The Billionaire's Craving

Chapter Forty-Six

COLIN DECIDED TO STAY IN Switzerland indefinitely.

It had been several weeks since Sabela left the chalet. He threw himself into his work, and when he wasn’t working, he drank his way through most of the liquor in the chalet and slept heavily in drunken stupors.

The liquor dulled the pain, and silenced his conscience. More now than ever, he knew his mother wouldn’t approve of what he’d done.

Both Bruno and Marie had silently shown, with their expressions, that they didn’t approve of his behavior either. Colin cared more than he’d admit that his servants’ opinions mattered to him.

Colin wasn’t sure what to do next. He had spent so long thinking about exacting revenge on Trevor Vaughn, and, in the end, he had ended up losing both of the women that he cared about. It made a certain amount of karmic sense.

He wasn’t sure what the future could have held between him and Sabela, but he had let it go. He had pushed her away and encouraged her to leave. Worse, he had been cruel.

She left him, and he couldn’t blame her. He could blame losing Blanca on Trevor, but he had no one to blame for losing Sabela but himself.

Sabela had shown the kind of backbone that Blanca lacked. If Blanca had possessed the strength to call himself and Trevor out on their bullshit like Sabela did, Blanca would still be alive.

Instead, she had led Trevor on and let him believe that there might be something more than friendship between them. She’d been the kind of girl who was sweet, but who craved attention, and Trevor had given her plenty of that. He’d picked up the slack while Colin was working a thousand miles away.

But no matter how often Trevor was there for her, it didn’t excuse what he had done. Blanca had never intended to leave Colin, and this knowledge made all the difference in the world.

He’d only recently begun to truly understand the past, to look at it from a different angle and see what he’d missed before.

As for Sabela, Trevor was right when he’d sneered that she was too good for Colin. Those words stopped him every time he picked up his cellphone in a drunken haze, wanting to call Sabela and apologize.

He let Sabela go because he was destined to hurt her, again and again. No matter what he did, his temper always got the best of him. She deserved better than that.

And him? He deserved to be alone.

So alone he sat, staring into the flickering flames of the fireplace. They danced for him, beautiful, but dangerous. If he got too close, they’d burn him.

Marie carried in a tray and set it down on the side table. On it were two slices of toast, lightly buttered.

“You need to eat. You’re going to pickle yourself if you don’t eat something,” she insisted.

She’d said the same thing for the last few days, and Colin was tired of hearing it. True he had barely eaten anything since Sabela had left, but he wasn’t hungry.

All he felt was hollow.

“Leave me be,” he said.

“You act as if you don’t have a choice,” Marie said with a stern tone in her voice.

Colin glanced up at her, irritation knitting his brows together. “Of course I have a choice, Marie. You can’t force me to eat toast I don’t want.”

Marie, usually so docile, rolled her eyes. Colin was taken aback by her sass.

“I meant you have a choice about what to do next, Colin. You know where Sabela is. You just have to go and get her.”

Never before had she called him by his first name. What had happened to the professional housekeeper he knew? Colin blinked, trying to judge if the liquor was making him hallucinate.

He knew it wasn’t. He rubbed his face. “It’s not that simple, Marie.”

Marie crossed her arms over her chest. “It is that simple. Sabela cares about you, and you care about her. You might even be in love with her.”

Love. The bottom dropped out of Colin’s stomach, and he opened his mouth to reply without knowing what to say. Marie cut him off.

“I know it’s scary, but it’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world, and you’re missing out on it by being a … a …”

“Take care. You do still work for me,” Colin interrupted. “For what it’s worth, I know I’m missing out. That’s beside the point. I have to stay away from her. I’m only ever going to hurt her.”

“She’s going to make some man very lucky someday,” Marie said in a wistful tone.

The idea of Sabela being with another man twisted at Colin’s gut. “Yes, you’re right. She will.”

“It’s too bad it can’t be you. I thought you made a handsome couple,” Marie said. “Haberlin is lonely without her laughter.”

Colin agreed with her. And Sabela had made him feel young again and unencumbered by the world. He’d felt nothing but cold and useless since she left.

“I heard that she was accepted into fashion school, you know. A very prestigious program in New York City,” Marie said suddenly.

Colin’s eyebrows raised.

“You’ve talked to her.”

Marie looked at him as if he had grown another head. “Of course, I’ve talked to her. She was a lovely girl, and I’m delighted that we’re staying in touch. It’s incredible how quickly the admissions people responded, but they could obviously see how talented she is. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“That is wonderful,” he said. He realized that Sabela was already moving on. Moving on and leaving him behind.

Good for her. So why did it hurt like hell?

“You helped her see a path that maybe she couldn’t have seen on her own. You should remember that,” Marie said. “You helped her.”

Message delivered, she gave him a small nod and left.

There was a lot to think about. Colin wanted Sabela to do better for herself, and now she was doing just that.

She had wanted him to let go of his past, and he’d refused to budge. Even though he’d sought to destroy her, she hadn’t allowed him to tear her down. Even after all he’d done she was soaring.

Colin rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and index finger, thinking it through.

All this time he’d wanted to use Sabela as a pawn in his game, but between the two of them, she was the one who had advanced to the next level.

He was a throwaway piece already discarded, used up and worthless.

But it wasn’t too late to change that. Was it?

He picked up a piece of toast and ate it while he thought things through. Maybe it was true that not everything he’d done had been bad for Sabela. Maybe he had helped her in ways he didn’t realize.

Maybe he wasn’t as toxic as he feared.

Colin swallowed the last of the toast and stood up. He looked at his watch. If he got ready quickly, he could be back in Brent Grove in less than twelve hours.

He had to see Sabela, and the sooner, the better.

Chapter Forty-Seven

SABELA KNEW ONE THING FOR certain: the second day of double shifts was always the most brutal. Unless there was a third day. Or a fourth.

Sabela didn’t mind it as much as she used to, though. Work got her out of her apartment and kept her from thinking about Colin. Ever since she had returned from Switzerland, distracting herself from the memory of Colin became a top priority.

But it wasn’t just that. It was nice that for once, the double shifts were for something that was important to her future: design school.

As she wiped down a booth and thought about how much she looked forward to getting home, soaking her feet, and falling into bed, she considered how much her life had changed in so short a time.

When she got home from Switzerland, she and Trevor had a heart-to-heart. Well, not so much a heart-to-heart as it was a gentle ass-kicking.

Either Trevor needed to get a job and start thinking about getting his own place, or Sabela was going to kick him out. The rules were clear, and she was going to enforce them no matter what.

Okay, the kicking out part prob

ably wouldn’t actually happen, but both of them knew that she would do everything in her power to make his life very uncomfortable. And besides, she’d be leaving for school before long, and he’d need to be able to fend for himself by then.

To his credit, Trevor hadn’t acted angry or immature about it. He realized that the jig was up. They both knew that he was far more mobile than he had let on. All this time he’d been pretending to be more hurt than he really was in order to wallow in his losses, and had, as a result, taken advantage of Sabela.

She was willing to forgive him, but she wasn’t willing to keep being his dupe.

Some time apart would do them both good. Now more than ever, she needed a fresh start. And a fresh start was exactly what she was going to get in New York.

Her life was changing for the better, but there was one gaping hole in it.

“So when do you go to school?” Rachel, one of the other waitresses at Pinkie’s, asked her when they met behind the counter.

“Assuming I can save enough money, I’m planning to start in three months,” Sabela replied. “I have to move and find a new job and a new apartment in the city, though.”