href="#litres_trial_promo"> CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VERONICA WAS STARTING to think rereading Wuthering Heights before this trip to Yorkshire hadn’t been such a good idea. She was finding it impossible not to compare Rafael Velez, sitting six pews in front of her, to Heathcliff—who was, of course, a prime asshole, albeit a magnetic one.
And once she’d started down that path, it was inevitable that she’d wonder if that made her some version of Cathy—who, sure, was intriguing, but had been stupid enough to leave the action halfway through the novel by dropping dead of a Heathcliff-inflicted broken heart. And Veronica wasn’t having any of that drop-dead-of-a-broken-heart crap!
In fact, she considered herself to be walking, talking proof that a woman did not drop dead of a broken heart. She hadn’t dropped dead seven years, two months, three weeks and five days ago when Rafael had decided the most appropriate graduation gift he could offer after living with her for three and a half fucking years was to run out on her. And she wasn’t going to drop dead today, despite the bloodlust flushing through every cell in her body just because she could see the back of his damn head!
Nope. No dropping dead allowed.
At least not by her.
If he wanted to drop dead, he was welcome to do so. Not that she’d give him the satisfaction of telling him to drop dead. She might want to pulverize the bastard, but she was a Johnson, and it came naturally to Johnsons to give zero fucks in public.
Well, it came naturally to most Johnsons—others had to work at it.
All right. Okay. Fine. She was the only Johnson who had to work at it.
But she did work at it, and she’d worked at it every day since graduation when that asshole Velez had pulled the rug out from under her.
She’d worked at it even harder from the moment Romy had called to warn her that Rafael would not only be at the wedding but that he’d be bringing the gorgeous, scarlet-haired, only-one-name-required TV soap star Felicity as his plus-one.
Her zero-fuck-giving goal today was to go up to him and Felicity during the wedding reception—not too soon, not too late—and be utterly charming, perfectly sweet, and completely not brokenhearted.
She would just be someone Rafael used to date at college.
A double-divorcée with nothing to prove, she didn’t need to bring a date to wave like a freaking banner of achievement under the nose of anyone who cared enough to look.
Wearing a hot-pink Dior dress, skyscraper Christian Louboutin heels and a coiffure secured with enough pins to set off every metal detector in the Leeds Bradford Airport, she had no intention of cowering in the background like some desperate and dateless loser.
Armed with pre-prepared lines she’d rehearsed a few thousand times to ensure their delivery carried just the right tone of dispassionate indifference to indicate she no longer gave a rat’s ass about him. Hello, Rafael. Long time no see. Congratulations on your two bestsellers—they’re in my TBR pile.
And the pièce de résistance? “The look.” Straight out of her mother’s playbook. Veronica had practiced it in the mirror—the eyebrows of destruction, the arched smile.
“The look” would let him know she had no intention of reading his tedious novels, no matter what words to the contrary were issuing from her mouth.
Her mother had given Rafael “the look” the first time she’d met him. Veronica had warned him to expect it, had assured him all boyfriends—hers and her sister Scarlett’s—copped it to test their mettle, so not to take it personally. But Rafael had been only nineteen and laboring under a misapprehension that her family was an all-powerful branch of some de facto American aristocracy, and he’d shivered as though an Arctic wind had blown right through him.
Well, she looked forward to seeing how he handled “the look” now that he was twenty-nine and a ragingly successful author. If she could wring a shiver from him today, she’d be downright thankful he hadn’t proposed to her all those years ago. It would mean he hadn’t deserved her. It would, in short, deliver the coup de grâce to her quest for vengeance—a quest that had seen her block his every attempt to contact her after he’d left her and marry not one but two men who were everything he despised.
Just one unworthy shiver, that’s all she asked. There’d be no need, then, to tear off his head and kick it across the Yorkshire moors—the image of doing which had been giving her an unhealthy degree of satisfaction despite it very obviously signaling she gave way too many fucks. So many fucks. A billion, trillion, gazillion fucking fucks.
And breeeaaaaathe, before she succumbed to that thing Scarlett-the-wonder-therapist had warned her about—vasovagal syncope. Fancy term for fainting!
Oh shit! Was that what was happening to her? Because that blood-pumping organ in her chest she’d assumed had lapsed into a lifelong coma was palpitating itself back to painful consciousness, her palms were sweating, her skin was prickling and the breath she’d taken in didn’t seem to want to come back out. What had Scarlett said to do? Sit so she wouldn’t fall down? Shut up so she didn’t babble something stupid? Check and check—no better place to be than in a hushed chapel. Oh, and she was supposed to avoid triggers! Which meant she had to stop looking at the back of Rafael’s damn head.
But she couldn’t stop looking.
Could. Not.
Only one thing to do: get out.
She darted a look to the right, where she’d already located the closest exit, which she knew led to some famous mausoleum. Surely if a girl was going to pass out, doing it among the dead—who told no tales and certainly weren’t giving any fucks—was the way to go. She could lie on a crypt, faint, recover and be back in time for you-may-kiss-the-bride.
Deal!
She leaned close to the elderly lady sitting primly beside her in navy blue Yves Saint Laurent and whispered, “Excuse me, I need to make a phone call. May I squeeze past you?”
“Of course,” came the polite reply.
She stood, waiting for room to be made for her to pass, only to watch in horror as Ms. YSL’s navy blue purse, which was large enough to house a medium-size dog, slid off her lap and landed on the floor with a heavy thud.
Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a disaster if not for the tube of mints that escaped its navy leather bondage and rolled out of reach, which occasioned a clearly enunciated little-old-lady “Oh fuck” that made Veronica burst out laughing. Seriously? How could she not laugh when an audible Oh fuck exploded in the anticipatory air of a chapel in an accent so posh it would do the Queen of England proud? Problem was, it was the laugh, the one that came with the distinctive taken-by-surprise-no-time-to-stop-it snort, a laugh Rafael would instantly