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Find him.
Kill him.
I laugh at myself, mainly because I’m not joking. I need to be rid of him, and yet I can’t do a fucking thing without revealing Ava’s and my relationship and that would be a bad,badmove. Unless, of course, he already knows, in which case my clock is ticking a lot faster than I’d like.
I pull Ava to my car, place her in the passenger seat, and round the back, searching for an answer to my predicament. There isn’t one. I drop into the seat, rev the engine aggressively, and pull off fast. Fuck, this isn’t ideal.
“What am I going to tell Patrick?” Ava asks.
“What?” I ask. “About us?”
“No,” she sighs, motioning back to The Ritz. “About our business breakfast. What have we discussed?”
“Tell him we’ve agreed fees,” I say. “And that I want you at The Manor on Friday to finalize the designs.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
I reach for her knee and hold it. “Baby,” I murmur, hating seeing her so subdued. None of this needs to be an issue. Another solution. Another problem. “You make it sound so complicated.”
And once again I’m considering the merits of buying a private island and taking us there where no one can burst our bubble. Whoever says the past is in the past is a liar. Mine is constantly creeping into my present.
20
It’sa short drive to The Royal Park, so any scope to formulate a plan is limited. I feel totally in the dark, so helpless, and helpless feels pretty fucking horrific. If I’m not careful, it could force me into behaving unreasonably. Push Ava away. So my focus is to remind her how damn amazing we are together.
Shouldn’t be too hard.
I park outside the hotel and turn in my seat toward her, getting on with reminding her. “I’ll see you at home.” I pull her mouth onto mine and kiss her slowly and deliberately, and she’s all in, finding my flow and following perfectly. The heat of her wet tongue entwining around mine is magic, and she hums, pulling away, her soft lips kissing delicately across mine before she plunges deep again, circling and lapping through my mouth. Yes. Fucking amazing.
“Six-ish.” Her whispered words make me smile.
“Ish,” I answer quietly, feeling her stiffen, and I know instantly it’s because she’s building herself up to say something. What now?
“I can’t retire at twenty-six,” she says with contrived sureness. Sensibility is telling her I’m messing with her over this whole career thing. The huge part of her that knows me inside out—at least, the parts I’velether know—is worried I’m deadly serious. I am. But I also know that any insistence will be met with force and, annoyingly, I won’t win any approval from my inconveniently ambitious, independent lady if I enforce anything.
“I told you,” I murmur. “I don’t like sharing you.”
“That’s stupid,” she huffs, and I blink, offended.
Nothing about my feelings is stupid. “Don’t call me stupid, Ava.”
“I wasn’t callingyoustupid.” Her eyes close. It’s a sign she’s gathering patience. I should follow her lead. “I was calling your ambitious intention stupid. I’m never going to leave you.”
I want that signed in blood across my heart. It’s an admirable promise. The problem is, she doesn’t know what she’s promising. I look away from her, my guilt flaring. This is not how I planned for this moment to go. I need her to leave this car more in love with me than ever.Fuck it.
I feel her hand rest on my nape and squeeze a little. God love her, here she is trying to reassure me, and here I am hiding a multitude of sins from her. “That doesn’t stop people from trying to take you,” I whisper, my secrets clogging my throat, desperate for me to spit them out. “I can’t let that happen.”
“What people?” she asks, my wild, thoughtless statement adding confusion to her concerned expression.
“No specific people.” I swallowing down my secrets and battle with the guilt to compose myself. “I don’t deserve you, Ava, but by some fucking miracle, I’ve got you.” I can tell her that much. “I’ll protect you fiercely,” I vow. “Eliminate any threat.” Wipe them all out, kill the competition and complications.Fuck my life.I look at my hands crushing the steering wheel. Van Der Haus could be my first victim. “Okay, we need to stop talking about this because I’m feeling a bit violent.”Just spit it out. Tell her!But where do I begin? I draw breath, ready to start talking—though what the fuck I’ll say I’m not sure—but she climbs across the car onto my lap, silencing me, holding my face firmly in her hands, looking at me with so much love. This look on her, for me? It’s my heartbeat, and it’s now my reason to be here. And with a few confessions, it could be stolen from me. I close my mouth, the words retreating, and Ava dips, scanning my face. She rests her lips lightly over mine, and I pull her close, losing myself.
Oh God.
This kiss. It could reduce me to tears. The slow, meticulous, controlled strokes of her tongue, the tender pecks around my mouth, the feelings she’s loading it with.
“What’s wrong?”
I startle, realizing she’s not kissing me anymore. I was in the moment. Then not. I was absorbing the love, and then mentally praying. “Nothing’s wrong.” I busy my hands, moving a lock of hair from across her cheek, avoiding her probing eyes. “Everything is right.”
