Stars Landing [Book 3]

Chapter 9 - Challenge Him

'Are you going to come to me or should I come to you?'

The pit in Tegan's stomach was growing bigger and bigger. What did she have to do to stop feeling like such a wreck? What could she do to keep her thoughts clear of Christian Lu? He had been bothering her with messages and phone calls all day. Didn't he have better things to do? Were his charity cases doing so well that he had time to antagonize her? Tegan didn't know if she was going to be brave enough to sleep with him again, but she wanted to stay true to her plan just the same.

'You're inviting me to your place?' Tegan typed.

Her phone beeped. 'Why not?'

'What's wrong with my place?'

'You have a roommate,' Christian replied. 'One that doesn't particularly like me at the moment.'

'You can't blame her. It's hard to like you sometimes.'

'Lol. But you do like me?'

Tegan didn't know why he was laughing. It wasn't funny. If he thought he could flirt his way back into her heart, he had another thing coming.

'Honestly, anything I felt got wiped clean that morning,' Tegan replied. Their conversation lost its consistency after that message. Tegan dropped her head on the desk and tried to pray away the headache. He couldn't get all bitchy about the truth, he had no right, if he didn't want to reply then good riddance. Still, why did the thought of losing contact with him make her heart swell up inside? Tegan would deny it to the end. There was no way in hell she was in l—

Christian texted back. 'Come over. This texting thing isn't doing anything for me. I want to hold you at least, even if it is while you bad mouth me.'

Tegan responded with anger. 'You can't talk to me like that!'

'Why can't I?'

'Because you're not my boyfriend, you have no right saying shit like that to me. It's misleading and I don't want to have to read it or hear it.'

'Well that's unfortunate but I do want to hold you.'

'We need to set some ground rules,' Tegan protested. 'You can't just be a dick after-the-fact and then flirty during the other ninety-nine percent.'

'I'm not giving you any ground rules,' Christian messaged. 'How is this fair?'

'Life isn't fair, get over it!' Tegan bashed her thumbs against the screen, overcome with rage. Turning off the phone, she decided she didn't want to deal with the jerk until she was done work. The files were piling on her desk and if she didn't sort through them then she would be stuck doing overtime.

Lucy seemed to coming through her office a lot, and that a was good indication of how busy things were. Five o'clock couldn't come soon enough. The amount of emails Tegan received didn't give her enough time to eat or cope. It felt like she was dealing with one situation after another. Cora, her co-worker decided to lend her a hand and help wrap things up with the accountants and buyers. Grocery stores were finally getting interested in putting Swirled up on their shelves. It was just a matter of figuring out how much space they would take up in the dairy section. It had nothing to do with Tegan's initial job, but people seemed to be aiming all their questions and frustrations out on her.

Tegan had to admit that work was a lot easier to deal with than her other problem. Tegan told herself that there were only two ways to handle Christian Lu. One, get stupid drunk and proceed to seduce the man-whore until he begged for mercy. Two, approach him lucid and try to maintain things on her own. Both of those options wouldn't end well.