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Thought? He questioned himself. She hadn’t seemed ambiguous or confused. She’d spoken with her trademark confidence and certainty, even when the words had clearly hurt, weighed down with the complexity of what that love meant.

“I’m absolutely scared out of my mind about what that means.”

What did it mean? Two weeks later, he had no fucking idea. He just knew that he missed her; that he wanted to go back to how things had been. That he wanted to fly them both back to England so they’d have to resume the play-acting.

He knew that he wanted to stay married to her, and for her to have his baby, he just wanted to do it in a way that guaranteed neither of them would get hurt.

Losing her hurt him, staying married hurt her. There had to be another option he hadn’t considered; there had to be a way for them to make sense of this.

For as long as Tia had been building her company and then running it, she’d barely taken a vacation. She was a workaholic, a control freak, determined not to let her business fail, and that meant tirelessly watching over every detail. Every sale, every showing, every missed opportunity.

But a week after Hamish had left her office, she had to accept that she couldn’t keep doing this. She was worn out. Exhausted. Bone-tired. Not from the challenge of her work—she lived for that. But from pretending that everything was fine. From acting as though her heart wasn’t being shattered into teeny, tiny pieces. From sitting in meetings and staring out the window, imagining Hamish, losing track of her thoughts, finding herself unable to focus.

Her IVF appointment came and went. She cancelled. She still wanted a baby, but she couldn’t imagine doing that with Hamish now. And at the same time, she couldn’t imagine not. Just the idea of them sharing a child made her heart explode with happiness—a single piece of goodness to survive the shipwreck of whatever they’d been.

Only, it wasn’t just sharing a child, it was everything that went with it. It was Hamish holding her hand at the ultrasound appointments, being there through the pregnancy, and then the delivery, at her side to witness all the milestones.

But was that just Tia’s way of trying to keep him in her life in some capacity? And was she better off letting him go? It hurt like hell.

She couldn’t make sense of any of it, and rather than go through the motions of her normal life, she fled the country. And though she was tempted to go to England so she could hear accents that reminded her of Hamish and maybe even drive out into the Cotswolds to see the rolling hills he loved so much, she didn’t. She had her plane fly to Paris instead—where better for a heartbroken woman to recover than in the city of love?

She’d run away again and Hamish was apoplectic. He’d thought of nothing but Tia since that day in her office, nothing but how he could find the balance and make something work between them, and then she’d just gone?

Her assistant eyed him with a bland expression, giving nothing away. “I really can’t divulge that information.”

Hamish stared at her in disbelief. He was not used to being denied anything, and now, to be denied Tia? When he’d come here expecting to finally be able to see her. The last few weeks had been a living torment. He’d given her the space she’d needed, because he had to respect her wishes. He hadn’t fully understood how much he’d been counting on seeing her today until he was told it wasn’t possible. “I need to speak to her.” Need was the perfect word to describe this feeling. It was a desperate ache.

The assistant shook her head slightly. “I can ask her to contact you, Lord Ashcombe.”

Fury zipped through him. The sort of fury born of the fiercest disappointment, because he wanted, more than anything, to see her. Now. Today. He’d waited the three weeks they’d agreed to, and it had been some kind of agony. But he’d done it, and he couldn’t wait even a moment longer. “Fine. Tell her it’s urgent.”

Tia read the message, frowning. ‘Urgent’ could mean any number of things. It could be something to do with his purchase of the penthouse, or it could be to do with his mother. Or it could be to do with them. She ran through the possibilities, unable to say which she thought more likely—or more appealing.

She’d run away but she couldn’t keep running. They were legally married and did need to resolve that. A day after getting the message, she called him, her heart racing as the phone rang, and then, stopped ringing, Hamish’s voice coming down the phone line.

“I got a message you needed to speak to me?”

Silence. Her stomach squeezed.

“Where are you?”

She exhaled slightly, glancing to the window showing a clear view of the Eiffel Tower. “In Paris.” Why lie? It wasn’t like he was going to swoop in and rescue her.

Silence crackled once more. Then, “Why?”

“Why not?”

“Are you working?”

She laughed caustically at that, glancing down now at her tracksuit pants and oversized shirt. Both designer but definitely not the sort of thing Tia would generally wear. “Not exactly.”

She could practically hear him digesting that. “Are you alone?”

She rolled her lips, wondering if she should lie. But why would she do that to him? She did, indeed, love him, and that meant never, ever hurting him.

“Yes.”

“Give me your address,” he said, the sound of rustling fabric and a closing door sounding.