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That wasn’t enough, I had to have a tangible solution. I turned on my heel and left them, going back to the bedroom to start packing.
I wanted to be pissed, but I’d done too much therapy with Gretchen to fool myself like that. They were both absolutely right, down to the letter. At some point during the last year, she’d gotten her pretty, manicured fingers around my neck and put me in a chokehold.
I’d passed it all off as showing her how she should be treated.
But that was a fucking lie.
No, I’d spent all that money because I wanted her to be mine.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CLARA
He adored me.
The Welsh King adored me.
I turned the phrase over and over in my mind the whole plane trip back to Providence. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but he had and now it was out and everything had changed.
He sat across from me, one ankle crossed over his knee. Laptop balanced and fingers flying over the keyboard. Every time he’d stop, he’d jiggle his foot in a way that made me anxious.
He was antsy, unable to hold still. I watched him for the next hour, counting the times he shifted position, took his reading glasses off and put them back on, and got up to get coffee. After a while, he put his laptop away and closed his eyes, turning to the window.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He didn’t open his eyes. “I’m good, just tired.”
“Alcohol isn’t good for your OCD and ADHD is it?” I asked. “I read up on both of those things after you told me you had them. You know…so I wouldn’t do stuff that bothered you.”
His eyes snapped open, fixing on me. “You never bother me, but thank you, that’s very thoughtful.”
There was a note of astonishment in his tone, like no one had ever made allowances for those parts of him before. I swallowed back the urge to go to him and curl up in his lap.
I wasn’t really sure where we stood after his admission the other night.
Instead, I curled up in the bed and he remained in his chair for the rest of the flight. When we got home, he went upstairs to his office and I took a shower and changed into a sweatsuit, intending on going to sleep.
“Clara,” he called from the stairs.
I leaned out of my room. “What is it?”
“Can you come up to my office?”
My stomach tightened and I padded up the hallway and stairs. He was going to break it off, I knew it. He was going to end this beautiful, fantastical dream and leave me with nothing.
He was at his desk, sleeves rolled to the elbow. I dragged my leaden feet into the office and shut the door, slumping in the chair opposite him.
“I apologize for doing body shots off you in front of everyone,” he said.
“It’s fine. I liked it,” I said, my voice small.
He cleared his throat. “Osian and his father will be in Europe for the next two and a half months. If either of them hear anything and contact us, I will handle it. Right now, we are going to deny anything between us.”
“Okay,” I said miserably.
“For the next two and half months, you will let me love you,” he said.
My whole body went hot and cold. Shock tingled down my spine and I jerked my head up, meeting his gaze. There was a flicker of softness deep in that cobalt blue.
