Tell Me a Story (The Story Series Book 1) by Tamara Lush Page A

I ignored everything and kept on doing shots by myself. By the time Sarah arrived, I was good and toasty.
    “Wow, I’ve never seen you like this. You normally don’t do shots.” Sarah held my arm as I slid off the barstool and stumbled as I tried to walk in my four-inch heels.
    “I normally don’t find out that my boyfriend’s a traitor.” I don’t think my words came out as snappy as I intended because Sarah scowled.
    She hooked her arm firmly into mine and steered me past a store with trolls and Norse gods. I started to speak, then caught a whiff of smoked salmon and gagged.
    Sarah held me tighter. “Let’s save the discussion for the car. You can barely form sentences. And you’re staying on my sofa tonight.”

13
    I woke the next morning , my head stuffed between the cushion and the arm of Sarah’s couch. My eyes felt like they’d been rubbed raw with sandpaper. My mouth tasted like ass. And since I hadn’t washed my makeup off, my skin was slick and oily. I rubbed my cheeks and felt an emerging pimple. When I was stressed, my face broke out. I let out a long groan, which made my head throb even harder.
    “Morning, sunshine.” Sarah was at her kitchen table, drinking coffee. She looked perky in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a sleek ponytail. Somehow, I was in her yoga pants and a grey T-shirt but didn’t remember changing out of my dress, which was on the coffee table.
    I was too old for this kind of morning.
    “Fuuuuck,” I whispered.
    “Em, I haven’t seen you that drunk since junior year at college.”
    The entire night rushed back into my mind in hazy snippets. I swore softly again and rubbed my throbbing temples. “Did I tell you everything that happened?”
    “Yep. You did. And Caleb’s been blowing up your phone all night and all morning. I shut it off around two because you were threatening to call him and tell him off. Maybe you should give him a call now that you’re sober. If you’re sober, that is.”
    I sighed. “Dunno if I’m sober. But no. Not calling him today. And maybe not ever. Did I tell you that his company bought the building?”
    “Yep,” she replied.
    “He had to have known. The moment he walked into the bookstore, he must have known his company had bought the building.”
    “That’s not what his texts said.”
    “What the hell? You read my texts?”
    She sipped her coffee. The quality that made me love her—the ability to be totally unflappable—annoyed me at that moment.
    “Had to. I needed to find out what you were crying about last night. I wanted to make sure he hadn’t hurt you.”
    “Well, he did. Hurt me, that is. Jerk.” I sat up and my entire body felt like it had been run over by a train. Repeatedly.
    Sarah grunted. “Maybe y’all should talk it out before you judge him. He owns a pretty big company, Emma. I looked it up last night. It’s one of the top five development companies in the entire US. It’s got assets in the billions.”
    “It does?” I squinted my eyes shut and felt the hot, smelly breath of Maggie, her dog, on my hand. I opened my eyes to pet her sleek brindle fur. Somehow I’d been so enamored with Caleb that I’d neglected to discover that he was some sort of mogul. I knew he was wealthy, but billions? He was so down to earth. And somehow I’d assumed that the developer who’d bought our building was some local yokel.
    I groaned again as Maggie licked my foot. Shit, I had to get home to feed Higgins. Thank God I’d bought him one of those water fountain things and an automatic feeder.
    “Yeah, it does. It’s enormous. And I did some more searching online. One of the King Group’s subsidiaries bought your building. The documents were filed Friday at City Hall. So that’s probably why he wasn’t briefed on the project. It’s still in the early stages. He’s at the top of a massive company. This project probably isn’t even a big deal to him.”
    “Well, it’s a big fucking deal to me.”
    I shuffled to the