“Stella, I know you’re worried about us working together and mixing business with pleasure—but we’ve done that from the start. And we do it so well together.”
“I don’t get it. You want me to work from your office?” she asked.
“I want us to be partners.”
“Business partners?” she asked.
“No.” Christ. How could I be so bad at this? “When we made our deal, I had no idea that pretending to be your boyfriend would result in what we have—what I feel for you. It might have started off as pretend but what I feel for you is as real as it gets.”
She blushed and leaned against the desk I hoped she would accept as hers. My heartbeat thumped in my chest like a clenched fist pounding on a door, waiting for her response.
She didn’t speak. Had it been enough?
“If you still have to work through your feelings for Matt, I’m prepared to be patient. To win you over. To make you see that he never deserved you. If you have doubts about us being able to work and be together then I’ll erase them for you. Give me a chance and I’ll prove to you how much I’m in love with you.”
Stella gasped as the strength of my feelings hit me like a fist to my throat.
I loved her.
She was all I wanted.
She stepped toward me. Close enough for me to touch her but somehow, I held back. I wanted to hear clearly, and I wasn’t sure I could concentrate if I was touching her.
“I don’t have feelings for Matt that I need to work through. And yes, I’m a little nervous about working together if we’re in a relationship. But really, most of all, I’m scared.”
“Of me?”
She pressed her hand to my chest and I relaxed instantly. Her warmth was like coming home—it was belonging. Wherever she was, I was meant to be.
“I’m terrified of being hurt,” she replied. “Of being made a fool of. But most of all I’m afraid of how I feel about you. It’s so powerful that even after a few weeks, I know you could devastate me forever. You’re capable of hurting me far more than Matt ever could have because of what I feel for you. I wouldn’t be able to live through you breaking my heart.”
I slid my hands around her waist. “You won’t ever have to.”
“But after Scotland, you didn’t seem bothered if we saw each other again—I said about us working together and you sort of shrugged as if it didn’t matter.”
“Stella, I was floored. I’d assumed that things would continue between us and when you seemed so unsure, I was on the back foot. Unprepared.”
She nodded, fiddling with the button on my shirt. “I thought you’d convince me. I’d seen you when you want something, and you gave in so easily I thought I wasn’t important. And after what’s happened—I need to be important to someone.”
Of course she needed that—deserved it. She needed me to have fought for her—and I hadn’t. I just hoped it wasn’t too late. “No one’s ever been more important to me,” I said.
She looked up at me as if she was trying to gauge if I was telling the truth.
A thousand words clambered up my throat, fighting to get out. “It’s why I brought you here,” I said. “I want us to be together—whether we’re at home or in the office. I want you to do what you love—to be happy—and if I can help then I’ll do whatever I can. I want to support you and your business.”
She glanced around. “Twenty-four hours a day?” She giggled, and it was such a delicious sound, I knew I’d be working to hear it as often as I could for as long as I lived.
“You don’t realize how different you are for me. I’ve never felt . . . The idea of losing you causes me actual, physical pain. I didn’t realize that was a thing, but I’ve been walking around with a tightness in my jaw and a headache that won’t go away but disappeared the moment I laid eyes on you tonight.” She reached up for my face. “I want to wake up with you every morning, not just when we’re in some castle in Scotland. I want us to work together so we don’t have to spend the day apart. We can talk all day. Discuss business projects. Jesus, I want to know what color underwear you’re wearing every morning and why you’re pissed off after a phone call.
“I want it all.
“I want to love you. If you’ll let me.”
I took a breath. It was all I had. I just hoped it was enough.
She paused and it was as if every nanosecond was strung out and had become an hour. Finally she spoke. “Being with you in Scotland shifted things for me,” she said. “I came back, and I knew what I wanted. I handed my notice in, put the flat on the market—I just knew.”
“And do you know about us?” I asked, impatient as ever. But she was so resolute about everything, why hadn’t she reached out? I’d not heard from her at all since Scotland.