Page 38 of Her Forbidden Bargain

She glanced up.

“I want to know why you haven’t moved in with me. The truth this time.”

She folded her hands together on her desk blotter and then pulled them apart. “It is the temporary thing.”

“I don’t understand how it’s any different if you move in with me,” he said.

Sheri pushed her chair back from the desk and got up, walking around so that he wasn’t leaning over her. “The difference is I’ve never lived anywhere but that brownstone.”

Tristan stood up from where he’d been leaning against the desk. “The brownstone is your home.”

“Yes. It’s my home. It’s the one constant I’ve had in my life since I was eight, when my mother died and my father dumped me at my aunt’s, and, as you pointed out, what we’ve got going is only temporary.”

Tristan didn’t say anything else and Sheri wanted to curse at herself for letting the conversation get so personal. She really tried to be cool and breezy whenever she talked to him. Always tried so hard to keep her emotions bottled up and a secret from him.

“Is that it?”

“No…I’m also afraid that, if I move in with you, I’ll start to buy in to the fantasy you’ve written for us. I might start to really believe that I’m your fiancée, and that would be devastating for me when you leave.”

“All relationships end.”

“How do you figure?”

“Even the strongest and most loving relationships end with death. So no matter what, everything is temporary.”

“Tristan, that’s sad.”

“What is?”

“That you view life that way.”

“It’s realistic, Sheri. Hell, if you were to admit it, you see things the same way.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

“Even though you won’t leave your little brownstone?” he asked.

“That’s different. I don’t see relationships as temporary. I see them as unbalanced.”

“I’m not following.”

Sheri crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Tristan. His eyes were misty gray today because of the shirt he had on. He was so handsome, sometimes she worried that he’d wake up to the fact that there were a million gorgeous women in the world who’d gladly be his pretend fiancée and do whatever he asked of them.

“My reality and that brownstone are tied together. I see relationships as unbalanced because I’ve always been the one to care more than everyone else. And in the end, they’ve all left me behind.”

Tristan didn’t say anything and she felt like an idiot for revealing what she had.

“I’m going to run down and get Maurice.”

She walked out of the office and down the hall, trying to pretend that nothing had changed, but knowing that everything had.

At the end of the day Tristan was tired. Sheri had made excuses to be away from her desk for most of the afternoon and he’d let her. There was work to do and he didn’t need the distraction that she presented.

But in the back of his mind all he thought about was what she’d said about people leaving.

He thought in terms of temporary because his life had always been in constant change. The only thing he really counted on was his friendship with Gui and Christos.

And even that was changing, with Christos’s marriage. He was happy for his friend, but at the same time concerned for him. Christos had never allowed himself to love a woman before, not the way he was in love with Ava. Tristan hoped they had a lifetime together, but his experience had taught him that they probably wouldn’t.