Page 18 of Fergus

Fergus gave a hard, humorless laugh. “I admit, I don’twantto want you. But I can’t deny, in spite of everything, that I do. And I have no intention of lying to myself, or you, about it.”

Thea’s frown deepened. “But we won’t be seeing each other again after you leave the hotel today.”

When she left the hotel too, she acknowledged heavily. Because she had no intention of remaining here for the rest of her stay in Paris after someone had not only broken in but physically attacked her.

“When I leave here today, you’re coming with me,” Fergus told her. “Either that, or I stay here with you tonight,” he challenged when she was about to protest. “In the meantime, I’ll make arrangements for the family-owned Wynter private jet to be waiting for us at the airport tomorrow, along with a team of bodyguards to accompany us back to England.”

Thea had a feeling she’d missed something. Because of the blow to her head? Whatever the reason, she wasn’t sure she had heard Fergus correctly.

Had he really just said, after so shockingly revealing that he wanted her and liked her arse, that he was flying to England with her tomorrow?

That in the meantime, he intended either to spend the night here with her at the hotel or she was going back to his home with him until they flew out of Paris tomorrow on his family’s private jet?

More importantly, she was still having trouble processing the fact that Fergus had said hewantedto bite her arse…?

CHAPTERSIX

“I thinkyou made the right decision,” Fergus told Thea as he let the two of them into his house in Paris’s 7tharrondissement.

She snorted as she followed him along the hallway and up the stairs. “Did I really have a choice?”

He placed her single bag on the floor inside an elegantly furnished bedroom decorated in pale cream and green. There was a view of the Eiffel Tower from the windows.

He turned to face her. “When it comes to me, I promise you will always have a choice,” he assured huskily.

A blush brightened the hollows of her cheeks. “Did I have a choice when you made a call to your doctor earlier and arranged for him to arrive here shortly so that he could examine me to make sure I don’t have a concussion?”

Fergus smiled inwardly, knowing she hadn’t voiced the question she really wanted to ask. Yes, his comments earlier had been outrageous, but that didn’t make it any less true that he had wanted Thea since that first day when he had found himself unable to look away from her or the curvaceous perfection of her bottom as she followed him around Paris.

He shrugged. “I gave you the choice of him coming to your hotel suite or here. You chose here.”

“Because I didn’t want to stay at the hotel another moment longer than I had to. I couldn’t remain in that room where…where my stalker had been.”

Fergus’s humor faded. When Thea returned to the hotel earlier she had initially believed the door to her suite had been left slightly ajar because the maid was in there cleaning, Fergus believed Thea’sstalkerhad probably entered her hotel suite when the maid was cleaning the rooms.

But he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure that was how the stalker had got inside Thea’s suite, which was why he was pleased Thea had agreed to accompany him to his home. Arranging for his doctor to come and examine her wasn’t an option he intended to give her.

Fergus stepped forward to lightly clasp the tops of Thea’s arms. “You’re here with me now, and I won’t allow anything or anyone to hurt you while you’re under my protection.” His brow lowered. “Least of all some coward who stalks a woman and then breaks into her hotel suite before knocking her unconscious.” He hadn’t mentioned it to Thea, but he was also concerned about what else the stalker might have planned to do in her hotel suite if she hadn’t returned and interrupted him.

He’d seen some really sick shit during the last twenty years of co-owning and running a security company.

Setting up security for a business could be complicated enough, but personal security could, and often was, even more so. Because it could becomeverypersonal.

As he believed it now had with Thea.

The person stalking her had now broken into her personal space not once but twice. Once in her apartment in London, and then again in her hotel room here in Paris.

Which meant the bastard had definitely followed her here.

In Fergus’s experience, these things could spiral out of control very quickly.

Not if he had any say in it!

He’d told Thea how he felt earlier because he didn’t want there to ever be the slightest suspicion in her mind that his attraction to her had anything to do with revenge for her mother’s past behavior. He wanted Theain spiteof who her mother was.

Yes, it was fucked-up that he wanted the daughter of the woman who had tried to blackmail him ten years ago. But he had watched his twin and cousin both fall for women who, on paper, were just as unsuitable for them. Maybe not as much as Thea was for him, but there was no denying he had known there was no walking away from her from the moment he looked into her eyes and became lost in those familiar golden depths.

He narrowed his eyes. “What were you thinking about earlier after I told you I’m attracted to you?”

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