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“Wait! What?” she asked with two hard blinks as his words registered.
“When my father was eighteen and about to go off to college, he fathered a son with a young woman. He left England not knowing she was pregnant,” he explained. “And today, we all met him.”
She watched him as he set the pan of roasted Cornish hens and root vegetables with baby potatoes on the counter. “That must have been a shock. Areyouokay?” she asked, having seen the battle of wills and might between father and son when she’d worked for them.
Cole eyed her again for long unsettling moments before focusing on taking the hens off the pan to rest and trap in the juices. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “There’s still so much to question and understand, but Lincoln agreed to come back to New York for a little while to give us all time to figure out what it all means for the family. The brothers.”
“How’s Phillip Junior?” she asked with an amused expression.
“Traumatized,” Cole countered. “I’m sure he skipped dinner and will whine to Raquel all night about no longer being the heir apparent to the Cress throne.”
“And Nicolette?”
Cole retrieved a bottle of wine from his wine rack. “Composed,” he said.
They shared a knowing look. Nicolette was the queen of composure but beneath the façade she may very well be close to blowing like a geyser.
“I’ve had some revelations about myself that directly correlate to my relationship with my father,” he said, the muscles of his arms straining against the thinness of his sweater as he opened the bottle.
Jillian bit back a gasp that almost escaped her lips and cleared her throat as she followed him into the dining room. “Has that made things better between you?” she asked.
Cole suddenly stopped and turned.
She nearly bumped into him.
He looked down at her. “No,” he said. “But it made me realize that I let my issues with him affect us. And I regret that, Jillian.”
Everything inside her fluttered. Her heart. Her belly. Her pulse. And the bud nestled between the lips of her intimacy.
“I thought I was here to talk about the medical bills,” she whispered, seeking control when her body was ready to relinquish it. “Did you pay them?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Why, Cole?” she asked, even as she felt light-headed from the intensity of his stare upon her face, the closeness of his body, and the reminder of his regrets about them.
“Because I love you,” he said with a simplicity that shook her to her very core.
Jillian closed her lids and pressed a hand to her eyes as she took a step back. It was a reprieve from that pulsing and all too familiar energy between them. “Ican’tlet you do that,” she insisted as she turned and pressed her back to the wall.
She was overwhelmed by it all.
“You can and you will,” he insisted.
Her body shivered, and she knew before she opened her eyes that he now stood in front of her. “Cole—”
“I won’t have you focusing more on making money than on enjoying your gift so that you can pay a bill for someone I have come to care for myself,” he said, reaching to stroke her cheek with his thumb.
A gasp escaped.
“My father once betrayed my mother and I caught him...” Cole began as his eyes caressed her. “Since I was a teenager, that betrayal that I kept—the secret that I held—shaped everything I thought I knew about love and fidelity. That, plus an ex I discovered only wanted me because I was a Cress, destroyed my trust.”
She saw the emotions raging in the gray-blue depths of his eyes. “Oh, Cole,” she whispered, reaching to gently hold his wrist and connect with him as he shared with her.
“I never wanted to fall in love and trust anyone with my heart...and then two years ago, I saw you during that interview with my mother,” he reminisced. “I fell for you before I even knew it. That’s why, when you chose the job over me—”
Jillian rose on her heeled boots and pressed a kiss to his mouth to halt his words in the hope of easing the hurt she now knew she’d caused him. His arms wrapped around her, pressing her body to his as he eased his face against her neck. The first kiss at her pulse brought shivers. The second softened her knees.
She was thankful when he took her up into his strong and able arms. She wrapped hers around his neck. “I have my own confession,” she whispered in his ear, feeling him shiver as her breath stroked his lobe. “It’s about Warren.”
