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‘Earth to Gage. Some communication would be nice.’ He realised he’d zoned out and gritted his teeth. Going mad as a result of this endeav
our wasn’t his plan, but much more time with Eve and he might totally lose his mind. He looked at her as she worried her lower lip. He wanted to slide his mouth over hers, ease the redness her perfect white teeth had left. Kiss her till they both forgot who they were.
Time to wrest back some control of this situation, let Eve know where she really stood in the hierarchy of things.
‘My secretary no doubt advised you of our itinerary. Other than that, I’ll inform you of anything I believe is important.’
‘I see.’ Her eyes narrowed, the watery blue of them darkened to something wilder, like the Gulf in a storm. ‘You say jump and I ask how high. Is that how this is supposed to work?’
‘You’re getting the picture.’
‘No, I’m not. You may be on your way to owning Knight, but I’m not some young thing you can push around. It doesn’t mean you own me.’
The freeze of those words chilled his veins. He hadn’t pushed her around when they’d been together. She’d wanted what he did, he was sure of it. But her words echoed every lie told about him. He couldn’t let them go unanswered.
‘What the hell are you trying to say?’ That chill started cracking under the banked heat of his anger, always simmering just below the surface.
‘I accept you’ll never like me. You can hate me for all I care. But just because this ring is on my finger...’ she waved her hand in front of his face ‘...it doesn’t mean I have to accept you being any less than the gentleman your mother raised you to be.’
The desire to be a gentleman, to be a good man by any measure, had almost been wrung out of him years before. When he’d been beaten by her father and his henchmen, cuffed by the police, thrown in a cell, all for having the temerity to love the woman sitting in front of him. Wanting to protect her. He’d taken the beating, accepted the scars on his face and his soul for their love. Had kept his mouth shut as a gentleman who’d made promises would, and it meant nothing. ‘And this assessment of proper conduct comes from who? You? Shouldn’t a lady keep her promises, Eve?’
‘It’s a lady’s prerogative to change her mind. Let’s just say we owe each other nothing but civility. We’re trying to pretend to have rekindled a great love. People will notice your barely concealed contempt of me. So let’s start over. Gage, I’d like to know where we’re going.’
Straight to hell was where he was headed. Right now the colour ran high on her cheeks, making her vibrant, captivating. Incomparable in too many ways he refused to think about. He hated that he noticed this, how being round her made him feel more alive than he’d felt in years. As if he’d been in a torpor and all it took was Eve to awaken him. Because all he could think about now was how passionate she looked when she was angry, and how that flush on her cheeks reminded him of the colour that bloomed when she came.
But there was no room for those thoughts here, no matter how tempting they were, whispering seductively in his ear the things he’d like to do with her. France was all about work. The perfect start to his quest for redemption in the eyes of the world.
‘Funny that you should ask, Eve. We’re going to Grasse to stay at your flower farm. Since we’re talking about rationalising the business, I thought it was good place to start.’
All that beautiful colour drained from her cheeks. He should have felt a spike of triumph, but instead he felt...less. Like a villain of some sort. But he steeled himself. It didn’t matter. He’d been unjustly cast as some type of scoundrel for so many years he may as well wear the title with pride.
Eve didn’t say anything. She dragged a tablet from the odd little yellow suitcase that she resolutely refused to relinquish even to his driver and which now sat at her feet. It looked like it had seen better days or a great deal of travel. He wondered at her keeping it when she was a woman who could afford a luxury brand. She was quite secretive about what it contained, manoeuvring the latch to make sure he couldn’t see inside. In the brief glimpse he had, it looked like it was filled with old papers.
She tapped away with a kind of fury on the retrieved device, stabbing at the screen as she worked intently on something until they pulled into the property. As they drove through the gate and down the long gravel drive she looked up, out the window. Something on her face smoothed out. He hadn’t realised that the merest of frowns had been marring her brow most of the time since he’d seen her again, until he looked at Eve now. A gentle smile tilted the corners of her mouth. A look of happiness, a quiet joy.
She used to look at him like that, once. As if he were her safe place, her...home. Now he’d been replaced by this, a property, not a person. He didn’t know what stung more.
The car pulled up in front of a quaint, two-storey French farm cottage of rustic stone overlooking fields of flowers. The pink of what he assumed were roses, the purple of lavender. He got out of the car and Eve followed, carrying her handbag and clutching the small suitcase tightly in her right hand. He reached into his pocket for the key handed to them by their driver at the beginning of the journey, but Eve was ahead of him with her own. She opened the front door and walked inside. It was a clear reminder to him that she believed this place to be hers.
‘I trust this meets your approval,’ Eve said, her voice clipped and sharp. She was dressed for business and he couldn’t help admire the perfect fit of her deep blue pants as they moulded to her backside with every step. The cut of her jacket’s waist that accentuated rather than detracted from her figure.
He followed the tap of her heels on the stone floor through a receiving room to the back of the house where French doors opened onto a patio, overlooking a lap pool and more flowers. Sheer curtains billowed in the gentle breeze. The rooms were full of provincial French furniture, all wood and warmth. Paintings of flowers and landscapes adorned the walls.
The cottage was unlike any of the properties he owned, which were mere places he laid his head. They held about as much attachment to him as a hotel, kitted out by interior designers in cool greys, granite and chrome. This space, as exquisite as the décor was, looked like a home.
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. That was nothing less than the truth, when there’d been too little truth between them. ‘You always wanted somewhere like this.’
Eve turned, put her bags on a table, its warm wood burnished by care and age.
‘Don’t forget. So did you.’
It was the type of home that they’d talked about owning together when their hopes and dreams had seemed to coalesce. But she hadn’t wanted that future with him, and he’d been too blissfully ignorant being yanked around by the chain of his misplaced adoration to see it. It was a reminder. They didn’t need each other. Once he’d thought that inconceivable but now he realised everything he’d done had been done in spite of her. He’d reached the pinnacle on his own.
She walked outside and leaned on the balustrade overlooking the sparkling water of the pool below and the beauty of the view beyond. In every direction were flowers, the scent of them lingering sublimely in the air. It all smelled like her—of gardens, of the life he’d expected to have. He stood back a little, not wanting to get too close. The warmth of the French afternoon sank into his skin and bones, unknotting him in ways he didn’t want to contemplate. Everything here spoke of opportunities lost and fresh ones waiting to be plucked. He shrugged out of his jacket. Began unravelling in a way all too pleasurable to be safe, especially with her.
‘You should have told me we were coming to Grasse,’ she said, looking down at the azure water below her. ‘I didn’t bring anything to swim in.’
‘I’m sure that doesn’t matter here. It looks secluded enough.’
