Page 60 of Dating the Billionaire
He really wanted to believe her—so damn badly. But that wasn’t the person he’d met. He’d metSavannah.And then Bill.
“I don’t know why she wasn’t that way with you,” Miranda said. “Except that I think she was scared.” She released a shaky sigh. “And if you knew Blair as well as I do, you’d be shocked as hell that anything could scare her. She’s flown in combat, after all.”
The thought of that—of her being in that kind of danger—scared the hell out of him. But she’d survived it; she was fine. Except now he understood why she’d had that odd reaction to his sister’s pieces of twisted metal Francesca called art. To Blair that wouldn’t have been art; it would have been bad memories.
“Then why would she be scared of me?”
Miranda shook her head. “She wasn’t afraid of you. She was afraid of what she might become with you.”
His head was pounding with confusion. “Who? Savannah?”
“Exactly,” Miranda said, and she slapped her forehead as if she’d been given sudden clarification. “That’s exactly who she was afraid of becoming. Her mother.”
“But I didn’t want her to change.”
“You said you didn’t want a female pilot,” she reminded him.
And he groaned. “Not because I was discriminating. It was because of the way her brother talked about her—like she was some kind of warrior princess.”
“And you were afraid you were going to fall for her when you were already falling for Savannah.”
“What a mess,” he murmured. “She’s never going to believe that.”
“I do,” Miranda assured him. “And Blair knows you much better than I do.”
“Yes, she does,” he said. “Because I was open and honest with her.” He’d even told her about his childhood, about how hard it had been. But she’d shared nothing of her life. That ache in his chest continued to gnaw at him. “Because she knows me and knows how I feel about honesty, she shouldn’t have lied to me.”
“She realized her mistake about that right away,” she said. “And I didn’t know about the Bill the pilot thing until yesterday. But I understand it, after everything she went through in order to become a fighter pilot. You struck a nerve with her, brought back all the bad memories.”
Like his sister’s artwork probably had. He could only imagine that it hadn’t been easy for her. It sounded as if nothing had been easy for her, though. Maybe that was why he’d fallen so fast for her—because they’d had far more in common than he’d realized. If he’d only known more about her, maybe he would have handled finding out the truth with a little more sensitivity and less anger. But he should have at least let her explain. Instead he’d acted like an ass.
He groaned and admitted, “I really screwed this up.”
“Go. Talk to her,” Miranda urged him. “She will understand, and she will forgive you. She’s forgiven me for all the times I got her into trouble over the years.”
“She might have, but her brother hasn’t,” Teo warned her. “He’s also not happy that you were involved in this whole mess, either.”
“Of course he isn’t,” she said. But that little smile was lifting the corners of her mouth again. Pissing off Grant Snyder seemed to amuse her.
“I might have to use that,” Teo warned her. “If I need Grant’s help to get Blair to talk to me again.”
“You really screwed up,” she mused.
“I overreacted,” he admitted. But it was only because he had been more vulnerable with Savannah than he’d ever been with anyone else.
And to find out that wasn’t even her name...
He’d been devastated. Now he was even more fascinated. Savannah was Blair Snyder, and Blair Snyder was so much more than Savannah.
She was an incredible woman. A woman he wanted another chance with...if it wasn’t already too late.
He was afraid that it might be, though. That he might have hurt her as badly as he’d been hurting. And that she wouldn’t want to risk that kind of pain again—not even for the pleasure they’d given each other.
