Chapter 19
It’s hard to tell which is worse—the bucket of cold water Tom’s words have thrown over my still-rippling core or the searing reminder of the pain of his leaving last time.
Hurt and frustration churn inside me. “Of course you are. Of course a good thing couldn’t be happening.”
I slump into the passenger seat and retrieve my jeans from the floor where they lay crumpled next to the boxed Cockolate and shove my legs into them. Disappointment sits like a lead weight in my belly. “Of course, you’re going back to London.”
Behind me, he zips up his jeans and thrusts his feet into his sneakers. “Han, look?—”
“Maybe you’re not even a Bridge Person. Maybe you’re just a Sixty-Nine-Her-in-the-Back-Seat-of-the-Car-Then-Disappear Person.”
I might be snapping at him, but it’s me I’m frustrated with. If making bad choices with men were an Olympic sport, I’d have a whole rack of gold medals.
“Fuck.” Tom opens the back door. “Look. Let me…” He climbs out. “Jesus…” The door slams, and he reappears in the driver’s seat next to me.
I speak before he can. “It was bad enough the first time. But this time I let myself do all…that first.” I jerk my head at the back seat.
So much for protecting my feelings by telling myself I’m here just for the hot sex. One text from London has brought that wall—that clearly poorly constructed wall—crashing down.
I ball my hands in my lap because all they want to do is pound his chest in frustration. But, really, I should pound my own chest for being such a fucking idiot.
Tom closes his eyes and flexes his jaw, as if I’m driving him to previously unknown levels of frustration. “Will you just let me?—”
I have no intention of listening to whatever his reasoning is. The reason doesn’t even matter. He’s going. And that’s it.
“I knew you were leaving, Tom. Obviously, I did. But I never imagined it would be like this.”I bark out a short laugh at the horror of it. “Wham bam in the back of the car, then ‘See ya.’”
I can’t even believe I talked myself into thinking this Bridge Person thing was a good idea, that it could possibly work. But I did. And now here I am about to wave goodbye with the taste of him still fresh in my mouth.
He reaches for my hand. “But it will?—”
I snatch my hand away. “I’m the biggest fool walking this planet to let myself get involved with you again.” I bang my fists on my thighs. “Deep down I knew it was a stupid idea. I should have listened to my gut, not to Rachel.”
Tom turns in the seat to look at me, the same way he did outside the chocolate shop right before he gave me the kiss of my life, the one that made me want to give myself to him completely.
He lets the silence settle between us. Waits for my breathing to slow.
“Come with me.” His voice is gravelly, with a hint of pleading.
I pause for a second to run that through my head again and confirm I heard it right. I did hear it right. Now he’s the one being a fool. A naive fool.
“What?” His simplistic view of the world doesn’t even make me angry—it just makes me sad. “Don’t be so fucking ridiculous. Off the back of one blow job in a car?” I shake my head at the absurdity of his suggestion. “And I’m not moving Dylan to London.”
“Hannah, will you listen for one goddamn second?” His voice is louder. Firmer. More in charge. “I’d really like it if you didn’t assume I’m an asshole who’d have my face between your legs one minute and disappear the next.”
“But that’s exactly what’s happening. And look.” I point at the phone he’s tossed on the dash. “One text. One excuse. And you’re off. That’s all it takes, Tom. You’re not someone who sticks around.”
“For fuck’s sake, Hannah. One of my executives chucked a Grammy at Sailor Caldwell.”
“Sailor Caldwell? The country singer?” Okay, that’s weird. “Why would someone do that?”
“Is there any reason that would make throwing a five-pound metal statue at someone a reasonable thing to do?” Tom shakes his head. “Thankfully he missed and smashed the glass display cabinet right behind Sailor instead. Or I could be dealing with a manslaughter case, rather than just a damn good talking-to.”
“You don’t need to go to London to fire him.” It’s a pathetic excuse. “You can do that from here.”
“I can’t fire him from anywhere. You have no idea what these guys’ contracts are like. To get the good ones, you have to pretty much superglue yourself to them for life.”
“He doesn’t sound like a good one.”
“He’s a bit hotheaded, is all. I need to find some balance between reading him the riot act and talking him off the ledge. And I can’t do that over a video chat. But.” He places his hand on my thigh, and I disappoint myself further for wanting it to stay there. “It’ll be just a couple days,” he continues. “Three, tops. Then I’ll come back.”
