I Choose Him, Your Worst Enemy novel Chapter 170

Snow collected herself with visible effort, smoothing her expression back into something composed.

She started walking toward Wynette, slow and deliberate.

She never got the opening she wanted. Adriel turned around and stepped in beside Wynette in one fluid motion, and right in front of Snow, his arm curved around Wynette's waist with the casual authority of someone claiming what was already his.

The move was too quick for Wynette to sidestep, and she found herself pressed against his side before she'd fully processed what was happening.

She looked at Snow's expression curdling by the second, and decided, quietly, to let Adriel do what he was doing.

The two of them looked entirely, unmistakably together.

"Allow me," Adriel said, his voice smooth and cold as winter stone. "This is Wynette Jewell. My girlfriend and future wife."

If he'd had their marriage license on him, he would have produced it then and there and saved everyone the trouble.

Snow's jaw tightened, and the look she fixed on Wynette was pure, scorching resentment.

Wynette felt the arm around her waist tighten by a fraction, and understood the message perfectly.

She curved her lips into a smile, settled herself more comfortably against Adriel's chest, and looked at Snow with the breezy warmth of someone who had nothing whatsoever to worry about. "Hi there," she said pleasantly. "I'm Adriel's girlfriend."

If he wanted to call it that, then girlfriend it was.

Then she tipped her head up toward him, letting her voice go soft and just a little petulant.

"I couldn't find you inside, so I came looking, and here you are. You told me I'm the only one for you, so what's all this about?" She clicked her tongue lightly. "I'm upset. You sort this out yourself, and if you can't, don't even think about coming back to the room tonight. You can sleep in the hallway."

It landed exactly as intended. Wynette had just told Snow, in the most offhand way imaginable, that they shared a room and that the relationship was thoroughly, comfortably established.

From somewhere behind her, Alice gave Wynette a slow, silent thumbs-up.

Absolutely masterful.

Adriel blinked, caught off guard for exactly one second, then recovered.

"That is completely unfair," he said, matching her energy without missing a beat. "She came to me. How is that my fault?"

"Oh, it's definitely your fault," Wynette agreed cheerfully.

"Fine, yes, completely my fault," Adriel said immediately, without a shred of resistance. "My fault entirely. I'll stay at least ten feet from every other woman from now on. You know I only love you."

He slipped it in like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The color that rushed into Wynette's cheeks was entirely involuntary, and she had absolutely no idea how to respond to that, so she settled for giving him a brief, pointed look.

Then she turned back to Snow, whose complexion had gone the shade of old ash.

"I'm sorry," Wynette said pleasantly, without sounding sorry in the least. "He's taken. You heard him, he loves me very much. A great deal, actually."

She let that breathe for exactly one beat. "And I'll be honest, I'm the possessive type. I don't share well, and I don't appreciate other women setting their sights on my man, even casually. I'd really appreciate it if you didn't come looking for him again."

She finished it off with a small, mild smile that managed to be simultaneously polite and completely immovable.

Snow's composure shattered all at once.

"That's rather controlling of you, isn't it?" she said, her voice sharpening into something cold. "Telling other women they can't even admire him? A man like Addy is always going to attract attention. If you're going to be this jealous, you're going to exhaust yourself."

Wynette's expression didn't flicker. "Well, that's just how it is," she said easily. "He likes that I'm the jealous type. It works for us, especially when he's also the jealous kind."

She tilted her head just slightly. "And one small thing, since we're talking. It's Mr. Gallagher, or Adriel. The way you've been saying his name, people might get the wrong idea about how close you two actually are."

She turned back to Adriel with the particular air of someone asking a very simple question. "Adriel, did you ever tell her she could call you that?"

Adriel cleared his throat. "No. Absolutely not. Never said any such thing."

She lingered, studying Snow with the calm, assessing look of someone making a considered decision, and then she spoke. "Ms. Zimmer, you've been at this for a long time with nothing to show for it," she said, her voice even and genuinely kind. "Why hold on to someone who was never going to be yours?"

Jamie had mentioned her before, something about a young woman who'd been pursuing Adriel relentlessly since their college days.

Adriel had already had someone else on his mind back then, and the way he'd treated Snow's advances had reportedly been the conversational equivalent of absolute zero, not a single crack of warmth, not one opening.

She'd apparently poured considerable family resources into engineering a business connection with the Gallagher Group just to get near him, and every approach had been turned back at the door.

Adriel had even blocked her from reaching his parents, dismantling every possible angle in advance.

And she was still here.

Alice, out of something that was genuinely, if perhaps misguidedly, charitable, said what she said next.

"Some things are simply not meant for you, no matter how hard you reach for them. Wynette is the person Adriel has kept safe at the very center of himself for years. She's his. If anything ever happened to her, I think he'd do something none of us would be comfortable witnessing." She let that settle. "I believe you're a smart woman. I trust you know where the lines are."

She'd heard things about Snow's methods. They were the kind of things that made her want to say this now, clearly, before anything could happen.

With the depth of her twisted obsession, Snow going after Wynette wasn't out of the realm of possibilities.

Snow let out a short, contemptuous sound. Evidently, the advice didn't reach her.

"Thank you for the concern, Ms. Tate," she said, her smile not reaching anything above the chin. "But I think you could stand to spend a little more time thinking about your own situation. I don't need anyone telling me how to conduct myself."

Alice looked at her for a moment, then lifted one shoulder in a small, unhurried shrug.

"Suit yourself."

She turned and walked back inside without another word, done. That's what I get for being kind.

If someone wanted to dig their own grave, she certainly wasn't going to exhaust herself trying to hand them a ladder out.