How to Get Over Your Ex by Nikki Logan Read Free Book Online Page B

of the old him still existed. Something that
responded to Georgia’s easy company and complete failure to engage with him the
way others did. She just didn’t care who he was or that he was the only thing
standing between her and a lawsuit. Or maybe she just didn’t recognise it.
    She stared up at him with those big brown eyes and treated him
exactly like everyone else.
    No one did that any more. Even Casey—the closest thing he had
to a friend at work—was always super careful never to cross a line, to always
stop just short of the point where familiarity became contempt. Even she was
sensitive to how much of her future rested in his hands.
    Because he was so thorough in reminding them all.
Regularly.
    His minions.
    He smiled. The irony was he didn’t think that way at all. Not
deep down. He believed in the power of teams and much preferred collaborative
working groups to the way he did things now. They’d served him well back in the
day when every programme he’d produced had been the product of a handful of
hard-working people. But there was no getting around the fact that EROS really
did run better with a clear, controlled gulf between himself and the people who
worked for him. And he didn’t mind the gulf; it meant no complications between
friendships and workplace relationships.
    And driving Georgia home would have been a complication.
    Having her here, in his house, would have been a
complication.
    He had a signed contract; the time for courting The Valentine’s
Girl, professionally, was over. He should have just given her a list of
activities that the station was prepared to send her to and been done with it.
Instead of being a sap. Instead of reacting to an event fifteen years old and
letting it colour his better judgement.
    Instead of empathising.
    Just because he’d been exactly where Georgia was; on the
arse-end of a declined proposal. Only in his case, he got all the way down the
aisle before realising his fiancée wasn’t coming down behind him because she was
on her way to Heathrow with her supportive bridesmaids. What followed was a
horrible half-hour of shouting and recriminations before the priest managed to
clear the church. Lara’s family and friends all went wildly on the defensive—as
you would if it was someone you loved that had done
something so shocking. His side of the church rallied around him so stoically,
which only inflamed Lara’s family more because they knew— knew —that there were a hundred better ways to not proceed with a
marriage than just not turning up. Less destructive ways. But she’d gone with
the one that would cause her the least pain.
    And, chump that he was, he actually preferred that. He wasn’t
in the business of wishing pain on people he loved back then.
    The heartbreak was bad enough, slumped in the front row of the
rioting church, but he’d had to endure the public humiliation in front of
everyone he cared about. Their whispers. Their pity. Their side-taking. Worse,
their determined, well-meant support. Every bit as excruciating and public as
Georgia’s turn-down live on air. Just more contained.
    Like atomic fusion.
    But the after-effects rippled out for a decade and a half.
    He jogged up the stairs and headed straight for his study. The
most important room in his house. The work he got done there was the difference
between just-hanging-on in the network and excelling. No one excelled on forty
hours a week. He was putting in eighty, easy.
    It was the one thing he could thank Lara for.
    Setting him up for the kind of success that gave him a
luxurious study in a big house in Hampstead Heath and had him rubbing shoulders
with some of the most powerful people in the country.
    And just like that he was thinking of Georgia again. Her crack
about big houses and unworn clothes and crowded garages. There was a reason he
parked the Jag on the street. Because both the cars in his garage were worth
more. He liked his life. Excessive though it might be at times. He