I sat there, staring at my reflection in the black mirror of my phone, and tried to remember when this had stopped being about a surrogate and started being about her.
Fritz dropped back into his seat beside me, his expression thoughtful.
"You like her," he said.
"She's our surrogate."
"You keep saying that. Like if you repeat it enough times, it'll become true."
"It is true."
"Is it?" He studied me with those too-knowing eyes. "Because from where I'm sitting, you just told her she's ours. Not our surrogate. Ours."
I said nothing.
What could I say? That he was wrong? That I hadn't meant it?
I'd meant every word.
Leanne appeared again, her tablet in hand. "Mr. Hastings, the pilot has been notified that we’ve been given an earlier landing slot."
"Heathrow?"
"Gatwick."
"Fuck." I stood, my hand already reaching for my phone. "Get the helicopter to Gatwick. Tell them to be ready the moment we land."
"Yes, sir."
She disappeared, and I started pacing the same path Fritz had worn into the carpet.
"Four hours," Fritz said, looking at his watch. "We'll be home in four hours."
"Four hours is too long."
"I know."
I thought about Presley in Etienne's arms, her face flushed, her heat building. I thought about the way she'd looked at me through the screen, like she wanted to believe what I'd told her but didn't quite dare.
I thought about her wearing Etienne's shirt because she thought he was the only one who liked her for who she was.
Like Fritz and I were some kind of cold, calculating businessmen who only saw her as a transaction.
Maybe we had been.
But that had changed. When, I couldn't say. Maybe when we'd shown up at that falling-apart caravan with her leaking boots and her ridiculous charity shop cardigan. Maybe when she'd joked about buying a cottage. Maybe when she'd danced around our drawing room in Etienne's shirt, laughing with her friend, making our house feel like a home for the first time in six years.
It didn't matter when.
What mattered was that she was ours now.
And I'd be damned if I let her go through her heat thinking we didn't want her.
"Henry," Fritz said quietly.
"What?"
"We're going to make it. We'll get home in time."