He’s just saying that, trying to rescue the situation. Once he gets to London, he’ll slip right back into his life there and never think of me again.
I snort, fold my arms, and stare straight ahead into the darkness. “Take me home. Take me back to my son.”
“Hannah, I’m not walking away from this. If you want to walk away, that’s up to you. But I sure as hell am not.” Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him rubbing his forehead. Is there a chance he really is torn?
“But I have to go.” His hand drops with a heavy thud into his lap and he stares at the side of my face. “And I’d very much like it if you’d come with me.”
First, how would that even be possible? My brain wobbles inside my skull, trying to figure out how he can think it’s a conceivable option. I can’t just drop my responsibilities and go galivanting to another continent.
But second, if he’s asking me to go with him, maybe he really does intend to come back.
How can I trust him, though? I can’t open myself to the hurt of that turning out not to be true and him deciding to stay there.
“Huh,” I scoff. “So you can abandon me actually in London, rather than from the other side of the Atlantic this time? Yeah, that would be better.”
“I’m not going to abandon you anywhere. You and I will go to London together. I’ll sort out this work nightmare. And you can help me out by doing some work for me there, like…maybe…preliminary chats with the executive assistant candidates, weeding out the ones you know would rub me the wrong way. No one could do that better than you. Then we’ll come back here. I’ll carry on trying to have an actual vacation. And you’ll carry on working for me and Maggie.”
I turn to look at him. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this whole Bridge Person thing. “And then you go back to London?”
“Yes. And you go to California. It’s not just me who’ll leave this time, Hannah. You’ll leave too.”
“Oh, you don’t get to put this on me.” I wag my finger at him. When the hell did I become a finger-wagger? “No, no, no. I was over here minding my own business, making my own life plans. This is not my fault.”
He catches my finger and wraps his hand around it. “I’m not saying it’s your fault.” How is he so infuriatingly calm? “I’m just saying what we already know. What we already talked about. That we’re both here for only a short time.”
He presses the palm of my hand to his lips and sends a maddening tingle up my arm, sparking a tremble deep in my lower belly. “And I want to spend as much of that short time with you as I possibly can. Say you’ll come with me. Please.”
Even if his touch and his words make me want to follow him to the end of the earth, and even if he does mean what he’s saying, it’s simply not doable.
I do have a passport though. My ex, Nicholas, was an airline pilot, and when I’d first started seeing him he’d promised to get me on one of his flight’s to Madrid, then he suggested Paris, then it was London. None of them ever happened. There was always some last minute excuse about there being no space for me on the plane.
But, London—that was the place I’d been most excited to see when he suggested it.
“I can’t leave Dylan.” There. I can’t go anyway. Even if I wanted to.
London, though…with Tom…mind-blowing sex with Tom in London…nothing could ever happen in my life that would be more exciting and romantic than that.
But I can’t go. So that’s that.
He wraps his other hand around mine and squeezes. “Just three nights. Dylan will be at school all day. And Maggie and Jim will look out for him the rest of the time. You know they keep telling you to work less. And you know they adore him. And he’s not a baby anymore. He’s thirteen. It’s not like he can’t make himself a sandwich.”
I drop my gaze to the console between us. The barrier between us. It’s not as wide as the ocean, but it might as well be.
“He got put in detention the other day. The teacher said he was being disruptive in class. She thinks it’s due to the ‘recent upset’ at home.” I meet Tom’s eyes, which catch just a fragment of moonlight. “She says he needs consistency. So, I should stay.”
“He’d be fine.” Tom squeezes my hand tighter. “And your résumé would look even better if you’d traveled to London as my assistant and done some work there.” His mouth turns up at one corner as he raises an eyebrow.
How can one person, a person I’ve loved, despised, and then done my best to put out of my mind, have such a goddamn effect on every part of my being—calm my anger, raise my passion, swell my heart, and crumble my will?
“Oh, fuck, Tom.” I drop my head back against the headrest. “Why can’t I resist you? I spent so long trying to hate you. Then the second you reappear I’m blowing you in the back seat of your brother’s car and contemplating abandoning my kid to run off to London with you.”
“Well, not the second I reappeared.” He chuckles. “We did make chocolate penises first.”
As hard as I try, I can’t stop the giggle. I take my hand back and push him away. “And fuck you for making me laugh.” His face breaks into a smile. “And for giving me the most incredible orgasm.” I shove him with both hands this time. “And for being so hot. And for so irritatingly having an answer for everything.”
