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"I’ll go with you" Ian stood up

"No No, you won’t" Bree grabbed her skirt off the floor and stepped into it

"Why not?" He gave her a wounded look

"Because I just want to talk to my sister alone" She yanked off her T-shirt and pulled a turtleneck on "Is there anything else about this Darius and his crappy offer that you need to tell me?"

"Just that he wants to close on January 1 and he wants you out by February 1"

Fresh tears filled her eyes, and these actually spilled up and over and slid down her cheeks "Are you kidding me? What a total bastard"

"He’s just a business personal"

She could not believe he was coldhearted enough to say so so callous "Not personal? Not personal! This is my family hooing to lose everything and you’re acting like it’s not a big deal Oh et out of my house Now Or I will screa this tiht just start spontaneously screaardless of whether he left or not

"Breecalure this out I’ll loan you the ed hi her, and she really, really wanted to be alone so she could break down in private She hated feeling vulnerable, hated feeling like she was being patronized, hated worrying and wondering if he had

"I don’t want your da for real now, and it pissed her off

Ian tried again to touch her, but she just threw his pants at hi totally irrational, but she was overwhelmed and hurt and panicked She wanted to be alone to think, and he was not listening to her or respecting that, which said volu his pants off his head

Hello "Yes, I do Leave"

He stood there for aand her palms sweaty His jaas locked, his shoulders tense

Finally, he said, "Okay If that’s what you want"

He tried to step into his jeans and tripped over Akasha "Daasped and bent over to grab her cat "Do not swear atat the cat I earing about the cat"

She bit her tongue before she said so

utterly childish Instead, she just turned and walked out the door

"Bree!" Ian called after her "Please, don’t do this

We need to talk We can figure this out"

Except that at the moment she just didn’t want to

Chapter 7

Bree sat in her living roo on the grate, red candles all around it She feltthe bleak situation with Charlotte and Will had helped The tax bill was a huge problem, there was no doubt about it Her sister and her brother-in-law had echoed Ian’s suggestions for how to handle paying the tax bill, but so

She felt bad about the way she had handled the situation with him She was fairly certain she had overreacted, but she had just been so blindsided by the horror of potentially losing her house that she had lashed out at Ian He had been an easy target, and she wasn’t necessarily proud of that But she didn’t really know hi for him

Hard And that had scared her SoWhich made her seriously annoyed with herself

She was the one who always professed to believe in signs, to believe in destiny, to believe in her own enored all of those and reacted with fear andbetween her and Ian, regardless of how short a ti of hienuinely enjoyed his company When she ith him, she felt an ease and a comfort that she had never had with any other man

Yet she’d thrown his jeans at him and tossed hi to do as to why he hadn’t tried to talk his client out of stealing her house from under her, but Bree understood that to a certain extent, Ian’s hands were tied She had reacted with pure eo and she would never know the fulfillether

It sucked, basically So Bree wanted to burn her log in solitude and ask her grandic to her life in the new year She wanted to stop acting first and thinking only later, and she needed to accept whatever was going to happen with the house She needed toher eyes, she visualized her desires, saw them as words and pictures in her mind Peace