Not answering meant something might be wrong.
My fingers tightened slightly around the phone and stepped back before I lifted it to my ear.
“Hi, baby,” I said softly.
And the moment the word left my mouth, I felt Hayden’s attention sharpen.
Chapter Six
Hayden
“Hi,baby.”
The words went through the room with the force of a silent explosion. For a moment I didn’t move. I simply watched her. Because the woman standing in front of my desk was not the same Edwina who had spent the last ten minutes speaking to me with a voice sharpened by five years of anger and restraint. The moment she answered the phone, something in her expression shifted so suddenly that it felt almost unreal.
Her shoulders softened. The tension in her jaw eased. And the warmth that appeared in her voice carried a tenderness I had not heard from her in years.
I felt something dark twist in my chest.
Baby.
Who the hell was she talking to?
Because whoever that motherfucker was, he had clearly earned something I no longer had—the gentle tone she used to reserve only for people she cared about.
She turned slightly away from me as she spoke, and that small movement pissed me off more than it should have, as if even her body knew to keep him away from me.
“Yes,” she said into the phone, a faint smile touching her lips while tension remained around her eyes. “I’m finishing work.”
That smile got under my skin. I knew it too well. I remembered what it meant when her mouth softened that way, how much warmth she could put into a single breath when she thought no one was watching.
Her voice lowered.
“No, sweetheart. I’m coming soon.”
Sweetheart.
The word sat unpleasantly in my head.
I leaned back slowly in the chair, watching her with an intensity she either ignored or pretended not to notice. I dragged my fingers slowly across my jaw.
I reached for another cigarette, keeping my eyes on her as I brought it to my mouth.
So who the fuck are you talking to, Edwina?
She laughed at something the person said, and the sound hit harder than I expected. I had not heard that laugh from her since the years when things between us were easier, before lies, silence, and distance turned everything into something heavier.
Even as she smiled, tension held in her posture. She knew I was watching. Her gaze flicked toward me before dropping to the floor, as if she had remembered I existed in the room with her.
“Yes, baby,” she said again.
The second time, the word hit harder.
Something ugly stirred beneath my ribs. Jealousy had never been a dignified emotion, and I had never been good atpretending I didn’t feel it. The thought of someone else occupying the place in her life that once belonged to me made my chest tighten with a restrained violence.
She ended the call soon after, murmuring something soft before lowering the phone. For a second, she didn’t look at me. Then she lifted her gaze, and the warmth I had just seen on her face disappeared.
What returned was calm hostility, wrapped in professionalism and control. Cold and sharp, keeping me exactly where she wanted me.