He rocks back toward me and takes both my hands, lifts them to his lips, and looks at me over them. “The most incredible orgasm, huh?”
“Yes.” Despite myself, I’m a puddle again. A melted, gooey mess that only Tom Dashwood is capable of turning me into.
“So, will you come to London?” His breath warms my fingers.
I sigh, my body limp, the fight gone. I want to. Christ, I want to. It’s wrong. And I know it’ll hurt me in the end. But, shit, I want to.
“More than anything, I need Dylan to be safe and well and happy. I am not doing anything that would jeopardize anything for him. So we need to talk to Maggie first. Then to him.”
Tom drops my hands, cups my face, and gently lifts my lips to meet his. And he holds me there, not moving, just our lips together. A perfect fit, the woodsy scent of his skin now tinged with sex sweat and the aroma of my arousal, the touch of his mouth filling my senses.
When he pulls back, he tips his forehead against mine and strokes my cheek. “I’ll talk to Mags. You talk to Dylan. And you and I will talk about it again in the morning.”
My final drop of willpower evaporates. Maybe this whole Bridge Person thing could work after all. Maybe the London plan will go exactly as he says. And maybe he will restore my faith in men so I can move on and find my forever person when we get to LA.
“Okay.”
“And now.” He kisses my forehead. “I’m going to tell you that you are amazing.” The tip of my nose. “And beautiful.” My lips. “And take you home to your son.”
“He’s a treasure. You both sleep tight now,” Maggie says, as she waves and turns away from the front door of our guest suite to head back toward the main house.
She’d been here getting Dylan to go to bed.
But he’s obviously not asleep yet because there’s a glow under his door. I nudge it open and stick my head around to find him sitting propped up with his pillows, lights from a video on his tablet flashing across his face. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing much.”
“Can I see?”
He shrugs, which isn’t a no. And that’s the best I can hope for a lot of the time these days.
I sit on the edge of his bed. “Too old for a snuggle?”
Another shrug. Again, not a no.
I swing up my legs and wrap my arm around his shoulders. “Ah. Guitar tutorials.”
“Yeah, this guy’s good. He explains it the same way Tom explained it to me.”
Right, there’s my way in. “Tom might not be able to give you lessons for the next few days. He has to go back to London for a work thing.”
Dylan’s face snaps to mine, his eyes wide, mouth open. Is that what I looked like when Tom told me?
“It’s okay.” I rub the top of Dylan’s head. “He’ll be back in a flash.” If I make that promise to Dylan, maybe that will make it true.
“Okay,” he says. “And you promised you’d put me on his schedule, right?”
“Totally.” And there’s my next way in. “He does need some extra help while he’s in London, though.” I take a deep breath. “So he’s asked me to go with him. To help.”
Dylan gasps again.
I stroke his hair. “But if you want me to stay home, I totally won’t go. I’ll stay.”
“Going to London would be awesome. Why wouldn’t you go?”
Oh. I guess he wouldn’t miss me as much as I thought. That makes me sad as much as it makes me happy. Tom’s right. He’s not a baby anymore.
“Because I’d worry about you. And also because I’d have to leave tomorrow. So it’s very short?—”
“I’d be with Maggie and Jim, though, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s fine. They’re nice. Kind of like grandparents.”
Someone might as well be slicing my heart in two with a glinting silver blade right now, because that’s exactly what it feels like.
With neither my nor his shithead father’s parents having shown any interest in him, and the last shithead’s parents both being dead, Tom’s aunt and uncle are the closest experience to grandparents this kid has ever had.
And in a couple months, we’ll be moving away from them too. Jesus. If he’s acting out a bit at school now, what the hell will it be like when we get to LA? It hadn’t dawned on me before, but it’s not only Tom I should worry about him becoming attached to. It’s Maggie and Jim.
But there’s no option. The clinical trial might fix his ear problem, or at least slow down its progression, and help him keep most of his hearing for most of his life. So we have to go. It’s his only chance.
“I’m happy you like them.” I drop a kiss on the top of his head. His smell has barely changed since he was a baby. It’s just a little sweatier these days. “It’s late, though. You should put that away and get some sleep or you’ll be nodding off at your desk tomorrow.”
He yawns, turns off the tablet, and hands it to me as he slides farther under the covers.
I sneak one more kiss on his head. “Good night.”
“Night, Mom.”
As I close the door behind me, his voice pipes up again. “London will be awesome.”
A lump rises in my throat.
My heart could not be fuller.