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“Will do. Oh, Nate?”
“Mmm?”
“Mina left early. Said she’d see you at home.”
He frowned. “Was she not feeling well?”
“She seemed fine. A little pale, maybe. She’s been working long hours.”
He sat down at his desk after Jo went to chase his call. Mina always waited for him. She always had more than enough work to do. Was she not feeling well?
Th
is morning she’d been unusually silent in the car as they’d driven in. She’d been off, in her own head since the revelation she was pregnant, but this morning had been different. She’d been completely distant.
An uneasy feeling working its way through him, he got to his feet, collected his jacket, grabbed his briefcase and stopped by Jo’s desk. “I’ll take the call in the car.”
His sense that something was wrong grew as he sat in gridlocked traffic. By the time he walked into the penthouse he was cranky and worried. Stalking through the salon he found his wife in her bedroom. Absorbed the neatly packed suitcase on the floor.
“What is that?”
Mina folded the sweater she’d been holding and dropped it into the case. Her hands clenched by her sides as she absorbed his aggressive stance. “I’m leaving.”
He stepped closer, a buzzing sound filling his head. “Where exactly are you going?”
“Paris. I’m going to stay with Celia for a bit.”
A seething anger, a fury he couldn’t explain, spread through him. “Is this what you do? Run from everything?”
Her eyes darkened. “That is not fair.”
He jammed his hands on his hips. “We can make this work, Mina. If you’d stop living in that fairy-tale world of yours and accept the fact that love is this mythological concept you women create that lasts exactly as long as the pheromones do.”
She lifted her chin. “My mamma told me the night before my wedding, the night Silvio hit me, that life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Well, I disagree. I want that. I’d rather have a few years of wonderful than never knowing love at all.”
Dear God. He expelled a breath. “So you’re just going to give up the opportunity of a lifetime at Brunswick Developments, jet off to Paris and then what?”
“I was hoping you would help me with a job at the Grand in Paris.”
A heavy feeling weighted his stomach. She was serious.
“I live here. When am I going to see my child?”
She gave him an even look. “You live on your jet. Even if I was in New York you’d rarely be home. You can come to Paris just as easily.”
He pushed a hand through his hair. He didn’t like the idea of her being an ocean away, and it didn’t all have to do with the baby. “You don’t have to work, regardless of what we do.”
“I want to.” Her gaze held his. “All of this, everything you’ve given me, has shown me how much I want this. To stand on my own two feet. To go after my dreams and make my father proud. It won’t be easy with this baby, but I’ll make it work.”
Reluctant admiration cooled his ire. “Why don’t you just stay?” he said softly. “Don’t throw away the life you’ve started to build. We’ll find you your own place.”
“Because you’re here.” Her mouth quivered with the admission. “Because I love you. You know I do. It would kill me to see you with other women because I know how it feels to have something so perfect now. To know I can have that with you. And I can’t settle for anything less.”
His heart stopped in his chest. He inhaled, tried to pull a breath in. “Mina—”
“Let me go,” she said softly. “Let me be the gladiator you taught me to be.”
He wished in that moment he had never taught her that damn analogy. That she didn’t have the strength to walk away, because he didn’t have the guts to stop her. Not when the price was opening himself up to all the pain the world had to offer. To the disillusionment in Mina’s eyes when she discovered how empty he really was inside.
