Therese Beharrie - Second Chance With Her Billionaire

Then again, fate had brought him Summer, too. Look how that had turned out.

‘Let’s put it down to the respect I have for my ex-father-in-law, then, shall we?’

‘Yes,’ she said after a moment. ‘Let’s.’

Her eyes met his, and he thought he saw a flash of vulnerability there. It quickly slipped behind a cool expression, which he was grateful for. A long time ago he’d cared about what was behind that cool expression. Hell, he’d thought he’d seen exactly what was behind that cool expression.

Because it was almost identical to the expressions he’d worn. The ones that said, I’m pretending, but you’ll never know why. Or, I’m hiding something, and you’ll never know what.

Back then he’d thought he knew why Summer was pretending. What she was hiding. She was the strong and powerful heiress of the Bishop empire; she had to act that way. She was hiding that she didn’t want to.

Except now he wasn’t so sure he’d known anything about her after all. Or was he just sour that she knew enough about him to think he wasn’t worth the woman behind the mask any more?

Whatever it was, when she deemed him worthy to see the real her, it made him lose his ability to reason. He’d proposed spontaneously; married her within weeks of that proposal.

He should have signed the divorce papers at the same time and saved himself some trouble.

‘Where is Autumn?’ he asked, trying to get his mind off the memories. ‘I thought she’d be here.’

Not that he noticed anyone after he saw Summer.

‘She will be.’ Summer clenched her jaw, then relaxed it. Forcibly, he thought. ‘She’s putting the final touches on a cake for a wedding tomorrow. Then she’ll have to get it to the actual wedding, so she’ll only be here on Sunday. Conveniently,’ she added, distinctly softer than her other words.

For some reason, it amused him.

‘Pity.’

‘It is.’ She narrowed her eyes.

‘What?’

‘You’re using that dry tone that tells me you’re making fun of me.’

‘I’d never make fun of you.’

‘You did it again.’

‘Summer, I’m not responsible for the way you interpret my tone.’

He smiled easily at her, mostly because he knew she’d find it irritating. He really missed irritating her.

‘As obstinate as ever, I see.’

‘As sensitive as ever, I see.’

‘I am not—’ Summer broke off when his smile widened. ‘I should have tried harder to get out of this.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, not acknowledging her confirmation that she had tried to skip the event. ‘It would have saved you a lot of trouble.’

Her expression went blank, her eyes shifting to the doors of the dining hall they’d come out of before resting on him again.

‘Did you come out here specifically to annoy me, Wyatt?’

Since he couldn’t tell her the real reasons he’d followed her—he didn’t fully know what they were—Wyatt said, ‘I did. I’m happy to see I’m succeeding.’

She shook her head and looked up, and for the first time he noticed her hair wasn’t loose. Usually, she wore her curls wild and free; today, her hair was tied back into a stern bun. Sleek, sure, but tamed to within an inch of its life. It bothered him.

Or maybe what bothered him was the hunger that was restless in his body. As if his cells had been starved and were now being offered a feast. Which was, he supposed, not untrue. For two years, his eyes had been starved of the beauty of her face. He couldn’t blame them for wanting to sate their hunger, despite the anger; despite the hurt.

So he allowed them to sweep over the oval slope of her brown eyes; the curve of her cheekbones; the dusting of freckles on the skin of her cheeks. He let them check whether the slight scar at her temple was still there, and if her lips were still pink and full and perfect for kissing.

He stopped himself then, because thinking about kissing and Summer at the same time was taking it too far. The prickling of his body told him so, as did the way those pink, full lips of hers parted. Which made him realise his eyes had dropped to her lips and had stayed there. That he was now showing her his hunger; revealing to her his feasting.

Though he warned himself not to, his eyes lifted to hers, and their gazes locked. A stampede could have passed them, the animals hurling themselves off the edge of the cliff, and he wouldn’t have noticed. He would have just kept looking into Summer’s eyes. He would have kept trying to see if his tainted past had been worth sacrificing that pull between them, especially when it still seemed to be alive and kicking.

He stepped back at the unexpected thought. When he realised it took him closer to the cliff, he took a step to the side. In his current state, being close to anything that might put him at risk of falling wasn’t a good idea.

So run away from Summer, then, a voice in his head told him.

He swallowed.

SUMMER’S LEGS HAD gone unsteady under her. She desperately wanted to walk away from Wyatt; she couldn’t. Because she was worried her legs wouldn’t carry her away, yes, but also because it was more than just her legs that were unsteady.

It was her mind. It was offering her memories of that short period when they’d been happy together. When his snark had attracted her almost as much as it had annoyed her. When she’d been able to enjoy the breadth of his shoulders, the short curls of his hair, his unreasonably handsome face.

Her heart was unsteady, too. It was complaining about being put under this much pressure, torn between being happy to see him and aching at what seeing him reminded her of.

Heartache. Loss. Failure.

Loneliness.

She resented the feelings almost as much as she resented Wyatt’s admiration for her father. She still didn’t know how he could admire the man who’d broken his family with his infidelity. Who’d broken her heart by telling her to keep it a secret from her sister and mother…

Because Wyatt doesn’t know.

Oh, yes. That was how.

‘I should get back,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘Me, too.’

They both turned, and their shoulders touched. Her head turned so sharply for her to glare at the offending part of her body she was afraid she’d damaged her neck. But she didn’t spend much time thinking about it. She was too busy looking at her traitorous shoulder.

How had they got so close they could touch like this anyway?

Not liking that she hadn’t noticed it, she took a deliberate step to the side at the same time he did. Her head lifted from her shoulder to his face; she narrowed her eyes. It was fine that she didn’t want to touch him, but how dared he not want to touch her? It didn’t matter what his reasons were—and she refused to think about her own—it was offensive.

‘You can’t kill me with a glare,’ he told her calmly, as if he were completely unaware of what had happened.

‘Doesn’t mean I can’t try,’ she replied sweetly, walking ahead of him before he could respond.

Except that the move wasn’t quite as impactful as she’d hoped it would be. Her heels sank into the grass. Because she’d been storming off—quite appropriately—she hadn’t been prepared to get stuck. Momentum pushed her forward and for the longest seconds of her life, Summer thought she was going to fall on her face. In front of her ex-husband. And a bunch of her parents’ wealthy friends she didn’t think much of.

Which didn’t mean she wanted them to see her fall.

Instead of falling, though, she was pulled back up against a hard body. Her mind needed a moment to recover, so it took longer than she would have liked to realise the body was behind her, not in front. It took even longer to realise that she recognised the feel of that body against her.