He let her fish her phone out of her purse, then kissed her on the corner of her mouth, then down her neck.
“It’s an unknown number. I should get this, it could be a client.”
“Don’t miss it on my account.” He made his way down her throat to the gentle curve of her shoulder.
“Hello,” she said, and she sounded thoroughly turned on. He gave a little nip and her eyes closed. “Uh huh. This is her.” She sat up straight and shoved Rhett aside. “No, I’m excited to hear from you.”
There was a long pause, where Rhett assumed the other person was talking. Then Elsie was on her feet pacing, her free hand smoothing down her hair as if the person on the other side of the phone could see her.
“Wow, that’s great. Next Friday?” She looked at Rhett as if to concur, like he knew what she was talking about. She seemed to need someone in her corner, so he nodded. “Friday works.”
She gave a few more unintelligible sounds and several more thanks and then hung up. She spun to face him, her eyes a little wild. “That was Susan fromModern Masterpiecemagazine. She saw the photos I sent over and she wants to do a walk-through on Friday.” She threw herself into his arms. “Can you believe it?”
“Yes, I can. You’re exactly the caliber of designer they’re looking for.”
She pulled back. “And what kind is that?”
“Talented, educated, with your own twist on the expected. And sexy.”
She laughed. “I don’t think sexy helped me any. But thank you to the rest of it.”
“I mean it. While you held me hostage at first, I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t love your work.”
“This doesn’t mean I’ve actually landed the article.” She walked out of his arms and paced. “It means that they’re interested in finding out more about the house.”
“They’re interested in finding more about you.”
She stopped, and the look she gave was so vulnerable and uncertain he wanted to punch Axel. And not for the first time. Every time she second-guessed herself or gave in to the insecurities that he knew Axel put there, the impulse grew.
“You think?”
He took her hands and drew her in. “I know.” She gifted him a small smile. He cradled her face. “Whatever he told you was a lie. It was his way of making himself feel like the big man of the house. None of it was grounded in truth.”
She worried her lower lip and her eyes went a little glassy. She was killing him. “It’s hard sometimes to remember that, when so many people, who I thought were in my corner, jumped on the Axel bandwagon.” She met his gaze and this time it was filled with hurt. “Like you did.”
“Oh, Els,” he whispered, hating that she was right.
He’d bought Axel’s “she fleeced me” story—hook, line, and sinker. Maybe it was because Rhett had just gone through a divorce and it was nothing more than male bonding. Or maybe he’d been looking for a reason—any reason—to keep his distance when it came to Elsie. Whatever the reason, it was clear he’d hurt her. Deeply.
“I was an idiot who was stupid enough to take a liar at face value. I should have known better. There are a lot of should’ves that I’m not proud of when it comes to you, but I promise I’ll never make another should’ve where you’re concerned.”
She studied the ground. “No empty promises,” she whispered.
“This promise isn’t empty.” He tilted her chin up to meet his gaze and when their eyes locked, neither looked away. He wasn’t sure what she saw in his expression, but hers went from disbelieving to hopeful and then right into wary.
“Why didn’t you call?” she asked. “After that weekend. You said you’d call and then you didn’t. Why?”
He took a step back and ran a hand down his face. There were so many reasons he didn’t call. His dad’s health being one. Benji passed a week after he’d met Elsie. Then there was his career that was taking off and he was putting everything he had into it. But then there was the real answer, the one she deserved to hear.
“You scared the shit out of me, Elsie. I knew what my life was going to be like and it didn’t match with a hometown girl who clearly had big dreams too. My dreams would lead me around the world and yours would lead you eventually to a forever home. I didn’t want to take that life from you.”
“I’ve been walked out on my entire life, so when you did it I thought that maybe that was just how things would go for me.”
“God, no.” His heart cracked open that he’d been just another in a long line of disappointments in her life. He kissed her lips gently. “At the time, I thought I was making the best decision for the both of us.”
She considered this for a long moment. “In retrospect, it was. We both had a lot of things we wanted to accomplish in life, but you still broke my heart. I didn’t date for nearly a year, waiting for you to call.”
He ran a hand through her hair to cradle her head. “I kept that gum wrapper with your number on it until the day I ran into you and Axel. I never stopped thinking about you.” And this was the part of his admission where he sounded like an asshole. “Even though you were with him, I kept thinking of you as mine. Which was why, after your wedding, I had to create some distance.”
