Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 88580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
The thought of being alone suddenly terrifies me. I shake my head rapidly. “No,” I say. His expression tenses. “I mean, yes, I’ll stay here, but no, please don’t sleep somewhere else.”
Some calm returns. He stares at me and there’s more pain in his eyes than I’ve ever imagined. I didn’t think Adler was capable of this kind of depth, but now I see that he’d been holding everyone at bay all this time, keeping his true feelings from the world.
“You’re my one indulgence,” he whispers. “And I won’t risk you. Maybe making you my wife was a mistake, but I did it to protect you.”
“I want the truth now.” I shift myself, sitting up again. “The board. The buyout, the money, what’s true?”
He shakes his head. “None of it.”
“The baby?”
“The money’s mine. It has been mine since my father passed.”
I blow out a breath. I knew the answer before I asked but hearing him say it—
“This is hard to process. Why did you add that stuff about getting me pregnant?”
“Call it a moment of weakness.”
“Seriously, Adler.”
“I’m not kidding. I thought, well, I thought that if we became intimate, if I could have you the way I really wanted to have you, then we wouldn’t get divorced at the end of this. I know it’s absurd and manipulative, and I’m sorry I wasn’t honest from the start, but I didn’t know how else to get you to marry me. I didn’t know how else to keep you safe.”
I rub my face. God, this man. “I can think of a thousand ways that don’t involve you getting me pregnant.”
“Maybe, but what’s the fun in that?”
I give him a hard look. “Not the time.”
“I meant well. Can you believe that? In my own way, at least.”
“This is too much,” I mutter, leaning back against the pillows again.
“I was being selfish. I openly admit that. Wanting you and having you are two different things, and it was selfish for me to drag you into my world. I knew it, and I resisted it for so long.”
“Until now.”
He nods slowly. “Until now.”
“What changed? And don’t tell me it’s because of Tony Vetch.”
His face tightens and he looks away. He stares at the far wall, and I can see the conflict play out on his face. Part of me wants to crawl over and comfort him—but that’s absurd. This man misled me from the start and I should hate him for it.
Instead, I might be as emotionally twisted as he is.
“I’m not a young man anymore,” he says, still not looking at me. The line of his shoulder slopes down to his muscular arms, and why the hell am I thinking about his shoulders and his arms right now when I should still be pissed? “I won’t pretend like the thought of having a wife, settling down, and establishing a family didn’t occur to me. That was never my primary motivation—keeping you safe from Tony was—but once I had you in my office and we were making a deal—” He takes a deep breath. “Yes, I’m a selfish man.”
I move away from the headboard. Adler’s stiff, almost rigid, like a man carved from granite. I go to him, heart racing. Fear tingles into my fingers and toes. A strange desire underpins it all. Why do I want this when I know it’s wrong? When I know he lied to me, misled me, kept the truth from me? All along, Adler could’ve told me everything I’ve wanted to know about the accident that changed my life, but he kept his distance instead.
It’s the emotion in his tone that draws me back to him. It’s that despite everything, he really did save my life, he really did keep me safe, at least until I ran away from him and put myself in danger. And even then, he made sure his men were watching me.
It’s that he did this for the right reason. “You say you’re selfish, but you gave me so much over the years. And you wanted more back then, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he says.
I stop inches from him. I should turn away, keep my distance. Instead, I touch his skin. It’s the wrong decision, it’s only going to make this more complicated, but it’s a choice I can’t seem to stop.
He’s wrong. He’s a mistake. And I want him despite it.
“You didn’t act on it until I was in trouble. You stayed away. Why?”
“Because I knew I was bad for you. I knew I’d only end up hurting you, and I couldn’t go through all this trouble giving you a decent life, only to ruin it.”
“And that’s why I’m going to stay.”
He shivers. I feel him release a soft grunt from the back of his throat as he glances over his shoulder. “Not that you had a choice,” he says, the hint of a smile on his lips.