Page 69 of Catching Sparkles

“What?” I said, mostly because I knew it bugged the crap out of her when I answered the phone that way. She’d always complained about my lack of manners, and more than once referred to me as a caveman. She had a point, but… So what? If she’d wanted some refined and elegant gentleman, why had she even dated me in the first place?

“Ugh.” Her sound of displeasure was immediately clear, and a tiny, petty part of me buried not-so-deep down was happy about it.

She went on to explain she was in the process of trying to change contact information for the insurance on the house. The house that I’d worked so many miserable hours to keep making the loan payments on. It wasn’t even finished being paid off yet, and I was already out of it. Some American dream.

But I’d always been the one who’d handled that stuff. The payments had always been auto-deducted from my bank account, and all the documentation was sent to my email. The insurance and escrow were all rolled into the mortgage payment, anyway. She didn’t even know the account number. It would have been easy just to give her the information, but… She sure as hell hadn’t made anything easy for me.

“Why should I help you? We’re not even supposed to be talking.”

My lawyer had drilled that into my head over and over. I shouldn’t have even answered the phone. Why had I done that, anyway?

“Why do you always have to make everything so fucking difficult, Rhys?” Her disdain for me rang through loud and clear in her voice. The sad thing was, it wasn’t even all that different from how she’d sounded when we’d still been together.

“Me?” I asked, with a comical amount of shock. “You were the one who wanted to get lawyers involved. You were the one who didn’t want to split everything down the middle. Oh, and in case you don’t remember, you were the one screwing around with my fucking manager.”

Spoiled princess. The words bubbled to life on my tongue but I swallowed them down, repeating the mantra of my lawyer’s words again and again. I couldn’t let her bait me into insulting her. Losing my temper would only make me look bad in court if she quoted me or used my words against me.

“Yeah, Hailey, I know I was the one who always took care of it. Believe me, I fucking know that,” I said, after her rebuttal.

“All I’ve ever tried to do is help you, but you are seriously beyond help, Rhys.”

As I listened to her gripe in my ear about how this was all my fault, I heard someone clear their throat behind me. Whirling in surprise, I locked eyes with Kendall. He’d come in without me noticing. Drawing my eyebrows together, I tried to convey an apologetic look. He shook his head a little, as if to tell me not to worry about it.

Having him there suddenly put things into perspective. It was stupid of me to be arguing with her. Neither of us could be objective about anything, we were both too pissed off and annoyed with each other.

“You know what?” I said, cutting off her rant. “I have to go. Have your lawyer talk to my lawyer, and I’ll think about handing over the account number. Don’t call me again.”

I hung up the phone, squeezing my eyes closed as a frustrated groan crawled its way up my chest. Even with my little moment of clarity, anger was still coursing through me. I lifted my phone, barely suppressing the urge to hurl it against the wall. Kendall scampered up and plucked it from my hand, gently tossing it onto the couch where it couldn’t explode into pieces.

“Hey.” He led me over to the ottoman in front of his cushy armchair and nudged me down into it, putting his hands on my shoulders once I’d sat. Squeezing and massaging them, he nuzzled his face into my neck. “Talk to me.”

“Don’t ever get married,” I said flatly, but rolled my head to the side to give him more access to my skin. “It’s not worth it.”

“Now, now,” he chided gently, pecking kisses up my jaw to just under my ear. “You don’t mean that. You’re just upset.”

The soothing timbre of his voice, his soft lips brushing over my skin, and the strawberry scent my body was starting to associate with calm and happiness was helping to take the edge off my anger. But not completely.

“I mean it. This divorce has been a fucking nightmare.”

“So next time you’ll just marry someone you won’t get divorced from,” he insisted and I scoffed.

“Yeah, well when you find someone who wants to stick it out with someone like me for the rest of their natural born life, let me know.”

He didn’t say anything for a few moments, just gliding his lips across the back of my neck. I felt him smirk at my pleased groan.

“You’re very, very tense, baby,” he observed.

“Gee, I wonder why.”

“I don’t like it when you’re tense,” he murmured, coming back around my body so I could see his pretty face. “You don’t need to think about any of that, anyway,” he tacked on. “Isn’t that what you’re paying a lawyer for? It’s his problem.”

Tilting my head a bit in acknowledgment, I glanced up at the ceiling.

“I guess you do have a point.”

“Come take a shower with me,” he said. My cock twitched with interest at his suggestion, and I cleared my throat.

“Are you going to take care of me, Sparkles?”