Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry

sucks. Yes, I
thought you were bad for each other, but that doesn’t mean I think
you’re a bad person or that I don’t want you to be happy. And I
might have made a few jokes about you being uptight and called you
Droopy Drawers, but I never told E to dump you. I know how much you
love her.”
    Martin blinked. Then he took his glasses off and made
a big deal out of putting them in his pocket.
    “ Again, thank you for your brilliant
analysis of my private life. Next time I want to be judged by a
woman who has wasted almost her entire life thumbing her nose at
her parents, I’ll know just where to come.”
    It was Violet’s turn to blink. “You know nothing
about me and my parents. So don’t you dare offer judgment.”
    “ Oh, I see. You’re the only one who
is allowed to have an opinion on something that has nothing
whatsoever to do with you. Is that right?”
    Violet sighed. Why did they always end up at
loggerheads? Despite the angry words that kept popping out of her
mouth, she actually quite admired him. She knew he did lots of pro
bono work. She had huge respect for the way he’d dragged himself up
by the boot straps. A part of her even liked how serious he was,
even though the outward manifestations of that—the clothing, those
stupid glasses—drove her nuts. And yet she couldn’t spend five
minutes in his company without rubbing him the wrong way and vice
versa.
    “ Maybe we should just pretend this
never happened.” She turned to go.
    “ Aren’t you forgetting
something?”
    He picked up the bottle of schnapps and offered it to
her.
    “ It was a gift.”
    “ I don’t want it.”
    “ Why not?”
    “ You know why.”
    “ Because it’s from me?”
    Did he really dislike her so much?
    “ Because I don’t need your bloody
pity, Violet.”
    “ Tough. You’ve got it.”
    She turned to go again but he strode forward and
grabbed her arm. Suddenly she was breathing in his aftershave and
the smell of shirt starch as he opened her shoulder bag and shoved
the schnapps inside it. She stared at his face, very close to her
own, but he was intent on his task and didn’t look up until he’d
released her and taken a step away.
    “ Now you can go.”
    “ Lovely. Beautiful manners. Maybe I
was wrong, maybe you don’t deserve my sympathy at all. Maybe E’s
the one I should feel sorry for, for putting up with a rude bastard
like you for so many years.”
    Martin gave her a scathing head to toe, his signature
look where she was concerned, apparently.
    “ There are many
things I will miss about sharing Elizabeth’s life, but spending
time with you will not be one of them. I can honestly say that I
have never been more... relieved to think that I need never lay eyes on a person
again. Was that polite enough for you, Violet, or should I drop a
few four letter words in there so you feel more at
home?”
    Hurt and anger and something else she didn’t even
dare name rose up inside her in a messy, confusing rush. She opened
her mouth but nothing smart or bolshy or sharp came out.
    And so she did the next best thing that leapt to
mind—she poked her tongue out and blew a noisy raspberry, at the
same time grasping the waistband of her sweater and lifting it up,
flashing her breasts at him. It was a tactic she’d last employed
when she’d been working very hard to be expelled from school, and
it came from the same frustrated, hurt, angry place.
    She didn’t hang around to hear the inevitable
censure. She swiveled on her heel and marched down the corridor
toward the elevator. Once inside, she stabbed the button for the
ground floor half a dozen times until the doors slid closed and she
started descending.
    Martin St Clair was a pig. An ungrateful, ignorant,
hateful pig and she hoped he suffocated in his self-imposed prison.
She hoped he met some horrible over-bred woman at someone’s dinner
party very soon and married her and had lots of horrible children
with big teeth and braying laughs and the smug air of