Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 74366 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74366 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
I shrug, gesture around me, to the beautiful room in his beautiful house. “This,” I tell him. “This everything. It’s… it’s like a fairytale.”
“Beauty and the beast?” He laughs.
“No!” I laugh with him. “Cinderella! I’m the scrubby servant girl and you’re Prince Charming come to save me.”
His eyes glitter. “I’m not all that charming,” he says. “Not when you get to know me.”
But I don’t believe him. I tell him so and he laughs again.
“Maybe this could be a fairytale, Laine,” he says. “If we want it badly enough. Life is full of magic, I think, you just have to trust in it.”
“I believe in magic,” I say. “I haven’t seen much of it, not until now, but I know it’s out there.”
“Maybe it’s right here.”
My heart daren’t even hope. I feel it lurch, and it scares me how much I want this. It scares me how hard I’m falling, falling right into him, falling right into his life.
“I hope so.” My voice is a whisper.
He holds out a hand and I take it across the table, and his fingers grip mine so tightly.
“Let me care for you, Laine. Will you do that?”
I nod. “I’d like that. Very much.”
“And you’ll stick to the ground rules? Let me keep you safe?”
“I’ll stick to the ground rules,” I say.
“Good girl.” His smile gives me tingles on tingles, and my heart races.
I take a breath, stare at my hand in his. “And that’s what you want? You want to take care of me? Like I’m…”
“Like you’re my little girl?”
My cheeks must be like beetroot. I close my eyes as I nod.
“And what else do you want, Laine? What did you want on the landing last night? What did you want in bed last night as you wriggled and squirmed?”
I can’t open my eyes. I just can’t.
“You,” I whisper. “I wanted you.”
“Is that still what you want? Not out of gratitude, or because you think you should. None of that is necessary, Laine, I promise you.”
I shake my head. “No… not because of that…” My heart is in my throat. “Just because… because I want it… because I like you…”
I hold my breath as I wait for him to answer, but his response shocks me enough to open my eyes.
“I need to tell you about Jane,” he says.
“About Jane?”
“My rules can get… intense. I need you to understand why.”
I nod, and my eyes are wide and focused. I’m pleased that he doesn’t let go of my hand.
“Jane was my little girl,” he says.
Was.
“I was young when I met her mother. Louisa was lost, just like you were. I found her sheltering under an awning during an autumn thunderstorm, upset because she’d argued with her piece of shit boyfriend. Jane was just a baby, fast asleep in her pushchair, none the wiser for her mother’s predicament, thank God.”
“So she wasn’t…”
“Mine?” he says. “Not biologically, no. But she was mine in every way that matters. I was the man she called daddy. I was the man who read her bedtime stories and tucked her up in bed at night.”
My eyes urge him to continue.
“I was young myself, relatively. Still climbing up the corporate ladder, coping with my father’s death. This was our family home, I inherited it naturally, and it was lonely here before Louisa came, just as it was before you came.”
“Did you bring her home, too?”
He smiles. “I did, yes. I brought her and little Jane home with me, and made Louise cocoa while she dried off. I listened to her stories about her loser boyfriend and her sad life, and how she was so scared for tiny little Jane.”
“You rescued her. You rescued both of them.”
“Yes. Yes, I did. But she rescued me right back. Saved me from a life full of nothing but work and loneliness.”
I take a breath. “She didn’t grow up here, did she? Jane, I mean.”
“She didn’t grow up, Laine.” He takes a breath. “She died when she was five. A car accident. Her and her mother alongside that sorry sack of shit I took her from.” I see his eyes darken. “She left me a note before she went. He wanted to talk, she said, needed some help, she said. She didn’t want him, but for some crazy reason that day she took our little girl and climbed into his car. Maybe she didn’t realise he’d been drinking.”
I feel the blood leave my face. “I’m so sorry.”
“I should’ve been here,” he says. “I was working late. Stupid client meeting.”
“But you couldn’t have known…”
“I didn’t keep them safe,” he tells me, and I feel the pain from him. I see it in his eyes, in the hunch of his shoulders, in the tightness in his voice. In his everything.
I squeeze his hand right back, as hard as I can. “I’ll follow the ground rules,” I tell him. “I’ll stay safe, I promise.” I feel so sad. So sad for that little girl with the pretty pink room. So sad for Nick, too. The whole thing feels so sad I can hardly draw breath.