Two words, delivered with nothing extra attached to them. No bow on it. No expectation of credit.
"When you made the donation, did you know the contract was going to my dad's company?"
He doesn't answer, but the corners of his mouth curve up in a faint, almost sad smile. My throat does something inconvenient that I deal with by breathing in slowly through my nose and looking back at the plaque.
"Thank you," I say with the tiniest voice. Barely a voice at all.
"It was the right thing to do," he says.
Which is such a Demetrius Thornwood answer that I don't even try to argue with it.
From the direction of the mayor and the plaque, Agatha's tone is sharp enough to draw blood, and the mayor responds in a voice that is definitely not the voice of a man in charge.
"He's going to cry soon," I say.
"Yes." Demetrius looks over at the scene with the expression of a man watching a natural disaster from a safe distance and feeling a little grateful it's not him. "Better him than me."
And there it is, a small laugh slips out and his mouth ticks up, and for a second we are just two people standing on cobblestones in the May morning light.
"Mrs. Primrose's brownies are out," he says. "We should get there before they're gone."
I chuckle and he offers me his arm. It takes me about a quarter of a second to accept it, then we're walking together to the Knitters Club table in search of an insane amount of sugar.
I try to just enjoy the moment.
I try not to think about the fact that Demetrius is not the boy he was when we last walked hand in hand on those piers.
He's the same. He's broader, larger. He has more money and more power, but underneath all of it is the same person who was once my entire world.
And as he hands me a still-warm brownie, I'm not sure if I'm the biggest fool of them all. Or just a woman about to lose her heart all over again.
Chapter Ten
Demetrius
Ipretendedtoworkall day.
I ignored phone calls, stared at emails without reading a single word and generally spent the day doing nothing I should have been doing.
All because my stupid brain refused to focus on anything other than Madison's smiling face.
Well, that's not technically true. My brain had no shortage of imagination when it came to thinking about her. And it didn't stop at a smiling face when it came down to fantasizing, either. The things my brain conjured when picturing those plump, round lips. I've dreamed them pressed against mine.
I've dreamed them wrapped around my cock more than anything, if I'm being honest.
And I know how wrong this is. I shouldn't be thinking this way. I shouldn't want her so bad my horns itch and my chest feels tight like I've just run an ultramarathon.
My laptop's screen, which turned grey a few seconds ago, turns black and I groan, then flip the top closed. What good is staring at it for another hour going to do? I have no tab open, anyway. I've been staring at my home screen since nine.
Shit. I don't even know what time it is. A full moon sits over the garden, throwing enough light that I could probably read the Windemere contract by it if I were a special kind of masochist. The entire world out there continues to exist, oblivious to my internal agony.
Get it together, man! You're the CEO of Thornwood Industries. You're a man who picks up the phone to call Prime Ministers and heads of state across the globe. You have the personal number to the President of the United States in your contacts.
Ugh. My little pep talk doesn't do me much good. It's a quarter past ten, and my stomach does a deep, angry rumble. I skipped dinner, too.
So much for not avoiding Maddie.
Well that ends now. I'm an adult. I know a kiss doesn't mean anything. So what, Maddie kissed me? It doesn't have to meananything more than a slip of judgment on her part. Both our parts.
