‘I...thought you were insisting on negotiating with me?’
He shakes his head slowly. ‘I’ll offer what they’re asking. There’s no need for negotiations.’ His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘You’ve done an excellent job, Grace.’
His praise doesn’t even touch the sides of my heart. I stare at him, the finality of his words cutting through me. Panic makes breathing difficult.
‘Thank you.’
He’s going to leave. I’m going to catch a cab to the airport and he’s going to fly out later, and I’m never going to see him again.
Darkness descends on my mind; hope gives way to grim acceptance. This is what he wants.
And what about what I want? My heart is insistent, becoming enraged. I told Gareth I didn’t care about marriage, even when deep down I did. He left me and got engaged to someone else and I told him it was fine, we could keep working together, when it wasn’t. How is it that someone like me, who’s so determined and good at what I do professionally, is so bad at the personal life stuff?
I don’t want Jagger to go.
I don’t want him to leave.
I want him to choose to stay.
But if I don’t at least tell him how I feel, I know I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life. And I’m done with regrets, with wondering and worrying.
‘Jagger...’ I place the coffee cup in the saucer and shake my head. It isn’t the time and place for this. ‘Can you come to my room when you’re done here? I’m just going to go up and get a head start on packing.’
He frowns. ‘You’ve hardly eaten.’
‘I just wanted a coffee.’ I stand, scraping the chair back. ‘See you soon?’
His eyes pierce my soul for a long moment and then he nods, just a jerk of his head. ‘Ten minutes.’
Ten minutes. Great. I feel like the executioner’s blade is inching its way downwards—all that’s left is for me to be brave and accept that soon my head may be rolling away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘WHAT IF YOU don’t go back to New York today?’
Wow. Okay. So I thought I’d at least let the door to my hotel room shut before blurting it out and, going by the look of complete shock that crosses his face, I should have prefaced this with a little softening preamble.
I didn’t.
The words are out there and I have a plane to catch. Life’s too short to delay. I’m not going to be the same woman I was with Gareth, pretending I was okay with something that really I wasn’t.
‘As opposed to?’ he asks guardedly, watchful. Wary.
Shit.
Wariness is not good. It doesn’t exactly scream, Hoorah! Let’s be together for ever.
I take a breath, trying to compose my thoughts. ‘What if you were to stay in Sydney a bit longer?’
He lifts a brow, saying nothing, waiting for me to fill the silence.
‘And what if I were to come to New York on my next holiday? And then you were to come back here for a while?’ He’s looking at me like I’m asking him to sacrifice his mother to the devil.
I want to curl up in a ball and disappear, but I’ve come too far. ‘What if we were to go back and forth a while? And talk on the phone. And keep having sex. And keep being in each other’s lives. Not just sex, but everything. What if we were to actually see what this is, beyond just a few nights?’
He swallows, standing completely still, his eyes running over my face.
‘What you’re suggesting sounds a hell of a lot like a long-distance relationship.’