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The not-loving thing she’d deal with later. It was enough for her that he wanted to keep seeing her. Because she wasn’t ready to let him go, either. “Okay. That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Glad you’re happy,” he said.
“I want you to be, too,” she said.
“I will be when we’re together again. I have to go to Berne so I’ll be out of town for a few days.”
“To see your mum?”
“Yes. She’s busy at the accelerator and won’t answer her cell,” Steven said.
“Is it an emergency?” she asked. “Something with your family?”
“No. It’s you. I told you I’d get my half brothers and our mothers to talk to you and mum won’t unless I go there and ask her in person.”
He was doing it for her. Suddenly it didn’t matter that he’d left her this morning. No matter how confident Steven seemed, this “relationship” between them was throwing him off his normal game. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing. The two of them might be destined for something greater—maybe to fall in love or perhaps to destroy each other.
Eleven
Steven entered the secure facility in Berne and found Roman waiting for him. The older man hugged him and greeted him like an old friend.
“Hello, Steven. Lynn will be up here in a few minutes. How was the drive?”
“Long,” he said. He could have flown, but he needed time in the car alone to try to figure out why he was doing this. He’d always been careful to give his mum space, never wanted to be too clingy to her and yet he was in Berne because Ainsley needed an answer. He’d hurt her by walking out on her.
He’d made up the excuse that his Moretti roadster was made to be driven. So he’d taken it on this cross-continent trip. But on the drive he’d had a chance to put things into perspective and had made sense of his decision to do the articles. They were for the good of his company, not just for Ainsley. Now he felt more like his old self.
Ainsley had overwhelmed him during the night they spent together, but he had decided that it was only because it had been the first time they made love that he’d reacted like that. Once he got back to London and saw her again, she’d be like all the other women he’d dated. She was hot, but she wasn’t any different from any other woman he’d slept with.
“Steven,” his mum said from the doorway.
“Hi, Mum,” he said, walking over to her. She hugged him close and held him for a few minutes before letting go. She always did that. He didn’t know why she held him for so long, but a part of him liked it. When she hugged him he felt like she was just his mum, not a brilliant physicist everyone in the world wanted a piece of.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t call you,” she said.
“It’s okay. I needed to get in my car and drive,” he said.
She laughed. His mum had changed very little over the years. She was tallish, almost five-foot-eight, and had thick, curly brown hair with streaks of deep red woven through it that she wore in a very casual bun at the back of her head. Tendrils of hair escaped it to drift around her face. She had on her lab coat and the earrings he’d given her for her last birthday.
Roman watched them both, as he always did, like an indulgent father figure. Steven suspected that Roman was Lynn’s lover, but his mother had never said anything about a romantic relationship between them so he kept that thought to himself.
“Do you have time for me?” he asked his mum.
“I’ve got an hour, sweetheart. I’m all yours.”
“Want to go for a drive?” he asked her.
“I’d love to. I haven’t left this facility in days,” she said. She glanced over at Roman. “Will you call me if anything happens?”
“Of course. Enjoy your time with Steven. I’ll take care of everything here.”
She nodded and waved three fingers at Roman before linking her arm through Steven’s. “Let’s go.”
He led the way to his car and got her seated. Then he put down the top of the convertible.
“Why are you in Berne?” she asked as he drove the car to a park that his mother suggested.
He parked the car and they got out and walked around the grounds. His mother was always very touchy-feely when they were together and he remembered as a small boy how much he’d enjoyed the fact that when she left the lab, she’d given him her full attention.
He suspected a part of her knew that he was lonely from spending so much time by himself. He hated how weak he felt when he was with his mum. He’d always wanted to make their time together last longer but yet, eventually he’d just found a way to let her go. It had meant shutting down everything, especially the hope that she’d stop being a physicist.
