Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92809 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92809 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Trying to get my words in order while my thoughts are scattered all over the place is quite a task, so I take my time. She lets me, her breaths hitching as her eyes burn mine.
“I apologise wholeheartedly for interfering with your calendar. I should have asked you first,” I say, and the red-haired goddess rolls her eyes.
“No shit, Sherlock. No wonder you’re the owner of an empire. Your IQ is off the scale.”
Even now, I love her dark humour. The cheekiness of her mouth, even in her pain. She folds her arms.
“So, why?” she asks. “Spit it out, Reuben. What’s going on?”
I offer the truth.
“I don’t know.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? You postponed every one of my bookings click after click, then blanked the notifications.”
“Yes, I did, and I shouldn’t have. Not without asking you first.”
“I was so fucking scared. I thought Orla was going to go ballistic, and call me out, or cancel my account. And then what? I’d just be Tiffany, a girl living in a tower with no fucking job.”
“As I said, that would never happen. I’d have admitted my actions and taken the fall myself.”
“But WHY? What the fuck?!”
She flails her hands in the air as though I’ve lost the plot, and the sight of her, frazzled and barely covered by my night robe only stokes my insanity. In a moment of madness I reach out and take her hands in mine.
“Because I HAD to. I couldn’t bear the thought of you being with anyone else. That night, at the club, when I heard you getting fucked like a slut behind those bins, I wanted to burst in and push him the fuck off you. Because I wanted you! ME! Not HIM! And ever since then, since our first proposal together, it’s all I can think about.” She’s wide eyed as I take a breath. “I didn’t get a wink of fucking sleep knowing you were at the glory wall, on your knees being taken by a load of clients who don’t mean a fucking thing. So I lost my mind, ok? I called up your calendar and put in a proposal of my own, and then I abused my authority. I used my founder login to postpone everything else I could, right the way up until Christmas. Because I wanted to. That’s why.”
“Wanted to or needed to?”
“You already know the answer to that, Tiffany. You said it yourself in the bathroom.”
“I want to hear you say it for yourself.”
The fire in her eyes has dimmed to glowing embers. The tension in the air is so stifling I can barely speak.
“Needed to,” I tell her. “I needed to. And so fucking help me, if I was back in that moment, staring at your jam-packed calendar with my heart in my hands, I’d do it all over again.”
I feel like a defendant awaiting a verdict. Vulnerable in ways I haven’t felt since Jeanette left me, my heart on the floor, exposed, with the potential to get trampled to shit.
“You should have told me,” she says.
“I agree, yes, I should have. Or more specifically, I should have asked you. I can only offer an apology and assure you it won’t happen again.”
She looks up at the ceiling. “We’re both going mental.”
“No doubt about that, but as I said earlier, it feels like we’re two very different peas in the same pod. And so help me, I love it. I haven’t felt this way in years.”
I let my words sink in, her hands still in mine. She blinks and more tears fall. Her bottom lip trembles.
“This could fuck us both up so bad.”
“I know.”
“Why me?” she asks. “You must have been with hundreds of women. You’re a founder, and a businessman, with years under your belt to find someone perfect, so why me?”
“Because my idea of perfect doesn’t come along all that often, Tiffany. The only taste of what I thought was perfect was an ex-wife who didn’t want my perfect in return, and walked away.”
Her eyes slam into mine.
“She left you?”
“Yes, she left me. Differences, arguments, growing apart. Irreconcilable. That’s how the divorce papers term it.”
“Did you want her to leave?”
I hate talking about Jeanette. I usually avoid it at all costs.
“Yes, and no. No at the time. I was a wreck. Later, I felt it was for the best. Good riddance, I’d tell myself. Then slowly, the loneliness crept in. It’s easy to ignore it when you’re busy. Work and charity, the Agency. All good reasons to forget that you’re coming home to an empty house and bed every night. Christmas is always hard. I do the grotto to ease my own pain as well as give people joy. And then you walked in.”
She smiles. “Walked in and plonked my butt on your lap.”