Page 80 of Bought

I’d always belonged to him.

I always would.

When the second orgasm came, I didn’t break. I didn’t shatter.

I flew.

30

Tennyson

The next couple of days, I didn’t leave the house. I spent the time with Zara, getting rid of my stubborn anger at my friend and my daughter in the endless distraction and pleasure dominating her was turning out to be.

She was perfect in just about every way. She took the sharp edges off my fury, turning it into something hotter and less cruel, less corrosive. She channeled it outward, making it a fire that blazed instead of needles of ice turning inward and shredding parts of my soul. She gave me my control back.

I’d had no idea I’d needed her until now.

I should have gone and made my peace with Isabel, but I was still too angry to consider speaking to her. Caleb had told me he didn’t want me to, and that was fine. I was still debating whether to kill him, but again, Zara had taken the edge off my anger at him, too.

She made everything better through some alchemy I didn’t understand.

However, even Zara couldn’t make the Hamiltons disappear.

I’d been going to call Livia to ask her for any inside details on the Hamiltons, since I was sure Caleb had mentioned that she had a contact. But I realized at the last minute that I couldn’t ask her any specific questions since that would give away what had happened to Sir George and my role in his death. And there was no way I was going to do that. Which meant if I wanted to find out how the Hamiltons knew I’d killed him, I needed to find another way to do it.

I went into work a couple of days after Caleb’s visit. Zara assured me she would be fine on her own. She was, apparently, very content to lounge around naked in my house, and I was very, very happy to let her.

It put me in a foul mood to leave her— not that I wasn’t in a foul mood already — so I wasn’t best pleased when Karl, my secretary, announced through the intercom, “Miss Isabel is here, Mr. Fox.”

The next minute, my daughter strode through the glass doors of my office.

Instantly I came to my feet, ready to give her the tongue-lashing of the century. All my good sense and Zara’s advice had gone straight out the window, buried beneath a flood of fear and worry for Isabel, not to mention the desperate anger that covered it.

“Isabel,” I began, “What are you doing—”

“I need to talk to you about me and Caleb,” she interrupted, coming to a stop in front of my desk.

She was different today. There was a poise to her, a calm I’d never seen in her before. As if at some point, she’d found an emotional focus or center, instead of being a wild storm flailing around trying to find a target.

Caleb’s doing perhaps?

I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to think about him. “Don’t mention his name to—”

“Oh, stop it,” she interrupted with some disgust. “I don’t want your righteous anger. I know you want to protect me, all the bullshit I’ve had to endure for years is all about your need to protect me. But I’ve had enough, Dad. It ends today.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but she held up a hand. “I haven’t finished. I love Caleb. I’ve loved him for years. Yes, I know his past. Yes, I know what he’s done. The thing is, Dad, is that he’s the only one who has ever given a shit about me. The only one who ever gave me the attention I wanted. He made me feel important. He made me feel wanted. He made me feel like I was worth something.”

You knew what your distance did to her. You knew how she would feel. And you just didn’t want to do anything about it.

It was true. It was all true. At first putting distance between us had been necessity. It had been grief at the loss of Juliana, and the horror at what I’d done to Sir George. Then, after that, had come the hungry demands of my business. There had always seemed to be a reason not to overcome that distance, and soon it had become insurmountable.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. The honesty in her green eyes and the utter certainty of what she was saying were like a blade through my heart.

“You held me at a distance for so long,” she went on, mirroring what was going through my head so closely it was as if she could read my mind. “And you know what I thought? I thought it was because you blamed me for Mom’s death. I thought you couldn’t stand to look at me, because of her.”

Shock hit me. Yes, she looked like Juliana — too much like her — and sometimes that was uncomfortable. But that wasn’t why I’d distanced her. I wanted to explain, but she continued on, “Regardless, Caleb was there for me and he always has been. That’s why I fell in love with him. I know he’s older than me and I don’t care. But as it happens, he’s not willing to love me back and since I’m not accepting scraps from him ever again, you don’t have to worry about us being together, because it’s over. But I won’t have you destroying a friendship over me. I refuse to be the thing that breaks you up. He’s a good man. He’s loyal and protective, and you need him whether you know it or not. And he needs you.”

I had no idea what to say to that. I was still struggling with the fact that she loved him to even process that he’d apparently rejected her. Instead, I turned sharply away, striding over to the windows, where I stood, hands in my pockets, trying to get my thoughts in order.