Chapter 14
Zoltán
Fia thought I was doing her a favour.
I’d struck gold.
Even the list of rules she’d slid under my hotel door made me smile. She normally stayed in an Airbnb with her sister and their friends. The fact that she’d come all the way to my hotel just to deliver it? That alone made me grin.
I read the rules until I could recall them word for word. Her handwriting was so pretty.
Follow these rules, or I’ll move teams the second we return.
You do not mention my father in any capacity. Unless I bring him up.
You do not get to come. At all. Whether it’s with your hand or anything else.
You are honest with me. You answer every question about the crash as specifically as you can with no omissions.
No flirting. With me or anyone else.
I am in control.
Maybe she couldn’t bear to see my face when I hit rule number two. Maybe she’d blush. Or bite her lip.
But she’d thought about it. She’d imagined me. Heard me. Felt me. Tasted me.
She’d made rules. Which meant she was already breaking them in her head. It was only a matter of time.
In the hospital, I’d caught her mind wandering, and I’d questioned what she was thinking. We’d nearly kissed in the medical bay. Again.
I’d thought she was having second thoughts. Turns out, she was just mentally writing rules about how not to fall for me.
On the flight, sitting beside her, I considered everything I could do with her hateful note.
I would frame it. I’d share the list with our kids. Omitting number two, of course. Maybe I’d photocopy it. I’d frame the clean version and keep the original in my wallet. Forever.
Fia Bacque was finally on my page. Falling, just as recklessly as I was.
Falling didn’t feel like the right word. It was more like flying — exhilarating. And as much as I had no control over my feelings anymore, it was in the best way possible.
One thing I did have control over? The itinerary.
She was going back to England for her Dad’s birthday next Monday, so I had approximately seven nights with her.
It was no skin off my back. Planning it all felt like a relief—finally getting the ideas out of my head.
When I told her I’d arrange everything in the hospital, she mumbled, asking if I could tell her sister too. But if anyone scared me, it was Everly Bacque because she was probably the one person who could make Fia reconsider me.
Through security, the flight, and the taxi ride to my house, Fia stayed quiet, typing savagely on her phone, throwing sighs and huffs.
I didn’t pry, just cocked my head and raised my brows.
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “My sister.”
But her annoyance shifted to panic when she looked around as we pulled up at my home. Her neck almost snapped with how quickly her head rotated, trying to take it all in.
“Is anyone else here?”
I shook my head. “No. I asked my housekeeper, Anna, to stay in her building.”
“She has a whole building?”
“Of course. I’m not a monster.”
She blinked with a shocked ghost of laughter, and I gestured for her to stay put before running to her side of the car and opening her door for her.
Laughter louder now, she kept her head down as she took my hand and stepped out. I squeezed her fingers.
“I think I’m going to add another rule,” she said, still smiling. “No gentlemanly gestures. No touching.”
I pouted, and she rolled her eyes, lightly slapping my arm.
“I thought no touching?”
Her eyes flashed with awareness, and she smiled politely at the taxi driver, taking her suitcase from him with a thank you before walking up the gravel path.
No gentlemanly gestures meant I couldn’t even offer to take her bag, but I should have decorated in the same way we had for the wedding. I should have arranged champagne towers and flowers on every surface. She couldn’t argue with something I’d arranged in advance.
As soon as I opened the front door, we were bombarded by seven dogs of various sizes, hounding us for kisses and treats. Fia dropped to her knees, stroking each one as quickly as she could to make sure she got them all.
My focus was on Bodri, who had been struggling with his arthritis when I left last week. He was on painkillers and every vitamin his vet recommended, but he was still a little stiff.
He’d been my granddad’s dog. He was the start of my whole rescue obsession.
His little grey snout nuzzled my hand, and from the pocket part of my suitcase, I pulled out a treat for them all, starting with him.
They each dispersed once they received their dad’s guilty gift.
I hated leaving them. If it weren’t for Anna being so amazing, I wouldn’t be able to have them. I was going to book her a spa day.
No. Fia said I often shoved things on people.
I was trying to do nice things.
But I may not have thought them through.
I was going to give her a spa voucher.
“Shall I take your bag up to your room?”
