“Blythe?” Duncan demands.
I turn. The first step is just fast, my legs tangling in my dress. Then within a second I’m running, and there are the signs for the ladies’ toilets, and I barge in and my god it must be the pregnancy hormones because I’ve never felt so panicked and scared and ready to take on a stupid gun that would kill me easily to protect my husband who doesn’t need my help.
I’m an idiot and tears prickle behind my eyes as I throw myself into a toilet cubicle and lean my forehead against the smooth papered wall, the floral pattern swimming before my eyes.
A door slams.
“Blythe.” Duncan’s voice is urgent and low and something I’ve never heard before from him. He beats on the door to my cubicle. “Blythe!”
Scared. He sounds as terrified as I was when I thought he was in danger. When I believed for one horrible, leaden moment that my husband might die and my lizard brain wanted to protect him at all costs.
My convenient husband, who hasn’t told his daughter about me. I’m a fraud, who didn’t understand the most important line in his advert.
No love.
Whatever Felicity saw, she’s wrong.
“Blythe!” Duncan slams his palm on the wood. “Let me inright nowor I’ll break the door down.”
14
DUNCAN
She opens the stall and I know I shouldn’t, but I yank her out of there and give in to my need to shout.
“What were you doing?!” My terror that something was really wrong, that she was hurt, that she was running away fromme, is excessive. I don’t even know what I thought, except that I was convinced I’d lost her, and my fingers dig into her arms. That fucking pink dress. It’s gorgeous and I love it and I’m going to rip it off her, to see her bare skin just to calm myself down with a ruthless possession of her. She can wear nothing but my dinner jacket home, I don’t care.
“I was upset!” she yells back, surprising me.
“What about?” I’m shocked into a normal tone.
“I was scared that you might die!” She fights me off, her mouth creased with what seems to be genuine distress. Her cheeks are pink and blotchy, matching her dress in colour if not texture. I’m baffled as she shakes, her shoulders hunched, and she averts her face. Hiding from me.
Then it’s all clear.
“It’s okay. You’d have half my estate, shared with Ainsley, even if you’re not pregnant.” I reveal what’s in the prenup without thinking, because it’s understandable she’s distressed. She has no idea the lengths I’ve gone to ensure she’s safe.
That very reasonable comment doesn’t hit the right spot.
“You idiot!” she sobs, turning and pummelling my chest with her fists. It doesn’t hurt, but what does cause me pain is that she’s crying now, tears flowing down her pretty cheeks. “Not because of that. Because I love you!”
Every cell in my body stops. My heart ceases to beat. I don’t breathe. The shock incapacitates me until the literal lack of oxygen forces me to suck in air before I pass out.
Even so, my head swims.
“It’s okay,” she mutters, as though she hasn’t turned my universe upside down. “You don’t have to say it back. Nothing has to change.”
“Everything has changed.” I still haven’t moved.
“I’m just yourconvenientfree use house?—”
I growl and grab her chin when she casts her gaze down. “You’re notjustanything.”
She doesn’t reply.
“You’re my world,” I confess rawly. “Since you turned up on my doorstep, my heart has been yours. I love you more than you’ll ever know.”
Her mouth falls open, jaw slack with disbelief, and her chin slowly rises until her blue eyes are on me, wide and incredulous.
