“Then why are you still here?”

She looked at him standing there. Closed off to his anger and to her. She loved him. She loved him more than she’d ever loved another man. “Because I got to know you and you began to mean a lot to me.” Her heart was breaking, and there was nothing she could do but tell him the truth. The terrifying truth. “I love you, Mark.”

He laughed, but there was no pleasure in it. Then, finally, she saw some anger in his eyes. Cold, stony anger. “Nice touch, but I’m not a sucker. At least not today.”

She’d just bared everything to him, and he didn’t believe her. How was that possible? Couldn’t he see how much the truth hurt? “It’s the truth. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, but I did.”

“You expect me to believe that?” His jaw clenched. “Now? After everything?”

Anger and hurt and desperation coalesced in her stomach and chest and pinched the backs of her eyes. Tears pooled along her bottom lids, then slipped over her lashes. “It’s true.”

“The tears are a nice touch. You’re a better actress than I thought.”

“I’m not acting.” She brushed the moisture from her cheek. The sick feeling in her stomach was far too real. He had to see that. She had to make him hear and believe her. “I love you.” She pointed a finger at him. “You made me love you even when I knew it was a really bad idea. You made me love everything about you.” She dropped her hand to her side as another tear rolled down her cheek. “You made me love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my whole life.”

He shook his head. “Right.”

“It’s true. Being with you these past few months has meant a lot to me. Please, believe me.”

“Even if I believed you, it doesn’t matter.”

It had to matter. She’d never pleaded with any other man. “I love you.”

He looked into her eyes and pounded the last nail into her heart. “I don’t love you.”

The air left her lungs as if he’d hit her and she turned her face away. He didn’t love her. She’d known he didn’t, but hearing it from his own mouth hurt more than she’d ever imagined. “I knew you’d hurt me,” she whispered through her pain. Raw pain and rage, at him and herself, swelled so big she couldn’t hold it in. “I was right about you from the beginning. You’re just another celebrity who thinks he can use people.”

“Sweetheart, you used me to get your hands on ten thousand dollars.”

“I told you it wasn’t like that. I’m not a user.” She looked back up at him. At angry brown eyes set in his face that she loved with her entire broken heart and aching soul. “But you are. You mess with people’s lives, then move on with your own. You don’t care. All you care about is getting what you want.” Her hands curled into fists. She wouldn’t hit him. No, but she wanted to. “You’re no different from every other celebrity I’ve worked for. You’re selfish and spoiled. I let myself think you were different.” She swallowed hard, past the bitter lump in her throat. “I let myself forget who you really are. You’re the man who insulted me the first day we met. You’re just a colossal tool.”

He laughed again. The same bitter laugh as before. “And you just said you love me.”

The most agonizing part of it all was that she did love him. No matter that he didn’t love her. She meant nothing to him. He’d pursued her, got her in bed, and now it was over. “And you always said you don’t play unless you can win. Congratulations, Mark. You win. I lose.” Everything.

He shrugged. “The Chinooks don’t know you slept with me, and I won’t be the one to tell them. You only have a few weeks until your contract is up and then the money is yours. You’ve earned it.”

She turned back toward the desk and grabbed her purse. Her throat got tight, hot, and she pushed past him on her way out the door. The last thing she wanted to do was break down in front of him. The last thing she wanted to hear was more of his laughter.

Somehow she managed to make it to her car. Her hands shook as she shoved the key into the ignition. She half expected him to run after her and tell her to come back. That he believed her and he’d only said she meant nothing out of pain and anger. That they could work it out, but that was the gullible side. The side that had wanted to believe falling in love with Mark would work out in the end. The other side, the rational side, knew that he wasn’t coming after her. Knew she’d lost more than ten thousand dollars. She’d lost something more important than money. She’d lost her dignity and her heart.

Tears streamed down her face as she drove the short distance to Bo’s apartment. Once there, she locked herself inside her room and let all her hurt and anger wash through her. By the time she heard Bo’s key open the front door, her chest hurt from crying and her eyes were scratchy and red.

“Chels?” her sister called out.

Chelsea didn’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone, but it was a small apartment and her sister would find her. “In here.”

Bo stood in the doorway, took one look at her, and asked, “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Chelsea didn’t know where to begin.

“Did Mark Bressler do something to you?”

