What just happened? Weirdly, I’m lighter and the headache has subsided. The wave of acid in my stomach has simmered down and my eyes don’t burn with unshed tears.
I’d be annoyed with him for the stunt, but…I feel so good. And safe. I never felt safe enough to let it out. My defense mechanisms must be broken. Because the alternative is I trust him and that’s another can of worms I don’t want to open.
He’ll disappear back to New York and whatever this is will end.
I’ve been shut tightly in my cocoon for so long, I forgot who the real me even is. Being a people pleaser to the point I let people walk all over me.
Carter forces me to step outside my self-woven pod. It’s uncomfortable, but I’m more alive than I’ve been in years.
Chapter Fourteen
CARTER
Revealing so much of myself to Eliza is beginning to be a problem because it’s shaping up to be a compulsion growing to worrisome proportions. I’m keen on having her undivided attention. I bask in the warmth of her laughter. The sound unlocks a section of my brain that shoots a bizarre concoction into my bloodstream.
It’s a double-edged shovel, digging myself a deeper hole. I know she shouldn’t be at the forefront of my brain when I wake up in the morning with a hard-on and no other release than a quick jack-off in the small shower. It takes the edge off, but then she looks at me with those pretty hazels when the morning light showers the kitchen through the leaves. It takes all my self-control not to do something stupid, like kiss her.
Eliza doesn’t even try to seduce me, there’s a gravitational pull bringing us too close and it’s becoming harder to keep my distance.
The mental list of reasons I’m not supposed to cross the line is circling my head with the cadence of a mantra.I don’t know if I can trust her. She just ended an eight-year relationship. She’s not the casual type.
I start my morning bombarding Jackie and Joseph with texts I get useless answers to. Eliza’s morning routine includes pestering me with random questions. I can’t ignore her because she keeps hovering or staring and I’m a gentleman.
“What’s your biggest fear?” is the debut of today’s game of twenty-one questions.
“What are you, twelve?”
“Come on, humor me.” She points to the plate. “I agreed to eat your weird omelet. You owe me.”
An offended exhale buys me some time. “A Michelin star chef shared that recipe with me.”
“Then he’s weird too. Quit stalling,”
I don’t know why I don’t just leave and check in at the Steamship Inn near the harbor.
“Becoming my father.” I breath out the bitter truth before I have time to mull the answer over in my head.
Eliza blinks like a chocolate-brown-eyed owl. “Wow. That’s deep,” she finally says, while I’m tense as a taut wire. “I was expecting spiders or something.”
The enormity of the confession I blurted out hits me. The bubble of laughter is uncontrollable. Her face does that thing when she looks at me with such wonder it shifts something in my chest.
“Your laugh is very warm,” she says, looking at her plate.
I clear my throat and get back to the article to get my mind off this moment of temporary insanity. Some reporters were asking where the face of the company was. “The young and promising CEO Carter Rawlings was MIA from yesterday’s Global Technology Forum.” Jackie did a spectacular job. I watched the video at least tentimes. The camera loves her. Stepping in for me allowed her to show off her natural charm and sharp mind.
But the media keeps asking questions and they’ll become more insistent. I have to convince my mother and sister that staying two more months is unnecessary.
“Why don’t you want to be like him?”
Few people know the reality of being Angus Rawlings’ son. After his rapid ascension into the top ten richest people stratosphere, many wanted to dig up dirt on us. So my father kept everyone on a short leash, including his children. He’d be horrified by our breakfast conversations.
Maybe the need to go against him drives me to answer her.
“The company was his sole focus. We, his family, were just pawns in his grand scheme. Each time I witnessed my mother’s disappointment over another missed dinner or my sister’s gloom on her birthday, I wondered if we were really a family. Nothing else mattered to him.”
“It reminds me of someone who crosses the days in the calendar, hoping he can go back to the office faster,” she says with humorous reproach.
It’s true, I’m not subtle about my desire to return.
