Duty At What Cost?

She glanced up quickly, wondering if her words had affected him at all. If he got just how ruthlessly he’d disconnected himself emotionally.

‘I’m fine as I am.’

That would be a no, then...

Ava sighed. He really was like an immovable rock, and she realised there was nothing left to say. The fact was Wolfe didn’t love her and, as she had so often had to do lately, she had to face the reality of her situation.

Closing her eyes briefly against the quivering sensation in her bottom lip, she straightened her spine, marshalling her indifference to protect herself as she had so often done in the past. But it wasn’t easy. Wolfe had crashed through her protective walls with the force of a military tank and all she wanted was for him to take her in his arms and tell her he loved her.

‘Okay, then.’ She turned to go, her feet leaden.

She hadn’t made it two steps when he grabbed hold of her arm and stopped her. Ava felt her heart soar and searched his face for some sign that he was about to—

‘You’ll let me know if there’s a child, won’t you?’ His voice was gravelly, strained.

Right then her hopes and dreams were well and truly shattered. She knew he would have ‘done the right thing’ if she had been pregnant, and it was with some irony that she realised that while she had fought marrying someone else for convenience she had never considered that the opposite could happen. That someone would have to marry her for convenience.

‘There won’t be,’ she replied woodenly.

He frowned and dropped her arm. ‘You can’t know that for sure.’

‘Yes, I can,’ she said wearily. ‘I got my period on the plane. Nice stash of female hygiene products, by the way.’

‘My staff stock my plane, not me.’

Okay, that was something...sort of.

When he didn’t immediately walk away she glanced up again and found his expression fierce.

‘Ava, I still want you.’

She stared back at him while those words sank in and then she just felt angry. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say to that, Wolfe.’ Because apart from begging him to stay what could she say? That he should do what she wanted him to do? Be what she wanted him to be? Wasn’t that what she had railed against her father for her whole life? ‘It doesn’t mean anything. It’s only lust and lust fades over time. Isn’t that what you believe?’

‘Yes.’

God, she hoped he was right. Because she felt as if her heart was being cleaved in half with a toothpick.

‘Ava?’ Her father materialised at her side. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘No.’ Swallowing hard, she braced herself to look at Wolfe one more time, her eyes tracking over his features like a laser beam, trying to trace every fine detail of his handsome face. ‘Goodbye, Monsieur Wolfe. I hope you find what it is you are searching for.’

Turning away before he saw how painful it was for her to walk away from him, Ava let her father escort her from the plane, resolved to face whatever the future had in store for her with the same dignity and grace her mother would have shown.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WOLFE HAULED HIMSELF out of the sparkling blue sea and flopped onto the hot sand. The sun beat down on his head with relentless precision and a hermit crab scurried towards the ocean in search of safety.

The only sounds he could hear were the languid ebb and flow of the incoming tide and the intermittent squawk of overhead birds as they dived for fresh fish.

By rights he should have felt happy and relaxed, but he didn’t. He hadn’t felt that way for three days. Not since flying out of Anders and ordering his pilot to return to Cape Paraiso instead of flying him to the round of meetings he’d had to put off to guard Ava.

Ava.

When he’d left her back in Anders he had somehow convinced himself that he would be fine. That he would get over her. Right now he felt very far from fine. And his sense of loss when she’d told him she had got her monthly period on the plane made a mockery of his assertion that he would get over her.

‘I hope you find what it is you’re searching for,’ she had said at the end.

The trouble was he hadn’t been searching for anything. She’d been right in her first assumption that night at the gala ball. He was running. Filling up his life with work and activities so he would never have to face how empty his existence really was. So he’d never have to think about what he really wanted.