She sighed, leaning back in the chair, holding her glass in her hand. “I thought that being a part of his dream was enough to make me happy. He’s ambitious and driven …”
“Handsome?” He must be begging for pain.
“Quite,” she replied with a small smile.
Adam narrowed his eyes as he watched her for a gusty sigh or a grimace of loss. There wasn’t one. He took that to mean that her attraction to Charles, whatever it had been, was there any longer. Good. “But that wasn’t enough?” he prodded.
She twisted her lips, adorably animated with her thoughts playing out on her face. “I always had the feeling thatIwasn’t quite enough.”
Adam called Charles an unkind name.
Bella shook her head. “I didn’t mean to say that he didn’t value me; the problem was that I didn’t value me. I thought my best role in life was behind the scenes, that the spotlight wasn’t meant for me.”
Adam cocked his head, trying to put himself into her mindset. He’d always known what his life would hold, that he would be at the forefront of the small Moreau empire. The spotlight was a given. “And what do you think now?”
Bella ran her finger around the rim of her glass, her eyes unfocused as she sifted through her thoughts. She was there with him physically, but her mind was elsewhere. That didn’t stop her from talking, and he hung on her every word. “I find myself wanting more than someone else’s dream. I want my own.” Her gaze sharpened, and she lifted her chin so that she could make and hold eye contact.
The whole world disappeared. For all Adam knew, they could have been in the middle of the ocean on a deserted island or surrounded by thousands at Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Bella could do that to him. She consumed his thoughts, his consciousness, to the point of excluding all else. The effect was that he wanted more, and more, and then even more.
“I finally realized that I don’t want to take second place.”
Bella’s words burned through him. “You deserve more.”
She shook her head. “I deserve better.”
“What’s the difference?” His interest in the conversation grew. Though he had years of experience over her, she had a way of looking at things that was totally fresh.
“Moreof the same would not have satisfied me. I want a better man.”
Adam swallowed. Was he a better man? At Bella’s age, he’d relentlessly pursued his goals—most of them starting with dollar signs. He wasn’t that much older than her, but he felt every year that passed like a weight about his neck.
“You disagree?” she asked, a playful light in her eyes.
“Why do you think I disagree?”
“Because your eyebrows are touching.” She reached up and smoothed the pressure between his eyes. He leaned into her touch, just slightly, amazed at how tender she was with him. He yearned for her to do it again, but instead she dropped her hand to her lap and her eyes to her plate. “They come together when you disagree with someone.”
“The only person I disagree with is myself,” he mumbled.
The captain came over the speaker to inform them that they’d be landing soon. Bella leaned over to look out the window. “Where are we?”
Now was as good a time as any to reveal the surprise. “A wonderful place to build a sandcastle.”
Bella pressed her hand to her chest. “No way.”
He tipped his head back and laughed with delight. “Way.”
Chapter Twelve
Bella
The sun hung just above the horizon line, painting the sky and the water the same shade of salmon with ribbons of gold sewn throughout. Santa Barbara was known for its steady temperatures, but 70 degrees and sunny was heaven in the winter.
Bella tried to remember the words to the princess song to describe what she was looking at … where the sky meets the sea … that was the phrase. That’s where the sun had settled like a duck in its nest. She sighed in contentment and dug her feet deeper into the warm sand on the private stretch of beach. She and Adam had spent the afternoon building several sandcastles, each one a work of art in her opinion andpassablein his. She giggled quietly, remembering the way he went about packing wet sand into a bucket with the determination of a ten-year-old.
Behind them, Adam’s beach house was lit with fairy lights, the paths bathed in solar lighting and the palm trees spotlighted. The white walls were pink in the sunset, and the whole thing looked like a magazine spread for a tropical getaway. You’d never know they were still on the mainland. There was enough magic in the air to start a wizarding school.
Upon arrival, she’d changed from her skirt to a pair of Adam’s drawstring white beach pants. They hung on her hips and puddled around her ankles, but she didn’t care if she got them wet or dirty, and neither did he. They’d romped like children without responsibility, and for once, she’d felt free from the expectations that had hung over her since her mother died, many of them placed there by herself and her desire to make a mother she didn’t know proud. As the sand sifted through her fingers, she thought that perhaps her mom would want her to enjoy life a little more.
