Chapter Ten #2
Her eyebrows rise. “Wow. I didn’t realize she asked that night.” She glances at me again, her gaze curious. “I did wonder what you thought about it.”
“I was shocked. And flattered. She said I had qualities she’d like for her child.”
“Clearly, she doesn’t know you as well as you thought.”
I give a short laugh. “Definitely not.”
“But you turned her down?”
“At first I asked for time to think about it. By the time I said yes, Marcus had swooped in and offered marriage. Turns out he asked her out at eighteen, but she said no because she’s five years older. But there was obviously always some attraction there.”
“Why didn’t you ask her to marry you? Friendship is a good basis for a successful marriage.”
“You think?”
“You don’t?”
I frown. “I’d like to be physically attracted to my wife.”
“Oh, come on,” she scoffs, “I saw the wedding photos. Wren’s gorgeous.”
“Yes she is, but we don’t have a connection, you know?”
“You can’t possibly be saying you’re demisexual? That you need an emotional connection with a girl before you’re sexually attracted to her?”
“Why not?”
“Because you had sex with me less than an hour after meeting me!”
“Yeah, but you were hot.”
We both laugh.
“Seriously,” she says. “I’m confused.”
I shrug. “I can’t explain it. Wren and I have always been friends, but we’ve never gone down that road. I didn’t even consider it when she asked me to donate.”
“But you still didn’t say yes to donating right away?”
“No…”
“Why not? You know you don’t have a limited supply of little swimmers, right?”
I give her a wry look. “I am aware. I was very sympathetic to her situation. She’d been to the fertility clinic, and they’d told her there’s a two-year waiting list for single women.”
“Jeez.”
“I know, so I understood her plight. I just needed time. I wasn’t sure…” I stop and run my hand through my hair.
“Wasn’t sure about what?”
“I do plan on getting married eventually, and I wasn’t sure how my wife would feel knowing I’d fathered another woman’s child.”
“You could just not tell her.”
“I wouldn’t want to keep a secret like that from her.”
Another curious look. “Really?”
“You don’t feel the same way?”
“I do, I wasn’t aware there might be men who did.” Her voice is flat.
“Are you talking about your ex?”
It’s her turn to shrug. “I thought we could talk about anything, but it turned out he was keeping a lot of his feelings to himself.” She pauses. Then she says, “Do you know how I found out that he’d been thinking about breaking up with me?”
“No.”
“I’d put my laptop away and wanted to ask ChatGPT something, and his laptop was open, so I quickly hopped on it and found a thread where he’d discussed our relationship.”
“Fuck me, seriously?”
“Yeah. He’d listed all my faults. Laid out every reason I pissed him off. And at the end, ChatGPT said something like: ‘taking into account everything you’ve told me, I believe you should think about ending your relationship.’”
I stare at her, speechless for a moment. “That’s awful,” I say eventually. “I’m so sorry.”
“Ah, it was a good thing in a way. I mean, I knew we weren’t exactly the golden couple, but I tend to be a bit…
fuzzy about things like that. I can’t take a step back and look at it from a distance.
” She glances at me. “Anyway, it just surprised me that you’d feel a need to admit to a partner what you did for Wren.
If the decision was made before you met your wife, why would she care?
Wren wasn’t asking you to be involved, right? ”
“No…” I think about the way I couldn’t get Cupcake out of my head. How obsessed I became. “But I’d already met you, Maddie.”
“What do you mean?”
“You got under my skin. I was wondering whether I’d ever see you again. I tried to find you.”
Her eyes widen. “What?”
“I tried to analyze the attendance report and work out who you were from the time you had your ticket scanned, but too many guests arrived in the fifteen-minute time bracket. I asked all the staff at the ball if they’d seen you.
Lots had… but nobody knew who you were. You’re not on social media like Brielle, and you’d disguised your coloring.
And you just vanished. After a few days, I realized I wouldn’t find you, and that’s why I said yes to Wren.
But by then, Marcus has proposed, and even if you ignore the fact that I think she was already attracted to him, an offer of marriage gave her baby safety and security. I can’t blame her for accepting.”
Maddie’s mouth is still open, and she’s blinking rapidly. “You… you tried to find me?”
“That surprises you?”
“Of course it does! I thought you’d walk away and never think of me again!”
