The Negotiator (Professionals 7)

And if I were stupid enough to throw everything I had worked so hard for, fought tooth and nail for, to be with a man who might eventually toss me aside, I would be left with absolutely nothing.

Nothing.

To do what?

Start all over again?

A year, five, ten, twenty years older?

It wouldn’t even be possible.

Yes, I felt different. And, yes, I cared more deeply for Christopher Adamos than any other man I’d ever met.

Was that worth everything else?

It was romantic to think so.

But it was also foolish.

And I was far too old to pin my future on girlhood hopes and wishes instead of adult facts and certainty.

“I know,” I whispered, my voice a vague, pathetic imitation of surety.

I’d never been more conflicted.

I’d never been less sure of myself.

“Hey, no,” Quin said, voice choked as he looked at me, making me realize my eyes had flooded, tears threatening to brim over and slip down my cheeks. “Don’t do that,” he demanded, sounding hopeless.

I’d seen this man handle crying women almost on the daily. He’d done it with diplomacy, with calm professionalism.

All that was stripped away now, though.

He was just a man faced with feminine tears. And he had no idea what to do or say about them.

“Christ, Mills, I don’t know what to do with that,” he admitted, eyes wide. “I, ah, you know what, I’ll send him out,” he decided, rushing away, doing what bosses did best—delegating.

I turned away from the windows, looking off the deck, the stunning landscape blurry through the water in my eyes.

I felt Christopher before I heard him. His body moving in behind me, close, but not touching.

“You’re going,” Christopher said, his voice small, impossible to interpret.

The sound of his voice managed to rip away the control I’d been holding on to, made the floodgates fail, made the tears flow, bringing with them this awful, choked whimpering noise I had never heard myself make before.

At that, his hands sank into my hips, turning me, wrapping me up, crushing me to his chest.

“I know,” he murmured into my hair, lips pressing there. “I know,” he repeated, one hand running up and down my spine as my soul purged the uncertainty, the fear, the potential loss about to shake my world.

A long time later, so long that I am embarrassed even to consider how much time had passed, the tears stopped, leaving me brittle inside.

Christopher’s arms released me, his feet taking a solid two steps backward, removing the temptation of contact, his dark eyes shuttered, closed down, impossible to read.

But they held mine as his face fell into grim lines.

“It was always going to end.”

With that, ripping out a piece of my heart I hadn’t known had started to belong to him, and walking away with it, leaving me bleeding on the deck, hand pressed over my chest, unable to convince myself that the pain was just in my head.

It was something like twenty minutes later when Quin reappeared, suitcases that didn’t really belong to me in his hands.

“Come on, Mills,” he said, giving me a tight smile. “Let’s go get you back home.”

And with no other option yet again, I followed a man toward an uncertain future I wasn’t sure I wanted.

FIFTEEN

Christopher

It was always going to end.

Regardless of the truth in them, I regretted saying those words. If not as they were coming out of my mouth, then the second I saw the impact they had on the woman who had come to mean a so much to me.

She looked… wrecked.

And that was after she’d already cried into my chest, soaking my shirt through.

There was no reason my words needed to add more hurt to an already painful situation.

I had no excuse.

Except that I was suffering too.

It was a shitty explanation, if you could call it one. Being in pain didn’t excuse inflicting it on others.

All I can say in my defense was… this was uncharted territory for me. It was foreign soil in a treacherous land. And I was without a map or compass or a north star to guide me.

I fumbled around like the unskilled pioneer I was.

I didn’t even say goodbye to her.

I’d gone inside, went into her room, put the suitcases on the bed, and slowly set to filling them.

It wasn’t long before her boss—a man by the name of Quinton Baird— moved into the room with me.

“Allow me to give you one piece of advice, Mr. Adamos,” he said, moving over toward the bed, hastily zipping the suitcases, hauling them off the bed. “If you ever lead that woman around by the neck like that again, I don’t give a flying fuck who you are, what allies you think you have, I will make you suffer for it.”

With that, he walked out, collected Melody off the back deck, and brought her with him toward his waiting car.