“Money isn’t enough,” I laughed, for the very first time at the irony. “Money will never be enough.”
He kept on following me up the sand, but I didn’t care. I could have taken him in a heartbeat if he was idiot enough to try to pull his fists on me, which was yet another reason to trust Paige Emmerson’s care to someone who could truly safeguard her.
Just as well that person was me.
“How come it’s not enough?!” the kid asked. “You sell girls for cash. That’s what you do! Why the hell won’t money be enough for Paige?!”
I said it before I realised. Just like that. In the magic of the moment, just like sweet little Paige had earlier. The magic of the moment when the truth spills over and slams its way free from your mouth.
“Because I love her,” I told him, and turned my back without a single scrap of care for his reaction.
There was only one thing I cared about. Only one thing driving me on as I paced my way like a crazed man up and off that beach and back to my car on the street.
And that one thing was getting back to the manor to speak those words aloud to Paige herself.Chapter Thirty-OnePaigeI was tired and battered. My bruises were paining with every step I took back and forth across the bedroom as I waited for a sign of him.
I was desperate for a sign of him.
I couldn’t let him send me back to university life without giving him every scrap of fight I had in me. It wasn’t about Phoebe, or the money, or staying true to my sixty day commitment here. Not anymore.
It was about him. About us. About the depth of my conviction that he was worth so much more than the monster he put so much into being.
He was more than that. So much more than that. I felt it with every screaming cell in my body.
If I could feel this much for a man so quickly, there was going to be no limit to how much I could feel when the truth in his soul raised its face to the surface. And it would raise its face to the surface. I knew it would. Him saving my sister confirmed everything I’d been suspecting… everything I wanted… everything I’d felt from him in those soul felt moments.
Hell, how I wanted him.
I tried to calm myself down enough to rest and recover, but my nerves were too wired. My throat was thick with a thousand words I wanted to say. My arms were tight with the need to hold him and tell him all over again that this love I felt was real. Too real to let go of. Too real to walk away from without bleeding out my very soul in the process.
The minutes were an age. The night long and lonely as I prayed he’d walk back through the bedroom door and hear out my words for him.
In reality I had no idea how long I was waiting before I heard the first sign of movement outside the bedroom door.
My heart jumped like crazy, battering hard as I heard voices on the landing. I presented myself as the true little submissive he’d ordered me to be for the sixty days, dropping to the floor and kneeling with my knees spread wide, my hands clasped at the nape of my neck with clammy palms, my voice ready to beg, ready to plead, ready to do whatever it took so that he’d hear me out loud and clear.
I felt the presence looming hard outside the door before the handle turned, willing the universe to give me a shot at a good outcome for just once in my sorry history. I waited for the lock to click with bated breath. Ready. I was ready.
But the lock didn’t turn.
The handle didn’t lower.
The bang on the door made me jolt.
On the next bang I scooted back up the floor and against the wall.
The boom of the door bursting in was enough that I screamed.
The footsteps that burst in after had me hugging myself to hide my nakedness as four sets of brogues came to a stop before me, tall suited legs standing firm as my eyes crept up to find stern faces waiting.
And then a fifth set of footsteps sounded, coming to rest so close to my feet that I could smell the leather and polish as I shivered and shook, curled up against the wall.
“Good evening, Miss Emmerson,” a stranger’s voice said, and it was an older man’s voice. A hostile man’s voice.
I dared to look up at the figure talking. He was tall and broad and suited in the finest tailoring. The knot of his tie was perfectly formed. A host of badges down his lapel showed some grand status I had no idea of.