Leave it to her twin to narrow it down without Chelsea having to say a word. She looked at her sister, and a tear slipped from Chelsea’s eye and dropped onto the pillow.

“What did he do?”

Nothing. Besides make her fall in love with him. She supposed she could make up a lie, but her sister would know, and Chelsea was too drained to think up anything believable. “I fell in love with him. I tried not to, but I did.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t love me. In fact, he doesn’t care about me at all.”

Bo sat on the bed. Chelsea expected criticism. Waited for a lecture on how her impulsiveness always got her in trouble. How she never learned. Instead her twin sister, the other half of her soul, the dark to her light, climbed into bed and spooned her. Let the warmth of her body heat up the cold places. Her life was in pieces. An absolute mess. There wasn’t a part of her that didn’t love Mark, and she didn’t know how she was going to get through the next few hours and days and weeks. She wanted the pain to go away. She just wanted to be numb.

But three days later, her emotions were still raw, and she couldn’t seem to stop her tears from falling. Her life was in turmoil, and the thought of living in the same state as Mark, and perhaps seeing his face in a crowd, was unbearable. Yet at the same time, the thought of leaving Washington, and perhaps never seeing his face in a crowd, was just as unbearable.

She went through the motions of living. Of checking out help wanted ads. Mostly she ate junk food and watched junk TV.

“Georgeanne Kowalsky has a catering business,” Jules told her over dinner Thursday night at a sports pub on Twelfth Street. Jules seemed to favor sports pubs, which was okay with Chelsea as long as he didn’t start spouting stats. “At least she did a few years ago,” he added. “I could call her and ask if she needs help.”

“How much does it pay?” she asked as she dipped a fry into ketchup. She knew her sister and Jules had taken her to dinner to try and cheer her up. It really wasn’t working, but at least the sports programming on the numerous flat-screen televisions filled any awkward silence.

“I’m not sure,” he answered, and reached for his fork. “Probably more than you’re making right now.”

Which, of course, was zilch. She needed the money. She had enough for first and last month’s rent, plus security deposit, on a studio apartment, but she needed more. Especially if she decided to move to Los Angeles.

“Maybe wear your Gaultier tunic for the interview,” Jules suggested. “And brush your hair.”

“I think you’d be great at it,” Bo encouraged. She took a crouton off Jules’s salad and popped it into her mouth. The two were already at the sharing food stage. She and Mark had never shared food. Licking champagne from each other’s bodies didn’t count.

“Maybe I can do some catering.” As long as it had nothing to do with catering to celebrities and athletes. And as long as she didn’t know what she was going to do with her life.

For the first time that she could ever recall, she didn’t have a plan. Not even a vague one. She didn’t feel a burning desire for anything. The feeling of numbness she’d craved had settled about her and she didn’t have the energy to feel much of anything at all.

A commercial for athlete’s foot splashed across several of the flat-screen televisions, and she dunked another fry. She wasn’t going to get her breasts reduced. Something she’d always wanted, but she just really didn’t care now. Her agent called with walk-on parts in local productions, but she turned them down. She just felt…drained. Like her life had gone from a thousand vibrant colors to two shades of gray. Blah and blah-er.

Across the table from her, Bo and Jules laughed at something that was clearly an inside joke between the two of them. He whispered something in her ear, and Bo ducked her face and smiled. Chelsea was glad for Bo. Glad that her twin seemed so happy and in love, but a part of her wished that could be Chelsea too. She reached for her fork, feeling an odd mix of emptiness and envy.

Over Jules’s shoulder, a local news conference splashed across the screen. Chelsea glanced up as the television filled with the images of the Chinooks’ general manager Darby Hogue, coach Larry Nystrom, and Mark Bressler. Everything around her seemed to still, fall away as she stared up at the screen. The sound was off but the closed caption was on. Chelsea read the announcement that Mark had just signed on as the assistant coach to the Seattle Chinooks. He sat at a conference table wearing the charcoal suit and black dress shirt he’d picked out at Hugo Boss the day he’d threatened to have sex with her against the wall. The ends of his dark hair curled up around the bottom of a Chinooks’ ball cap resting on his head. His brown eyes looked out from beneath the dark blue bill, and her empty soul drank him in like cool water. His face was a bit tanner than it had been a few days ago. Probably from coaching Derek without his hat.