever you feel like it.” I pull the door open. “Go forth and find thee thy perfect doormat.”

He pauses at the threshold, a mere foot away, close enough that his Tom Ford aftershave fills my nostrils. That scent alone used to get my blood rushing. “You say that now, but I doubt you’ll like it when I start dating again.”

“Let’s test that theory out.”

“Fine. I’m going out to dinner with Vicki tomorrow. You remember her, right? That sexy blonde from the gym. She’s been after me for years. Pretty sure she’ll be staying over.”

“Tomorrow, you say?”

“Tomorrow.” He smiles smugly as he peers down at me, waiting for a reaction.

“Didn’t you just ask me out to dinner tomorrow? Because having dinner with your ex-fiancée when you already have a date for that night is sleazy, even for you.”

“I . . . We . . .” He stammers, caught in his lie. “I meant, hypothetically, I could go out with her.”

I chuckle. “Sure, right.”

“That’s not the point.” His expression sours.

“No, the point is that I don’t care who you date, screw, or marry,” I usher him out with a hand against his broad back, “as long as you accept that it’ll never be me again.” I push my office door shut with a heavy sigh.

I believe that, deep down inside, David knows we don’t belong together. He’s just not the kind of guy to accept losing. It’s not something his ego can handle.