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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO – WILLIAM
The Twilight Zone
I should have kissed her.
Fuck, I should have just done it.
I didn’t care that she’d lied to me. I couldn’t pretend that I fully understood the reasoning behind her keeping her family—and her full name—a secret, but then I never would be able to. I’d never gone through the trauma she had, and I hoped I never would.
She had every right to want to keep her identity secret from me. She was right when she said I hadn’t told her who I was either at first. We’d both done the same thing, she’d just dug herself a far deeper hole.
She’d have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for Mum recognising her.
Of all the people I could have walked into that day, it had to be Grace. What were the chances of that, really? How likely was it that of all the people in Oxleigh, she was the one I’d collide with?
No wonder I felt connected to her.
I’d noted our familiarity the moment I’d conned her into sitting down for a drink with me. Well, conned was a strong word—but I’d certainly coerced her into it, and I couldn’t say I regretted doing it.
We wouldn’t be here if I’d let her go with her coffee in a takeout cup.
Whatever here was.
I didn’t fucking know.
Her insistence that we’d never see each other again after this weekend made sense. I understood her reluctance to be involved in anything that resembled her father’s life—his title had brought Grace nothing but pain and heartbreak. Inheritance laws for the peerage were a bitch, and it made no sense in this day and age for everything to only go through the male line.
I’d been brought up knowing this estate would one day belong to me. I’d had time with my grandfather that my sister never had, and I didn’t know how the difference between us had affected her. I’d never asked, and Freya had never brought it up. That didn’t mean she wasn’t bothered by it, though, just that she didn’t want tobother me.
I sighed and stared at the fridge. Her wedding was tomorrow. Three feet of snow had fallen overnight, and today would be a widespread mission for everyone and everything to get to the castle for the wedding.
The household staff had worked overtime preparing extra rooms, even ones that weren’t technically designated as bedrooms, so guests could come tonight and stay for the next two days. There was no snow forecast today, but the temperatures would be lucky to get above freezing so it wasn’t going anywhere, either.
I knew I should be thinking about how I was going to help get everything ready, but all I could think about was the redheaded woman I’d left asleep in bed an hour ago.
I’d left a note that I was getting up along with a crudely drawn map of the route to the kitchen, the library, and the ballroom where the wedding was to take place, of course, but I’d left her there.
Because I couldn’t stand to lie next to her anymore.
Not because I hated it, but because I just couldn’t lie next to the woman I wanted to kiss so badly it was burning at me every time I looked at her.
To think that I’d almost done it. I’d almost given in. I’d almost done the thing I’d wanted to since I’d helped her to her feet on the watchtower and she’d fallen into me. That night was the closest thing I’d had to a really enjoyable date in a long time, and it hadn’t even been a real one.
Hell, this relationship was the closest I’d had to a real one in years and it was the fakest thing I’d ever partaken in.
I couldn’t help but believe in fate. We made our life what it was by the decisions we made, but something had brought her back into my life. I didn’t know what it was, but she was here for a reason.
And she wanted to leave my life as quickly as she’d re-entered it.
The bingo had been fun. A playful joke, an indulgence, almost. Something to help us pass the time and the stress of the wedding that was playing on my entire family, but the outcome of her winning was incomprehensible to me.
I couldn’t let Grace go. More than anything, she was a friend. She had been a friend, and we’d connected so easily since she’d landed in Inverness that she was now, too. I truly counted her as one, even if I wanted something more.
Shit, did I?
I didn’t know. I just knew I was drawn to her in a way I couldn’t explain. Everything was so easy with her. It was all so natural—holding her hand, hugging her, sleeping next to her. All entirely platonic, but it felt like so much more every time we touched.
I was sounding like a fucking lovestruck ninny, I knew that, but I couldn’t explain it in any other way.