“You’re more memorable than that, Cupcake,” I say softly. “Even with your disguise.”
She glances at me and our gazes lock for so long, I’m afraid she’s going to crash the car. Eventually, she tears her eyes away and looks back at the road. Color lingers in her cheeks, though, which are an attractive pink.
“Why did you tell me that?” she whispers. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
“I never said that. I’ve thought about my mysterious girl practically twenty-four-seven since the ball.”
“I’m mysterious? Dude, you’re the mysterious one.”
“Why? I’m an open book.”
“Yes, but you’re completely inscrutable. I can never tell what you’re thinking. And you’ve been so antagonistic, so angry with me… I thought you hated me.”
“I don’t hate you at all. I like you a lot. Like I said, you’re hot, sexy, smart, and funny. I just don’t trust you, that’s all.”
She doesn’t seem to know what to say to that.
“I’ve shocked you,” I comment, a little amused.
“Well, duh.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t normally speak my mind so openly. But I don’t like you thinking I hate you, because I certainly don’t.”
“You just don’t trust me.”
“No.”
“Is there any way I can convince you that I didn’t try to seduce you?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“How about the fact that when I tripped up the steps, you approached me?”
“That’s true… but maybe you feigned it when you saw me.”
“Caesar, you’ve seen me in action. I’m not a ballerina. I have two left feet. I’m constantly banging into things and falling over.”
It’s true, and for the first time, doubt flickers inside me.
“Anyway,” she continues, “do you really think I’m skilled in the art of seduction?”
“I think you’re incredibly intelligent, and your cutesy bunny thing could be an act.”
“My what?”
“The way you turned your womanly wiles on me.”
“The way I nearly fell off the stool, you mean?”
“No, I mean the way you flirted and teased me and made me believe you liked me.”
“I did like you! You’re gorgeous. All the women at the ball would have killed to get your attention, Caesar. I’d just had an awful breakup, and been called—amongst many other things—vanilla. Even Brielle said, ‘Nobody’s going to recognize the quiet little mouse tonight,’ when we parted.”
“Jesus, really?”
“Yeah. My self-esteem was, like, an inch high. And then the inimitable Caesar Ashford started talking to me. And not just talking—he was flirting with me. I had stars in my eyes. I thought we had real chemistry.”
“So did I,” I murmur.
She swallows hard. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes all this harder.”
“All what?”
She just shakes her head.
After thirty seconds or so, when it’s clear she’s not going to reply, I look out of the window.
We’re well on the way to Lake Wānaka now, and the hills are rising around us, the brown peaks brushed with green and interspersed with isolated farmsteads. It’s unforgiving farmland, so I can see why Maddie chose a farm like Blackridge to test Verdant on.
I had stars in my eyes, she said. It warms me through, and even though I tell myself firmly not to be flattered by it, it’s impossible not to be.
Could it be true that our connection was real?
That she didn’t seek me out? I did approach her first. I’m so cynical that it’s impossible for me to see our meeting as anything other than engineered, but honestly, what’s more likely?
That her grandfather told her to do her best to soften me up at the ball, and so she constructed a plan to fall over on purpose in the hope I’d leap in and save her?
It would’ve been risky; she could have fallen down the steps and broken her neck.
The alternative is that she truly didn’t recognize me until we’d talked for a bit. And then, as she said, she was enjoying herself and knew I wouldn’t stay if she admitted who she was.
Is it possible that she was just recovering from a breakup, and was lonely and flattered by the attention? That she did like me? That the chemistry I felt was real?
My heart lifts like a leaf on the wind… and then slowly drifts back down.
It doesn’t matter whether she was lying or not.
She’s Tom’s granddaughter, and I have no doubt he’s instructed her to close the deal this weekend.
She’s admitted being excited at the thought of getting her hands on the Ashford technology, and I’m sure she’ll pull out all the stops to make sure I agree to the partnership.
I still have to be on my guard. Maybe now more than ever.
My mood sours again. I wish we were heading out to the hills for a Valentine’s Day romantic break, but that’s not what this is.
It’s a business trip, and not a nice one.
I need to find all the flaws in her system, so I have something concrete to use in my rejection of Tom’s proposal.
My father will listen if I provide evidence. That has to be my focus.
Not the girl with the white hair and violet eyes. I mustn’t think of her as anything else but the enemy.