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“No, but you’re a grumpy CEO who needs to lighten up.”
I don’t like how my heart thumps in my chest whenever she wraps her arms around me. Or tells me off. Or any damn thing.
I don’t like any of it, but I’m afraid that Charlize Prescott owns my heart. The idea that she could be going back to America at any time makes me anxious. I want to ask her plans, but I don’t want to hear the answer. Nor do I want to hear she might leave.
This is absurd. I’ve only known her for a couple of weeks, and I’m already wanting to move her in. Stop this sugar baby nonsense and make her mine.
For good.
And no matter how hard I try, it’s the one thing I can’t talk my way out of.
The heart wants what it wants.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Charlize
It’s been an amazing day. Alistair lit the fire and we ate a roast that had, of course, been prepared earlier and left in the oven for us. The fridge was also fully stocked and — surprise, surprise — Alistair has a wine cellar. The man is out of control!
The best thing of all? He has horses. Freaking horses!
At the moment he has two, Dover and Daisy — totally cute names — and I can tell from the way he pats them and talks to them that he’s a horse guy. He loves them.
“My babies,” he mutters. “Aren’t they so pretty?”
I smile. “They’re so beautiful, Alistair.” I watch as he strokes them and my heart swells at how gentle he is with them.
“They’re special to me, which is why I try to get to the country as much as I can.”
“That’s understandable. If I had horses and a house like this, I’d never leave either.”
He smiles, the larger horse leaning into him further, wanting more attention.
The stables are amazing; everything on this property is. When he told me to get wellies — and I did, pulling on my Hunter boots with the wool socks — I had no idea that we’d literally be trampling around over horse manure. But I don’t mind one little bit.
One thing my grandmother could never stand about me was the fact that I loved to get dirty as a child. Sure, by the time I was a teenager, she ironed that out of me along with all the other things she didn’t like. But give me a puddle and some mud, and I’m happy as a pig in shit.
“It feels different here,” I say as we sit by the fire. He’s been quiet again, and I put it down to Alistair mode. He has his own mood swings that I just don’t understand. It’s just an Alistair thing.
He glances at me.
I thought I’d seen sexy Alistair in his designer suits and that one time he wore jeans, but Alistair in sweats is a whole other ball game. He also hasn’t shaved for a couple of days and I’m here for it.
“How so?”
I curl my legs up and hug my arms around them. “It’s like time stops, you know?”
“I feel the same way.”
“When’s the last time you were here?”
He thinks about it. “A couple of months.”
“Do you bring anyone here?”
“If you’re referring to other women, then the answer is no. Only my friends, my parents and Layne. This is my private space, and I don’t get a lot of that being in the public eye.”
“I wish we didn’t have to go back.”
