AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Obviously I didn’t care enough. If I had, I wouldn’t have kept my father at a distance until it was too late.”
The words hung in the air between them, wiped away her moment of anger as pain surged forth. She started forward, to lay a comforting hand on his arm, to soothe away his anger and fears.
But once again he moved out of her reach, quelled her motion with a single glare that gave her a glimpse of the reputation that had supposedly made grown men quake in the boardroom.
“I know that I can’t offer you what you want, Rosalind. We can’t all live our lives with such an overly optimistic outlook. Us. Your career.”
“My career?”
“Yes, your career. You’re continuing with this charade that you want to reach the next level with a prestigious firm instead of examining your life and deciding what you really want.”
Anger punched through the hurt.
At a loss for words, she turned away, ran her hands through her hair as she tried to think, tried to make sense of the jumble of thoughts clamoring for space inside her head. Pain took front and center, that he would be so dismissive of her feelings, of what they had shared. Yet hadn’t he told her, repeatedly, he was too selfish to engage in anything beyond what little time they had been given? Had she been so captivated by their physical chemistry that she had let herself mistake attraction for something more?
Doubt hovered at the edges of her pain. She wondered if she had let herself be swept up in the romance of her first lover, in the novelty of their glamorous seclusion, instead of seeing things for what they were.
And now doubt that she was even capable of separating fantasy from reality. Even before she’d set foot inside Chateau du Bellerose, she’d questioned her future with Nettleton & Thompson. But she’d brushed aside her misgivings, focusing on living as much as she could, on achieving the loftiest goals, to do her mother proud.
She swallowed hard before turning back to face Griffith.
“You make a good point.” He blinked, as if she’d surprised him. “And that is something I’ll have to deal with. Sometimes people don’t respond the way that they should to loss,” she added quietly. “I don’t think either of us dealt with our grief in a good way. It doesn’t mean that’s the way we have to stay.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
He let out a shuddering breath. Closed his eyes. When he opened them, she saw his answer in his eyes.
And it broke her heart.
She moved then, walking toward him with an outward confidence she didn’t feel. She reached up, ignoring the barely perceptible flinch as she laid her hands on his cheeks.
“I do sometimes look at things unrealistically. With too much optimism. Sometimes I do exactly as you suggest and turn a situation into a positive when actually it sucks and needs to be fixed. Sometimes I avoid discomfort.” She blinked rapidly, willed herself not to cry. “But isn’t that better than embracing misery. Not allowing yourself to feel anything else.”
He tried to step back. She held on for just a moment, leaned up on her toes and gently kissed the scar that cut over his cheekbone. His sharp intake of breath nearly undid her as she pulled away.
“I think what’s truly the saddest of all,” she said as she moved to the door, “is that you can’t see yourself as I do.”
“With rose-colored glasses?”
“No.” She glanced back over her shoulder. He stood, framed in the morning light, body tense and poised as if he would run away at any moment. “As someone who made mistakes, realized he made mistakes and is trying not to repeat them. You’re not perfect, Griffith, and you never will be. And maybe you will never want what I want out of life. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be someone you could be proud of. Someone who does good with all of his money and influence.”
“Or perhaps,” he said, his voice low and bordering on a growl, “I’m exactly the man I told you I am and you’re just not listening.”
She nodded toward the gilded mirror on the wall, the one they’d stood in front of last night as he’d undressed her, worshipping her body with such care it had warmed both her body and her soul.
“Take a good long look at yourself, Griffith. I hope one day you’ll realize you’re the only one who sees yourself as a monster.”
With that final pronouncement, she grabbed the signed contract that she’d come here for all those days ago, stepped out into the hall and closed the door.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“CONGRATULATIONS, ROSALIND.”
Rosalind blinked and refocused on the couple seated on the opposite side of the massive walnut desk.
“Thank you.”
Mr. Robert T. Nettleton nodded, his smile wide and bright. At sixty-three he was still an attractive man. His silver hair was cut just long enough to be combed back from a broad forehead touched with only the faintest wrinkles that made him look distinguished rather than old.
