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I’d done without her all these years so she could stay in fucking Willow’s Hearth?
I’d lived without her, had to find solace in other women, all for her to work as a PA for some jumped up inventor who thought more of his ego than his inventions?
She stared at me a second, then her head dropped and I saw her gaze focus in on the hand I had used to hold her in place.
“Let. Go. Of. Me.”
The words were spat out as furiously as mine had been, and each one was individually pronounced, as though she wanted to verbally strike me.
It worked.
In a sense.
I felt punched in the gut, but I didn’t let go. “Answer me,” I snarled. “Why are you still here? Why aren’t you in fucking Milan? London? Paris?” All places she’d dreamed of going. All places she’d wanted to live in and work.
All reasons why I’d let her go, knowing that if I wanted to make it big, my world would have to be in New York.
She frowned at me. “Paris? London? Why would I be there?”
“Because that’s where the best curator jobs are, of course.”
She stared at me, confusion making her squint up at me in a way that narrowed her beautiful, rich, caramel colored eyes.
It had never ceased to astonish me how unaware the woman was of her own beauty.
She wasn’t a brassy beauty. Was demure, almost. A Grace Kelly kind of gorgeous, not a Pamela Anderson type.
I’d always loved that about her.
She’d been an innocent. In so many ways.
I hated that I’d given that up for... what? A PA’s job in her home town?
“You were supposed to be a curator,” I hissed at her, not realizing I was shaking her, trying to make her understand. “You were supposed to work at the Uffizi, the Louvre. You were not supposed to stay here, goddammit!”
She flinched, but I saw understanding soften her rage. “Mom got sick.”
And like that, my house of cards tumbled down.
“Ellen? What? Is she okay?”
Something in her eyes gentled at my question. She sensed how genuine it was, how scared I felt at that moment.
I’d had to give up the best in-laws—to-be in-laws one day anyway—in the world when I’d let her go.
Knowing they’d hate me for what I’d done, I’d never called them to check in. Never even thought they’d be ill.
Ill enough for their only child to stay close to home, at any rate.
“She’s fine now. But it was…” She grimaced, let out a deep sigh. “Touch and go for a long time.”
“Cancer?” I asked hoarsely, and when she nodded, my eyes closed of their own volition. “Jesus.”
Guilt speared me.
I should have been here.
“When?” I asked, needing to sign my own death warrant.
