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“And the bridge?”
“So far it looks all right. I was able to make a call. An inspector is arriving this afternoon and will confirm if it’s safe to drive on.” His expression remained placid. “But given that half a dozen men were on it this morning, it appears safe to walk across.”
She forced a smile. “That’s great.”
“I’ve arranged for you to fly back to London on my private jet. There’s an airfield near here—”
“Wait.” Her head spun. She held up a hand. “You just...you made all of these plans? Without even talking to me?”
“Your boss will be pleased.” He gestured to the envelope. “The documents are signed. You can go back to London and present this to your superiors. It’s what you wanted.”
“It was. It is.” She stood. Suddenly conscious of her nudity, she moved to the bed and grabbed a shirt he’d thrown on the footstool the night before, hastily buttoning it up to cover herself before she turned to face him again. “But what about us?”
The sigh he released tied her stomach into knots so tight she could barely breathe.
“Rosalind.”
He said her name so gently, as if he were talking to a child. Before he could continue, she turned away.
“I see.”
She’d known this was a risk. Had accepted it when she’d decided to take the leap and share her body with Griffith. How many times had she fought her attraction, told herself that she shouldn’t let herself get carried away?
The sight of the ocean waves rising and falling drew her to the windows. She crossed her arms over her chest, watched the familiar sight with a desperation that made her feel weak, fanciful.
Foolish.
She’d let her body rule, let her heart take the lead, instead of listening to her brain, to her instincts warning that while she might thoroughly enjoy her time with Griffith, he would ultimately break her heart.
“Rosalind,” he said again. “We talked about this. About the differences between us and what we want.”
“I know.” She sucked in a steadying breath, reached for an inner strength that eluded her. “I just...” No matter what he’d said, she knew something had shifted between them. Knew what had started as pure sex, pure hedonistic enjoyment, had morphed into something else.
Her voice trailed off as her mind raced. Did she tell him what was in her heart? What she had realized last night as they’d made love under the stars?
That she had fallen in love?
It was too much too soon, she knew. Especially to be in love with a man who believed himself incapable it. A man who hid behind this monster persona to keep himself protected from the grief life inevitably threw in one’s path.
Yet hadn’t she dealt with her own grief in an unhealthy way? Pursuing a career that, from the beginning, she’d had misgivings about? All in some misguided way of honoring her mother’s memory when she knew, deep in her heart, that her mother would have been devastated if she would have realized how unhappy her daughter had become.
Yes, Griffith had work to do. So did she. Didn’t everyone? But behind the hurt was the man she’d glimpsed, the one who had cared for her, loved her body, taken her on a walk to calm her mind, encouraged her to follow her dreams...
“Will we see each other again?” One hand fluttered in the air between them. “Obviously I don’t have much to go on, but this, what happened between us...that meant something to me.”
“It meant something to me, too.”
He said the words, but the lack of inflection, the flat tone, said differently, twisted the knife in her heart.
“We could—”
“I can’t give you what you want, Rosalind.” Suddenly Griffith stood before her, eyes glittering with pain and anger. “Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. I will inevitably mess up. If I couldn’t be the kind of son my father deserved, what makes you think I could even come close to being the kind of man worthy of you?”
“Do you even believe half the things you tell yourself?”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You told me you weren’t the same after your mother’s passing. Everyone responds to grief differently. Would it have wrecked you so much if you hadn’t cared about her? What about your father? Would you be this upset, this wrecked, if you didn’t love him? The company you work so hard for, the one you never let down even when you were spending like crazy and dating slews of women?”
