Cole's Mistake (Haven, Texas 8)

When she drew back, she smiled at him. “I’m so glad you bought a house here.” She looked over at Julian.

The other man cleared his throat. “When the time is right, we could talk about us moving in with you.”

Something shifted in him. Something huge. And he found himself breathing a little easier. They weren’t ready yet, but he got that. They were here. They were his.

Keira bit her lip. “But are you sure you won’t get bored here?”

“Bored? With the two of you to look after? Somehow, I don’t think so, little bit. You need a full-time keeper as it is.” He tapped her nose, and she attempted to give him a disgruntled look. “Truthfully, now that I’m out of the city, I’m glad to be away from it all. The noise, the pollution, all the maneuvering and bullshit that came from the board. I like it here. Even if the people are a little unusual, they’re protective and loyal. That’s not something you find everywhere.”

“No,” Julian agreed. “It’s not.”

“There’s something else I have to tell you, though,” he added, knowing it was best to lay all his cards on the table. “Something I don’t quite know how to tell you both, but I can’t put it off any longer. I want full honesty and communication between us.”

And he hoped like hell they wouldn’t be too angry with him for not telling them already.

“You need to understand that I was in a bad place. After I pushed the two of you away, I focused on finding the traitor on the board. It was the only thing that really kept me going. That stopped me from chasing after the two of you. After I discovered who it was, I fell into a dark place. I wanted to go after the two of you, but I told myself you were better off without me. That our relationship had just been a fantasy, that it could never be a reality. I threw myself back into work. I no longer cared about my life. About what I did—”

“Cole, what is it?” Keira asked carefully.

“I nearly got married,” he blurted out.

28

“You nearly got married?” It was a stab to her gut. She’d known he wouldn’t be celibate all this time, of course.

But he’d been engaged? He’d been going to marry someone else?

Cole looked pained. “It wasn’t . . . I wasn’t in love with her. Arabella is Hank Bridges’s daughter. It was an arranged engagement. He suggested a match between us. It was a business decision. I was tired of fighting the board constantly. I couldn’t have the two of you, I knew I’d never love anyone like I did the two of you, so I figured it didn’t matter what I did.” He gave them both a guilty look.

“We knew you would have been with other people,” Keira said.

Cole shook his head. “I wasn’t. There was no one else. I didn’t have sex with anyone else. Not even with Arabella.”

“What? Since we left?” Julian asked, looking shocked.

“I couldn’t even look at anyone else, let alone feel an attraction towards them,” Cole told them.

She believed him.

“What happened to the engagement?” Keira asked.

“One day, I told my assistant to cancel my obligations for the evening and she reminded me that I had dinner planned with my fiancée, and t

hat I’d canceled every appointment with her for weeks. I don’t know why that hit me with such clarity in that moment, but I realized I could go the rest of my life without seeing her and I wouldn’t care. It made me see that I had nothing in my life I cared about. Not even the company anymore.”

He looked at them both. “I didn’t want Arabella. Didn’t care about her the way I should have. I wanted something more in my life. So I broke it off. I took some time to think about what was really important. And it wasn’t the business or money or power. I thought about who I was then and who I wanted to be. I wasn’t living the life I wanted. I wasn’t being true to myself. About a week after our engagement broke off, I joined a BDSM club, and enrolled in Dom classes. It felt right. It felt good.”

“Did she . . . did she love you?” Keira asked.

He reached over and grabbed hold of her hand, squeezing it. “Arabella didn’t love me any more than I did her. Truthfully, she seemed relieved when I told her I couldn’t marry her. She was getting as much pressure from her father as I was. Hank held too much power and he would have acquired more with our merger.”

Keira wrinkled her nose. “Merger?”

“That’s all it would have been. Not a real marriage. An aligning of assets. I finally figured out that wasn’t what I wanted. Not at all. I think in a way it was a good thing, because it dragged me out of that dark hole I’d been in. It made me realize that my life was nothing if I didn’t have anyone in it who loved me. I didn’t think the two of you would want me, I fully expected you to have found someone else, but I had to know. To move on, I had to first make sure the two of you had. So, I sent an investigator to find you. And I decided to try and mend fences with Joel. Do you guys believe me? I’m sorry it happened, but there was truly nothing between us.”

“I believe you,” Julian told him.

Keira leaned her head against his shoulder. “Me too. I’m glad you didn’t marry her.”