Hitched (Imperfect Love Book 2) by Kendall Ryan Read Free Book Online

countryside outside of London. He still has a taste for it—reminds him of his youth, I guess.
    He places an order for the ploughman’s lunch, and I choose the least noxious thing I can find on the menu—fish and chips. Tea is the one thing we can agree on.
    When the waitress saunters away, he’s back to smirking at me expectantly. “So, do tell. How’s the wifey?”
    If he bats those fucking eyelashes at me one more time, like we’re having girl talk, I’m going to slug the son of a bitch.
    “At least let me get my tea before you badger me,” I mutter.
    The waitress delivers a little porcelain kettle with piping-hot brew. It reminds me of the one I have at home. I think of Olivia and something inside me pinches. She tapped away on her keyboard until late last night; whether she was determined to get her thoughts on paper or to keep her distance from me, I wasn’t sure.
    “I’m not trying to badger you,” Sterling says with a sigh. “Just wondering what’s the problem. I take it the wedding night wasn’t all you dreamed it might be?”
    “You could say that.” I take a sip of my tea and find it’s the perfect temperature.
    “Is she still as icy as ever, or is she warming to you?”
    “We spent all night going over a new business plan,” I say.
    “Christ on a cracker. The woman is a ballbuster.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    It’s true that Olivia is relentless in her pursuit of perfection. She’s smart and determined, and she never wavers in confidence. It’s sexy as hell. Frustrating. But admirable.
    Nothing fazes the woman. She’s smart as a whip, and doesn’t take shit from anyone. I’ve never once seen her back down from a challenge. What I have seen is her effortlessly dominating executive meetings filled with industry veterans—men old enough to be her grandfather, who were in business suits before she was out of diapers. And she doesn’t even notice or care how beautiful she is . . .
    I realize Sterling is still watching me and snap out of my thoughts. They were getting too gooey for my own good, anyway.
    “She sure as hell doesn’t act like anybody’s wife,” I mutter.
    He shrugs. “So she isn’t a romantic.”
    Actually, according to her friend Camryn, she is. But I don’t tell that to Sterling at the risk of sounding like a total cliché.
    “She fell asleep at her desk sometime after midnight.”
    “You don’t become that successful at the age of twenty-six by taking your eye off the ball.”
    “I guess.”
    “So I can assume that baby-making isn’t going well?” He chuckles.
    “Not exactly.”
    “What are you going to do? A woman’s never refused you before, and now your own wife won’t fuck you.” He makes a disappointed noise in his throat.
    When I merely flip him off, he excuses himself for a visit to the restroom. When Sterling is gone, I pull out my phone and check my messages.
    There are three e-mails from Fred, all of them about the dire situation of the company, and another from Preston informing me that the board is having an “exploratory meeting” with a rival firm next week.
    Fuck .
    I close out my in-box. Since Sterling still isn’t back, I pull up the business news app on my phone to scroll through the headlines, hoping to take my mind off all the bed news at work.
    “Can Manhattan’s New “Power Couple” Turn a Marketing Dinosaur Around Before It’s Too Late?”
    I begin reading the top article, only to discover that it’s about Olivia and me. Financial advisors are speculating about the future of the company and predict a plummet in our stock price as leadership changes are shaken out.
    Well, fuck that. I won’t watch our company go down in flames. But the truth is, we’re not even close to being out of the woods yet. And all this bad press is bound to hobble us even more.
    Frustrated, I slam my phone down on the table just as Sterling approaches.
    “What now?” he asks, sliding into his seat and laying his napkin across his lap.
    It