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“Would you mind taking me somewhere, Glen?” she asked him.
He grinned at her, that shock in his gaze warming to something akin to pride. “Of course not.” He started toward the elevator with Raevynn following behind.
“Where are you going?” her mother demanded.
Raevynn didn’t owe her mother an explanation or an account of her whereabouts any longer. But she still turned around and smiled at Joyce, because she wanted her mother to know where, and with who, her heart belonged.
“I’m going to be with the man who makes me the happiest.”
“What do you mean you just dropped her off at the hotel and let her go?”
Collin winced as his sister yelled at him through his cell phone, nearly bursting his eardrum with her high-pitched tone.
When he’d go
tten to his apartment a short while ago, he’d sent Avery a quick text telling her that he was at home after taking Raevynn back to her hotel. Seconds later, his sister was calling him, and when he’d given her a brief rundown of what had transpired, concluding with things being left unresolved with Raevynn, Avery had lost it.
“Did you at least tell Raevynn you loved her before you let her go?” his sister asked, reiterating his stupidity.
“No,” he replied, hearing the defensive note in his voice.
She groaned. “What the hell, Collin? Why wouldn’t you tell her how you feel before you went your separate ways again? How you still feel about her after all these years?”
Collin dragged his fingers through his hair as he paced his living room, pulling on the strands. “I did it to make things easy on her. So she wasn’t torn about any decisions she needed to make about her career based on my feelings for her. I didn’t want to muddy the situation.”
“Just like you didn’t tell her what Joyce did to you seven years ago? Just like you walked away from Raevynn back then, to make it easy on her instead of giving her a choice in the matter?” His sister made a tsking sound that made him feel like one of her kids being reprimanded. “Jesus, Collin. You’re an idiot.”
Having all that thrown back at him definitely made Collin feel like one.
“She’s a big girl who can think for herself,” his sister went on relentlessly. “An adult, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed,” he growled irritably.
“And as an adult, she’s capable of making her own choices.” Avery was on a roll and barely stopped to take a breath in order to make her point. “But she can’t make the right decision if she doesn’t know all the facts. Like the fact that you love her.”
Collin rubbed at his temples, where the beginning of a headache was taking hold from his sister’s unfiltered opinion on the matter, which he really couldn’t argue because she was right, damn it. “Okay, okay, I get it. I made a mistake.” And dear God, he hoped he wasn’t too late to fix it.
“Yes, you did.” Avery huffed on her end of the line, calming down a fraction. “But at least it’s a mistake that can be corrected this time. Do you want Raevynn in your life?”
The question grabbed at his heart, and he squeezed his eyes shut, seeing him and Raevynn and their future together. He’d never seen any other woman in that scenario. “More than anything I’ve ever wanted.”
“Then get your ass over to the Plaza Hotel, tell Raevynn you love her and can’t live without her, and plan to grovel, you dumb shit!”
He laughed, just as a knock echoed in his apartment. “Hey, Avery, someone’s here. I need to go. I’ll keep you posted on what happens.”
“You’d better!”
He disconnected the call as he walked over to the door and opened it. His entire body jolted with shock at seeing Raevynn standing on the other side. A few feet behind her was her bodyguard, Glen.
“You good from here, Raevynn?” the other man asked.
She smiled at him. “Yes, thank you for bringing me over.”
Glen nodded, then headed toward the elevator, and a few seconds later he was gone, leaving the two of them alone.
Collin stared at the beautiful woman in front of him in disbelief. “What are you doing here?” He swallowed a groan. His sister was right. Total idiot. “Is everything okay?” He had no clue how things had gone with her mother.
A smile tipped up the corner of her sweet mouth. “Everything is almost perfect,” she said cryptically. “Can I come in?”
