“He was outside of the hotel. He waswaiting,” West says in a half-snarl.
“Paige was here. She ran when we came out,” Nora says.
“Where did she go?”
“Down there. Toward the docks, just a minute ago,” Nora says. “Go.”
I’m already moving. Racing toward where shedisappeared, across the street, and down to the long boardwalk along the marina.
There are tourists everywhere. Someone tries to sell me a keychain withMonacoemblazoned on the side. My eyes roam, looking for golden hair in a long braid or loose and moving with the breeze.
It takes me ten minutes to find her.
She’s pacing at the edge of one of the docks, arms wrapped around herself, looking over the ocean. There’s a frantic nature to her movements.
I walk out the dock with slow steps. Ben was here.Here, talking to her. Was it her he was waiting for?
I shove my hands into my pockets and come to a stop in front of her. It takes her a few more panicked paces before she notices me. Her eyes widen, and her chest lifts in quick breaths.
I recognize that look. I’ve seen it once before, when she couldn’t breathe in her wedding dress. She’s panicking. Her uncle talking to her had not been a good thing. When Paige is truly scheming, she is smiling. She’s not struggling to breathe.
“Rafe,” she says. Her eyes flick behind me, to the edge of the dock, like she wants to run again. But then her breathing speeds up. Like it did in my kitchen, with her tied into a silk wedding dress, tears in her eyes.
Seeing her like that last time had made me react on instinct. Now it feels painful to see, and I approach slowly. “Breathe, darling. Can you do that for me again? Breathe in and breathe out.”
She tries to take a ragged breath. But it comes out gulping. I wrap an arm around her waist.
“Let’s sit. That’s it…”
Our legs hang over the edge of the dock. She has always seemed to love the water. It calms her. She takes another deep breath. And then another. Her eyes are roaming, but they finally land on me.
I think of what I just saw. What I just said.
And now this.
I’ve wondered, of course. But I didn’t until this very moment, seeing her destroyed by a conversation with him, just how poorly her uncle has treated her. My free hand tightens into a fist at my side.
I’m going to hate that man until my dying day.
“I didn’t… he was waiting for me,” she says, and her breath comes in gulps. “He said… he said…”
Tears start to flow down her cheeks, and her hands find my knee, my shirt. Like they’re scrambling for purchase.
I open my arms in invitation. “Come here.”
She climbs into my lap, legs draped over mine. Her breathing is still fast, and I murmur into her hair that she should breathe. That’s all she has to do.Breathe.
“I’m trapped,” she says between sobs, her voice thin. “And I hate feeling trapped.”
“By who?” I ask. “By me?”
She nods, quick and panicked. “By everything. I have to make the company a success. I have to, or all this was for nothing. I have to—” she breaks off on a gulping breath. “He thinks… he thinks… we’re not in love.”
My hand strokes over her back. She’s crying now, warm tears against my neck. “We’ll talk later. Breathe for now. That’s it.”
It takes time. But slowly, breath by breath, she finds a rhythm to it again. Her hair smells like the hotel’s shampoo, from her shower last night.
I hold her tight and wonder what the worst thing I can do to Ben Wilde is.
