Page 97 of Heartless As Puck

The walls were pale blue, the roof was hexagonal and angled up to a peak. The curtains were beige with faint vertical lines, and the floors softly carpeted.

As he guided me farther inside, I did my best to ignore the massive four-poster bed that occupied the center of his bedroom. It was a strange design, with posts rising from each corner to form a cube with the bed as its base, but there were no curtains hanging from it. As far as I could tell, the posts were purely a design feature with no functional purpose.

Considering Austin wasn’t the kind of person to care about interior design, I assumed that someone else had chosen it for him. Perhaps Hazel.

There were two comfortable beige armchairs positioned in front of the windows. Every time I’d been in here, I’d envied the window box. It looked like an excellent place to relax in the sun and read a book.

Austin gestured for me to sit on one chair. He dragged the other around, so they were facing each other and close enough that, when he sat, he was able to reach out and take my hand.

“What’s going on?” I asked, afraid to enjoy the warmth of his palm on mine because there was something worrying about the way he’d immediately separated me from my family upon coming home, especially given the lack of closure over what he’d done earlier.

He sighed, his chest deflating. “First off, I need to tell you about something that happened tonight.”

“Oh?” An uncomfortable squirming sensation started in my gut. He was clearly reluctant to talk, and I was afraid of what that might mean.

“A woman came onto me while I was at the bar. I immediately told her I had a girlfriend and wasn’t interested, but she touched my arm. Rebecca Jansen was there and I saw her pointing her phone at us. I’m a bit worried that she got a photo and that it might find its way into the tabloids tomorrow with some headline about me cheating on you. I’m really sorry.”

I shook my head, trying to make sense of what he was saying. I’d been uneasy, but something like this had never been on my radar.

“Why are you sorry? It’s not your fault.”

No, I didn’t like the idea of him being hit on while I wasn’t there and, if I were honest, I hated the idea of our relationship being something the world got to see and discuss, but my conversation with Hazel earlier had really driven a point home.

Austin was someone I could trust.

He grimaced. “It might not be my fault that it happened, but it’s my fault that people care.”

I considered that for a moment. “You’re not wrong, but if I want to be with you, then this is just something I’ll have to get used to. I know you wouldn’t have crossed any lines. You’re not that sort of person.”

The brackets around his mouth softened. “You believe me, just like that?”

I nodded. “Just like that.”

His expression didn’t give anything away, but I got the feeling there was a whole lot going on inside his head. I squeezed his hand, hoping to reassure him.

“Thank you, Jane.” He raised my hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. “Honestly, I’m not sure I deserve you.”

“You deserve everything,” I said fiercely.

He’d already lost so many things he should have had. A childhood. Parents who treated him like a kid and not an investment. If I could ease that at all, I wanted to.

“I know,” he began, his expression turning sheepish, “that we’ve kind of tiptoed around what we are, and then I went a bit rogue earlier, but you need to know now that I’m all in. I want a relationship with you with all the bells and whistles. But if we do this, then it probably won’t be the last time our relationship is dragged into the spotlight, and I have no idea how my bosses are going to react to what I did in that interview, so if any of that is too much for you, I need to know now because I’m not sure I can handle it if you pull out later. I’m not as heartless as some people think.”

My instinct was to immediately assure him that I wasn’t going anywhere, but I could tell how much this meant to him, so I gave his words the thought they deserved.

I didn’t want to lose him.

Being with him was so many things I never expected. The tabloid stuff… Yeah, it sucked. It was going to be a long time before I felt comfortable showing my face in some places, but being the subject of that scrutiny also wouldn’t last forever.

I’d seen that myself with my own family.

Post-retirement, Dad and Uncle Wayne made their way into the online news every now and again, but it was nothing compared to the fame they’d once had. The same would happen with Austin.

Besides, unless the same thing happened to me as had happened to Rebecca Jansen, and I saw a photo of him with another woman in a tabloid, then I’d pretty much already faced the worst. I couldn’t think of anything more horrible than being exposed during an intimate moment.

I didn’t have to worry about suffering as she had, though. Austin and Connor Taggert were two very different people. He’d never do to me what Taggart did to her.

As for the uncertainty around his career, I could hardly protest when he’d done it to show me how much he cared. My heart swelled and I drew in a breath, but before I could speak, Austin scrambled off the armchair and dropped to his knees in front of me.