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His phone rang, kick-starting his stalled heart.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FLISS’SMORNINGREADINGhad encouraged her to say goodbye today.
She had thought she had understood it, especially when Saint had proposed, then things had ended on that sour note at the car and she’d been thrown into confusion.
Slowly, however, as Mrs. Bhamra promised her a knitted blanket for the baby and Fliss visited Granny at the cemetery, she knew which goodbye was necessary and inevitable.
She told her landlords that movers would come in the next few months. She paid them in advance and packed up a handful of personal items, then said her goodbye.
She said goodbye to the person she’d been when she’d lived here in Nottingham, the one who’d held herself back on so many levels and worried she wasn’t good enough as a designer or wasn’t entitled to live a bigger life.
She said goodbye to thinking that it was impossible for Saint to wantherwhen he could have anyone.
He did want her. He’d said it in thousands of ways. She had kept this flat and all her ties here because she hadn’t wanted to believe in him. In them. It was scary, especially when he hadn’t saidI love youback to her.
How many other declarations and guarantees did she need, though? He made her life richer in countless ways. Yes, materially, but he had given her ababy. He made her laugh. He coddled her and supported her dreams and built her confidence in herself. He cared about her very deeply. She knew he did.
He wanted to be her person, her safety net, and he couldn’t be that person for her if she didn’t let him. She had to step off the ledge and have faith that he would catch her. That was how she would learn to trust that he would.
So, even though she was hurt, she was closing out her life here for good so she could make a new one with him.
She had just finished labeling the boxes she wanted shipped to her in New York when he texted.
Dad had a stroke. I’m flying back.
“What?” she cried and hit the button to call him. “I’m coming back now. Don’t leave without me,” she said as soon as he answered.
“Why?” he asked flatly. “Because you think I’m going to inherit everything now? He’s not dead.”
It was a slap in the face delivered from three hours away.
“You’re upset,” she said shakily, as much to remind herself as him. “Have a maid pack my things from the hotel. I’ll meet you at the airport.”
He ended the call, so she had no idea if he would do as she’d asked.
Saint was stewing in his seat on the tarmac, hating himself for what he’d said to Fliss.
He should have called her back, but he’d been fielding calls from his mother and doctors and the board as word had spread that his father was in hospital.
When he saw the headlights come through the gate toward his jet, he let out a sigh of profound relief that she’d gotten here safely. As much as he’d resented the pilot delaying takeoff—because Fliss had called Willow and told them to hold the plane—he was still shaken by that damned Death card, worried it had been meant for her.
“Willow doesn’t work for you,” he snapped as she came aboard and took her seat next to him.
“Willow has your best interests at heart, same as I do.”
“Do you?” he scoffed. Why the hell was he talking to her this way? Had his father actually died and started inhabiting his body?
“You may go ahead and be an ass to me if you need to let off steam,” Fliss said with cool patience. “But I didn’t cause your father’s stroke.” She closed her belt and gave the attendant a tight smile to indicate she was ready for takeoff.
He was being an ass. Why?
Because she hadn’t been there when it had happened. He’d thought she was leaving him, and he’d been so hurt, so cast adrift he hadn’t known how to deal with it except to go on the attack.
Shewashere, though. Exactly where he wanted her, expression stiff with hurt.
“I am upset,” he admitted. “Even if he survives, he’ll be too ill to work. The board has already named me interim president. This isn’t the way I wanted it to happen. I wanted him to choose me.” God, that sounded puerile. “To trust me. To give mesomethingthat showed—” He couldn’t say it.
