That’s why I’ve selfishly been hanging around here all this time, pushing the envelope as I try to steal just one more day with my family, the only family I truly want, but the one I cannot have. I bit into my lip to staunch the flow of tears I felt threatening. I can give Calen no explanation for them, not after the beautiful way in which we’d just made love.
It felt like old times, even better, and I satisfied myself with the knowledge that I’ll have the memory of this night to take with me when I leave. It will be the only thing keeping me warm for the rest of my life. “What is it?” I held my breath at his question. How did he know that something is bothering me? I’ve been so careful not to give myself away, going so far as to keep my back turned in the dark.
I started to brush him off, but then his arms came around me, and I turned and buried my face in his neck as I fought back the deluge of tears that I know once given free rein, might never stop.* * *CALEN* * *I bit back the questions that were burning a hole in my tongue, not quite sure for the first time since I made the decision to do things this way if I was going about this in the right way. Should I tell her that I know some of what is going on? Should I show my hand now? Or should I carry on as I’d planned to? The only thing holding me back from opening up to her at this point before I had all my ducks in a row is the fact that she’d run once before.
Obviously, my little fool did not think that I could protect her keep her safe, so she ran. Her fear of Ann Winthrop is very strong though I still have no real idea why. Does she, too, suspect that her mother had killed her father? And if so, is that enough to put this kind of fear in her, or is there something else going on that I’ve missed? What could the other woman possibly have done to her own daughter to instill this kind of blind fear? And what, if anything, does the Salvo family have to do with any of this?
Silas has yet to get back to me with anything, which I totally understand since I’d asked for an intense search and ordered the other man not to contact me unless he had something of use. I trust him to know what that something is when he finds it.
I wish I’d known all of what I’d learned here in the last few days before, though, so I could’ve handled things, so she wouldn’t have spent the last two years enduring this shit alone. But wishing doesn’t make shit possible.
It fucks with my head that the whole time I was blaming and cursing her in my head, she was going through something that I had no knowledge of. I feel like just one more person who’d failed her in life; though she hadn’t given me a chance to protect her, somehow, I feel like I should’ve known. I should’ve seen the signs.
It’s for this reason that no matter what I find, I will make Ann and Dana pay and pay dearly for whatever the hell they’d put her through. Dana, because she’d brought that terror back into my wife’s life after she’d escaped. I’m not sure if Ann would’ve found Giselle eventually on her own, but I have no doubt that Dana had helped her along for her own selfish reasons. Ann, I will destroy because, well, the wife of Calen Addison the fourth shouldn’t fear anyone.
Speaking of Dana, mom had started the ball rolling in her campaign to destroy her, but that wasn’t nearly enough in my book. She can always find another job with her connections and credentials unless that is I destroy her connections.
In our circles, both business and personal lives are mostly entwined, and there’s no doubt that I have more sway amongst our peers than she does. She can always explain away her reason for no longer working alongside of me, but she can’t convince them otherwise if I fill them in on a few home truths.
I have a sneaking suspicion that she’s deluded herself into thinking that I won’t come after her because of our history together. She’d know better than most how much I value friendship, loyalty, and honesty. These are things that I live by and of which my closest and dearest are very well aware.
Somehow she’s slept on the fact that my wife became my closest and dearest the day we took vows, thereby eclipsing all others, even those who came before her. Now, as I hold Giselle after the most intense lovemaking of our lives, I can feel the tension return to her body as she laid with her back turned.