Caroline Anderson - Snowed In For Christmas - Snowed in with the Billionaire / Stranded with the Tycoon / Proposal at the Lazy S Ranch

‘And if I mind?’

She stood up and looked at him expressionlessly. ‘Then I’m still going to bed. Thank you for my meal and your hospitality,’ she said politely. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

He watched her go, and he swore softly and dropped his head into his hands. Why? Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut? Getting angry with her wouldn’t change anything, any more than it had nine years ago.

He was reaching for the wine bottle when the lights on the baby monitor flashed, and he heard a sound that could have been a sigh or a sob or both.

‘Why does he care, Josh? It’s none of his business if I was happy with another man. He didn’t make me happy in the long term, did he? He could have done, but he just didn’t damn well care.’

Sebastian closed his eyes briefly, then picked up the baby monitor and took it upstairs, tapping lightly on her door and handing it to her silently when she opened it.

‘Oh. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. And, for the record, I did care. I never stopped caring.’

She swallowed, and he could see the realisation that he’d heard everything she’d said register on her face. She coloured, but she didn’t look away, just challenged him again, her voice soft so she didn’t disturb the sleeping child.

‘You didn’t care enough to change for me, though, did you? You wouldn’t even talk about it. You didn’t even try to understand or explain why you never had time for me any more.’

No. He hadn’t explained. He still couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he really knew himself, in some ways.

‘I couldn’t change,’ he said, feeling exasperated and cornered. ‘It wasn’t possible. I had to do what I had to do to succeed, and I couldn’t have changed that, not even for you.’

‘No, Sebastian, you could have done. You just wouldn’t.’

And she stepped back and closed the door quietly in his face.

* * *

He stared at the closed door, his thoughts reeling.

Was she right? Could he have changed the way he’d done things, made it easier for her to live the life he’d had to live?

Not really. Not without giving up all he’d worked for, all he’d done to try and find out who he really was, deep down under all the layers that had been superimposed by his upbringing.

He was still no closer to knowing the answer, and maybe he never would be, but until then he couldn’t stop striving to find out, to explore every avenue, every facet of himself, to push himself to the limit until he found out where those limits were.

And on the way, he’d discovered he could make money. Serious money. Enough to make a difference to the people who mattered? Maybe. He hoped so. The charities he supported seemed to think he was making a difference to the kids.

But Georgie mattered, too, and she was right, there hadn’t been time for her in all of this.

OK, it had been tough—tough for both of them. He’d had a hectic life—working all day, networking every evening in one way or another. Dinner out with someone influential. Private views. Trade fairs, cocktails, fundraising dinners—a never-ending succession of opportunities to meet people and forge potentially beneficial links.

To do that had meant working eighteen-hour days, seven days a week. There’d been hardly any down time, and of course it had meant living in London, And that hadn’t been compatible with her view of their relationship, or her need to follow her career—although there was no sign of that now.

She’d wanted to stay at university in Norwich, get her Biological Sciences degree and work in research, maybe do a PhD, but now it seemed she was a virtual PA with a ‘very understanding’ boss.

So much for her career plans, he thought bitterly.

Hell, she could have been his PA. She would have been amazing, and with him, by his side every minute of the day and night, and Josh would have been his child. That would have been a relationship worth having. Instead she’d chosen her career over him, and then gone on to live her dream with some other man who hadn’t had the sense to keep his life insurance going to protect his family.

Great stuff. Good choice, Georgia.

Shaking his head in disgust, he turned away from the door and went downstairs to the kitchen. It was in uproar, the worktops covered with the wreckage of their meal and its preparation, but that was fine. He needed something to do, and it certainly needed doing, so he rolled up his sleeves and got stuck in.

* * *

The bath was wasted on her.

It should have been relaxing and wonderful, but instead she lay in the warm, scented water, utterly unable to relax, unable to shift the weight of guilt that was crushing her.

She got out, dried herself on what had to be the softest towel in the world and pulled on clean clothes. Not her night clothes—she wasn’t that crazy—but jeans and a jumper and nice thick slipper socks, and picking up the baby monitor she padded softly downstairs to find him.

The kitchen door was ajar and she could hear him moving around in there—clearing up, probably, she thought with another stab of guilt. She shouldn’t have stalked off like that, not without offering to help first, but he’d been so pushy, so—angry?

About David?

She opened the door and walked in, and he turned and met her eyes expressionlessly. ‘I thought you’d gone to bed?’

She shook her head.

‘I wasn’t fair to you just now. I know you cared,’ she said quietly, her voice suddenly choked.

He went very still, then turned away and picked up a cloth, wiping down the worktops even though they looked immaculate. ‘So why say I didn’t?’

‘Because that was what it felt like. All you seemed to worry about was your career, your life, your plans for the future. There was never any time for us, just you, you, you. You and your brand new shiny friends and your meteoric rise to the top. You knew I wanted to finish my degree, but you just didn’t seem to think that was important.’

He turned back, cloth in hand. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem important to you any longer, does it? You’re doing a job you could easily have done in London, that’s nothing to do with your degree or your PhD or anything else.’

‘That’s not by choice, though, and actually it’s not true, I am still using my degree. I’m working for my old boss in Cambridge. I’d started my PhD and I was working there in research when I met David.’

‘And then you had it all,’ he said, his voice curiously bitter. ‘Everything you’d always wanted. The career, the marriage, the baby—’

‘No.’ She stopped him with one word. ‘No, I didn’t have it all, Sebastian. I didn’t have you. But you’d made it clear that you were going to take over the world, and I just hated everything about that lifestyle and what it had turned you into. You were never there, and when you were, we were hardly ever alone. I was just so unhappy. So lonely and isolated. I hated it.’

‘Well, you made that pretty clear,’ he said gruffly, and turned back to the pristine worktops, scrubbing them ferociously.

‘It wasn’t you, though. You weren’t like that. You’d changed, turned into someone I’d never met, someone I didn’t like. The people you mixed with, the parties you went to—’

‘Networking, Georgia. Building bridges, making contacts. That’s how it works.’

‘But the people were horrible. They were so unfriendly to me. They made me feel really unwelcome, and I was like a fish out of water. And so much of the time you weren’t even there. You were travelling all over the world, wheeling and dealing and counting your money—’

‘It wasn’t about money! It’s never been about money.’

‘Well what, then? Because it strikes me you aren’t doing badly for someone who says it’s not about money.’