No gentlemanly gestures — unless I asked for permission? Her suitcase was huge, and I was not about to see her struggle taking it up the stairs.
And it meant she would see the goodies I got her on her bed. Well, my bed.
She narrowed her eyes at me, because yes, I was immediately trying to break a rule.
“If you insist,” she said and relinquished her wardrobe to me.
“I do,” I said and lifted it by the side handle. Fuck, was she carrying bowling balls in here? I rolled my shoulders, trying to act like I hadn’t been taken aback by the weight of it. Her ex’s Instagram posts sprang to mind, and now I wanted to do twenty bicep curls with the case. “You coming up?”
Come and see all your gifts.
She shook her head. “I should probably get it over with and call my sister back.”
I nodded and ran up with her suitcase, excited to see exactly how my housekeeper had decorated my room.
And I stopped short.
Oh fuck. Anna was good. She was too good.
Because there were rose petals everywhere.
And that had not been the plan. I wanted Fia to feel safe, not seduced.
I placed her suitcase in the wardrobe space I’d made for her — wishful, forward thinking — and scrambled on the floor to try and get every petal, before then trying to brush them off the bed into my hands.
But they were finicky and small and soft and smooth and slipped easily from my big, meaty hands.
And I had nowhere to put them.
I lunged into the ensuite, opening the bathroom bin to put as many as I’d managed to carry, only to look down and see the bath drawn with more petals.
And lit candles.
Fia’s voice floated up the stairs. Angelic. Too close.
Fuck.
I pulled the plug of the bath, rushing back to the bed to scoop up yet more petals before she came up and saw that I was trying to seduce her again.
I fully intended to respect her boundaries and follow rule number four — no flirting. To the best of my ability, anyway.
But why could I smell burning?
I stood straight, dropped the petals on the bed, sniffed, and went into a full meltdown, because the room was on fire.
I checked the bed, the balcony, the bedside tables, and the wardrobe. Nothing.
Bodri huffed down in the doorway, uncaring of my fear that the whole house was going to burn down because it was made of wood.
In the bathroom, the smell was stronger. The drain gurgled behind me as I strained to hear if Fia was coming up. But my focus also had to be on the fire.
I blew out each candle, only to find that I’d dropped some petals in one of the candles, and that was what had been burning.
I sat on the side of the bath and sighed in relief. I was surprised I didn’t pass out.
Now that the adrenaline had passed, my head was reeling.
And there were still a hundred petals left to bin.
Bodri was the best wingman and heaved himself up to go and find his new best friend, Fia. Good. Hopefully, he’d distract her.
I managed to bin the rest of the petals, empty the bin bag, and hide the candles in record-breaking time.
With how stressed I’d been, I put on some more deodorant and patted my forehead with a towel to make sure I still looked and smelled my best for her because I had been sweating, thinking that before I could make her fall in love with me, I might accidentally kill her.
Downstairs, she paced by the tall, panelled windows, her phone pressed so tightly to her ear that her knuckles were pale.
I’d been practicing my English more and more so that I could better understand Fia — I was even doing online classes — but I couldn’t understand everything she said.
“Well, I don’t mean to upset anyone,” she pressed.
“I’m allowed to have a relationship with whoever I want.
” A pause where I felt euphoric. She was defending us to the person whose opinion mattered most to her.
And then she continued. “He’s my father, Ever.
I shouldn’t feel guilty about reaching out.
We work together. A few days getting to know him will help my team— and then I’m staying with friends.
” Another pause. Fia’s hands tightened into fists. “I do have friends, thank you.”
They continued, Fia shaking her head with fury.
I didn’t know much about Fia’s social life. I knew she lived mostly with her sister and Livie and then her mum and the man she called Dad in England, but… I didn’t know much about her relationships outside of that.
I made sure to creak the stairs as I walked down them to her. She gave me the weakest smile.
“Ever, Dad will be fine. Mum will be fine. I can’t live my entire life for them and not even give him a chance.”
So she was lying to them. But I wondered how much of that last sentence was truthful and whether she meant me or not.
I really hoped she meant me.
We had two days to get through the report before I planned for us to travel to Serbia. There, I would try and woo her. Respectfully.