Page 85 of Filthy Rich Temptation
I cock a brow. ‘Essentials?’
‘Oh, you know – a pool, a fully-staffed spa…’
‘Ri-ight.’ I laugh into my glass. ‘Taylor said you struggled to live with her. She didn’t say she was high-maintenance, too.’
‘And now youdefinitelysound like my mother. Are you sure you two haven’t caught up behind my back?’
‘Promise,’ I say with a slow smile, daring to press, ‘So is that why you two didn’t work out? She wastoo muchfor you.’
He gives a tight laugh. ‘There were many reasons we didn’t work. If you ask Katie, she’d say I was already married to my job.’
Of all the reasons he could give, that one lands the hardest. Because for a man who’d been determined to see his parents work less and live more, Katie’s reason reaffirms what everyone else has said: that he’s fallen into the same trap.
Doesn’t matter what I’ve witnessed in him these last few weeks, seeing him put me and Lottie first. We’re a temporary distraction, a momentary blip in his routine, and I don’t doubt for a second he’ll return to it when we’re gone. Return to it and then some, making up for the time he’s lost.
I want so desperately to say something, but… no judgement.
‘And what about you?’ I say gently, trying a different tack. ‘What would you say the reason was?’
His eyes don’t leave the horizon, but something in his posture shifts. I start to think he’s not going to answer at all, when finally, he speaks.
‘Before Dad died, work was a way to secure the future for all of us. After… it filled a void that nothing else could fill. Not even Katie.’ He turns to me, the weight behind his eyes making it hard to breathe. ‘So, no. It wasn’t that she was too much. It’s that I wasn’t enough to give her what she needed.’
The confession hangs in the air, raw and real.
But all I can think is that the man I’ve come to know again has been more than enough for me. More than enough for meandfor Lottie.
‘Or maybe she wasn’t what you needed to be able to give that to?’
His eyes narrow and I feel my heart slow, the meaning of what I’ve just said registering and settling in my chest. How foolish, revealing, and stupid stupid stupid.
‘But hey, what do I know? I’m hardly the relationship expert, am I?’ I chuckle into my wine, taking a sip and trying not to choke on my foolishness. ‘I have to say though, if I had to choose between the Côte d’Azur and this…’
I set my glass on the rail, fingers curling around the wood as I fix my gaze on everything Wales currently has on offer. The sun is just a deep-pink sliver now, its shifting hues rippling across the water as waves whisper against the burnished shore.
I breathe it in deep. Let it out slow. Feel the calm overtake me…
‘I’d choose this every time.’ I smile. Accepting it for what it is. My current reality. My life in this moment. ‘Because this, Theo. This is perfection.’
And I’m happy. For the first time in too long, I’m actually happy.
Not just free and living, but happy.
And all the crazy flutterings he stirs up inside me, they’re just noise above that totally exquisite baseline of H-A-P-P-Y.
‘Yeah,’ he murmurs beside me, his voice lower, heavier – like he’s just waking up to the beauty he’s overlooked all this time. ‘It really is.’
Only… he’s not looking at the view at all. He’s looking straight at me. And the way he says it… the way his eyes look… they have that burn, the same fire he was sporting on his knees last night…
My breath catches and I think about the promise I made to myself that morning.
To take what hadn’t been perfect and make it so.
By claiming his mouth and his pleasure, too.
‘Theo?’
* * *
